Atlas Drake
Okkeus Dainlei
Earlier...
Blip. Blip. Rayia's communicator pinged, disrupting the silence of the early morning with an incessant whining. Rayia stirred, one ear twitching in irritation as she opened one eye a crack and peered at the offending device. A soft, blue glow permeated the dim light spilling from her window as the communicator pulsed with an awaiting message. Rayia was tempted to simply drift back into the lull of sleep when Valery's message began. Golden, slitted eyes shot wide as the Felacatian threw off her bed-covers and bolted across the room in a heartbeat. Being given a mission by Valery was perhaps the last thing that Rayia had expected. After all, Rayia had just revealed to her that she had obfuscated her registration with the New Jedi Order by posing as a Cathar and not a Felacatian.
'Never mind, revealing to her my biggest secret. My ability to shift and the beast within,' Rayia thought. She was still learning how to control it with Jonyna's and Valery's help. But listening to the message, she understood that Valery was trusting her with an important task. Maybe it was a test to see if she could operate in the field again.
'Find Okkeus, meet Atlas, investigate Sith dealings. Got it. No wonder the Order is spread so thin. There's always so much to worry about,' Rayia summarized, before readying herself for the job at hand.
Now...
Rayia had fortunately met up with Okkeus before the two made it to the Drunken Tooka on Vestar. While Rayia knew that two figures entering the cantina together were bound to attract more attention than if they had entered separately, she was grateful for the company. Beyond not speaking a lick of the language commonly used here, entering the cantina was like willingly submitting herself to an assault on her hyper-sharpened, feline senses. The cigarra smoke that lingered in the air like a haze burned Rayia's nose and tasted bitter on her tongue. As she passed through the door, her ears flattened in discomfort from the shrill whine of the speakers overhead as they pumped a lilting song over the fluttering murmurs of hushed conversations, raucous laughter, and bountiful swearing in a low, groaning language she didn't understand that melded together all around her. Her tail too instinctively retracted into its sheath at the base of her spine, bristling as it detected even the minute displacements of air the movements of a throng of people around them.
"Focus on something. That will help," She muttered to herself as she drew her cloak tighter around herself. It was perhaps a good thing that Rayia didn't have to try too hard to obscure being a Paladin (Jedi in Weikian).
'I never much fit in anyway. Not really what one might expect,' She thought to herself. Her gaze froze as it caught a man sitting alone at a table in the cantina. This by itself wasn't too unusual. But the man's every movement bled tension into the air around him. Even if she didn't have her tail to let her feel each tautened breath the man took, Rayia had been raised a huntress by her tribe.
'I know when prey is about to bolt, and he looks like he wants to have been gone hours ago,' Rayia thought to herself.
"That him?" She asked Okkeus in a whisper. Though it would seem her companion thought so too as he led the way over.
Given that she didn't speak the language, Rayia contented herself with pointing at a picture of a Riosa Punch. The fruity drink might contrast a bit with the image of the solemn, silent figure she was portraying, but Rayia didn't care. She couldn't afford to get drunk. Not here. As Okkeus gave the code words, Rayia winced.
"You'd think they could find something more natural than that," She muttered, muffling her words and scorn with a sip from her drink. Well in any case, they could only wait to see if they had approached the right person.
