Do You Wanna Buy Some Deathsticks?

[Hol Horse]

Metellos was a real shithole, but it was his kind of shithole.

Athir kept his blaster concealed in his pilot's jacket as he walked along the grimy and somewhat dimly lit streets of the urban planet. He had never been to this darker version of Coruscant before, his parents had never allowed him to visit as a youngling, and now he saw why. It only took a few casual glances around to see the rampant poverty and overcrowding, the poor littered the streets, gangs of hoodlums coagulated the various side alleys of the infinite city. One could not go thirty paces without seeing some sort of decrepit and rancid bulding that was falling apart from the inside out. In short, it was a heaven for smugglers like him, even though he sort of was disgusted with the whole place.

The red skinned zabrak had been finishing up some loose ends here after his latest cargo run, he had been transporting Spice- a commond trend these days. There were whispers of the Republic growing weaker and weaker with each passing day, inner turmoil and decay tearing it apart from the inside out. Growing up studying politics and buisness, Athir paid such talk with greater ear than most, the sign that smugglers like him seemed to so easily get in and out of Republic space was surely an ill omen of the alliance's current state. Still, money was money, and so long as he was getting paid and getting paid well, it didn't matter who owned what: he knew he'd buy it back, everything has a price after all.

Athir's steel-toed boots stomped through a puddle of grime as he walked along the dirty and polluted streets. High above him, somewhere, there was a completely different world, one just as opulent and rich as Coruscant. It sort of made him sick really, moreso than the smell of this place, how such a divide could exist. Sure, whenever he turned a corner or walked down a dark alley he always checked over his shoulder, but even then such a separation was immense. Athir kept his hands in his pilot jacket as he kept walking, maybe some spice or a few drinks would lighten him up, he didn't have anything going on anyways, he had no contract.

@Toska

 

[Toska]

Stratablock Sixteen was covered in a translucent, purple haze. Perpetually dark, lit by the dim gauze of neon fixtures acting as beacons for the caustic wanderer. Few moved in isolation, and those who did clung to the shadows, hid from sight. Refused to traverse the open boundaries where a casual eye might fight them; they were as rats skulking about, creeping in the darkness and blinded by the barest hiss of light. Provided sanctity by the stoops and alleys, they wore scowls and half-choked laughter. Swathed themselves in the airs of mystique as to obfuscate their own cowardice.

It made Alycone shine all the brighter.

Tangled tassels of hair glittered with jewels. Gold, silver, little rubies that dangled and clattered about; each step was electric, a spark demanding attention. She basked in it, in the revulsion she drew. Eyes skittered from that tussled bird's nest in her hair, from the patchwork silks that cloaked her shoulders. Off-yellows, sunkissed blues, a dirtied white blouse strewn loosely about her frame. Affected singularity as it proclaimed her lithe with a scintillating peak of collar. She hung herself from the bones, flesh flayed taut and pale, peppered with pocks and swollen sores that etched a pentagram across the tendermost part of her wrist.

Her smile was brilliant. Hollow, empty, distinct. Aloft in her perch as she sauntered from stoop to stoop, knocking on doors painted red, murmuring to passersby without a care other than how their silence lifted her laughter to a shrill chorus. She spotted the Zabrak shortly, and her hips swayed as she lurched towards the man: red skin, head a mess of thorns, crowned king of contempt with those placid contours.

She studied his topography to satiation and curled herself about him. Lavished and arm over shoulder, across waist, crooked her chin against him. Acted on sheer inertia in the collision.

"Hey," she chirped, lilting up to a distant laugh as she steadied herself on an arm. "You aren't from around here, are you? Foreigners... smell different."

 

[Hol Horse]

Athir sauntered along, bungling his way through the overcrowded streets of Stratablock sixteen, looking for something to do until he picked up another contract. The faces of the similarly downtrodden and discarded folk like him seemed to blur together, a permanent sheen of disappointment and reluctant acceptance plastered on their faces. The smuggler took note of the way they walked, how they seemed to drag their feet or skitter around nervously, it was walks like this through the gutters of the galaxy that reminded him why he fought so hard to work his way up and get rich. This was not where he was destined to be, he knew that one day, perhaps soon, he would be on the upper eschalons once again- perhaps literally in the case of Metellos.

