So a Shard and a Shapeshifter Beat a Guy with a Bar

[Rusty]

The first thing Rusty realized as he tumbled backwards was that the floor was cold on his backside.

The second thing he realized was that his backside was bare.

The boxers were apparently great friends with his pants. The pain of separation was too much, and [member="Laguz Vald"] had, in her valiant effort to assist him in his epic struggle, removed them as well. So there sat the Shard in all his splendor, his little friend hanging out in the breeze, his last scrap of clothing and apparently dignity in the shifter's lap.

The betrayal of the boxers was heartbreaking. After all they had been through together, they went and ran off on him in favor of the stupid pants. Clothes, he decided, were evil. They were plotting against him, and that wouldn't do. He would invent new clothes, better clothes, clothes that wouldn't leave him hanging in the second most literal way possible. They would be tough, durable, and covered with pockets. And they would be comfortable and easy to remove. Not like those pants. Those pants were the devil.

The Shard looked Laguz in right in the eye.

"I regret nothing."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz blinked a few times, and for the second time in as many minutes the strangest sight she'd ever been privy to had been topped. Again.

"Right. That was clearly too much whiskey for you, big boy," she snorted after recovering from the brief surprise. Who knew they made HRDs so anatomically accurate? Or so drunkenly accurate? With careful motions to counter her swimming head, Laguz stumbled back on her own two feet and tossed his boxers at the naked droid-man. White with a red heart pattern. Classy.

"And you'll regret it. Maybe. Probably. Do you droids even regret things?"

Asking the real questions, here. Inebriated Laguz was a shameless Laguz, or at least a shameless-er Laguz. It would be absurd to claim that the shifter was a timid or restrained individual on any day, but alcohol had a tendency to pronounce the lack of inhibitions or care even further. Probably why some of her faces were banned from most renowned establishments in the Galaxy, and why others still had standing arrest warrants for destruction of public property and disorderly conduct.

Then again, those paled in comparison to the murder and theft that loomed above some of her other identities. Fun times, being able to change your skin like yesterday's socks. Saved her oodles of trouble in the long run.

Like, say, if this thing with [member="Rusty"] went south? She could always just don a different body and go about her usual business. No loose ends.

Speaking of loose things…

"And for kark's sake, put some clothes on if you aren't going to use it." She waved in the general direction of his crotch and then promptly collapsed onto the bed, sighing as the soft blankets embraced her.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty sighed as he slid the traitorous undergarments back on.

"That involves finding a use for it," he grumbled. "13,000 page instruction manual on every little detail, and when they get to that section, it's all 'proceed with caution.' The [bleep] is that supposed to mean?"

In truth, the designers were having a bit of a laugh at his expense. They knew from the fitting session that Rusty had large and atypical gaps in his memory. Though he could perform a wide array of medical procedures flawlessly, or bring a victim tob the edge of death without pushing them over, once you removed that clinical setting, that knowledge failed to carry over. Given his advanced age and history of violence, they weren't at all surprised.

The older a Shard got, the more unstable their minds and memory, and Rusty was one of the older ones.

Once they realized that the Shard hadn't a clue about reproduction among organics, the mostly organic team though it would be hilarious to give him a fully functional set of equipment and remove the 5,000 word section from the manual about how to use it.

There were words to be had, once this was all said and done.

It took a couple of tries to regain his footing, but once he did, Rusty madenot to the bed without further incident.

"And yes, there are things I regret," he said. "But I'm not exactly a droid. I don't know if they regret. I imagine some do and some don't."

His inner ear rebelled against the sensation of sinking into the absurdly comfortable bed, but an iron will and a few discreet bursts of electronic interference averted tragedy. This was a Very Good Thing, because the bed was obscenely comfortable. The fact that he had inadvertently given a clue as to his true species was lost in the wave of pleasure rolled through his entire body as the bed took over the job of supporting his weight from muscles that had yet to grow fully accustomed to their burden.

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz chortled into her pillow as she listened to the HRD's plastered muttering, marveling at the accuracy of the programming. The slur was completely believable, and if she hadn't seen [member="Rusty"] wearing his normal, bare metal chassis, the shifter would've been hard-pressed to discover inconsistencies in his human disguise. If she paid close enough attention… even intimate attention, one might say, the merc might have picked up on the differences. She made a living off of it, after all.

She usually wasn't piss drunk, however, so there's that.

"The kark does it need that many pages for?" she mumbled into the sheets as she scrambled to lift her heavy body from the sinfully soft embrace of the blankets. Must. not. close. eyes. Skins and bones and tendons weren't all that complicated, really. The shifter had been working with them her entire life, and nobody had ever given her more than a few words of advice, let alone a manual. Instructions were overrated, anyways. Wasn't flying blind and deaf into a potentially lethal situation so much more fun?

