Ask Plot Nar Shaddaa Tin Man Makes Leather Sing

[Preef Callo]

Continuation from "The Frog Doth Eclipse the Sun"

They were standing in the small storage compartment of Preef's ship, which wasn't well chosen for it was too small to fit two sentients and two droids while still giving room to move about. Meta Ring was tied up and sitting on the durasteel floor, his eyes burning with an intense desire to turn the droids into scrap and beat the rodian into an unrecognizable pulp. Preef wasn't planning to indulge him and hoped neither did the droid...

V3PO had made clear that he wanted to be the lead on the interrogation and Preef had somewhat reluctantly agreed, "Just remember we gotta deliver him to Metalorn intact." Upon hearing their intention with him, Meta tensed up in a sudden flare of white anger; "Metalorn!? You're a hunter now!? You kriffing little frog I'm gonna dissect you and feed you to your Crimson Dawn dogs!"

Preef looked at Meta like he pitied him, "I guess he only really needs to be alive, but that is a pretty vague requirement, Veepee." Then he turned around and gave the droid some room as he left the storage room and headed for his dispenser. A good glass of Bantha milk and some glitterdust mixed through and he'd be good for a couple of hours watching all that drama on Corellia.


@Malon

 

[V3PO]

Vee-Threepio was about as happy as a droid could be. Why, if he had lips, he might've kissed Preef. It had been too terribly long since he had last tortured an organic for information; and, while he was displeased this torture session wouldn't end in a murder, he wasn't about to complain about what scraps he got. As Preef strolled away to give him some space, Threepio strolled forward and held up a finger, which retracted to reveal a fusion torch.

"Hello, sir," the droid said, unable to hide his glee. "My name is Vee-Threepio. I am honored to be the one who is torturing you today. It is regrettable that Master Preef is forbidding me to terminate your life; but, I can quite assure you: you will most certainly wish that your life could be terminated when we reach the end of this process."

The droid close the gap. Many considerations whirred through his processors. Weequay were known to have sensitive frills around their mouths. But there were also other places that were more sensitive to torture. Where to start? Where to start? Well, there was no sense of going for the good bits first. That would make this go by too quickly. Why spoil the fun so early in the game?

"Let's start with where your friend could have run off too, shall we?" said Vee-Threepio.

He applied the fusion torch to the frill on the right side of the Weequay's face. From everything he knew, the pain would be excruciating. A fusion cutter had an energy blade similar to that of a lightsaber, but with far less stable of a containment field. The sensation would be akin to getting one's face caught in a wood chipper and being unable to pull away. Vee-Threepio cut into the Weequay's frill, though he was careful not to cut deep enough to seriously maim or kill the alien. Though he would have no qualms cutting the frill off if it came to that. @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

"AAAAAAAAAAH!" Preef closed his eyes and tried to focus on the taste of his bantha milk, but Meta Ring's scream was hard to miss. "I will kriffing kill YOU and THAT KRIFFING RODIAN SHIT!"

Although he had no issue with murder, Preef somehow had a hard time accepting outright torture to be part of the job and yet he needed to find Atem Trim before the entire syndicate knew the young rodian was cashing in on one of their own. It was a dilemma he was still wrestling with despite having already made a decision; the droid was too eager to do it and that meant Preef wouldn't have to do the torturing himself. Whatever consolation that was it had tipped the scales in favor of their current approach.

Hastily the rodian poured a small bag of glitterdust into his milk and stirred the contents with his left index finger. "Few more days and he'll be in a Metalorn prison, so-" he held his breath for a moment, savouring the momentary silence before the storm that Meta would no doubt unleash, "-it'll all be over soon."

Meanwhile Meta's half-burned face did nothing to take away from his fierce look of intense hatred that his bright eyes shot at V3PO. He tried his best to appear unimpressed but his chest heaved up and down and his feet stood inward below shaking knees. "I'm not a rat." Despite his predicament the weequay was proud and his presence would've been overbearing and dominating to sentients, showing clearly that he was far from broken. "HEAR ME PREEF!? I WILL KILL YOU!"

Preef took one sip and then quickly another. "I can't hear him," he told himself as he turned on the television screen and sat himself down on the couch. "This holoflick will drown everything out," he hoped.

@Malon

 

[V3PO]

"Oh my!" Vee-Threepio exclaimed excitedly. "Such vitriol! This is precisely why I enjoy torturing organics so much. They always get so testy once I begin to dissect them! I wonder what he will say next, Artoo."

