Ask Nar Shaddaa Just Kidding, Money Tomorrow

[Arla]

Tiptoeing around this kind of thing was so tedious. On the bright side, the besalisk seemed to have gotten distracted by Yvon, and Arla - who was quickly losing patience - decided to capitalize on his turned back.

Yvon would be able to see over his quadruple shoulders that Arla seemed to be swallowed up in green fire as she cloaked herself and bent the ambient light around her body. Sliding over the counter and around the corner, Arla was immediately confronted by confirmation of what they already suspected.

The hallway beyond was far nicer, lined with clean - even if not particularly nice furniture - that showed there was certainly more money than the front implied. She could hear voices beyond.

Man, when's Artsons coming back from the quarantine zone?

I don't know, will you shut up about it? You want to go look for him, be my guest, another voice said.

Arla continued creeping back and looked around the corner to see two men sitting on couches and on the far wall was a physical map that looked like it had been marked up with all sorts of information, one of which was the location of the Crimson Dawn building where the droid had worked.

Bingo. They were in the right spot at least.

 

[Yvon]

As the besalisk told Yvon off, the Echani watched in a bit of awe over his shoulder as Arla seemed to envelope in green fire for a moment before simply... disappearing. Well. Add that to the list of things the woman could do.

"... another thing, don't go sticking yourself where you don't belong." The besalisk continued his lecture, seeming to take Yvon's momentary stunned silence as a rapt audience, fully unaware of what had just occurred behind his back.

"Yeah. Okay." Yvon said with a nod, backing off away from the door they had been about to walk through. "So do you have the droid I need or not?" They asked after a moment, crossing their arms over their chest while trying to put on their best 'skaren' portrayal. It probably didn't work very well while in a blast suit and helmet get up. Or maybe it worked better.

"Oh errr..." The besalisk grumbled slightly, looking around. "Wait, where did the other one go?" He asked with a growing concern. Yvon just shook their head.

"I'm sure she got tired of your karkshit customer service, she just left." Yvon hooked their thumb towards the door leading back to the street. They hoped the besalisk wouldn't call their bluff and put on another bit of aggression to make it less likely "So do you have what i'm looking for? or should I take my credits elsewhere?"

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla was satisfied that they were in the right spot, and if they were in the right spot, then they were bets off when it came to dealing with the people here. She stepped away from the room with the two men and headed back in the direction of the front room, letting her cloak drop away as she snuck back up.

She could hear Yvon arguing with the four-armed alien again, and that was all good for her. More distracted meant less likely to resist or notice the Nightsister.

She reached out and plucked the tendrils of the Shadow that connected her to the man. She plucked at it, reaching out and pouring energy down that connection and suppressing the nerves in his mind. Without further warning, the man collapsed downward, losing all consciousness and flopping into the ground at Yvon's feet.

There are two men in the back and they're definitely connected to the abduction. They had the mansion marked on a map, Arla said as she appeared from around the corner. She glanced down at the unconscious body and scowled. She wasn't going to just kill him, though that would have been easier.

You want to tie him up or something? she asked, hoping she could just pawn that off on someone else.

 

[Yvon]

The besalisk was right in the middle of telling Yvon precisely where they could stick their credits, in explicit detail, when suddenly his face seized up. The besalisk seemed to fall unconscious where he stood before falling at Yvon's feet. The slicer looked down at him, then up at the once again visible Arla who was holding a hand out towards the man. Another one for the list.

"Excellent." Yvon said in response to them being in the right location. It seemed they had found the masterminds of the droid theft, caught them in their home turf. The echani glanced down at the besalisk as Arla passed off the responsibility of dealing with the man to Yvon. There was a brief moment of thought as Yvon weighed the probabilities, glanced about for a rope or some sort of binding before just shrugging.

"Sure." They said as they proceeded straight past 'tie him up' and to the 'or something' option, kneeling down besides the unconscious besalisk as a vibroblade was drawn, spun, and then activated with a dull hum. The blade glided across the side of the besalisk's neck in Yvon's hand before returning to it's sheath. Yvon stood and gave Arla a nod before proceeding towards the backroom, leaving the besalisk behind as his life pooled on the floor beneath him.