The bed creaked suddenly under added weight, and Laguz shifted her face around to see how gracelessly the droid-man had landed on the mattress. An eye peered at his pose critically, and then the merc smacked her lips in approval. A solid 8/10, if she knew her poodoo, and she certainly did. She was nothing if not an expert in all things horizontal, including but not limited to coitus, sniping, and drunken bedscapades.

"If it looks like a droid, acts like a droid, and… uh, sounds? like a droid… it isn't a droid?"

Her eyes narrowed even more as she blinked at him in confusion, trying and failing to reconcile the statement with common sense.

"What are you, then?"

 

[Rusty]

Rusty rolled over and propped his head up on his arm.

The entire world seemed different from this angle. It was a little spinny, but no more so than it had been standing up.

A part of him desperately wanted to trust [member="Laguz Vald"] with his identity. He had already tipped his hand; what harm would come from showing it entirely? Despite the size of the bed, they were still close enough that he could smell the alcohol on her breath and feel the heat radiating from her body. Whatever species she was, apparently alcohol caused her capillaries to dilate as well. He could feel that his own skin was flushed. The two of them probably looked like furnaces on infrared.

Rusty suspected that the sudden feeling of intimacy was the result of the alcohol, but a quick check of the body's OS revealed something surprising. The alcohol was certainly lowering his inhibitions, but there was a complex interplay of hormones and pheromones that he was unable to consciously detect without consulting the numbers. His body was designed to perfectly mimic that of a human's, and was only distinguishable through either invasive surgery or sophisticated scanners. It was reacting exactly as it was programmed. He was mildly startled to find himself aroused.

But just knowing what was going on in the background was enough to allow some of his paranoia to claw its way back to the surface. They were here together, inches away, but that did not make them friends. They were both singularly dangerous creatures, with hearts hardened by more bloodshed than any ten normal beings would see in a lifetime. They had both done terrible things, and were on their way to do another, and for what? The secret to making better armor and weapons, to further enhance their ability to end lives.

If he trusted her with this secret, what would happen if a bounty came up on the Captain? If he was her, he'd use that knowledge to take the most dangerous element out of the picture first. Allowing the Captain to be harmed, even indirectly, was unacceptable.

Rusty so badly wanted to trust her. His body was practically screaming at him to do so. But his mind just wouldn't allow it.

"Secrets are like fire," he murmured. "Kept small and under control, they can keep us warm. They can protect us. But if they get to big, they can just as easily destroy us. Please don't take this as a sign of disrespect; if anything, it's the opposite. I don't meet many beings that I'd wager could give me a run in a fair fight. But I can't tell you exactly what I am, and I won't ask exactly what you are. Let's just agree that we're not what we appear and leave it at that."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Was it just her, or was it getting hot in there?

Oh, Laguz had been drunk and in bed with vaguely humanoid creatures one time too many not to know exactly what was going on. Familiar feeling, the whole thing. Some light-headedness, some warmth, a healthy drop in the voice pitch… oh, yeah. She knew precisely what this was; that thing you tried to avoid for at least a week on the job. Operative word 'tried'.

Laguz was intoxicated, and generally not a very good judge of what was and what wasn't appropriate. Plus, screwing a droid (or whatever [member="Rusty"] was)? That was something she hadn't tried yet despite several decades of prowling the Galaxy. The usually inaccurate ebellishments like 'pistoning' and 'jackhammering' came to mind, and the merc did nothing to stifle the laugh the thoughts elicited, green eyes alight with mischief and amusement.

She shook her head lightly as the laughter petered out into small chuckles and propped up her heavy head. Decisions, decisions… sleep or seduce? She could go either, way, really, and the alcohol could help with both. She opened her mouth to speak, but then the droid-man beat her to it, his voice so low she almost missed it at first.

The merc nodded slowly as the words reached her ears, and then she reached forward and ruffled his hair with a wink.

"Don't sweat it, babe," she said with a light shrug of one shoulder and retracted her hand as she stretched like a lazy cat, not bothering to cover up her yawn. "Business before pleasure… or something. We wouldn't still be alive if we spilled our guts to every stranger that came along, now would we?"

The sad truth of their profession, indeed. No matter how close you could get to someone, you were destined to be forever alone, or risk perishing for trusting the wrong person.

It's just business, after all. Nothing personal.

 

[Rusty]

Looking back, Rusty would come to realize that this exact moment was the reason he only used his HRD sparingly.

He had expected her reinforcement of the necessity of their self imposed isolationism to allow him to safely disengage from the emotional aspect of the situation. Instead, it merely served to hasten the chemical process that brought about feelings of kinship and bonding. The effects, he noted in a distant, absent sort of way, were not entirely unlike alcohol. Though the two chemicals worked on different areas of the brain, their results were remarkably similar. Lowered inhibitions, increased feelings of kinship with those close and increased hostility towards those not in the subject's immediate circle, flushing, arousal, the list went on and on.

