Ask Nar Shaddaa Stray into the Shadows

Noél Voss

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Sith Order
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Champion

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Nevermore
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The teeth of a dainty brush streamed through Noél's hair, pulling free the myriad small knots and tangles that were present. The woman set the brush down on the vanity she was in front of, her free hands now reaching back to draw the lengths of her hair into a tail. Holding everything in place with one hand, Noél retrieved an elastic band from the clutches of her pearly white teeth to begin wrapping it around her hair. A thin smile tugged up the corners of her painted lips.

"I hope it was as nice for you as it was for me," she spoke towards the mirror she gazed into, though the recipient for her words was a man covered in sheets on the bed behind her. The smile gradually faded as silence pervaded, her lips pursing thoughtfully. Her head angled down as she continued wrapping the band several more times around her hair, before releasing it once everything was secure. "It's such a shame I need to leave," Noél continued as she fidgeted with and adjusted her hair, rising to her feet. As she finished styling her hair, she pivoted on a heel to turn and face her companion laying in the bed. There was still no reply. She sighed and sauntered over to the bed, gathering her clothes up off of the floor as she went.

"Come now, is this any way to treat 'the hottest piece you have ever seen?'" she asked, reaching out to grab the sheets and throw them back.

Lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling, his face contorted into an expression equal parts fear and pain.

Noél set her bundle of collected garments on the bed, safely away from the crimson stains that might deface her clothing. Nar Shaddaa had always had some of the lowest of the low when it came to people. Men, women, humans, aliens, nobody was safe or dignified on the Smuggler's Moon. Everybody was out to seek cheap pleasure, lie, swindle, cheat, and her and the man in her bed were no exception. He had wanted a quick night of pleasure before he had to leave Nar Shaddaa, and she had wanted a way to get off of this planet. Only one of them got what they wanted.

"I told you it was an experience to die for," she cooed as she finished dressing herself. Reaching across the bed towards the man, she neatly removed the stained knife from his body. She cleaned it on the sheets before doubling over to slide it into the hidden scabbard in her boot. Walking back over to the vanity against the wall, she picked up the various spoils she had looted off of the man, including his credit chit and his key card to access the ship he had arrived on. With a casual toss into the air, as if to celebrate her little victory, she snatched the items back out of the air and inserted them into ones of the pockets on her shirt. She had plenty of time to get off-planet before housekeeping showed up. She would be long gone by then.

"See you later, champ," Noél quipped sardonically before double checking to ensure she had all of her belongings, and making for the door.
 

Ana DAmico

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Sith Order
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Painus
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Ana reclined in her seat, feet propped up on a console. A lazy yawn escaped her lips and she rolled her wrist over to check the time on her chrono. A half-hour past when he was supposed to return to the ship. In the time he’d been gone, she went out, ran some errands, purchased what she needed, and returned to the ship with nearly a full hour to spare and the idiot still hadn’t returned. She considered, briefly, leaving him high and dry on this world, but she needed the other half of his payment. Their arrangement was that she’d get half up front to ferry him here and half after the fact, and right now, she was about 50% of her payment short.

An exasperated sigh left her lips as she lifted her feet off the console and planted them, swinging her body upright. Well, she had a rough idea of where he was headed thanks to her probing questions on the ride over, so she figured she might as well go find the lout. She patted Beegee on the dome and headed for the landing ramp, bringing with her the vibroknife she usually carried, sliding it into its sheath on her hip. With an outstretched hand, she summoned her lightsaber and clipped the thing to the small of her back, ensuring it was hidden by the black jacket she wore.

The landing ramp lowered with a hiss of hydraulics as Ana waltzed downward, the gentle clang of her footsteps on the metal barely audible over the cacophony outside. Nar Shaddaa was like a sensory overload, with its plethora of flashing neon signs and the rush of air traffic whizzing by the port. This entire planet was teeming with life, and she could feel the overwhelming sensation of oppression from where she stood. The people here were truly trod-upon serfs, barely able to scrape two credits together to survive.

As she exited the ship, a portly toydarian flitted over towards her waving a datapad. ”Hey, lady!” he shouted, ”You gots to pay to stay! It’s been way too long since that junkheap you call a ship’s been sinkin’ its struts into my landing pad since ya last paid!” As he got closer, she could smell the foul stench of rotgut, or perhaps some other brand of toilet wine, and the acrid stench threatened to break her composure. ”I’ve already paid,” she said, gesturing ambiguously towards him, sending a spear of her will into his weakened mind to bend him to her authority.

”Eh…?” he trailed off, looking at her bemusedly, ”Well why didn’t you say so?! Sorry to bother.” He flitted away, his tiny wings barely able to support his massive weight. Ana sighed and turned to leave the landing pad, ensuring the Muse was locked up nice and tight. Didn’t want vagrants to steal her ship, now did she?

Before she fully set off to search for her wayward passenger, she paused in the entryway to the pad, pulling up her datapad to see just where exactly he said he was going.

Was that a brothel?

@Nevermore
 

Noél Voss

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Sith Order
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Nevermore
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Exiting her rented room, Noél proceeded nonchalantly down the long, narrow hallway towards the main foyer of the brothel. Her strut was brisk and confident, bolstered as she was by the prospect of finally getting off of Nar Shaddaa. She didn't know where she would go, or what she would do when she got there, but anything was better than this. She crossed the breadth of the room and approached the main door, stepping out into the open of the city proper to breathe in that dank, musky air that reeked of pollution. She had become accustomed to it spending her entire life on this planet, and her mind raced with the possibilities of what fresh smelled and tasted like.

