Ask Nar Shaddaa No Holds Barred

[Lilith Vye]

In Alais' mind, the best way to deal with a bad day was lots of alcohol and drugs. Lots and lots and lots, or perhaps lots was an understatement. She'd learned young and quickly that her body could hand a lot of it for some reason. Somehow she'd managed to out drink some dude twice her size. Of course, this was a very unhelpful talent to have but it didn't stop her from being proud of it.

Today was one of those bad days, so she had a plan. A sloppy, 'already drank a lot' plan but a plan nonetheless. Tonight she dressed in her white and pick fitted dress with a skull pattern down the middle because she felt like being in something cute but not too cute. That was why she left her hair down and a little messy, but a purposeful messy. As she walked out of her repair shop into the open, she spotting a man that looked like he could handle a lot of liquor. At least, she hoped so she sat beside him at the table. They were in her establish so nothing was holding her back, plus she'd already started drinking more than an hour ago.

Without a word she grabbed two drinks off one of her servers trays as they passed by and placed them on the table. One in front of the man, one in front of her. "On the house," she said happily, not being 'with it' enough to bother watching his reaction. Grabbing some pills from her pocket she tossed them into their drinks, as if they were credit chips and she was playing a drinking game with the random ass stranger.

"Stick around for a lot more, because tonight it's no holds barred!" Alais shouted into the already noisy crowd in the bar, grabbing her drink and attempting to slam it down in one go.

@Sreeya

 

[Cavalry]

Cav was here to make some credits, and he had a sizeable amount of goods to trade for it. He loved Nar Shaddaa for all the chaos and business opportunities it offered. He had heard through the vine that someone named Alais was paying decent credits for the best spices out there. Cav originally hadn’t intended to do a spice run, but he managed to run into someone that owed him a lot of money. The scrawny little fool offered up some nicely refined spice as interest payment.

He had the spice in a little packet on his hip, but he needed to find the buyer first. He had obtained it for free (the Rodian was all too eager to get rid of it), and he intended to cash out for a high price. Cav had dealt with spice enough to know this was high quality merchandise.

He entered the bar the woman owned almost as soon as someone shouted about no holds barred. Everyone inside raised their drinks and clinked their glasses together, guzzling down what was in them shortly after.

Cav calmly made his way through the crowd, stopped as a woman shoved a drink in his hand with a huge smile. He simply stared at the drink but took it regardless, moving past her to look for the woman that fit the Alais description.

He spotted her almost at once - the dress made her stick out, along with the look of cleanliness that put her leagues above the rest of the grungy patrons around her. Cav was adorned in his Mandalorian armor as usual, the only thread tying him back to his former life.

Cav noticed she was already surrounded by company, mostly seedy men and some decent folk. He didn’t miss the subtle pills being dropped into the drinks, and he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows beneath the helmet.

“You the lady in charge?” He called out to her, though he half expected to be drowned out by the music. A few others turned around to glare at him for disrupting the games.

@Dread

 

[Lilith Vye]

After she downed her drink in one go, she took a deep breath before another voice tugged at her. Something more gruff, and slightly muffled. She looked at him through the foggy glass before placing it down. It wasn't the first time she'd seen a man in that type of armor, so it peaked her interest. She had no clue what type of armor it was, but the last man wearing something similar had been decent, so maybe this one was decent too.

That didn't mean she was going to be honest though, "I may or may not know the lady in charge, why are you looking for her?" Long ago Alais learned not to give too much information to strangers looking for it. Not until she knew their intentions.

But...it was at that point that she noticed a man standing like a statue, staring at her from the distance. Directly behind this man inquiring about her. The staring man was wearing some old leather mixed with some pieces of armor. When Alais looked around a little more there was another man standing and dressed the same, and another.

Something was up. People looking at her wasn't unusual but this was. Now she was already tipsy, but somehow that helped her stay calm just not stable on her feet. So instead of freaking out she simply returned her attention to the man to listen to what he had to say. Unfortunately she had little control over her expression at the moment, which had completely changed to an unhappy one.

