Flicker and Flight

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

NAR SHADDAA
21:45​

Abrakhal Grisgoh stomped down the loading ramp, vaguely grimacing past the greasy dock worker. He beckoned Abe to stop, but Abe simply thumbed over his shoulder, shoved the worker's droid aside, and said, "It's his ship." The confused worker looked back at the transport to find the pilot exiting in similar wonder, shoved aside in similar regard by Richard, whom, despite a lack of facial and vocal expression, seemed a gentler sort with a benign yet monotoned, "Sorry".

Abe's browned coattails whipped behind his heels as he tramped through crisscrossing bodies out into the busy suspended streets of Nar Shaddaa, cutting through traffic toward The Fan Flick, a smaller two story club. He looked as average as anyone, hiding his lightsaber in the left leg of his boxer-briefs under his pants, partially unbuttoned civilian's shirt, and long tatty coat. Richard called out to him, trying to keep up, "Master. Sir. Master, sir. Sir Grisgoh. Master Grisgoh, sir."

"What, Richard?" Abe snapped, without breaking stride. "Sir, why have we returned?" Abe snorted, "To find that slime Thesto and make him give me back my- We talked about this. Are you glitching?" "No, sir. My memory banks are perfectly-" "Then you know why," Abe interrupted. "But you said it wasn't worth it. That the parts weren't enough to pay for the trip, even if they were functional." "Yes, but now I owe that pilot, what's-his-name, a favor and we're going to get my credits back, and then some." "Yes, but didn't you say-" "I'm saying now that we're getting my credits back and then some, got it Dick??" Richard paused, "Yes, sir."

Abe reached The Fan Flick, finding it difficult to stop marching forward, and stood in line. Agonizing over the wait, he shifted from leg to leg with many a huff and puff until reaching security. They went to frisk him, but he shoved them when they got too close to his member, and played it off as offensive but complied with the rest of the search. Since it was a smaller club, security wasn't as tight.

So, he entered into the bumping music and flashing neon lights, Richard forced to wait outside, and walked to the bar counter to debate whether or not he should drink right now. Normally he'd jump at the chance, but right now he was fuming and focused, despite the debilitating atmosphere. The bartender was busy with another patron, so it didn't look awkward for Abe to be waiting there without a drink, and luckily for him, he couldn't get a drink if he wanted to.

@Luno

 

[Luno]

Luno had become a bona fide resident of Nar Shaddaa in the last few weeks as he had accepted to manage the operations for the Paroaria Mafia on the ecunemopolis moon. A warehouse for housing and distributing arms wasn't an uncommon thing on the moon but finding reliable smugglers and suppliers turned out to be disturbingly tough task for Luno. Storming towards the small club The Fan Feck...? The Fan Flick? Luno's mind was far more focused on finding the slimy gob who'd hooked him up with an 'arms dealer' who couldn't even get his shipments through customs without being caught.

That was nearly ten thousand credits of the mafia's money gone with the wind, and someone was going to pay for it. Luno approached the line for security checks and walked to the second entrance meant for VIPs of which he was not. He was wearing his normal dress attire of black leather shoes and slacks with a chromium buckled belt and a black button down overtop his body armor finished off with an ash grey suit jacket. His blaster was holstered under his left arm as he leaned in to talk to a bouncer without screaming "The Paroaria's have business here tonight, do you mind if I get in there the quick way?" Luno asked as he leaned in with one hand clapped on the man's shoulder which he would bring down and in front of his face holding up a credit chit for 500 credits.

The bouncer would grab the chit without a word and lean in again "Side door, tell 'em you're here for the show" The bouncer concluded with a clap on Luno's shoulder and a smile. Making his way to the side entrance Luno repeated the phrase to a pair of the inhouse security who opened the door to let him through and into the strobe light filled drug fueled dance pit. Making his way past the dance floor and towards the bar he would produce a baggy from his pocket and put two high dose painkillers in between his teeth as he reached the bar. Holding up his pointer finger at the bartender who was finishing pouring a drink Luno called out from between the pills "wisky, two finers" and with a nod the bartender turned to begin the poor.

@Styx

 

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

Whisky, two what'sit's? That sounded good, Abe thought, turning a look down the bar at the man who'd ordered it, barely able to hear, let alone see where it came from. He shortly gave up and leaned over the bar with a light bang of his palm on the countertop.

"Hey!" The bartender ignored him at first. "Barman!" "One second pal," the bartender muttered. A pretty blue woman stepped right over his toe with her spiked heel, sliding in front of him as close as could be. He choked, looking over her shoulder all confused with her red hair in his mouth, until he lost his nerve, stepping away. Abe got up his gumption again and stomped down behind the stools to reach the bartender from a better angle. "I need to ask you something!" The bartender noticed and moved away. "Hey!" Abe's shoulders were being nudged and bumped with the libations of the dancers so long as he stood outside the line of stools. So he struggled to go back to where he was, but his slot was now taken by some spice-head hitting on the girl. Frustrated, Abe found himself close to the whisky, two timers guy and pushed toward him, feeding his left shoulder in-between the two bodies to place his left arm on the counter next to Luno.