"Now, where is your ship?" she mused aloud, removing the datapad she had pilfered from her unfortunate victim. After a cursory search she found the information she was looking for, and stowed the device away again. "See you later, Little Slugland," Noél spat contemptuously under her breath. "I hope this entire place burns to the ground," she continued as she strutted away towards the starport at which the ship was docked. While Noél did not have extensive knowledge on the inner workings of a ship, she had studied and learned enough to have a vague idea in her off time, or so she at least assumed.

The trip between the brothel and the starport was an uneventful one. Familiar sights Noél knew she wouldn't miss, such as catching glimpses of shakedowns, ratty buildings, and no shortage of yelling, screaming, and the occasional blaster shot. How much more different things were going to be once she left this backwater place. How much cleaner and more civilized it would be. With the possibilities on her mind, the woman took the datapad back out of her pocket, as well as the credit chit, to check and see exactly how much money she had to her name for what felt like the first time in her life.

"Not as much as I had hoped," she murmured. "Still, if that louse managed to get here with it, that has to mean that there's enough left to get off the planet. Nobody willingly comes to this place without some way off of it," she mused to herself, stowing the data chit away once again to pull up a map of the nearby galaxy to peruse what options were open to her. She only occasionally glanced up to see where she was going, keeping her attention focused largely on the datapad itself. The last thing she needed to do right now was run into somebody, and potentially start a fight with somebody that could kill her the way she had killed that man. It wasn't uncommon for people to assault or harass you for much more minor things than that.

"Arcan?" she chortled after accidentally bringing up the man's personal information. "That's a dumb name. Ah well, I suppose I should have learned it so I could properly thank you."
 

Ana DAmico

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Ana frowned as she read through the reviews of the place Arcan was visiting. Did she really just ferry this man here to get some strange while she ran some errands? While the money was sufficient, she felt a twinge of irritation that she’d essentially become a taxi service for somebody who just wanted to lay in bed with some eight-credit floozy on Nar Shaddaa. She had half a mind to simply take his second payment and leave him marooned on the planet, and it seemed to be a fitting punishment for generally wasting her time.

She grumbled to herself and began to walk from the entrance to her landing pad, still looking down at her datapad to locate her passenger. Her preternatural senses reached out to keep her from bumping into the wrong person so as to avoid any unnecessary conflict, but she was otherwise preoccupied with the datapad. The place he’d visited, the Lusty Lekku, seemed, well, pretty strange, in her uneducated opinion. A wrong swipe later and she’d pulled up photos of the place, distracting her long enough to bump her shoulder into a woman staring down at her own datapad right as she mentioned his name. Her datapad fell from her hands and she looked down at it with a scowl, expecting the figure she ran into to be some brute.

For a brief moment, Ana spun and prepared for a fight, knowing the denizens of this world were surly and violent, regardless of their physical stature. The woman, however, was not much taller than she was, and she didn’t exactly look like much of a fighter. Looks could be deceiving, though, and so Ana knew better than to assume she wasn’t dangerous. ”Did you say Arcan?” she queried, not apologizing for running into her, ” He was to meet me back at my ship, and the lout hasn’t answered my calls.” Her venom-green eyes panned between the woman and her landing pad, and an interesting sensation overcame her the longer she studied her, her preternatural senses warning her of something lying dormant beneath the surface of her mind.

@Nevermore
 

Noél Voss

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Sith Order
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Champion

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Nevermore
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Noél's attention was diverted from the datapad in her hands as her shoulder met with somebody else's. Once her eyes met the gaze of the person she had bumped into, there was a brief twinge of regret. This looked to be the kind of person that Noél had been wanting to avoid. The thought was only reinforced when Ana spoke of Arcan. Her idle ramblings had caught somebody's attention, and if what this woman spoke was true, then she needed to tread carefully. Nar Shaddaa attracted all kinds of people.

"I did," Noél replied, canting her head. "I'm not sure if the Arcan you're looking for is the same one," she continued casually, keeping her tone carefully measured to sound as natural as possible. "He was at the Lusty Lekku, just back that way. He might still be there, trying to pick up girls," she finished her half-truth with an amused titter, before she resumed walking. From this brief exchange she had already gleaned all of the information she needed: it wasn't his ship. Noél's entire plan had been ruined in an instant, by an entirely chance encounter in the streets. At the same time, it had spared her what would have certainly been an even more unpleasant meeting when she wandered into that ship.

Turning away from Ana, Noél straightened out a strand of her hair to tuck it behind her ear and continue walking. As much as it was a boon that she encountered this person, it was simultaneously a detriment. Not only did she no longer have a way off of Nar Shaddaa, but now she had this stranger and the possible retaliation from the security to deal with when Arcan's body was discovered. She quietly swore under her breath, having been foolish enough to believe a lie some guy told to try and impress her. She was better than this, or at least she thought she was. She needed to at least break away from this particular area of Nar Shaddaa.

She took a turn begin making her way towards one of the taxis. If nothing else, perhaps she could go lie low in the Duros sector while he reevaluated. As she walked, her kept her senses turned back behind her to see if she could feel whether or not she was being trailed. There had to be another way.

@Painus
 
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