The feeling of someone bumping into him suddenly however surprised the zabrak. He stopped and lurched back a tad as he felt an arm wrap up around his shoulder and the other around his waist. The tall alien looked down to find an expectant and intensely keen pair of eyes staring right back up at him. Instinctively, the man placed a hand on his back pocket where he kept his wallet. Pickpockets were common, and although this woman didn't look like one in the traditional sense, looks were immensely deceiving in this city. As the woman spoke up to him, clutching his arm a tad as she stood up to recover form the temporary loss of balance, the zabrak still remained suspicious. Her skin was white like snow, her brown hair strewn about and with no semblence of order whatsoever, her clothes and jewelry exotic and colorful.

Athir raised an eyebrow as the woman noted his odor. The zabrak raised his arm and tucked his head down, sniffing himself, "I'm pretty sure I used deoderant of some sort this morning" he thought to himself aloud. The red skinned alien looked back to the stranger and eyed her over, his eyes stripping her down in a mental image of only her essentials. She may have looked strange, but she piqued his interest for a few moments. "You a native then? A human?" he asked his green eyes looking back down at her with a mixed feeling of intrigue and wariness. He should probably get going soon.

 

[Toska]

That smile haunted the palisades of her eyes. Echoed deep in the freckled pools. It was bereft of amusement, betraying only a distant lust for the tangible. Numbed from lip to toe, fingers dragging along the fabric of a coat, she breathed a circadian rote. Lavished herself daintily, sweetly about the fringes of polite conversation. A hand found her hair, tangled up in the glitter and jewels, and pulled her from that perch.

Her chin bobbed, lids drooping so that lashes kissed her cheeks.

"And what," she crooned, "gave you that idea?" The font of laughter gurgled in her throat, bubbled up from a chest that heaved in sudden excursion; she expelled that breath with a small noise, a soprano sigh giddy from the night's largess. Her hand fell to the nape of her neck as she shook her head, caressed the open folds of her nestled tresses in soothing lulls.

Eyes lucid, locked on his, she started. Shook from the small of her back, limp at the shoulders; a marionette dangling at the ends of strings frayed from misuse.

"Got any death sticks, offworlder?"

 

[Hol Horse]

Athir wasn't sure what to make the way the woman looked back up at him. The zabrak was a base creature, he had learend that long ago and was fully conscious of it. Money, power, lust, things like this fueled his life then and they fueled him now, leading him to live the unceremonious life of a smuggler. The red skinned alien thus didn't bother to hide anything in his gaze, he knew what he was, what interested him more was this strange woman. As she sighed and seemed to think to herself in contemplation, she would finally speak to him.

Her response about his assumption caused him to raise a questioning eyebrow, was the answer meant to be obvious to her? Athir had seen countless humans, and many more who were vaguely or some off-shoot of humans, it was hard to tell in these core worlds what was what- especially in the dim and dark streets of Metellos. Still, he for once gave an honest answer, "Just an educated guess, this is Metellos after all, there are humans here bursting out of the seems of each and every building almost" he stated with a shrug. The way she rubbed the back of her neck was a bit disconcerting, yet Athir didn't raise the issue, this woman probably had issues or something. She didn't have money though it seemed, or else he probably would have taken it by now as she seemed like easy prey for lesser folk like him.

Her eyes fell on him though, her shoulders falling down a tad as she seemed to let her next words flow out casually. The prospect of Deathstick was a sudden shift that the alien wasn't quite sure how to react to. He had only used the drugs a few times in the past, and they had always managed to mess with his head more than any other spice. Though, the way that the stranger seemed to look at him expectantly, and seeing as how he had nothing else going on tonight, he answered, "No, but I bet we don't have to look very hard to find some" he said, deciding that he was going to fry his mind he'd do it with someone who was already half gone like him.