"So how many tricks do you have?" Yvon cocked their head at Arla curiously as they asked the question. So far they had seen Arla; kill someone with shards of ice, blow a hole in a mans chest, burn away into invisibility, and now knock someone unconscious without barely raising a finger. Clearly there was much more to this Force thing and Yvon was beginning to feel a sense of envy when it came to just what exactly the woman was capable of.

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla watched the slicer kneel down and slit his throat. Well, that was what Arla had thought about doing.

Hm, she simply grunted and then started turning back toward the hall when Yvon asked how many tricks Arla had. She didn't even really know how to answer that question. How many techniques did she know? More than she could count and certainly more than she could try to start counting.

Enough to keep me going in this business, she said. And that was the truth. She didn't use technology much, and that meant she had to rely on other techniques. Fortunately, the Nightsisters had a lot of options in that regard.

Unfortunately, in the moment when they had been discussing it, one of the backroom men rounded the corner, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open.

What the kriff!? the man shouted, starting to reach for his blaster before Arla blasted him backward into the wall with a burst of green.

Deal with him! she shouted to Yvon, leaping over the momentarily stunned man and darting down the hall to hunt his partner before he could escape.

 

[Yvon]

Arla's answer was rather vague, though Yvon decided that they probably deserved that. It's not like the slicer went around bragging about just how good they could slice or how well they could handle a blade. There was no opportunity for a follow up however as one of the men in the backroom rounded the corner.

Arla managed to blast him with a bolt from her hand as he reached for his blaster, sending him careening into the wall as she flew past him and deeper into the hall. Yvon rushed forwards, not needing to be told twice, and slammed into the momentarily stunned man with a hail of furious strikes. Literally slammed into him, in fact, as they launched themselves forwards off the ground to connect with the man's abdomen with their knee in a flying knee strike.

Yvon felt the wind rush out of the man's lungs as they came to ground right up close to him, not stopping the assault for one moment to allow him time to recover. Clinching the man around the neck with their arm that was covered in dried blood, they drove another knee into the man's gut, sending him doubling over in their grasp. They launched another knee strike, this time aimed to smash into the man's face as they pushed his head down into the blow.

A sickening crunch sounded in the room and the man whimpered. There was to be no more of that though as Yvon held him in the vulnerable position, this time striking from above as they drove their elbow down into the back of the man's head and sent him sprawling to the ground. He tried to raise himself weekly, but a rough kick to the head put an end to that. They had purposefully been gentle with this one, wishing to keep him alive if only temporarily in case Arla ended up killing her own quarry. They needed one of them to talk after all.

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla didn't glance back as she tore into the next room. Fortunately, if she had to guess, this guy was probably pretty high on spice, and hopefully that would mean his reflexes were according.

She rounded the corner and gripped him, outlining him in glowing green smoke before flinging him back into the wall hard enough that she heard a crunch. He was still alive, and what she didn't expect was for him to start climbing back up. His right arm was twisted at an odd angle as was his right ankle, but he seemed to not even notice.

Can't feel it? she wondered to herself, quickly analyzing the situation. Some spice could dull pain and some could turn you almost superhuman. In fact, she'd heard of serums before that did just that.

As he reached for a knife at his thigh, she knew she wasn't going to take any risks. Her arms waved through the air in front of her as she conjured a shard of ice before thrusting her hand forward. The shard launched at high speed, pounding into his face and straight through, piercing out the other side of his head and knocking him backwards.

Clear! she shouted back, checking with Yvon to see if they needed help as her eyes swept around the room. It locked in on a small area to the left of the room where a trapdoor led... somewhere. Strange.

 

[Yvon]

The all clear call sounded a few moments later from the room ahead. Yvon would grab the unconscious man by his collar and drag him along behind them, leaving a thin trickle of crimson where his crushed nose bled on the ground. They would enter the room, lifting the unconscious man up and heaving him bodily to sit on a chair before looking at Arla.

"Do we need to ask him any questions?" They asked the other hunter. It would be good to have intel on what exactly was going on. Of course, Yvon wasn't exactly opposed to just slitting his throat where he sat either if they decided an interrogation wasn't in order. It was after all the only reason they had kept him alive.

