Private Nar Shaddaan Nightmares

[Isar]

NAR SHADDAA,
UNDERCITY - DARKLANDS

Night lay over Nar Shaddaa, but the urban sprawl refused to sleep. Far below the reaching fingers of its skyscrapers lay the undercity. Much like Coruscant, it was place of squallor and utter lawlessness. Only worse, for on Nar Shaddaa the corruption ran far deeper, down to the very core of the moon itself.

Beneath the Red Light Sector, a turbolift shaft led to the Darklands. A place utterly devoid of electricity, where the worst denizens dwelled. Standing in front of the turbolift was Isar, the nearby neon playing shadows across his face as he puffed on a cigarillo. He'd a hand stuffed into his spacer jacket and leaned against the permacrete of the shaft with a bored expression.

Few people passed by in the alleyway. Never alone. Not the type of place you walked alone, absent a certain caliber of hunter. Which Isar happened to be. He'd been given a job by the local Syndicate rep. Someone had been snatching bodies off the Red Light. Made it tough to do business when people were freaked to even go there in the first place. Oh sure, they knew it was seedy, but that was one thing. Getting disappeared was another. Isar had managed to track down the source of the problems, sort of, to a gang of slavers - operating without the consent of the Syndicate - right under the Red Light sector in the Darklands. They'd use those tunnels to go straight to a nearby spaceport and then traffic the bodies elsewhere.

Isar's job was simple: kill them all. Send a message, right?

And since the job was killing slavers, he figured it would be the perfect opportunity for his new acquaintance, Sael , and so had dropped her a line. Now, he waited. Odds were, she'd show. Not every day you got to go practice shattering minds on some hapless slavers.

 

[Sael]

​

Seedy or not, it was probably unwise for Sael to walk anywhere alone. Sure, her eyes and the depth of red of her skin were startling, striking even, but nothing about her composition imposed.

Ashline Terminal was probably the only place on Nar Shaddaa she could walk around with some levity and not look like someone's next meal ticket.

Thus she did not walk alone this night either. So close to her side was a giant Lasat, long leather jacket, massive fists, that they looked companionable.

Far from it. To the massive cat creature, Sael was the only alluring thing that could keep him from drowning in the sea that shouldn't have belonged on Nar Shaddaa. But he was now convinced that this low down, the world could burst and flood at any moment. And the only lifeline was the little red, white haired Zeltron. He glowered menacingly at anyone whose eyes lingered too long, cracked his knuckles if anyone stepped too close.

Mercy didn't necessarily approve of Sael's readiness to accept Isar's invitation — for two reasons: Misandry (of course) and trying to encourage Sael not to give second thought to slavers.

But it was impossible not to. For all the power she was coming into now, she'd spent her formative years in terror. Lost her mother and her only friend. How could she say no?

And besides, Isar fascinated her.

"Retrieval services?" She asked as soon as she saw him, bathed in a neon glow and puffing away. Was he high? He said often..

Recalling the crash after the high, her stomach flipped.

"Hell of a location. Coincidence or you keeping tabs on our mutual Mercy?”

She stepped forward, just a foot or two away from her bodyguard.

But the Lasat did not depart just yet. Even though he was fascinating, she wasn't sure she could trust him fully. And Mercy would kill her if she'd come all this way to meet the tattooed Zeltron just to be taken advantage of.

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Isar
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​

 

[Isar]

The orange-red ember of the cigarillo pulsed with an indrawn breath, a tiny hearbeat in the shadows cast by the glare of neon signage, then flickered dark again. Threads of smoke curled up around Isar's face. Through the haze, a lilac stare studied Sael and her imposing, furry friend. Isar took a moment, seeing past the physical toward those strands of emotion threading between the Sith and her companion. Fear and subjugation could turn even the most imposing warrior into little more than a meat puppet.

Isar took his cigarillo between finger and thumb and tapped out some ash on the ground, which he ground beneath his heel, actions disguising the flicker of disgust that flashed across his face.

"Depends. She the one what's snatching blokes off the Red Light and sellin' them?"

But no. Not exactly Mercy's speed. This tamed Lasat though? It had Mercy written all over it. He tilted his chin back, peering down his nose at the odd pair.

"Cute. This her idea? He even have a name?" he jerked his chin at the looming behemoth, who puffed out his chest even further in response, if that was possible.

Oddly, the sight of Sael with the Lasat made him think of Jogon and he wondered what his Dashade friend was up to these days. They'd cut a similar sight, only he hadn't been liquifying Jogon's brain the whole time. Maybe he should have.

"Nevermind. Doesn't matter. I found a hideout full of your favorite type of people, slavers, yeah?" He jerked a thumb toward the turbolift behind him. "Figured you might enjoy blowing off some steam. Practice and such."

Sael