@Sreeya

 

[Cavalry]

Cav quirked an eyebrow beneath his helmet at her vague answer. He was on his guard then, toying with the little bag of spice. He chose his words carefully, “I have some business to conduct with Alais,” He grinned under the helmet, “And I think she’ll be very thrilled to hear about it.”

That was when he noticed her slight change of expression and the line of sight. She appeared to look behind him and he abruptly felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise. Within the blink of an eye, everything burst into motion.

The man behind him grabbed him abruptly and slammed him down against a table. Cav was no novice to combat, though he had to take the initial hit. With his face against the table, he quickly jerked his arm back, allowing a blade to jut out from his gauntlet to slash the man in the thigh. This caused the thug behind him to howl in pain and stumble back, giving Cav the chance to whirl around with a knockout punch.

However, the rest of the similarly dressed men also sprang into action, quickly trying to subdue the other patrons that had surrounded Alais. One of the larger men ran directly towards her when a path was cleared in an attempt to grab her, “You’re coming with us!” He growled as he reached out.

@Dread

 

[Lilith Vye]

Now his reply almost changed her expression to a happy one, almost because all hell broke loose right after. Something like this happening in a new, reputationless shop wasn't all that surprising on Nar Shaddaa but, nevertheless, it caught Alais somewhat off guard.

At least the first thing she noticed was the armored man being attacked too. He wasn't here to attack her too, at least. Her focus went off him quickly because a man charged her. While she was pretty karked up, she still knew where her blaster was. She grabbed it from it's holster, aimed and fired. The sound of blaster fire barely made it through all the yelling, and well... Alais didn't exactly hit her target. She'd aimmed for the mans chest but instead got him right in the... baby maker.

This... made Alais burst out laughing. A hardy, drunken laugh that didn't last long either when she noticed one of the other men grabbing for something at his hip. She ducked down under the crowd and crawled to the groaning, now dickless man and dug around in his utility belt until she found a datapad. Hopefully there was something on it to explain this all. Luckily the people fighting around her were able to either keep the attackers away from her, or simply provide a tiny crawling woman cover.

After crawling a bit more she found herself near the armored man who she was talking to earlier and finally stood up, though using him as cover. "Look we can still do business. I'm Alais. Follow me and kill anything that tries to stop us please. I'll pay bonus credits for each head." She'd need to make up for the loss in credits with more jobs, but it was worth her life.

If he followed or not she'd make her way to the door in her droid shop, smashing in the code and letting the panel scan her hand print. She jumped into the hallway and felt her datapad buzz in her pocket, alerting her to someone entering her hallway. It'd buzz again if the armored man followed. "I don't know if they'll try to come in here, but we are safe for the time being," she added as they made their way down the hallway, holding up a datapad. "And I got this off the one I shot in the dick. I'm going to find out who sent them," she added, hoping this guy was interested too.

At the end they'd make it to Alais' "junk room". Computer parts hung off the ceiling and wall. Parts hung off parts hung off parts. There was not an inch of the floor to see through all the parts, though there was order to the chaos. Anything that could be stepped on couldn't be easily broken. It'd take a lot of weight and a lot of repetitive smashing to destroy them. The delicate items were off the ground. Through that, they'd find themselves in her computer room with an entire wall covered in console screens.

 

[Cavalry]

Shit hit the fan all around. Cav was throwing punches and decking people left and right. His wrist blades were out, and he was swinging and slashing in close quarters, not having needed to draw any other weapons yet. He cleared out the area immediately around him and suddenly turned around to see the woman spring up from seemingly nowhere.

His instinct was to lash out, and the blade stopped a hair’s breadth away from her once he realized she wasn’t trying to fight, “Kriff, don’t do that again,” He growled at her, still unsure where she popped up from. He listened to her and it didn’t take much convincing after that.