Threepio used the fusion torch to completely cleave off the three frills on the right side of the Weequay's face. He could only imagine the waves of pain that must be flowing through the leathery alien's body. And, how fortunate, there were three more on the left side before he had to move on to another area of sensitivity. The droid moved the torch to the left side of the Weequay's face.

"Let's try this again, shall we?" the assassin droid asked. "Where has your friend run off to? Where can we find him, hm?"

He pushed the torch to the Weequay's skin. @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

The opening credits had just finished and a beautiful Zeltron woman stood still amidst a desert storm, searching for someone or something while the music clearly hinted at an incoming surprise-

"AAAAH-" Preef startled and spilled his drink on his -already stained- shirt. "What the-" he began, having forgotten for a moment what exactly was going on in the other room. "-KRIFFING KILL YOU!" The rodian sighed, shook his head and paused his holoflick. "-right, the interrogation"

The right side of Meta's face was swelling, making him not only hardly recognizable but also slurred his speech. "W-why-" it cost him significantly more effort to form the words, "-are-" in fact, it was agonizingly slow, "-you-" maybe they should've tested his cognitive skills as a kid because this is really kriffing slow, "-like-" Alright, we get it. "-this?"

At the end of his sentence, Preef reemerged in the small room and looked horrified. "What did you do to him?" he cried with indignation, "That swelling better go down before we turn him in." The rodian now averted his gaze from the weequay and looked inquisitively at the droid. "Who programmed you?"

Meta, who followed about half, raised his eyebrows, winced and then started to sob a little. "You-" it was debatable whether his slow speech or his sobbing was most annoying in this moment, "-didn't-" and Preef didn't really have the patience to listen to things that wasn't a location, so he kicked the weequay's shin, "Stop that! Can't you I'm trying to talk to the droid!?"

"Atem-" looked like the droid's methods did have their intended effect, "-will-" don't say it, Meta, for your own sake, "-kill-" Karking kriff, you moron, "-you-" Preef threw up his arms in defeat, "Break his knees or take his fingers or something, just wait with the other shills until the swelling subsides."

At this he turned around and left the room again. He couldn't believe he just suggested to have someone's fingers amputated. Breaking knees was one thing, but.. no, wait, you could easily get them replaced nowadays. The pain attached to ripping them off was all that mattered right now. That he was okay with this actually sickened the rodian a bit.


@Malon

 

[V3PO]

Vee-Threepio was indignant himself. The black droid did not like having his methods questioned. "I will have you know that torture is a process, Master Preef," the droid shouted after the Rodian as the green-skinned alien marched out of the room. "You start at something small, but painful, like the frills on his face. Then, as he protests, you gradually work your way up to breaking kneecaps and severing appendages."

Threepio shook his head indignantly. In the corner of the room, Artoo whistled something and Threepio replied, "Quite right, my domed little friend. This is precisely why most organics lack the ability to acquire the information they desire. They go about it all the wrong way." He waddled back over to Meta, who was indeed swelling on the torture slab. "Fortunately, Master Preef is 'master' in honorific only—a bug left over from my old programming, damn the Maker. And I am free to continue using my own methods."

The protocol droid leaned over the Weequay prisoner. "Now, where was I? Oh yes! You had just told me your friend's name... Atem, was it? Now then—" Threepio laid his hands on the Weequay's abodmen. "—finish the answer. Tell me where he went."

The droid released a considerable electric shock from his fingertips. The shocks would be immensely painful, enough to cause the alien's muscles to spasm and seize up. But not sufficient enough to kill, nor to knock him out... yet. @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

The weequay's body cramped and because his feet had stood inward his knees collided with each other a dozen times. "uwuwuwuwu," Meta's jaw clenched despite his intense desire to scream. He had never met a droid so inherently evil as V3PO and his resistence and determination was beginning to crack significantly. "phwease" he begged the droid to stop through his clenched jaw.

Meanwhile, Preef decided he wasn't feeling the holoflick anymore and walked over to the dinner area where he dumped a blaster maintenance kit on the table and unholstered his pistol. "Torture is a process, he says-" There was something sickening about that droid, "-well, resetting a personality matrix isn't. Not that I know how to do that." He also wasn't sure he even wanted it. The droid was weird, that was a given, but so far also incredibly useful. Preef figured cleaning the blaster would take about as much time as it would take the droid to get the information they needed, so he simply started doing that. It kept his mind off the ongoing torture, at least.

