Open Nar Shaddaa Chaos in the Cantina

Eveline

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Take advantage. Use anything you can to mask yourself. Exploit any weakness, use the chaos to help you.

Using the cover of a plague was hardly what they'd meant. But it presented Eveline with the best chance she'd ever have. Nar Shaddaa was getting consumed by it, overrun with swarms of the walking dead. All across the smuggler's moon, the smaller gangs and crews were looking to conserve what they could and ride it out. They'd retreated to their most defensible businesses, hoping to hold them. The ones that weren't rich or clever enough to get out. That suited Eveline just fine.

The Slurped Slimeslug was the kind of dive cantina that you'd expect some crew to run. This crew had information, though. They had sources. Her contact told her that they had what she wanted. A link. A connection. Something that would tell her more about AMS. Or rather, who. So she'd waited. Scouted it out, drank there a few times. Right up until the chaos came close and resolve was wearing thin.

There were few drinkers there that night. The distant screams were hard to drown in cheap booze. She knew some of the crew were there though, waiting nervously. Preparing to move, or hunker down, depending on what their boss said.


They'll be saying a lot more tonight, once I'm done.

Vibroknife on her hip, beneath the hooded coat. Blaster too. Bow folded in the duffle-bag by her feet as she sipped her horrid drink. Waiting for the right moment. Plenty of mutters from around the place. Talk of getting out and ships, from the clientele and the 'cantina staff.' Eveline had never seen thugs looking so worried.

With a twist of her hand, she tossed her glass behind the bar. It shattered, making the bartender jump off his feet.

"Musta slipped, sorry," Eveline told him, affecting a slightly drunk slurring. The bartender groaned, kneeling down to pick up the shards. "I'll... I'll pay," she said, reaching for her hip, reaching down, fingers round her blaster.


Little closer...

"You're damn right you'll pay, whaddya think this is, a-" the bartender said, his words cut off by the presence of a blaster barrel right in his face. Eveline glared at him darkly.

"Say nothing," she whispered.
 

Helen Holcomb

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Helen Holcomb, ace pilot and interstellar adventurer, racked the slide on her crude slugthrower pistol as she slammed another magazine into the grip, letting out an angry snarl as she brought the weapon in line the horrific visage of an AMS victim in the advanced stages of decomposition. The infected, evidently not recognizing the danger literally staring it in the face, let out a gurgling snarl of its own and lunged forward, rotten jaws gaping as it sought its prey.

There was a staccato pop of two slugthrower blasts in rapid succession, and the monster abruptly sagged bonelessly to the street, its head cored out by a pair of 10mm solid bronzium slugs. Although most body armor in the wider Galaxy could turn slugthrower rounds with ease, they were still undeniably effective against bare flesh, especially at nearly point-blank range.

"Dammit that's more rounds I'll never get back... kriffing walkers!"

The Lepi's long, rabbit-like ears swiveled above her head, and her nose twitched to match. She caught the faint scent of decay, and the sound of groaning, shambling creatures; that was the trouble with the living dead. If you killed one, chances were there were several more within earshot, and they didn't seem to care how good you were at killing them.

Helen needed shelter.

The young pilot had come to Nar Shaddaa in search of slavers. She had found them, but as it turned out, they had been the wrong ones, although the last one left standing had had to tell her that through a mouthful of broken teeth, which Helen was quite proud of. Besides that, however, the trip to Nar Shaddaa had been a bust; the Lepi was no closer to rescuing the enslaved citizens of her world.

She was just in time to face the living dead, however.

Biology had never been Helen's subject in school, and she'd never had much use for it afterward. Thus it was that she didn't exactly know how the AMS virus worked. It was enough for her that it killed people, rapidly and horribly, and then to add insult to injury, the victims didn't stay dead for very long. It just wasn't right.