In short, [member="Laguz Vald"] went from being a dangerous unknown to a kindred, if still dangerous spirit in the mind of the Shard.

That small detached part of him noted that the chemical connection was fleeting at best. Whatever bonds were eventually formed, the resultant hangover the next morning would do serious damage to the ones formed tonight. It, however, was left to sulk in a small, unwanted corner of the Shard's mind, because logic and reason could go [bleep] themselves if they thought they were getting any attention from this point forward.

[Bleep] the instruction manual and [bleep] his shoddy memory. The Captain had forced Rusty to sit through too many of those godawful soap operas to not at least have a clue what was supposed to happen.

He leaned in to kiss the shapeshifter, and immediately realized his mistake. According to the soap operas, this was always the point where the world faded to black and they went to commercial break. Why was the world not fading out? Where was the transition? Where were These Messages?!?

 

[Laguz Vald]

While 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' sounds like a truly poetic statement for Laguz — not to mention odd and somewhat uncharacteristic for the shifter — it was one of the few things that xe could subscribe to in full and not feel like a two-bit hypocrite. That is not to say that the hypocrisy part bothered xem much, because xe'd long come to terms with the fact that it was simply part of life, but being able to take an adage and claim it as your own felt nice nonetheless.

When you could assume any form, extant or not, all standards of beauty went right out the window. Ironically enough, Laguz would likely make for a great mediator when it came to seeing things from other people's perspectives, because nothing places you quite into someone's boots like becoming them. Alas, that career option had long sailed xem by, left in the dust of explosions and stained by the blood spilled in pursuit of credits.

Laguz liked attainable, tangible goals. Kark the poetry and heroism, because they never amounted to jack poodoo. Where were the heroes now? Rotting in the ground just like everyone else. Did they have more fun living their heroic lives? Doubtful.

So, beautiful or not, the HRD in front of her was… interesting. Dangerous yet fun, and also not a new player in this ancient game of hunters. There was something about experience and mileage that made killers far more attractive, in her opinion. Something ripe, almost, with none of that early undecisiveness and guilt that so often plagued individuals in their line of business.

Combined with all the alcohol they had consumed a few hours previous, the merc was left feeling more than a little randy, and with her inhibitions locked outside the bedroom door, there was nobody but the droid-man himself that could stop her.

When the very opposite happened, you can only imagine Laguz's delight. Her fingers sought out his chiseled jaw with a surprising amount of dexterity for her level of intoxication, and the redhead pulled him closer with an appreciative hum. She rolled her hips and went to straddle the man before he could utter a protest, abandoning his face in favor of pinning those strong, strong arms to the bed with a triumphant grin.

"How about some hands-on instruction, metal boy?" she purred low in her throat, eyes lidded ever so slightly as she scoured the artificial features below. Amusingly enough, the kiss had tasted almost… @Rusty.

 

[Rusty]

Waking up the next morning felt like being forcibly dragged out of a pit full of tar, glass, and polio.

The chrono by the bed helpfully suggested that it was after noon. He wasn't sure what time they had finally collapsed out of exhaustion, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours.

Every muscle ached, or so it seemed. The instruction manual had been clear that, in order to better replicate the behaviors of a real human, the muscles would become sore with strenuous exercise. This function could be partially overridden, but only in extreme emergencies. The muscle tissue was mostly organic, so the pain the Shard was feeling was actual pain, not a simulation. The pounding, throbbing headache that was currently making light painful and continued existence undesirable was a simulation, however. He quickly killed that one with a line of code and tried to make sense out of the events of the last few hours.

He had tried to kiss [member="Laguz Vald"] at some point. That, he suspected, was the trigger. In his drunken stupor he had confused soap operas with real life (and not for the first time), and had been quite surprised when the scene hadn't faded to black. That's when things got interesting.

Much like chess, the actual basics had been easy enough. Tab A into slot B, that sort of thing. These spots do this, those spots do that, and for the love of god, stay away from that one if you value your life. Rusty quickly learned that, also like chess, the basics may be learned in a few minutes, but mastery could take a lifetime. He and Laguz and set out to try just about every permutation or position they could think of, as vigorously as possible. Eventually, they had succumbed to exhaustion and drunkenness, and had collapsed on the bed in confused, sweaty tangle not helped at all by the fact that both of them could bend in ways that most humans couldn't. That they had managed to defile every horizontal surface in the room, along with quite a few of the vertical ones, was just a bonus.

Now it was morning. Ish.

At some point during the night, they had untangled themselves and assumed a more comfortable, less anatomically jarring nuzzle. It probably hadn't been anything conscious on their part so much as the desire to restore blood flow to extremities and the desire to seek warmth in the night, but they had ended up nuzzled up against one another, her back to his front.