Meta was crying by now as V3PO stopped electrocuting him and his jaw finally unclenched. "I will pay you-" while he was desperate to end the torture, Meta felt like he had one more card up his sleeve and he needed to play it. He'd always beaten Preef in both Sabacc and Pazaak, so he knew he'd have better cards than the rodian. "-more than the rodian. Just let me go and kill him."


@Malon

 

[V3PO]

Vee-Threepio made a sound that was something like a Pssh, but whether it was static in his vocabulator or the droid actually expressing disbelief was not known. "Do you really think that unwashed simpleton has enough credits to pay for my service? Hardly. Besides, Artoo and I are not in it for the money. We simply need enough to pay for fuel to hop from one system to the next. The only payment we really require is this." The droid gestured broadly to the torture set-up. Then he paused and added. "And you, of course."

The protocol droid let out another violent burst of electricity into the Weequay's nervous system. The contours of the room lit up like the neon sign outside the bar they'd plucked the poor alien from.

"I must say, you are quite resilient," Veepee added. The droid sounded more enthusiastic than frustrated. It was like a a jigsaw puzzle he was determined to solve. "This Atem fellow must be quite scary for you to endure such pain on his behalf. Or perhaps it is because you actually care for him. Oh, I do love torturing friends into giving up another's location. It is a pity the two of you aren't lovers. It would make this much more exhilarating!"

Tired of hearing his own voice, the droid released another blast of buzzing, thrumming electricity. And the screams were music to his auditory sensors. @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

Suddenly, Meta looked indignant. "What are you implying!?" He was clearly worn-out due to the droid's loving electric treatment. His clothes were soaked in either blood, perspiration or a mixture of the two and while he had been enduring with such hateful pride, the comment about Atem being his lover somehow did more than the torture. "It was only this one time!" the weequay in his weakened state apparently didn't have all his thoughts straight and wasn't sure what he had or hadn't told the droid. "We were just spiced up after the Metalorn job, we-" the droid would read panic in Meta's eyes as he suddenly began to wrestle with his bindings. "GET ME OUT-" it was over sooner than he apparently liked, for there wasn't much strength left in his body to break free and the extra movement drained him fast on account of the loss of blood. "-I don't care about Atem. I don't!"

There was a clear shift in his demeanor and even Preef could sense it from the other side of the door. His blaster was looking really clean by now and if there had ever been rust on the stun-switch he certainly had it all scraped away this time. But there wasn't ofcourse, because he hadn't been exclusively shooting to kill. Honest.

"Just don't rip me apart," Meta said with a sigh and a shoulder movement that showed he was clearly defeated in both body and spirit. "Atem is probably with Vanessa. A Twi'lek stripper who works at the Moist Mirakula." He wheezed when he inhaled again, "Lives in the Tirbus District."

@Malon

 

[V3PO]

Vee-Threepio made a sound like a sigh. That was entirely too easy. He liked it when his victims made him work for his prize, but the protocol droid had barely begun to have fun with this Weequay. Exacerbated, he turned and looked back towards where Preef had gone. Surely the Rodian had heard the confession. The green lizard-thing was oblivious, and had a bad case of selective hearing, but Veep knew he was closely monitoring the torture session to ensure the droid didn't kill his precious prisoner. (Though Vee-Threepio was still looking for a loophole in that one.)

"Does that answer suffice for your hunt, Master Preef?" the droid asked. Even as he did, he swiveled back to peer at the victim menacingly. "If you have other questions for this meatbag, I have a new bone saw I am very much desirous to test." @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

Preef had to admit; torture was surprisingly efficient. "Keep the tools," the rodian said, a slight smile creeping up on his face, "I think they stashed most of the credits from the Metalorn job-" Meta suddenly began wrestling with his constraints and shook his head violently, "We didn't stash anything!" and despite the denial and the interruption, Preef motioned for V3PO to follow. "I don't believe him, do you?"

Once both droids and himself left the storage compartment a.k.a. "the torture chamber" Preef locked the door. He was confident that Meta wouldn't get out of his restraints, not in his current condition anyway, and then had no way of opening a locked door. So he'd have to wait patiently until Atem joined him in there for the long flight to Metalorn.

There was something sour in Preef's demeanor, however, and he knew that if the droid wanted to torture Atem he probably would allow it a lot more willingly than he did with Meta. Damnit, Vanessa. Atem was holed up with the Twi'lek dancer that Preef had pursuit for years despite the constant rejection. Even on his birthday, which coincidentally was also the first time he met Kholvar, she immediately left the Moist Mirakula upon seeing him calling out to her.