Looking around, Helen raised her eyes to see a sight she had never considered she would ever be glad to see on the depopulated smugglers' moon. She gravitated toward the lights of a cantina. The Slurped Slimeslug, despite its unfortunate name, still seemed like an island of life in the sea of the dead.

Holstering her pistol, she walked inside, instantly catching stares from a few of the patrons. Ambling up to the bar, she took a seat, waiting patiently for the bartender, who seemed to be talking to someone...

@Lumie
 
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Vayla Mirana

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Day after day… Vayla turned the shot glass of blue liquid round and round upon the tabletop. She couldn’t remember what she had ordered but it looked as pretty as it tasted. It tingled the tongue, first spicy then sweet; slid down the throat, first sweet then spicy. She knocked it back. Now she stared at an empty glass. Night after night… She sighed. Day into night, night into day, time no longer seemed to matter. Like the Jedi’s efforts, time was in vain of catching up to itself. She knew rather intimately how you could never get it back. It went one way more than it went another way—forward much of the time, backward not so much. Is there any other way?

The bottle before her might hold the answers. It, too, was a gorgeous thing. Well, the glass was smudged with fingerprints, a number of them not her own, but the blue sea floating within it was a sight to behold. She had paid top cred for top shelf: “Most expensive brew I got in the house, honey,” the bartender had informed her. “Give me the brew. Hold the honey,” she had responded. Halfway into the bottle later and Vayla was already debating whether to order another, even if it meant sleeping in the booth tonight.

The bar was on the other side of the, well, bar. Servers were lacking next to patrons. Still, if it came to it, she could always Force-pull the bartender to her. For that matter, she could have used the Force to nullify the effects of the alcohol. But where was the fun in that? What would the point have been? Vayla was here in this dive bar to wash her sorrows away. The Force had failed her in that regard. No need to force herself to stay sober.



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Eveline

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Eveline stared right into the bartender's eyes. Almost like she was daring him to do something. The hubbub of the cantina continued around them, a brief moment of danger in the middle of genial calm. It wouldn't last.

"I'm going to come around the back of the bar," she whispered in a sharp and clear voice, "and you're going to let me through into the room you've got back there. You even think about warning someone, letting anyone know, I'll blast you and burn your bar to the ground." For added effect, she pushed the blaster closer to his face. He nodded, looking every bit as scared as he should.

Carefully, Eveline rose from her seat. The blaster pointed low, but still towards him. Trying to hide its presence from the rest of the clientele as she grabbed her bag, pulling it over her shoulder. Moving round to the gap, slipping behind the bar. "Here's your stuff," Eveline said loudly, making sure everyone could hear her, "I'll just put it in the back..."

Moving towards the door at the back, she kept her eyes on the bartender, watching his every move. Beneath her hood, she couldn't see much of the other people, but it seemed to be going well. The door opened behind her.

Perfect...

She caught a glint of something. Twisting, she turned just in time to avoid getting slashed right across her front. The blade cut into her shoulder, leaving a wide but shallow slash. Eveline gasped. The bartender snarled, raising the vibroblade again. Eveline pushed the blaster up, right into his neck. She pulled the trigger and kicked, the blast pulsing right through his neck. The body span back, crashing onto the bar.


Shit.

Eveline wasted no time, heading through the door and tapping it shut behind her. Her time had just become a lot more limited. As she tapped on the panel to lock the door, she noticed a computer screen nearby.

Score.

Here: low success roll, so she gets in but the bartender goes for her and forces her to act.
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Helen Holcomb

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Something was going on. The person the bartender had evidently been talking to was moving, along with the bartender themselves, toward the back of the establishment. Initially, this merely caused Helen to groan; she would have to wait longer for her much-needed drink now.

And then things started happening.

Even on Nar Shaddaa, the flash of a blade and the report of a blaster shot were enough to send people scrambling, especially in such an otherwise tense and quiet setting. Instinctively, Helen dove for the nearest cover she could, drawing her Braco M1212 and ducking down out of sight of the hooded, blaster-wielding figure who had just essentially executed the bartender.