 

[Toska]

Educated guess; Metellos. Two words that rarely belonged in the same structure, regardless of the context. A bastion of filth, decadence, and poverty, the fallen cloud cities crumbled beneath time's weary breath. Stratablocks lined the ground in self-made craters that oozed defeat. Home to the downtrodden, the very air sucked away most chivalrous inclinations. Existing was strife in itself, nihilistic by nature.

Alcyone teased the notion from the high arch of a brow. Lifted it for the Zabrak's benefit, deigned it fit that he should see her stumble forth another pace only to balance precariously against his arm. She swayed, sauntered, and from her perch so close to his chest, she adopted a gentle clarity. Latched onto him from the whites of her eyes.

"That's how they know you're an offworlder," she said, a murmur into his collar. A nail languished against jaw, tilted it with an ethereal force to encompass the faceless masses skulking about. Conglomerates of them, groups that strayed from the mainstay in threes and fours, that found confidence at five and were emboldened by six.

Lips curled in the loosest of smiles, she implored him.

"Go ahead, ask them."

 

[Hol Horse]

Was she already on Deathsticks?

Athir eyed the woman warily as she seemed to creep and claw closer to him, her body seemingly latching onto his like a woman with little inhibition who had given up caring about the world. That was good, he didn't like inhibition. Her white eyes seemed to pull and tug at his own green pupils as she took a page out of his book of facial expressions, raising her own eyebrow to invite him down the rabbit hole, to not care about where he might end up once he came out the other side. It was a tantalizing offer, he had to admit. Between being nearly sucked into a black hole and fighitng his way against Rodian mercenaries, the notion of turning his mind off and letting it wander through the neon lit streets appealed to him. He had no true home, no contract at the moment, and no family nor friends to feel a responsability for. He was his own man, she was her own women. This planet was made for self-indulgent scum like them, Athir could realize that now as he looked into the woman's eyes, it was an epiphany that only a few moments earlier was completely lost on him.

A smile crept up onto his face once more as he began to slowly understand the world a bit better, the faceless rats scurrying around the alleys just like him. Athir could feel the stranger's voice speaking into the collar of his pilot jacket. Her finger brushed against his jaw casually, provokingly, longingly. The horned man felt a strange pull towards her then, not out of attraction or genuine intrigue, but something different- he couldn't explain it besides the feeling of 'lightness'. The ground felt like it wasn't there anymore, it felt like one strong burst of wind would send he and her flying off into the etherious night. Like there was something pulling the heaviness from his mind and his chest as he saw the world more clearly for the first time. What was it? Athir was not a religious man, so was this fate? No, there was no such things as fate so far as he was concerned, he made his own choices and thus his own destiny. Still, her statement deserved an answer, "They don't matter, all that is, is just us, and we are nothing, just dirt and mud. That's the way of the galaxy" he reminded her before adding on, "What's your name stranger?" he asked, his gaze narrowing as he looked back down at her.

Aye, he would let his mind wander for the night. Time was money, but what was the point of having the latter if you could not enjoy the former?

Athir looked up from the crowded and neon-lit street where he and the woman stood. It didn't take long to spot a group of what looked like thugs eyeing them both warily. The zabrak pulled a few credits out of his back pocket, twiddling them between his fingers as he returned the drug dealer's gaze in force. Leaving the fellow wanderer's clutches, he approached the slimy and rat-faced human that seemed to lead them, his black clothing contrasting from the red tattoos covering his face. "You wanna buy some Deathsticks?" he asked, pulling a couple of the aforementioned multi-colored sticks from a box he was sitting on. The zabrak nodded and flipped him the credits he had. A few moments later, he was the proud owner of 4 Deathsticks. His mission accomplished, he would turn around to the stranger once again, handing her one. Holding his own in his right hand, he would prep it for use, "Cheers" he stated, waiting to take it together with the stranger.