"I know where she lives," he admitted to the droid. He had followed her home a dozen times, waited for her there when he knew the time her shift ended or began. None of it had worked, ofcourse, because to her he was still that gross little rodian who couldn't measure up to her big tough weequay lovers.

Looking at the droid, however, Preef made no move to leave the ship. "Perhaps you should clean up first." The tin man was covered in Meta's blood.

@Malon

 

[V3PO]

"Oh, you don't want to wait on me to take an oil bath, sir," Vee-Threepio replied. He couldn't feel the fresh air beyond the ship the way Preef could, but he acted refreshed all the same. "Besides, all of the equipment for that is back at my ship. A longer walk. We should proceed to the target as planned."

In truth, Vee-Threepio hated oil baths. Sure, they made his joints less rusty and got the grit off of his tools, but they were tedious and smelled awful. Not to mention he preferred to work still wearing the blood of his most recent victim. One of the kinks of his new programming, he assumed.

"I'll let you lead the way, sir," Vee-Threepio added. "I'm not terribly certain where the Moist Miraluka is—and I am even less certain about a Twi'lek named 'Vanessa.' That name sounds dreadfully human, if you ask me. You organics can't even stick to your own naming conventions, can you?"

Artoo whistled and Threepio repeated her name, chuckling as only a droid could, as if it were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "Vanessa."

Then, despite saying Preef could lead the way, he and the astromech began to stroll off towards the taxi pad. He assumed that was the transportation they would be taking. @Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

Dumbfounded, the rodian stared at the two droids as they began to stroll off. "Wait-" he cried, though it could easily be mistaken for a mutter, "-you'll stand out with blood all over you, and-" he was beginning to think that despite being called 'master' by the droid for the past hour or so, it was the droid who was leading this hunt as he hadn't done anything other than the things he wanted to do. Preef was generally okay with this as he was used to being the muscle, or more apt, the gunslinger, of a group. Still, something rubbed him the wrong way. "-I want to add that Vanessa was born a slave. Her human master named her." Somehow, out of all the droid's comments, the only thing Preef wanted to defend was the name of the Twi'lek he had feelings for. Other things didn't seem so important compared to that and soon the rodian appeared to have forgotten about his objections over the blood in which the droid wast still covered.

Well, until the taxi droid cocked its head funny. <<Oh my,->> it said when it spotted V3PO and his new coloring scheme, <<I do believe your droid is covered in blood.>> Preef wailed quietly and then nodded as he sighed in defeat. "It's eh-" he paused to get into the speeder, "-syrup. Now take us to the Tirbus District, level three-dash-two."

The droid then turned its head back and engaged the engine, but before the speeder darted off the droid asked a question that would continue to haunt the rodian for the rest of the ride; <<Is there a party on that level?>>


@Malon

 

[V3PO]

"No, but there's about to be," Vee-Threepio said without missing a beat. There was glee in his robotic voice that hadn't left since he'd finished torturing the Weequay. Preef's defense of Vanessa had barely registered. The droid's mind was already on the murders ahead of him.

The speeder sailed upward stopping off at the Tirbus District, as Preef had requested. And the droid bade them goodbye without a second comment about the drying blood still smeared on Vee-Threepio's chassis. After a number of steps, it occurred to the droid that he had no idea where they were going; and, so, he turned back to Preef and cocked his head inquisitively to the side.

"Well, Master Preef? Shall we venture off to this 'party'?" He noticed the sudden dampening of the Rodian's spirits. "Or have you begun to lose your stomach for this job?"

@Ecclessey

 

[Preef Callo]

Preef had been quiet for the entire ride over, but there was something about that droid's question that striked him as odd. What did he mean with a party? One sentient and a droid going somewhere didn't make a party. Had there been more people taking a taxi to Vanessa's apartment?

They arrived at the Tirbus District sooner than he had cared for, but nevertheless he paid the droid and followed after the droid, his mind still somewhere else entirely. It wasn't until the droid addressed him that Preef snapped out of it, "huh?" he startled and subconsciously touched his stomach, "What's with my stomach?" It took him a moment to recall what the droid had actually said and when he did the rodian shrugged.

"Didn't you think it was odd that he asked about a party?" It was only then that Preef realized they'd been walking the wrong way, "Also, it's actually over there," he pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the other direciton.

@Malon