"Hey... What is that, too tiny drink you ordered?"

@Rimrald

 

[Luno]

As the rock glass with two fingers of whisky was placed in front of Luno, he would knock his head back slightly letting go of the pills to let them fall into his mouth, then bring the glass up and knock it back with a shudder. Slamming the thick bottomed glass on the bartop with a shudder as he heard the question from his left side and saw the errant arm between him and another patron, turning to see who was talking to him he observed the man; not the one he was after. "Whisky, two fingers-" Luno said back to the man asking the questions, "-Hard to talk when you've got pills in your mouth."

Raising a pair of fingers with a credit chit in between them to the bartender caught his attention pretty easily. Convinced to come over Luno slid his glass forward motioning for another "And another one for my friend here." Luno said turning his head to look at Abe. Maybe this guy could tell him if the slimeball he was after was here tonight, he didn't look clean enough to be an associate of his maybe a henchman or a runner? Liquored up folks always tend to talk a little easier, that was one solid trick Luno had kept up his sleeve for many a year.
@Styx

 

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

Abe frowned at the man, who talked with an easiness that put him on edge, then watched with resentment as a two-fingered credit chit magically summoned the bartender, quickly followed by two more smoothly shimmering drinks. He resisted the urge to clumsily punch his right arm forward for the drink, shifting weight in his rugged boots and rapping his fingers on the counter, inches from the amber liquid that made his mouth water.

"I shouldn't," he callously shoved it away with thumb and knuckle, the liquor rocking seductively in the glass. But he felt a sudden drop in his throat when the lights fell out, as they had been doing, black abyss the undertone to the whole flashy, smokey thing going on; Abe feared he'd lost the drink in a blink of an eye. And as soon as he saw it again, he brutishly groped at the glass and drew it toward him with a wet slide.

When a light flashed over Luno's unique face, starring at him, Abe broke a half smile, frozen with blush before squirming into a glance left, hiding the practiced quickness with which he kicked it back and slapped it down with a smack of the lips and a soothing, searing, "Ahhh."

"That's. Not. Something I do. I don't normally. Today's. This is a special occasion. For... Thank you, for that. That was, that was pretty good, I have to say ha, ha, ha." Abe sniffed at the wetness still lingering on his upper lip, wiping a dry left finger across it as he remembered where he was. A darkness fell over his eyes when he caught a glimpse of some mangy looking nobody cutting through some dancers, recalling Thesto's face. "Listen, I owe you one, but I need to get going."

Abe shifted some more, but without knowing where he needed to go or who to talk to, he stuck perfectly to the floor. All the while, dancers lit up in different levels across the floor, each different bright colors. The music shifted from a thumping, reverberating beat to a tonal slinging that sounded like fireworks popping off.

@Rimrald

 

[Luno]

Standing in his place at the bars counter Luno watched as the man waffled about deciding to drink. Either a sign of an alcoholic trying to stay on the wagon or someone on the clock, and when he made the statement of this wasn't something he often did Luno couldn't help but let out a sputtering laugh from the coattails of an unexpected response. "Right and I take painkillers because I still need them... You're welcome." Luno said as he knocked back the rock glass in his left hand and slid it forward and picked up on the man's attention lasering in on something, likely something important, turning to his side to observe as he said goodbye.

"You won't even get the chanc-" Stopping the morbid sounding remark partway as the man pushed past where Luno believed he could be heard and finished his statement to himself "-e to do that, since you know you don't even know me..." With a sigh he would look on and follow his movements giving him a short lead before pushing through the crowd to follow from a distance.

@Styx

 

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

The churning tide of bodies swept him away, and before he knew it Abe was near the center of the dance floor getting grinded on by some half-naked clodhopper off his balls on something, just like everybody else, apparently. The chest bump was enough to catch his attention, previously fixed on the shadow of a man slipping past security up to the second floor, but the inside of the guy's knees drumming the sides of Abe's thigh sparked an uncontrolled right-armed shove to the guy's chest. The guy fell back against the wave of bodies harmlessly, like a safety net catching his arms and whisking him right back up into the bobbing sea, a sailor blissfully lost in the night under the aurora borealis; and just as soon as Abe had found himself surprised at his own sharp reaction, guilt creeping in, the guy had wandered off with in a swimming smile without a care or recollection of anything or anyone.

Lights dropped out. He felt something wet on his sleeve and shirked it loose around his hand to wipe it against his side. The lights flashed again, and just like that it was as though the sneaky man had never existed; two guards stood shoulder to broad shoulder at the base of the stairs without any sign of what came before. For a second, Abe wondered if he'd imagined it. He looked back at the angle that the guy had danced on him, instead finding glassy-eyed faces swirling, then turned back the other way, lost in this feeling he couldn't shake.

