Rude [Charlotte]

[Joseph Gresham]

Rishi​

Raider's Cove​

Quiet evening. Light rain. Rishi was quite the planet. Tropical islands weren't really a thing I enjoyed, but I guess you went where the product was. Spice wasn't particularly hard to come by, but my trips out of Wild Space were infrequent at best. It meant that I was never going to the same guy twice, although most were getting a read on who I was. They all call me 'Shady Joe.' Probably think its funny.

It's not.

But I let them. I'm just some guy in a trench-coat, right? The one with the wonky mask and voice made of tumbling boulders? Yeah. That's me.

Crazy Shady Joe.

Without much thought, I emit a faint noise of amusement. The smugglers across from me shift uncomfortably. We've been standing here two minutes. I haven't said a word. There's a briefcase in my hand filled to the brim with hard currency. Worth quite a good deal out here, and my planet has tons of it laying around. It all lost its value when there was no one around who cared for it anymore.

Funny how that works.

So here I am, a pair of thugs across from me, glaring unhappily in my direction. And then there's me, trench-coat, mask and hat pulled low, rain splattering along the brim. I feel my head twitch. One of them spoke.

"Repeat that?" My voice is audible sandpaper.

Oh, that's what they want. To see the money. The case twirls up, the locks snap open, I lift up the top long enough to see their eyes glisten. Its snapped shut a moment later. And then, in the next instant, they're trying to sell me stolen droids. "No." They continue.

"No."

That puts a stop to it, finally. "Show me the product." The first one motions to his partner, who pulls out a small sample; they'll be keeping the rest hidden away nearby. They're new to this game, I'm not. This meeting is so auspicious it hurts. But beggars can't be choosers, and I really need the spice. I take the sample in a gloved hand. Inspection deems it suitable. "Acceptable."

A weight tugs on my pocket as the sample is put away. "I want the rest." I really don't trust that governments aren't getting involved around here. A pirate haven this may be, but this is a lot of business not being tapped for taxation, and really, anything 'stolen' sets my teeth on edge.

[member="Charlotte"]

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Upon joining the Obsidian Order, new recruits were outfitted with some basic gear. Armor, weapons...all functional, but not as important to Charlotte as the ability to move about the galaxy at will. She could visit any planet in her head, through holonet documentaries and recorded video, but to visit a planet in person was an entirely different experience. Also, getting the hell off of Hypori was a pretty great perk.

When she first encountered records of [rishi], they involved references to the Rishi [maze]. This was a curious name for a planet. Was the planet a maze? No, it appeared the "maze" portion of that was a term for an exterior dwarf galaxy, named after the most common planet to start all expeditions towards the maze from. Still, that was as good a place to go as any. She could see green things, and more species that weren't freakin' humanoid, and a dozen other features that Hypori didn't have.

Charlotte shut down during hyperspace travel, setting herself to wake up when she dropped back into realspace. Normally, she wouldn't have used this function. It was how the Sabia Group scientists managed to manipulate her memories for an untold amount of time. For now, though, it was probably safe. She was the only one in her Dominus, so it wasn't like there was a cadre of techies waiting to tear apart her skull and stick things into her body while she was anesthetized.

The first thing she saw after waking up was the most gorgeous tropical planet she'd ever-...honestly, it was the only tropical planet she'd ever seen, so that would've been a deceptive qualifier. Still, green. Green as far as the eye could see. She landed in a valley, providing Obsidian Order clearance (and more importantly charging the fee for the use of the docking platform to anyone else) in order to cut the red tape a bit. Not that this planet seemed to be terribly big on bureaucracy...

[raider's cove] seemed to have more in common with a shanty town than a bustling spaceport. Not that either of those things really mattered to Charlotte. She was just here to experience, and didn't much care what she was experiencing. At the moment...it seemed what she would be experiencing was a brand new smell.

Desperation.

Just in case, Charlotte set the alarms and theft protection defenses on her Dominus before she left the docking platform. If it could even be called that...
[member="Joseph Gresham"]

 

[Joseph Gresham]

Drugs, glorious drugs. More specifically, glorious spice. Spice was what I needed, and spice was what I got. For the most part. They'd tried to skimp out a little on the weight, but had made up for it when pressed. Criminals weren't always honest, but out here, among pirates, you knew honest business was the only way to go. Among your own kind, you were honest or you were going to be hunted.

I imagine hunted didn't sound like a pleasant proposition. I was cashing on my being an unknown quantity. If I walked like I knew what I was doing, and spoke like I knew what I was doing, they wouldn't question me unduly. After all, business was done different on every planet in the galaxy. No standards meant you took the familiar with the downright strange and didn't question further.