Rusty knew he'd have to get up before long, to pee if nothing else, but that didn't stop him from taking a minute to admire her form, even if it was artificial. If the specifications for the armor were any indication, she could just as easily be the one spooning him, with a size difference every bit as pronounced. He suspected most organics would find that creepy, but he didn't get why. She was what she was. Now, she was a she. If the job called for it, she might be a he. How was that any different from a Shard swapping chassis to suit the job? The only hard part was keeping track of the pronouns, and he figured he'd let her lead with that.

In the mean time, her form was pleasing to the eye, enough so that the Shard could feel the now familiar stirrings down below. Given the residual soreness of that area, he figured it would be wise to head things off and go make use of the latrine. He had quite by accident discovered a Heads Up Display to assist with aim last night, and he was dying to try it out for realsies.

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz yawned, stretched, and promptly fell off the bed.

What followed was a colorful string of profanity that would make a seasoned spacer blush, and unlike her programmed companion, the merc had no filter installed. Talk about an abrupt wake-up call.

The woman groaned and propped herself up on an aching elbow, which in turn brought a messy, sweaty recollection before her inner eye; a somewhat dim memory informing her just how the ache had come about.

"Huh." She hadn't tried that one in a while. Who knew that the droid-man would be that flexible?

As she picked herself up from the floor, more souvenirs started making themselves known, but all they did was make her grin stretch wider. It had been damn fun, and that was the extent of her care at the moment. She'd probably come to regret bedding a business partner — venture partner? — as the last of the afterglow and headache passed away, but that was a worry for the evening hours. It was noon still, and she could bask just a little more.

Pleasure first, apparently.

"Morning, metal boy," she murmured as she pulled herself back onto the bed with a content sigh. The fact that her voice sounded like she'd been gargling shards last night surprised her none. The hoarse timbre was practically staple by now. She wasn't all that young anymore, and wild nights like these were slowly but surely taking their toll.

Another groan as she popped her back, and then Laguz finally opened her eyes to peer at her unlikely bedfellow.

"Huh." Eloquence in the morning wasn't her forte, and hungover mornings didn't help much in that aspect.

You see, her bedfellow wasn't there.

A confused frown drew her eyebrows together as she eyed the empty spot on the bed, and with some shuffling, the woman realigned herself to the other side. Ah, there it was. The red light on the panel of the fresher.

Laguz chuckled at the sight and collapsed back into the heap of blankets on the bed, entirely content to nurse the pounding in her skull in the warm ebrace of the sheets. They would arrive on Bastion in the early evening, and that's when the real fun began. Maybe this hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

It would certainly lend a sort of… intimate cooperation to the punishment they were set to exact upon the mandalorian.


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

By the time they got to Bastion a few hours later, they were both dressed and ready to go.

Granted, it had been a close one.

[member="Laguz Vald"] had informed Rusty in a very matter of fact sort of way that the activities of the previous night were actually pretty good for curing a hangover in their own right, and he had been more than willing to cooperate. The Captain dealt with her hangovers in other ways, but who was he to deny relief?

At any rate, they had managed to keep themselves occupied for the next few hours, and much to Rusty's surprise, he learned a lot. Different situations called for different etiquette and different techniques. Preferences varied wildly from culture to culture, and each one had a certain approach. There simply wasn't enough time to go over the whole galaxy, but they hit the highlights. They were about to start in on High Coruscanti when the cockpit chimes went off, letting them know they had fifteen minutes before reverting to realspace.

That was cool and all, but they were still naked and smelled like, well, they had just spent the afternoon and the whole night before engaged in vigorous and enthusiastic exercise. Mad dash to the shower, wash wash wash, throw on some presentable clothes, and get ready to meet the beast.

They made it to the cockpit just as the starlines shrank into individual pinpricks of light.

The Shard managed to learn a few things on the way down. Firstly, if the conversations with Air Traffic Control meant anything, they weren't exactly expected, but they weren't unexpected either, nor did they seem unwelcome. At the very least, it meant that there wasn't a swarm of fighters boiling up from the surface to blast them to little bits. It didn't mean that someone on the landing pad might not have that idea, but if they did, they'd have to meet Gertrude.

Secondly, this place wouldn't be easy to escape from. It had the look and feel of a planet that was used to some shady stuff. They were probably very good at keeping folks on the ground if i came to it.

Oh goody.

Once the battle box/rucksack was securely clamped to his back, Rusty jacked in the power feed and ammo belt and stood by the loading ramp. The gun was pointed down in a fairly nonthreatening way, but he could get to it if needed. Everything else was up to the shifter.

 

[Laguz Vald]

Well, there was something to be said about the relativity of time, and how having fun affects its passage. Mostly because Laguz could not remember the ride to Bastion ever being this short, or this entertaining. Maybe all those stories about companionship were true?

Naaah. Can't be.

In any case, they were here, and the jaws of the fortress planet closed around them with the gentleness of a mother bear. Whether that methapor worked or not was up to debate, but Laguz was already moving on, nearly skipping down the ramp and into the hangar with a smile plastered all over her face.