Like some horror flick, Luno's morbid face lit up under a ghost white light, then vanished. Abe called out to him, not far off but finding his own voice muted in the center of this place. He was sure their eyes met but wasn't sure he could find him again, paddling back toward where he saw him, shouting. It was the only solid thing he had to reach for, this strange feeling drawing him toward this stranger. And when Abe reached that place he was all turned around and alone, cursing, "Now I'll never find that shavit Thesto."

@Rimrald

 

[Luno]

Luno observed past Abe at whoever it was he was following and it clicked suddenly that they might just be after the same person this evening, as he focused in on the fleeting being he was roughly the same build of Thesto the piss poor connection. Pushing up to flank Abe, Luno leaned in to yell just so he could hear him "Looks like we have something in common, but if we're going to find that something we have to get upstairs." Luno was holding his shoulder and yelling into his ear, keeping his body turned towards the stairs to watch for anyone emerging.

"If you've got a plan let's hear it... If not I've got one you might not like" Luno shouted as he thought out what he'd said, obviously this guy wasn't against violence coming into a place like this but it was surely not something Luno was in the mood for. The lights and the music were starting to aggravate Luno, most nights they would be a welcome distraction from his day to day but tonight was different due to his reasons for being at the club.

@Styx​

 

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

The cold voice seeped into his ear like it almost came from inside his own head, the hand already upon his shoulder like it had been there all along; albeit a welcomed one at the moment, Abe felt something cold in its warm weight upon his coated frame.

"Thesto?" he asked dumbly, almost immediately kicking himself for giving himself away so easily. His eyes flicked around, but also realized, taking too long, that no one else could hear him. Abe winced as he reluctantly leaned in toward Luno's ear, accepting the necessity of Luno's hand upon his shoulder, and projected, "There's two guards at the stairs. There's no other way up there, is there?"

But then he realized it, drawing back with a warned look on his face and asked, "What do you want with, with him?" It had dawned on him that Thesto could have a bounty on his head, or a rival after some revenge. And while Abe was no stranger to the grays of the galaxy, he wasn't in the business of helping killers get their rocks off. Shooting blaster burns through Thesto or carving his limbs off with plasma weren't activities on his itinerary this evening. There was a lightsaber in his crotch and he didn't want just anyone knowing what he was packing.

@Rimrald

 

[Luno]

"Thesto set me up with a bad business connection, I want my fee back and to put a blaster in his mouth for crossing me... Maybe see him piss himself for a laugh." Luno shouted into Abe's ear as the bass and lights were momentarily just background as he thought of a plan "We could lay a beat down on the guards but that might bring the whole place in on us... But what do you want with that snake?" Luno asked, changing his course of conversation mid sentence in an effort to guage who or what this person he'd just met was after in The Fan Flick.

Taking a glance over his shoulder past Abe, Luno eyed up the two guards and sure they could go in trying to get into a fight, or they could likely be bribed like the guards out front even. Luno was sure none of them would die for this place, not bouncers and inhouse security, at least that's who he believed these men were from his limited interaction in this establishment. "We could pay them off, we could beat on them or if you're really looking for a fight we can shoot them." Luno said after eyeing the two stair guards and focusing back on Abe.

@Styx​

 

[Abrakhal Grisgoh]

Abe pulled away, both in shock and left with a fading half smile, eyes judging the man before wishing he hadn't given himself away, again. He hoped the flashing lights and bouncing bodies hid his reaction a bit, feeling he misrepresented himself with every instinct and gesture. In fact he'd done something similar to holding some slime's mouth for ransom with a blaster just to see him sweat, but it apparently hadn't stopped Abe from looking down on someone else for suggesting the same thing. In fact he'd done much worse in the name of justice. Of course his surprise at himself and drop of his eyes to his feet did nothing to hide his self chastisement, he had nothing but to reengage as if nothing had happened, as though he wasn't the open book that he was.

"I'm not looking for attention," Abe explained as he leaned back in to Luno, editing down the phrase 'too much attention' in the hopes of not highlighting his Jedi affiliations. "You can take the guards out if you wish, but I'm just after Thesto. He set me up also. Gave me bad parts and more. If we can get our credits back and then some, we're golden. But if we can, and I know it's a big one, but if we can shut his little operation down, scare him enough, or-or something, then all the better."

Abe looked back at the guards then back to Luno as he realized he didn't want to lose another credit to this scum, Thesto. Bribe the guards? But that'd be counterproductive to his whole purpose here. His eyes flicked over Luno's shoulders from corner to corner, only now checking for added security, noting several bouncers in black with arms folded here and there. They weren't near the stairs. They wouldn't be first responders to a scuffle. If there was a disturbance near there, it'd be the two guards who'd come. But would they leave their station?

"Alright. I'll get their attention, draw them away from the stairs. You go up. They see you and follow. I go up after them. The others won't go near the stairs. We take them down with Thesto. No one down here knows a thing." Abe paused to gauge Luno's reaction to the proposed game plan.

@Rimrald