Taking in the room, it was clearly where these guys had planned the heist. Information scrawled on the walls. Pictures, documents, maps. All with little red strings connecting them like some sort of mad conspiracy. What the hell had they walked into. The trapdoor drew Yvon's attention. It was likely that it led to a lower level. With how close they were to the quarantine area it was no wonder they kept the thing locked.

"Wonder where that goes." They commented aloud as they began to examine the information on the wall. It seemed that this plan had been in the works for a while judging by some of the data they read there. "This is highly organized, despite how amateurish these guys seem." There was vague sense of question and unease that was beginning to poke at the back of Yvon's mind, though they weren't quite sure what the source was yet.

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Probably, she said. What exactly they needed to ask was still a mystery, but there was clearly a lot more going on here than appeared on the surface.

She moved over and started looking at the information on the walls. Multiple locations were marked with the Crimson Dawn symbol throughout the planet, and one area was marked within the quarantine zone, though it was marked simply with an "X" and with several lines drawn on how to get there.

Can you slice into any of their systems? Get anything useful out of them? she asked, looking at one of the data terminals.

I'll work on him, she said, moving to close the shop's front door and switch the sign over to "closed." She didn't want them to be interrupted during the... conversation.

 

[Yvon]

Yvon glanced at the data terminal when Arla asked her question. Could she? The extreme confidence that they had felt about their slicing skills had taken a blow recently, with their failure on G'wenee. There was no room for self doubt now, here on the job and Yvon nodded.

"Of course." The slicer said as they moved over to the terminal, pulling out their port scanner and plugging in the device with a piece of corded holocable. "If there is anything useful on them, that is." The disclaimer needed to be said. The fact that they had strung all their info up in the physical on a wall meant that a few things were likely. Either they were tech inept and preferred such methods, or that they had so much info that the relevant data needed to be isolated visually for them to carry out whatever job they had set out to do.

"Their security isn't great, this shouldn't take long." Yvon said as they started the process of slicing into the terminal. Even in such short a period, a brief glance at the terminal's encryption revealed they were running bog standard hardware. No fancy military tech, no custom slicer built security coding. They would continue the process of slicing the terminal to get at whatever data lay within while keeping an eye on the unconscious man who Arla was about to work on. Yvon was curious exactly how Arla planned to go about that.

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla nodded as Yvon said there may not be anything useful on it.

There probably isn't, she agreed, but it never hurt to look. Worst case scenario, they got nothing and had to do things the old fashioned way. She pointed to the mark on the map.

I'm guessing that it is something significant, she said. I want to know what it is, she said, heading back out to the other room where the man was just beginning to wake up. She waved her hand in front of her and tendrils of green energy lashed his arms and legs to the ground.

What are you doing in the quarantine zone? she asked him to which she immediately received a spit at her feet and a string of expletives.

Hm, she grunted. Her fingers twisted in the air as if she were writing something as she started summoning horrifying illusions from the depths of the man's mind. He began to hallucinate the worst imaginable horrors, thrashing against her restraints before beginning to scream at the top of his lungs, trying to flee the demons that weren't present.

Hopefully, Yvon was having more luck.

 

[Yvon]

Yvon made a noise of affirmative to Arla's comment about there being nothing on the device. It was highly likely but worth a shot. The slicer was deep in concentration at this point and responses were hard to come by, however the comment about the spot marked within the quarantine zone did draw their attention for a split second.

The time crawled by as Yvon carried out the process of cracking the decryption. There was a few brief seconds of doubt in their mind, and then they were through. The terminal's data was there before them to peruse, though it seemed to be mostly junk. Screams echoed behind the slicer, drawing their attention for a moment as they turned their head to watch. Arla seemed to be doing nothing to the man except twisting her fingers in the air. Terrifying.

Watching the man writhe in what seemed to be either horror or pain for a moment, Yvon felt a sense of... Pity wasn't the word, they didn't give a whit about the man who lay bound on the floor. Admiration, mixed with fear, they realized as they glanced at the woman who held such power at her command. They didn't dwell on it however. There was work to do.