And then she skipped no more, because a pair of guards leveled their rifles calmly at her, all grim expressions and set jaws.

Oh, right. Silly me.

She shot them a sheepish smile and then fished out her Exemplar signet, flashing it at their widening eyes as they lowered their weapons again. How she loved that little piece of gilded jewelry. So small, so insignificant, and yet it opened so many doors.

"Come," she beckoned to the droid-man behind her and winked at the guards as they stared, unused to this particular Exemplar bringing anyone home with xem. When xe suddenly brought a lumbering mountain of muscle and danger to their doorstep, they were understandably confused and befuddled. Who could blame the poor sods? They were mere gatekeepers, after all.

For better or for worse, they had never been privy to the darker sides of Laguz Vald, and likely never would be for as long as they lived. Probably for the best, really. They had lives, and families, and kids; it wouldn't do to drive them mad with the truth of what went on beneath their feet.

For Bastion was riddled with cavernous systems of dungeons where no ray of light ever penetrates, and where fresh air is merely a distant memory. Cold and dank and filled with all manner of beast and man, the prisons that stretch for miles under the surface have been the stage of many a horror story throughout the history of the world.

[member="Rusty"] and Laguz were just here to write another one.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty grinned as [member="Laguz Vald"] backed the two guards down with nothing more than a piece of jewelry. Behind that cocky grin, however, the wheels of cognition were spinning like a top fuel drag car's.

He didn't know much about her organization and, until now, knew very little about her place in it. She was high enough up to come and go as she pleased (or so it seemed), had a nice ship, and access to prisoners. That in his mind made her a moderate to highly successful operative, and from what he had seen so far, he was willing to bet she was on the higher end of the scale.

That signet though...

For a government or criminal organization to have its own internal hierarchy was a given. Even the most violent of gangs had to have a pecking order after all; anarchy rarely worked so well as the idealistic fools who touted its supposed benefits claimed. In this day and age, however, signet rings were almost nonexistent. The fact that the shifter had not only been able to get the guards to back off just by presenting it said there was a lot going on behind the scenes that he wasn't privy to. They should have checked her ID or something, but they didn't. The biggest thing that told the Shard was that she was capable enough that they weren't worried about another shifter stealing her ring and her ship and infiltrating their planet.

Whether or not she had realized just how much information Rusty could glean from that simple display was its own conundrum. If she had, that meant she either trusted him with the information or didn't consider him a significant threat. And since she wasn't an idiot, that meant she probably had some idea just how dangerous he could be. On the other hand, if she hadn't considered the issue, she had underestimated the Shard's intelligence gathering experience.

That, he wagered, would be the more likely option. Even in robot form, Rusty wasn't the sort who people would peg as a spy. He was too big, his weapons too loud, and he liked blowing stuff up more than was probably healthy. They figured him for a brawler. An intelligent brawler who was good with machinery perhaps, but a brawler none the less. They never saw the other side of him, the side that stalked targets in the dead of night and made the last few hours of their lives so hellish that when death came, they greeted it with a smile on their lips and gratitude in their hearts.

Of course, a niggling little voice in the back of his head pointed out that he might just want it to be the second option. If she actually did trust him to that degree, well, he wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wasn't an organic. He didn't process information or feelings in a way that any organic being would understand. He had just figured out that whole friendship thing in the last few years with the Captain, and while he didn't mind making another friend, the implications bothered him. If he added another person to his circle, would that strengthen his position in relation to the rest of the galaxy or weaken it? The case could be made either way for the Captain, and while Laguz seemed like she might be more dangerous in a fight, this incident taught him she had far more potential to be a liability as well.

Such was the life of an assassin. Never stop thinking, planning.

Rusty might have been good for the last few years, but 9 centuries of habit didn't die quickly.

None of this made it past his face as he followed after the shapeshifter. He smirked towards the guards, and offered a jaunty little wave as he opened up his stride and caught up with her.

"Lovely place you have," he said as they got closer to their destination. "I like the whole 'decadent criminal underworld' vibe. Really brings out the evil of the place."

He couldn't help but poke fun a little.

 

[Laguz Vald]

The shifter was well acquainted with the streets of Bastion even if the streets of Bastion weren't acquainted with her, and so she led them through the hustle and bustle of the capital city with some skill, avoiding the typical routes to save them some time. It was mid-day, and in a city this big slow traffic was to be expected at this hour.

Getting stuck in transit was for suckers, though, and the merc knew far better than to wade into that mess.

As soon as she was able, Laguz steered their shuttle away from the main lane, nose-diving into the foggy and narrow pathways of the lower city. They were a sight to behold, when smog didn't cloud everything in a one meter radius from the viewport, which was true six days of the week. It was also a maze of trecherous collapsed passages, blind alleys, and straits that often harbored opportunistic bandits ready for an ambush. Granted, given the occupatants of this particular vessel, that would be one robbery gone terribly, terribly wrong, but more often than not the travellers who found themselves beleagured were of the less violence-savvy sort. Poor sods.