So that was a drug deal down, and the money case was traded out for a drug case. I cuffed it to my arm. Just to keep any of the local pickpockets from trying to pry it open without my knowledge.

Which meant I was making my way back through town quick, towards the wooden platforms that qualified as 'landing pads.' But I was a bit hungry, and thirsty. The sensations had lost a good deal of meaning for me over the years, but sometimes I would partake just to feel... normal. That was a good word. Normal.

I turned on my heel as I walked down the thoroughfare towards the shanty towns starport, pausing to look over the various fruits and vegetables arrayed on a wooden plank and shaded by a bright colored canopy. "That one." I said gruffly, pointing a sharp finger towards a bright fruit I recognized. Didn't know the name. They tasted good though. People always thought it weird I liked them though.

Something about being poisonous to humanoids. Digging into my pocket, I handed over some money and hefted the fruit in my only free hand. Kark.

Mask.

[member="Charlotte"]

 

[Fabula Caromed]

From her long hours perusing documentaries and online encyclopedias and discussion boards, Charlotte knew that tropical worlds were known to be "beautiful and dangerous." She was quickly finding out that, for a certain definition of "beautiful," so was this crappy little city. Dull, faded colors offset the vibrant green of the world around it, and in general everything held a feeling of being old. Not necessarily timeless...there were words in languages that weren't Basic to describe this, and unfortunately Charlotte didn't have the sense of poetry to search them at the moment.

Fruit stands! She had been on Hypori before now, which was easily the economic capital of this branch of the galaxy. She'd shopped in strip malls and eaten at fast food establishments. The idea of walking up to an open-air shack, picking up a piece of fruit, and walking away without receipts or corporate recordings of your existence was beyond exotic to someone who had literally been created at the mercantile hub of the known universe.

Her holographic eyes scanned over the whole exchange, her wet computer comparing a man buying a fruit to known holonet recordings. Completely casual, nonchalant. Anthropologists certainly knew how to find shockingly typical "typical examples." Though...most humanoids didn't wear strange speckled masks in public. Maybe it was a cultural thing. Cross-referencing...

She had been standing still, white-armored and watching the whole thing like a hawk, for several seconds.
[member="Joseph Gresham"]

 

[Joseph Gresham]

There are times you know you're being watched, and then there are times you think you know and you aren't. This was not a case of the latter. Fruit hefted in hand, I found myself turning to regard a redhaired... mechnical woman? Sure, mechanical woman. Probably four inches taller than me, built like a brick chithouse too, if you were into tight latex with bright colored highlights.

I felt my eye twitch beneath my cloth covering. Lowering the hand that held the fruit in it, hand reflexively tightening then loosening on the handle of the case cuffed to my other wrist, I did what any entirely sane individual would do when confronted with someone staring.

I stared back.

Didn't utter a word.

And while he didn't know it, she was searching for examples of him. Which were sparse, and mostly just showed him walking around looking shady - and always in the same attire.

[member="Charlotte"]

 

[Fabula Caromed]

No, no recorded humanoid culture wears white and black spotted masks. And... [search] ...that fruit was poisonous to several species of humanoid. Why would this one be buying it? Charlotte became lost in her thoughts almost immediately, and it took her another couple of seconds to realize that she was being looked at. Rather intently, actually.

Oh. They noticed her. Respond. She'd practiced this...

Charlotte smiled a bit awkwardly and offered an enthusiastic, but very brief wave. She cut it off way too abruptly, as if she'd run out of waving hours and had to stop before she was arrested for illegal greeting. In her head, this was an 80% match to known examples of casual greeting waves. Sufficient within two standard deviations. Unfortunately not sufficient to make her look like a real person.

Immediate regret. She'd done something wrong. This man was not waving back.
[member="Joseph Gresham"]

 

[Joseph Gresham]

If it was possible to be painfully awkward, this woman fit the description. She was trying harder to blend in than I ever had, and I wasn't sure if that was something to envy... or pity. She didn't seem too sure, either, judging by the way her attitude deflated along with the wave of her hand. Not unlike being gifted a dead flower, what was likely something to be enjoyed - a greeting from what was by most standards a pretty woman - was actually just an insult.

'Hi,' she seemed to say, 'I'm a complete idiot. Or, I'm hoping you'll think I'm one.'

I'm not sure what was more offensive.

Even if I was going to return the stilted greeting, my hands were full. "You look lost."

That was an understatement. She looked to be on the entirely wrong side of the galaxy.

[member="Charlotte"]