Men Are Still Good?

[Tarrius Drast]

Men Are Still Good?​

It seemed that life was full of constant destruction, a battle of facing one's darkness and fears that only seemed to repeat in cycles that ensnared their victim in a never ending torment--to be dead would be a more peaceful fate. The City of Neon Lights, Spice, and Crime. This was once his city, his home, the place he had sworn to protect, yet today it was nothing more than a broken naive dream. To think that people could change, that men didn't hold the darkness within them to conflict terror, to reject it and to seek the light. The force knew that he had given in to his demons, so why would he expect anyone else to rise up when he himself could not.

It had been a few weeks since the incident on Nar Haaska, the beheading of his newfound partner. Her green eyes staring back at him as her bloody head oozed from the pike within the torture room. He had spared no mercy and left the men and alien alike bloody, caved in and in pieces. His hands were still bruised and ached from the pain, yet he felt empty and hollow inside.

"Hey lover boy...care for a ride?" A woman responded with a purr, the gold chains and rings danced within the neon lights as her silken white hands reached around his neck. Tarrius would push her hand away as he stepped into the vibrant night club. It's time to drink these problems away.

tag: @Korvo

 

[Ascella Dysaro]

Bmeha... bhema...

Oh, Ascella Dysaro was many things. In fact, it was often the case that she was many people. A scoundrel. A thief. A gambler. A spy. More than once, she was even a gunslinger. But of all the things she could, and often would claim to herself, the only thing she would never fake was being a surfacer. Back on Hythrion, they used to call them "pahjons", or "mudlings". Ascella was spaceborn, through and through. Planets were never her thing. Even though being back in territories dominated by the Hutts, surrounded by filth, grime and skyscrapers that rose as tall as the eyes could see, it was only a delaying of the inevitable; Ascella literally couldn't stand being confined to planets for too long.

But today was a special case. Every time she did it, it always was.

It was a cantina of some sort. Perhaps a club, even? It didn't matter, really, nothing would really change from knowing one way or the other. Scantily-clad women danced around the entrance, drawing patrons of every kind, albeit with rivaling clubs doing the same. After all, it wouldn't be Nar Shaddaa without healthy competition. Ignoring the main entrance, Ascella instead made her way down an alleyway that would bring her to the back door of the establishment.

After glancing about to make sure none were watching her, the Pantoran woman removed her techno-coffer, booting it up and creating a hard-link with her port scanner. Public places like these always had the same weaknesses; coalesced network data clusters that were rooted in local power distribution mitigation systems. It was round about, for anyone that was looking for trouble, but it was by no means secured. Designed for ease of access, mostly for maintenance or astromech droids, Ascella would have guessed, the Pantoran slicer hacked into the power distribution system without much trouble, and from there, re-routed the databits communicating with the power distribution to trace them back to the central computing system of the night club.

"Bacake-osa chee sa", Ascella said quietly to herself, grinning subtly.

Now at the proverbial door of the establishment's network database, Ascella folded her techno-coffer and slid it into a nearby shaft that extended beneath a dumpster next to her, keeping it hidden from sight. It was linked to her datapad, so she didn't need to be so hands on with it at the moment anyway. Instead, Ascella programmed her port scanner to begin slicing into the system, then placed it into the shaft alongside the techno-coffer.

Everything was set, now all that was left was to wait... and wait... and wait...

Sighing, Ascella glanced about again and opened the back door of the night club, slipping inside. She would be stuck here for a while, so she might as well have made the most of it.

@TWD26

 

[Tarrius Drast]

"Is that echani silk?" The bartender would ask with a raised brow, as he skimmed the bubbling top of a thick neon green liquid. Pushing it down the slick metal bar top. "We haven't seen your face since your retirement from the GSL."

"You know your fashion," Tarrius would muse with a dry expression as he forced a weak smile to his face. The former vigilante would toss a few credits onto the bar as he leaned in close to the tender, "I would prefer to keep it on the down low..If anyone asks if that's Kal Gast...simply look the other way."

The bartender would quickly snatch up the money, pouring it into his pockets before nodding, "For what you did in game four of the finals.. It would be an honor." Tarrius would grin as he clasped the man on his back--his face holding the smile until his back was turned.

Do people in this city forget anything? He thought to himself as he pushed through the crowd of dancing patrons as music boomed through the tight confines of the club. His aging black hair would transform to various dark shades of colors as the neon lights bounced about the room. The man was in no particular hurry nor concern--he had to keep his mind off of the darkness that lurked in the back of his mind; the ghosts of his past.

He would slip into a small opening on the dance floor, taking in a deep breath of the fleeting pocket of cool air that the opening had provided before being pushed by the flow of the sea of dancers. He would bump into a blue skinned woman, his worn and rough hands clasping her shoulders as he attempted to steady the two of them from falling. "Sorry about that," the former shockball player would respond with a flirtatious wink, "Care to dance?"

tag: @Korvo

 

[Ascella Dysaro]

Ascella was born in a densely packed city. After all, all residential space stations were. Space was a most-precious commodity with stations, and it was managed so carefully and meticulously, people practically lived on top of one another. Because of that, Ascella was normally fine in crowds. If anything, she honestly preferred it. There was of course the stress of being planetside, and Ascella knew she'd never be over that, but there was more to it.