Regardless, beyond the grime, mire, and thriving criminal enterprise, the lower city was rife with spots quite dear to the merc's heart. From clubs to stores to bars, the urban sprawl in the depths was riddled with diamonds in the rough, stained with blood and dirt as they were.

It was in front of one of these pubs that they came to a stop, repulsor thrusters quieting down their drone as they exited the vessel. At first glance, the place was just like any other around these parts, sturdy if battered, with peeling paint and many a busted window. You could tell the age of the bar just by counting how many of the neon lights in its name still worked, which wasn't all that much for Rock Bottom.

"Here we are. The Robot," she chuckled and shot a glance up at the flickering sign before walking up the short stairs and pushing open the heavy blast doors.

They swung inwards in a blast of hot air and boisterous laughter, revealing a room full or rowdy patrons well into their tenth drink. The counter in the back was lined with all sorts of enticing spirits, but for once Laguz didn't feel the urge to down a shot or two before heading out back.

Wonder why.

She meandered through the sea of intoxicated populace, smirking at the snippets of conversation that she caught in-between utilizing her elbows and knees to great effect. With full confidence that [member="Rusty"] would have no problem making his way through the crowd, Laguz would then carefully navigate past a long line of waiting females and into the men's bathrooms.

Oh, and the curves were gone. And there was a beard, and slightly broader shoulders. And some… additions downstairs. Nothing like a tightly-packed throng of drunkards to mask some shifting on the go.

Now to remember which stall was the correct one...

 

[Rusty]

As drunk as everyone else was, Rusty was pretty sure they didn't notice the subtle shifting. It definitely confirmed to him that [member="Laguz Vald"] was indeed a shapeshifter.

It was an interesting process, the subtle shift of mass as she, or he, the Shard reckoned, changed genders. Human anatomy had always been an interest of his, but mainly because he more often than not found himself in situations where being able to break it apart or patch it up was necessary for job. It was interesting to observe the transformation.

What was more interesting to observe was the reactions from the crowd. If anyone had noticed the change, they probably passed it off as the result of too much liquor, but they definitely took note of the fact that two males were heading to the restrooms with a purpose. Laguz was breaking the trail, and while she wasn't being obvious about it, a few of the more savvy patrons could take a guess. And since she, er he, was quite clearly being followed by the Corellian God of Protein Shakes, they were probably making assumptions about the nature of their relationship and what they had in mind. Rusty might not understand much about the intricacies or organic relationships, but he had spent enough time in dive bars to pick up a few things.

They were half right there, he and the shifter had been intimate, but he didn't quite understand the judgmental glares. Was it because he was now, well, a he? Or were they simply angry at the two newcomers walking through like they owned the place? One particularly ugly guy made a rude gesture. Rusty shot him a wink, well aware that Gertrude was back on the shuttle, and gave Laguz a playful slap on the rump. It was something he had witnessed between the Captain and Kairon, something he took to be a sign of playful affection. The Chiss lunged angrily, but checked himself as Rusty's free hand drifted to the large kukri on his hip.

Once they were in the bathroom, it was clear the shifter was looking for something in particular, so Rusty picked an unobtrusive corner and tried to stay out of the way.

"Secret entrance?" he asked, voice pitched low enough not to be picked up outside the door. "If so, you should probably put a word in with sentient resources."

 

[Laguz Vald]

"Maybe."

The redheaded man snorted at [member="Rusty"]'s remark, shaking her head as he bit his lower lip in thought.

"I don't think we have those, actually," he responded after returning from the third booth with no results. "But I also never bothered to check, so…" The merc offered his unlikely partner a one-shouldered shrug before pushing open the door to the next stall.

"You know, maybe I shoul— ooh. Hello there."

Laguz grinned as he spotted what he'd been looking for. One particular line of toilet grafitti, inconspicuous in its mundaneity unless you knew to look for it. On its own, the piece of street wisdom was nothing to scoff at, but its message wasn't the cause of his smirk; that would be what lay hidden behind those washed-out gray walls, cracked and green with mold in places.

It was deep, for sure. Ancient-catacombs-leading-every-which-way-for-miles kinda deep, anyway. The message… eh, depended on the reader, certainly. Laguz paid it little mind as he punched the right sequence into the flushing panel next to the toilet. Didn't look like anybody had used it for its actual purpose in years, judging by the brown lines rimming the yellowed plasteel.

Oh, well. Where the two of them were going, body fluids and excretions were par for the course.

He took a step back and peeked his head out of the booth with a merry smile, completely unfazed by the classical latrine aromas as he beckoned to droid-boy.

"Found it. Let's go."