"The frell is going on?!" She shouted...

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Vayla Mirana

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The sound had broken the silence. Oh, there was noise yet—the occasional voice of a few patrons chatting, the clink of glass, the drum-bell beats of the speakers’ music—but she had been too caught up in her own private little trance to register much of it. Then she heard it. This other noise was unmistakable—a blaster bolt. Damn it! Vayla cursed herself. She might have been prepared for it instead of surprised, had the alcohol not been allowed to creep along her blood vessels.

She immediately turned to the bar, detecting the origin of the shot in an instant. At the same time, she responded with a noise of her own: the thrum of a lightsaber just ignited, blue light tearing through the air from the hilt. Vayla spotted the bartender collapse upon the counter, his killer retreat into the back room, a Lepi leap toward cover, and then she herself sprung from her booth.

The Jedi tore through the air between table and bar, reaching the latter to evaluate the bartender. It didn’t take two fingers to search for a pulse where there was none, nor the Force for that matter; the hole in his neck said it all. Vayla watched the door as though it could burst open any moment, despite knowing that its room now functioned as a bunker for the person within it. Steadying herself with a breath, she turned to the Lepi, keeping her weapon low.

“What happened!?”
Vayla had been too busy gazing at her drink to have witnessed the exchange, only catching a glimpse of the murderer before they disappeared. The hood had not helped. “Tell me now!”



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Vizim

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You know, it was a shame what had happened to the smuggler's moon. This was always a planet that Vizim had enjoyed because you could simply vanish here. No one wanted you to stand on ceremony and no one batted an eye if you walked down the street looking like you were ready for a gunfight because that was simply the way of the world.

Then the Hutts had had to go and try to make a plague to wipe out Force users. Vizim was fairly confident that proportionally it had killed many, many more non-Force users than Force users. Idiots.

And yet despite the world being about halfway overrun with crazies, Vizim was here. And why? Simple: he had a target here. In this case, the target was an actual bounty and not one for the Sith. All the better because it was both funding and a further cementing of his cover - that really wasn't entirely false - that he was a bounty hunter rather than a Sith.

Sitting in a corner booth by himself, he had earlier convinced the kitchen to make him a nerf burger despite some objections about not really being "open" for such orders, and now that he finally took a bite, it seemed chaos was going to unfold.

He stiffened in his seat at the sound of a gunshot and his hand was on the grip of his pistol without even thinking. It wasn't unusual to have a shootout on the planet, but he decided he couldn't just ignore it. It was just as well, anyway, this burger wasn't very good.

He set it down on the plate and pulled the covering up over the bottom of his face. If things ended up turning sideways, it never hurt to not let people know exactly what you looked like. And yet, he didn't move from his seat yet, knowing he had a full view of the room and decent enough concealment from where he was. He wasn't really looking for a fight.

And then there was a lightsaber. Stang, he thought, a spike of adrenaline rushing through him as a Jedi appeared on the scene. That complicated things and perhaps changed the equation as well.

He was out of his booth and on his feet in a flash, attention partially focused on the Jedi and partially on the shooter. He wasn't entirely sure which one needed his attention more immediately, but he figured the Jedi had no reason to randomly attack him right now, and whoever was in the back might well interfere with him tracking his target. @AutoFox @Die Shize @Lumie
 

Eveline

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Eveline didn't expect to be alone for long. She had a limited window and that bartender hadn't helped. The door would remain sealed for a little bit of time, which would hopefully give her the opportunity to do what she needed to do. She heard loud voices, muffled by the doorway. She could only hope that the drunken wastes that populated the cantina were too sloshed, out-of-their-minds, or scared to do much about her.

