Smooth Criminal
You've been hit by... you've been struck by...
Kinley Pryce once beat a Devaronian at sabacc with nothing but blank cards
Mos Eisley, Late Dustfall
The twin suns had already begun their slow descent, bleeding molten orange across the dunes when Kinley Pryse stepped through the blast-scored archway of the cantina. The heat outside clung to her like a second coat, sweat drying into salt across sun-browned skin, but in here the air was cool and thick with the sour tang of spilled lum, engine grease, and the stale perfume of a thousand whispered deals.
She paused just inside the door, one gloved hand resting casually on the grip of her blaster. Casual, but never careless.
Heads turned. They always did.
A few eyes widened in fleeting recognition: Wanted in twelve sectors, bad news in all of them. Rumor said she'd smuggled spice through a blockade by pretending to inspect herself. Rumor said worse. Rumor never mentioned she was real. She took in the room with a gunslinger's glance that was quick, deliberate, counting exits, armed threats, drunk liabilities. A pair of Weequay gamblers hunched over sabacc. A Devaronian dealer watched her too long. A Black Sun enforcer she knew by reputation slouched in the corner, marked by the obsidian emblem at his collar. She looked away. Not him. Not today. She wasn't here for syndicates. Not for debts. This run was dirtier, riskier. Rebel guns. Imperial heat. The kind of cargo that got you spaced if you trusted the wrong hands.
She made for the bar.
The bartender was a grizzled, human, too old to scare easy who was polishing the same glass he'd probably been polishing since the Clone Wars. "Drink?"
"Information," she said, sliding a credit chit between two fingers. It glinted like bait. "I'm looking for someone who knows routes. Quiet ones. No Black Sun strings attached."
His eyes flicked up. "Bad time to be runnin' guns."
She arched a brow. "Good time to be paid."
He hesitated. Then nodded toward the far end of the cantina. "Blue Twi'lek. Keeps to herself. Doesn't dance. Doesn't pray. Flies anything with a hull and something to outrun."
Kinley followed his gaze then smirked as she saw the woman he described. "Give me whatever she's drinking and a mocktail."
With drinks in hand Kinley made her way over to the table to see if this Twi'lek liked credits more than fear. Politics were people who could afford morals and today Kinley wasn't one of those.
Rheyla Tann
A Smooth Criminal