The large tile in the middle of the booth had been pried open like some sort of hatch, and below it, a long ladder that was soon consumed by the darkness of the narrow shaft. With no ladies to go first anymore, the two not-quite-men would have to settle it by some other means.

Laguz briefly considered flipping a credit. He hadn't been in the dungeons via this entrance in a while, and Gods only knew what sorts of creatures might have found their home in the rarely frequented corners of the subterranean tunnels.

Then he realized that Rusty would have no idea where to go, and with a sigh the shifter hopped inside, fingers wrapping around the metal of the ladder.

Now climb and pray the corroded piece of crap holds until the bottom.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty eyed the corroded rungs warily. They looked like they were holding [member="Laguz Vald"] well enough, but he wasn't about to put his faith in them if at all possible.

Once it looked like he was safely out of the way, the Shard hopped in and, using his biomechanical muscles to their fullest extent, shimmied his way down without ever touching the rickety ladder. All he had to do was press his hands and feet against the sides of the thing and hope he didn't run into anything slick.

Fortunately, he didn't lose his grip, because it would have been a long, looooooong way down.

Of course, when he hit the bottom, he kinda wanted to go back up.

See, he knew a sewer when he saw one. He had been in sewers before. Hell, he lived in one for over a year after a particularly nasty target had managed to burn him. That's not to say he liked sewers, especially now that he could smell the damn things. What stretched out before him looked to be the set of a movie. Tunnels branched off to the side from the main line at irregular intervals. The walls were covered with mold and damp. There was a distinctly brownish tinge to the water that ran through the channel in the middle.

The only sources of illumination were dim glowpanels every fifteen meters or so that barely managed to dispel enough of the gloom to keep a careful explorer from stepping in excrement.

"You know," the Shard said, his voice echoing through the labyrinthine maze of tunnels and corridors, "I think you should definitely give your sentient resources department a ring. For [bleep]'s sake, whatever happened to elevators in phone booths?"

 

[Laguz Vald]

There was a wet splash as the considerable weight of her companion landed in the wet puddle of… something at the bottom of the shaft, but Laguz had been wise enough to move far enough that the droplets of the dubious liquid didn't hit him. That would have been unpleasant.

The merc chuckled, shooting a glance at the taller man over his shoulder. It was hard to distinguish his features in the half-light, and the echoing of their voices along the seemingly infinite corridors made for a rather eerie atmosphere. Now, several times six feet underground, it was much easier to see the pair of them for what they really were; killers and exactors of torment, with little regard for others beyond the credits they possessed. Lines turned harsh and smiles that seemed benign became sharp grins of malice under the low lighting filtering through the polluted air of the sewers.

Even his easy laugh seemed hollow now, as it rang through the dark tunnel.

"Phased out, I guess," he replied finally and ran his hand along a dirty wall until he encountered a slightly elevated edge. With some manipulation and a grunt, the panel slid to the side, and Laguz reached inside to close the passage above them once more.

"Or maybe this was cheaper. Who knows."

With that, the shifter headed deeper into the maze of passages, trusting that the man would follow fast on his heels, lest he get lost in the webbing of tunnels underneath the urban sprawl. One could easily wander forever and perish before ever seeing the sun again.

Just like the prisoners in the cells ahead.

The deeper they went, the closer a distant rattling got, growing in intensity and clarity as they rounded corner after corner. Though they looked nearly the same, Laguz had been down here too often not to know his way around. Sure enough, there came a moment when they took yet another fork, and found themselves nearly blinded by the stark contrast in environment.

Gone were the smeared walls and cracked duracrete, replaced by the dull gleam of matte metal that encased the corridor as far as the eye could see. And in the middle of it, another door, the type that looked like it could brush off several explosions and not bat a single hinge at the damage. They were here, and the rattling was louder than ever.

"Huh. Guess they haven't fed them for a while," Laguz mused out loud as he stepped over another puddle to access the interface. His broad back would obscure the keypad in its entirety as the man punched in the code and pressed the signet into a small circular opening above it, turning it a few times at various angles.

There was a hiss and a click, and then the door swung open, stark white light spilling onto the sewer floor.

"After you."

And the rattling would only keep getting louder. Visitors weren't an every day occurrence down here, after all.


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Yup.

This was, undeniably, a detention center.

For all the muck and filth they had to wade through to get here, it was modern and, from the looks of it, incredibly secure.

No two cells lined up in a way that would have given the prisoners a line of sight and a way to communicate. And even if they had, the Shard got the feeling that the shimmering energy fields at the mouth of each cell were one way, most likely polarized on the other side. If they had any light at all, the prisoners probably only had a mirrored surface to stare at every day.

That was, of course, probably all part of the plan.

The cells themselves were, well, utilitarian. Stark grey ferrocrete walls, floors, and ceilings. No toilets or sinks. Instead, recessed receptacles in the walls, one meant to dispose of waste, one meant to dispense water. Neither would have offered anything useful for breaking out; judging by the stains on the walls, they were barely functional for their intended purposes. There were no cots or bedding. The prisoners could either use their filthy jumpsuits as pillows and sleep naked, or they could use nothing.