The first thing she did was open up her duffle bag. Inside, her bow and quiver were ready, if she needed them. Not exactly the best environment to use them, but the plasma might convince people to back off. Inside one of the pockets, she pulled out the port scanner she'd brought along. Holstering the blaster, she slipped the quiver around herself and fastened, keeping the bow in one hand and the scanner in the other.

Her eyes moved to the computer screen. It'd be so much easier if she'd been able to get by covertly, but the time for that had passed. She needed everything. Every file. Every connection. Every hint of whatever networks this had been connected to. The crew had run spice, or slaves, or something out of there and she knew they had a link to the Hutts. A few taps on the port scanner were all it took to get started. The code flashed on the screen as she tapped, her gaze flicking between the scanner and the door.

There was nothing else to prop against it, no vast cabinets. Just some crates of cheap booze. Probably more like 'shine than anything else. Certainly not enough to really block the door.

It better stay sealed then. Just keep to your drinks, she thought to herself, knowing it would never be that simple.


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Helen Holcomb

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Helen instinctively pointed her slug pistol toward the source of a sharp snap-hiss, the distinctive report of a lightsaber being activated. It took her a split second to raise her pistol off target; blue blade, not something to fear, if prior experience was anything to go by.

Again, the fact that energy sword-wielding space wizards seemed to follow something like the white hat, black hat conventions seen in Tolvite frontier pictures seemed bizarre to the young pilot. She had to admit, though, it was convenient.

"Kriff, you're asking me?!" She replied, shaking her head. "All I saw was whoever it was talking to the bartender as I came in, then zap, there's a hole in his neck!"

Cautiously, Helen peeked up over the bar. The shooter was gone; probably barricading herself in the back room. The young pilot looked around at the other patrons, climbing to her feet.

"Any of you know what this is about?!"

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Vayla Mirana

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Vayla bit her lip as the Lepi spoke, though none of his words possessed much in the way of an answer. She already knew about the hole in the neck. She needed to know how to fill that hole with information. Still, the Lepi was at least sober enough to speak plainly, which was more than she could say for some of the sorry souls sitting in the cantina. Or for yourself, Vay, if you’re not careful.

Following the Lepi’s gaze, her own landed on a figure who stood at the ready: a man whose eyes were visible but whose lips were masked. It was no promising appearance, though not exactly surprising given the local environment and the worldly circumstances. She studied him for a moment longer. He seemed a little too ready. Difficult to pinpoint whether that was good or bad.

“Whatever.” Vayla dismissed her own question, deducing that she may get no better answer than if she were to pose the question upon herself. “I saw enough. That's what counts.” With that, the Jedi turned back to the door, with only the bar standing between it and her.

You in the room!Vayla called out, though the hum of her blade was somehow louder in her ears. “There’s no way out of this but through that door. You can open it, we can talk this out, no more violence, or I can open it and maybe there will be more violence.” She shrugged. “And do trust a Jedi when she says that she can open that door…”



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Vizim

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Vizim was calm despite the Jedi's gaze. If he were in her position, he wouldn't have trusted him either.

As for offering the person inside a way out without any harm? That was kind of dumb, wasn't it? She'd just put a blaster hole in someone's throat and now they were just going to talk it out? Granted, Vizim didn't have a problem with her killing the guy, but the Jedi did, and that meant talking it out was just... well, it was very Jedi, wasn't it?

Does that ever actually work? he asked sarcastically, easing the pistol from its holster and the vibroknife from its sheathe and walking over toward the door. He was wary in the event that the woman inside decided to open fire, but he also knew that having a nice chat wasn't likely to get results, but a heavy blaster pistol could punch a nice hole in the door lock. And it was oh-so-fitting of someone on Nar Shaddaa.

He pulled the hammer back on his pistol, setting its firing mode to heavy and paused at the side of the door, careful not to stand in front of it.

And in his mind he began counting. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... and if she hadn't emerged by the time he was done, a hole would be punched in the door lock by one heavy pistol shot. @AutoFox @Die Shize @Lumie
 
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