An invisible cage

[Tsar Fire]

The sun was rising over the tops of the buildings around him, and Derek Ekhar supposed that he would have to get up. He sighed, and eased himself out of the boarded up doorway, pushing over the refuse he had piled in front of himself.

Stepping out onto the already busy street, he stretched lazily, and then looked around slowly. He was already ravenously hungry, but was low on money... He sighed, and glanced at all the nearby stalls... at least they were affordable... He stopped by one and picked up some food, forfeiting some of his scant money as he did.

That done, he took his food in hand and strode out onto the city streets, thinking he might go by the starport and gaze longlingly at all the ships there. He couldn't afford any of the higher end transports, and wouldn't be allowed on them anyway, because they were reserved for pure arkanians and a few other "acceptable" species.

Any lower end transports might be affiliated with the slavers... He rubbed his wrist, absently, and then shook his head. He would have to find some sort of reliable transport, just to get him to a central world, where he could find work away from the Zekga slavers...

He sighed, and looked at the crowd around him, full of people... rushing to and fro. The sound of their voices rang in his ears as he tried to think what he could do... Ringing... louder and louder...

His eyes widened in horror. He couldn't have one now! Not here! He staggered into a side alley as the voices started. "I can't believe this! Thirteen credits the lot... Have you seen Jared!?" He leaned against a wall, hands over his ears... "I need.. You... Kia.... fugitives.... republic troops... alsakans... coruscant... I'm worried..." The sound rose around him, escalating to a fever pitch as his head pounded with pain. "Can't see why... what did you say? Can I have two... hope they don't find out...."

The sound receded slowly, and his body relaxed, leaving him leaning against the wall, shaking. He hadn't had a fit this bad before. He shook his head. It must have been because of all the people... It must have been the stress....

With a sigh, he staggered upright, and continued towards the spaceport.

(sorry about the uber-long post, but I wanted to give people the most possible hooks in...)

 

[Tsar Fire]

(because nobody hopped in, I will provide more potential ways to get in, and progress a little, this planet is mostly undefined, correct, apart from being on a trade route.)

The sun was setting in the industrial district of the capital city of the planet Jatir.

Derek sat down outside a diner, looking longingly in through the windows, but he knew he would have to ration himself if he wanted to survive. He needed to find a job, or something, but something else had been bothering him.

After waiting around the spaceport all day, and seeing nothing, he had started to wonder whether the slavers would be coming after him. Then he had started to wonder whether a republic agent might be sent after him, since he had stolen a transport from them, and then he had thought...

Maybe the Jedi were after him? He had taken a lightsaber from one of their members, and wasn't that some sort of insult? He thought that maybe jedi were supposed to never lose their weapons or something like that...

He sighed and looked at the people milling around him, and began to think... Running away wasn't right somehow... The slavers had to be delt with, or they would just keep doing their evils...

He knew a lot about them, their bases and such, because he had run messages for them... His mind raced.... Only with their destruction could he truly be free...

 

[Ols]

Cain stepped out of the small diner, not particularly full. He had only entered to meet with someone and had been inside barely long enough to finish a cup of scalding hot caf, cooled down with a subtle motion of his hand. He wore a black cloak over his black and grey robes today, looking very mysterious, but concealing his robes, which were suspiciously Jedi-looking and the silver cylinder hanging at his belt. He had no hurry today, so he sat on a bench, next to a young man, and began toying with his datapad, running through his messages and the like, waiting for his next clue in the Force to lead him to his next destination.

 

[Ben]

(Sorry about premises, pri-mih-ciss. Cant spell that word).

Ben had been leaning against a wall, next to the door of a diner, observing the beings that were in the premises. When suddenly, he had been struck with fear when he saw a man dressed up in elegance, holding a black leather briefcase. The man was a tall fellow, atleast six feet.