Scanning the data stored on the terminal, it was quickly apparent that there was nothing of use on the device. There was only disgust to be felt at some of the contents as horrifying images popped up on the display. Yvon quickly shut their device down and unplugged, not wanting to pollute their hardware or mind anymore with what they had just witnessed.

"Nothing of use on the terminal. Unless you're interested in what kind of filthy holos they watch." The slicer reported as they came to stand beside Arla, looking down at the twitching and screaming man. There was no sense of pity in their mind for the man, only a growing disgust and hope that he would reveal something worth knowing before they could slit his throat.

Dice roll: Terminal information 2/20

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla simply let the man marinate in his horrors for several minutes. She knew that leaving him down there too long - or even just turning up the "volume" of the hallucinations - could send him into a spiral of insanity from which there was no recovery, so she didn't do so yet.

It wasn't until Yvon confirmed that there was nothing to be gained from the device that Arla gave a nod.

Okay. Let us see if he has something more useful to tell us, then, she said. moving over and bending down next to the man. She reached out and tapped her finger against his forehead and a little burst of red flashed outward.

The man jerked back upright, his eyes no longer rolled back in his head. He was sweating bullets and looking back and forth between the two of them.

Please! Please let me go. I'll do anything! Please just don't... please, not again! the man was practically whimpering now.

Shut up, Arla hissed, her face deadly serious and yet perfectly calm.

You're going to tell me about the droid you stole from Crimson Dawn, the artifact, and that mark in the quarantine zone, she said. There was no need to make threats. It was quite clear that he wasn't eager to go back to the world of nightmares.

Yeah, yeah... we're part of the Collective. Resistance against the Dawn and the Cartels. We rewrote the droid to steal a key that can get them into the base. They want to hunt us down. The droid's in the QZ at the safe house. No one's nuts enough to go there, the man said, practically tripping over his words to get them out.

Roll: 18/20 for getting info from him

 

[Yvon]

Whatever Arla had done to the man... it had been sufficiently torturous enough to have him spilling his guts out for them. Not an artifact then, but a key. It made sense that the Dawn wouldn't outright say what had been stolen from them. Better that the contractors they hired think that it was some bobble worth a lot of money to them than access to their base. That could be worth a lot of money in the right hands.

It also made sense as to why the Dawn was willing to pay so much for it's recovery.

"The safe house. How do we get to it?" Yvon asked. They had a rough idea where it was located by the markings on the map, but that was only so useful. The man licked his lips for a moment, shaking before glancing over at the hatch.

"Down there. That hatch leads to the lower levels, into the quarantine zone." There was a glimmer of fear in his eyes as he spoke of the quarantine zone. Clearly there was plenty more to be afraid of down there. "There is a symbol carved in various places along the safe paths, they mark the way." He glanced at the hatch again, then back at Arla. Whatever Arla had done to him had put a far greater fear in his mind than whatever lay below.

"I can... I can lead you there. Just, please. Please don't put me back there." The man's voice was broken with horror as he relived whatever terrors Arla had placed within his mind. It looked like he was on the verge of breaking down into tears.

Roll: further information 16/20

@Phoenix

 

[Arla]

Arla looked away from the man for the moment, taking several moments to study the map and the route to this "safehouse." Not very safe in the middle of an infected region, was it? It wasn't far, though. No doubt, the Collective didn't want to fight hordes of infected, but if she had to guess, they had probably cleared the area around where they operated.

The Nightsister barely even seemed to hear the man anymore as he said he'd lead them through the streets. She didn't trust him, but she also wasn't eager to throw away a potential resource. Her fingers rubbed together in thought before she glanced over to Yvon. She flicked her head to the other room, motioning that she'd like to talk to the slicer in relative privacy to discuss the man's fate.

I am inclined to tie him up and leave him here somewhere or maybe just inside the quarantine zone. If we need him we can come back for him and if we don't then he's irrelevant, she said. Hopefully leaving him just inside the QZ wouldn't mean he got eaten... probably not if he kept his voice down. They could stash him in a dumpster or something.