When Imperial Hutta fell, it was a hellscape for most of the worlds within it. Of course, order within Hutt territories was always a relative thing, but there was always a structure that had held, keeping it from falling into pure anarchy. In the Uprising, it all fell to piss. It wasn't simply bedlam or confusion, it was a perfect storm of raw, unadulterated havoc. The sheer scale of mayhem was impossible to describe; endless rioting, the utter collapse of any guise or semblance of control. It was like the worst elements of Wild Space, stretched over countless sectors, made worse by almost every galactic superpower deciding to have an all-out brawl over the territories.

It was No-Man's-Land, and nowhere in the former Imperial Hutta was left unscathed.

Except for all the words that were.

Nar Shaddaa was one such world, or moon, rather. Of everything lost, looted, gutted and pillaged, this galactic cesspit that made even Tatooine look like prime real estate was almost entirely unaffected. All these people, going about life as if nothing had changed for billions upon billions... whereas Hythrion, Ascella's old home, was basically on the brink of non-existence. Her home was gone, and...

...hocan wata, heee pahjons yoieu bai bolla dah bacaka tanea apoya...

Ascella was stewing in her own negativity as she made her way through the night club, until then, like clockwork, someone knocked into her, then grabbed her by the shoulders. Quietly as a wisp, Ascella inhaled deeply and exhaled just as sharply, keeping herself calm. She hadn't even bothered to look at who had bumped into and then grabbed her at first, but she eventually met the eyes of some Human with a sneering glare of her own.

"Jee chahsa bai yocola", Ascella said, knocking one of his hands away with her arm and shaking free from the other, all the while not even bothering to translate her words to Basic so that the Human could understand.

"...pahjon", she muttered at him, making her way to the counter to order something, anything, to drink. She felt irritated, moreso than usual, but then being on planets always made her that way. Even if only slightly, she needed something to take the edge off her. Burying her face into her hands as she sighed, Ascella grunted and non-nonchalantly waved one of her hands to beckon whoever was serving around there.

@TWD26

 

[Tarrius Drast]

The former vigilante would raise a brow towards the woman's words, understanding each thing that had escaped from her lips. Her facial expressions read that she was tired, agitated by something. She seemed to be well guarded and there had to be more to her than a simple stuck up woman making her way through a night at the club.

He would smile slightly as he followed the woman through the crowds of people, his body shifting and sliding to avoid the ever moving sea of people on the dance floor. "A mudling?" He would respond as he slid up against the bar, his hips resting against it as he twisted his body to look towards the woman.

"Another Alderaanian Gin for me...and get the girl whatever she wants." He would muse towards the tender before turning back towards her.

"Right away Mr. Gast," the young man would respond before shifting away to make their drinks.

"Something tells me you're not just another stuck up girl here on vacation," the Vigilante's brow would raise as he shot her a wink.

tag: @Korvo

 

[Ascella Dysaro]

Ascella's face was still buried in her hands when she heard that same man's voice again. Ordinarily, that alone would have exasperated her; people_annoyed her on a general basis anyway. But it was specifically what_he said that made it more aggravating. He might have spoken Basic, but apparently he knew Huttese...

...heoi pee see pacmhanaduee goo wohot..., Ascella lamented, slowly bringing her hands down and lifting her face upwards, so as to see over her hands. She still kept her hands upright, however, resting her chin on them as she stared blankly ahead.

"So you are not ignorant as most, Ascella mentioned, albeit without looking towards him. "Kudos for you."

She hadn't spoken Basic in some time, and she knew it would sound somewhat off, perhaps even broken, but it would probably do her some good to practice it every so often. If ever her travels took her out of the Outer Rim or Hutt-controlled territories, like the Mid Rim or even the Core Worlds, she might need to have a sharper and more practiced grasp of the language.

Before Ascella could speak further, an electronic whirring caught her attention as she pulled out her datapad. It was small and discrete, but an indicator at the bottom corner of the screen had a caption that read "Cahcata". Please, but not visibly so, the Pantoran woman quickly turned her attention to her device.

"On that, you would not be wrong, Sacenit Gast", Ascella remarked, having heard at least his last name now. He was a known patron, apparently. Perhaps even a local.

"Do you make habit asking what is not yours to know?", Ascella asked again, still dedicating her attention to her datapad. However, she did pause slightly and look up. She was pretty sure that her sentence came out... jarringly, and she was fairly certain there was a clearer way to ask him if he made it a habit to ask other people about their business. Basic was annoying to speak; the syntax, the grammar, the sentence structure... so annoyingly different from Huttese. Sighing slightly and shaking her head just a bit, she turned her eyes downward again.

Now inside the system, Ascella directed her program to seek out the designated cache files and begin the siphon. It'd take a while, and the Pantoran woman shut off her datapad's screen for the time being and turned her attention to the bartender.

"Whatever burns the way down", she said, essentially asking for a strong drink, but leaving the specifics up to the bartender. She still didn't look towards Gast, but did at least address him.

"So what makes a stranger seek words with another stranger, Sacenit Gast? Are you 'man of people'? Or maybe, you are man without_people?"

@TWD26