Ben then pulls down the topmost part of his hood, covering his appearance. He had gotten in trouble in a local convenient store, for god knows why, and now he has men chasing him recently. Although he could probably kill them with a blink of an eye, it would be considered man slaughter since the men chasing him probably would not kill him.

The other people around don't take notice to the tall man in the suit, even though the man looked like a hitman. The fact that these men were chasing him was out of the question, but the extent to which they've been chasing him all this time is a bit unneccessary.

As he covers his appearance, he peers towards the man in a black cloak. He had then scanned the rest of his body, and sensed irregularities in his appearance. He then peered back at the man in the suit, and he was no where in sight. As he walks away Ben is relieved that nothing out of the ordinary happened, such as the man coming to speak to him, or worse.

 

[Tsar Fire]

(Sorry about the late post, I can't get on very regularly, as my house is an internet free zone.)

Derek leaned forward across the table and picked up an oblong black object he hadn't noticed earlier. A smile flitted across his features. It was a community access datapad, tethered to the table for safekeeping. He flicked it on and started to pull up docking information from the nearby spaceports. While it loaded, he looked around himself, a strange tingling sensation along the back of his neck.
A man, wrapped in a black cloak, sat a few feet away. Derek frowned. Something about him, an aura, as it were, seemed dangerous... His hand strayed to the silvery cylinder by his side, but he decided it was best not to do anything stupid... yet.
Turning his eyes back to the ship rosters, an idea slowly began to steal over him, steal... heh... funny way of putting it...
Why not take what he needed from the people who had denied him the right to get off planet? Why not steal a ship? It might be difficult, but he had a couple of advantages most didn't... explosives training, a lightsaber... and the bloody-headed tenacity to try it... He flicked through the list of yachts and personel freighters, until one cought his eye. The Arbiter. It wasn't a freighter, it was a corvette, a state of the line experimental vessel that's development had gone overbudget, leading to the discontinuation of its construction just before, so it didn't have a few minor, trivial parts. It had been put into storage, in a place that would hardly even be guarded at all...
He smiled, this could actually, maybe... work....

 

[Ben]

Ben leaned against the brick wall of the building, and looked out into the sky. The sky...there was no sky. Coruscant was a wastedump of pollution, and its factories spewing out smog into the atmosphere.

Ben slid down the wall in a prone position. My next bounty...assisted my Kal Jericho. Huro was a tough opponent, but compared to Vaean, it was a fools job.

He looked over to the men sitting on the benches yards away from him. They seem suspicious...the one in the black cloak is hiding something, and the one with the community datapad had probably been planning some horrific scheme of some sort. Ben could analyze the people around him, by what he thinks is really going on.

His apartment had been a few blocks away, but Ben had come to this spot to relax, with what he could relax with considering the gaunt atmosphere that Coruscant had.

 

[Ols]

Cain knew he was being watched. He was always a suspicious looking character. THe man on the bench next to him...well...he felt some very stranged emotions from him. An edge of fear, a touch of anticipation and a lot of daring. Cain checked his lightsaber on his belt, under his cloak, just in case the boy decided to do something brash. He then felt himself being watched again. This time by a conspicuous looking gentleman dressed all in white. Cain looked up and made eye contact with him, giving him a look that read What are you looking at? When someone was watching you, for any reason, looking straight back at them seemed to make them very uneasy or uncomfortable, enough to usually get them to look away.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek sighed, he was skimming the details of the ground plans for the hangars the arbiter was stored in, and looking for a potential way in. He had already checked the response procedures to unauthorized takeoffs, and after examining the baseline response times, thought it highly likely that he could get off planet well ahead of any sizable pursuit.

He stood up, hand twitching to the conspicious silver weapon at his hip. He wished he had some better place to keep it, or some way to conceal it, but he was currently out of ideas...

He threw a glance towards the man in black, again feeling a slight twinge of worry. Something about him seemed too knowing, maybe he was a jedi, or a spy... and standing behind him by the wall was a man in white, who also made the hair on the back of his neck prickle....