Disease would have been a huge problem, Rusty suspected, if not for the hospital grade surgical sterilizing field built into each cell. The prisoners wouldn't have noticed from inside, but the bulky generators protruded over the doors for each cell. That was an interesting choice. Those fields would kill any microbes- including the healthy ones in the prisoners' guts, which meant they weren't running full time. If the Shard had a guess, he'd say they were flashed on once a day for long enough to clean the room without completely devastating the intestinal ecosystems of the poor souls who lived here.

How food was delivered was anyone's guess. It was clear that no organic beings came down here frequently enough to keep the prisoners from starving to death and yet, here they were. Sure most of them showed signs of malnourishment and vitamin deficiency, but they were still alive, for a given value of the word.

Droids would be the most likely culprit, but there was no way they'd be able to turn off the fields, get the food in, and get it back up before a clever prisoner tried to overwhelm them.

Ah, there it was.

Recessed into the walls were what looked like twenty centimeter thick durasteel doors. They probably rolled the doors shut, killed the fields, delivered some sort of barely sufficient and only marginally edible ration, turned the field back on, and rolled the door out of the way.

For all the utilitarianism that went into the cells, the prison was clearly not meant to be a punishment for casual visitors. Sure there were the usual automated blaster turrets that would undoubtedly turn anyone unauthorized an unaccompanied into a grease smear, but the minute he and [member="Laguz Vald"] entered, sonic scrubbers blaster the sewer muck from their clothing, and a courtesy droid led them to a posh waiting room. Overstuffed and comfortable chairs and couches, a self service wet bar that, from the looks of it, probably cost more to stock than the Wicked Grace, a walk in humidor with just about every conceivable substance meant to be smoked within; hell, there was even a pool table and a stage where the visitors could order up holographic concerts from their favorite bands.

Then it clicked.

This wasn't just a maximum security prison. This was as much a pleasure lounge for the people in the top tiers of the shifter's organization as anything, and the prisoners were just another form of entertainment. Argument with the spouse after a long day of work? Why not find a prisoner that looks like them and torture them a little?

Well, there were worse reasons to build a prison, he figured as he sank down into one of the chairs.

"Almost makes the sewer seem worth it."

 

[Laguz Vald]

As far as governments go, Primeval was pretty crap at it, and they didn't much mind. In fact, the whole thing was based around it, which often meant that facilities like this one were not only allowed, but even encouraged financially and ideologically. Wild space was wild in many ways that one never considered before actually setting foot inside its borders, and few vibrant, curious explorers survived its dark facets without emerging just a little more grim and a little more scarred.

So long as someone was willing to fund it, and someone was willing to staff it, the detention center would continue to exist, however vile and depraved in purpose. Not only did the religious following stick the heretics into holes like this — provided they weren't simply summarily executed for their blasphemy — they also doubled as entertainment from every day after that.

It was logical, in a sense. If you were spending good credits and people on upkeeping state-of-the art prisons like this, why not make some money from the whole shindig?

As it turned out, there was always a market for the rich and perverted, and Laguz suspected there always would be. In the considerable years he'd spent running around the Galaxy killing some of them and being paid by others, there were very few truths that the merc found to be unchanging and immortal, and that was one of them.

Where there was demand, there would always be supply. Why not you?

The only things preventing people from entering such a lucrative business were ethics and morale, and both of them had long abandoned those. Laguz was unsure if [member="Rusty"] could in fact tell at a glance what the prison doubled as, and found he didn't care either way. It wasn't like they made a point of hiding what they did for a living.

"Almost," the shifter echoed with a dry chuckle, scrolling through the list of captives with a thoughtful expression on his face.

The place always made him feel ill at ease, but not for the reasons one might suspect. Knowing the Primeval as well as he did, the merc realized full well that he could easily end up in one of these prisons one day. Luck was a fickle mistress, and with a job like his, it was a small wonder he was still alive. Sure, his main contract was with these religious freaks, but he'd never stopped doing side gigs for others all over the Galaxy. Conflict of interest was a very real thing, and around these parts, they usually resolved it with a bullet between the eyes. If you were fortunate, anyway. If the Universe really hated you, this was where you'd go. Some sterile, cramped cell beneath leagues of soil and rock and duracrete, to serve as amusement for those who could afford it.

The fact that he was one of the few who stood a chance of escaping was only mildly comforting, because that chance was still… unpleasantly close to zero.

"Ah, here we go," Laguz broke his own train of thought with a half-hearted smile and typed in another code. The interface accepted his one-time verification — a result of a previous arrangement — and a small green light came on on the map of the facility, denoting which cell had now become accesible through the use of a secondary password on site.

The shifter nodded to himself, then to the droid-man, and led them out again.

Time to play.