Cav followed her at once, finally drawing his pistol and blasting a man in the chest. The entire establishment was in chaos, and people were screaming, pushing and shoving all over the place. Glass was shattering and people were bodily tossed around.

He shielded Alais from harm, whirling around to punch anyone that came at her. As another man approached, he leveled and fired his blaster, making the front of his face explode brilliantly, “That should count for at least two points,” He announced proudly.

Cav unleashed his flamethrower on a group of people as Alais punched in the code to make it to the next room. He was about to yell at her to hurry, but the door finally opened and they all but toppled in. He turned around to spot a hallway, confusion on his face under the helmet.

As she mentioned the datapad, he quirked an eyebrow, “You’re full of surprises..” He muttered quietly. She certainly didn’t look like someone that could handle herself, but she had craftily managed to evade capture and also nab something off her attacker.

Watching her struggle for a moment with the various parts, he rolled his eyes and took out a vibroblade. He began to slash and smash till they finally got through, and he paused to stare at the console room.

“....What the hell is this?” He asked. He couldn’t tell whether to be afraid or fascinated by this peculiar woman.

@Dread

 

[Lilith Vye]

"WAIT!" Alais screamed, grabbing the man's arm with the vibroblade and nearly falling over in the process. "No! Don't destroy anything else. I need everything here!" She paused, looking at the spinning floor. "Also if you keep waving something around quickly like that, I may... you know...lose my dinner."

With that said she pushed off him with the hope he'd stop and went into her computer room. He said something but she didn't react at first. Instead she sat in her single, tiny chair in front of her set up. Everything came to life as she hit a single button her panel. Each screen flickered on, one after another within a few heartbeats. She input a password, it scanned her face and then everything switched from a screensaver to something else. Most of the screens displayed the camera feed, from her extremely obsessive, obviously paranoid amount inside and outside the building. Each one had saved recordings and ticking timestamps on the screen.

"I created this security system myself so don't bother trying to identify it, you wont see another on the market exactly like it," she said out of paranoia, assuming he actually knew what he was looking at. It wasn't wholly the truth however. Somewhere out there in the galaxy at large, someone could've thought of the exact same setup as her. It felt safer to claim it was completely unique though.

There were a couple screens with other programs up. Alais pressed a button to switch to one of them, then placed the stolen datapad into a slot meant to connect it to a console. After running program it didn't take long until she found what she was looking for. "So...I don't recognize the names here. I'm guessing it's a new upstart group or gang. I have the location the command was sent from. The command to bring us to their boss. You have any idea why?"

Maybe he wanted Alais and this man killed off, or something. She still didn't know anything about this man beside him being extremely skilled in combat, but they were in it together, so she swiveled around in her chair to say one last thing, "Also...I hope you want more credits because there's two men at the back door. I want them dead so I can meet this boss of theirs. I cannot reply to him in any other way than his death."

 

[Cavalry]

If she could only see the look he gave her when she grabbed his arm and gave the most bizarre reasons for not using the vibroblade…

Cav looked up at the screens and his eyes widened beneath the helmet. There was a lot more to her than he expected, and he realized that she just may have some rather deep pockets. His keen eyes quickly flashed over the various different screens, and he didn’t pay attention to what she was saying for a moment because he was distracted.

“Is that the men’s bathroom?” He asked suspiciously, leaning in to stare at one of the feeds, “And is that…” He watched with great interest as he could make out two people in a stall, and some lekku that belonged to one of the waitresses bouncing up and down from view, “How very interesting,” Cav muttered quietly before glancing back to Alais.

He hadn’t heard half of whatever the hell she said and simply nodded along, “Yeah sure, credits,” Cav shrugged as he looked over at the datapad, “They want something you have. Either you know some important people or information or they simply want to pick on someone that’s established to make a mark.”

Cav spun on his heel as he began to hear the two men at the door. He called out over his shoulder, “I hope there’s another way out because they won’t stop coming.”