He gulped. He would need help to make good his plans, but not knowing the disposition of such ominous people made him uncomfortable...

 

[Ols]

As the man near him stood, Cain noticed the lightsaber hanging at his belt. Yet he did not feel the air of a Jedi about him, no obvious need to help others and no self righteousness. Although that did not really mean he definitely was not a Jedi, jsut unlikely to be one. Cain remained seated, still fiddling with his datapad, but making sure his attention was focused on the man with the lightsaber and the man in the white garb.

 

[Ben]

Ben did not care whatsoever about the two suspicious man sitting on the bench nearby him. He had come to this spot to relax, and that is exactly what he is planning on doing.

Under his wrinkly white cloak lay a vast arsenal of weapons holstered on by a brown leather belt. He only used them when he had to. Ben had no expansive knowledge of Jatir, only that it wasn't the most crowded place in the galaxy.

It had just been suspicious seeing two men in cloaks sitting on a bench.

Ben got back on his feet and began to walk away towards the spaceport. He had only a few errands to run here, and those errands have been completed. He was on his way back to Coruscant, having word that the Alsakan fleet has structured a blockade around it.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek's hands brushed the hilt of the lightsaber one more time, and then he strode away, the faint tingling on the back of his neck unabated. He had a strange feeling that these people could either make or break his plans. Either way, he needed to head to the spaceport and get a look at the hangars.

He noticed that the man in white had left, and was walking ahead of him. A faint frown spread across his pale features, and he slowed down, to trail the man in white, not wanting to follow him too closely.

 

[Ben]

Ben paced down the sidewalk slowly, unaware the man was following him. If they had been right behind him, he would have known. Ben turned left on the sidewalk around a general store, and the space port had been just one more turn away.

 

[Imperator]

Natalia dropped her force concealment once the other man on the bench was gone, and suddenly appeared next to Cain. "You know he could be a great addition to the Shade?" Natalia had been looking around for anyone with a strong force connection and was a bit surprised that Cain found someone seemingly without trying.

 

[Ols]

"Great? That's a bit presumptious," said Cain slowly, "but addition? Definitely."

With that Cain stood and led Natalia to the spaceport. He made idle chat with her as they walked, keeping the man up ahead in constant sight, but now looking a lot less conspicuous as they spoke and laughed. They needed a destination, though, but Cain would think of something when they got back.

"Make sure you keep an eye on the guy all in white, too," he said, "I feel...danger from him, a little."

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek raised an eyebrow as he saw that the man was heading to the hangar cluster where the arbiter was stored. There was nothing for it, he would have to pass the man before the crowd thinned. Pushing through the throngs of people he managed to catch up, but as they came up to the intersection in front of the hangars, the crowd finally thinned, and he found himself stranded right in front of the stranger in the white coat...

 

[Ols]

((Which one of us?))

 

[Tsar Fire]

(heh, edited...)

 

[Ben]

Ben walked down the sidewalk, and then spotted the man he saw earlier in the black cloak infront of him. Awkward, you might say. As long as the man in the black cloaks had not been hostile, he didn't mind.

Ben took the next turn now with the man still infront of him, and the street lead to the Jatir spaceport.

 

[Imperator]

Natalia nodded, he was right that the man in white could prove dangerous, but from what she had felt the danger was not great. "The man in white could hamper us, but from what I can tell he does not feel like a threat. Also the other could be a great addition not through his actual skill, but because he is fresh blood. The Shade are beginning to grow a little stagnant. We need to do something soon."

 

[Ols]

"There's no need to go on some idealistic crusade because we're bored," said Cain, "but recruiting members is very important. We must grow."

Ahead he saw the man in the white right next to the young man. He made sure he was not to far behind them, but made sure he and Natalia did not look like they were obviously following, as he now started a pointless discussion about an item in a shop window, his eyes upon the two men ahead.