Post by Takeda on Nov 7, 2010 5:23:57 GMT -5
Character: (NPC - Ayu'lesh)
Location: Sub-Alley, Kuat Ring
Having lost them for a moment, she slides in behind one of the ever-present piles of trash parts and lies still, it is only mid-morning and it has already been a completely bad day. It had started out so simple, a brief walk a few districts over, and she could find some spacer with too much money that he was just going to blow in some seedy place on Twi'leks of highly negotiable affection. But oh-no, not her, she sees some shady looking suit talking with some of Murza's boys, and decides to do a run-through and snatch the part... Hmm, she didn't know of Murza being into corporate espionage, but maybe he was having his boys run it to Boss Gagath. Getting up close to them was easy, she started her run just as the small one pulled the silver and black thermocouple from the case of the suit and bingo, it went off without a hitch... Until she collided with that drunk dock-worker coming out of Muriell's, it delayed her long enough to miss snagging the handrail on KDY-10:03SW by a fraction of a second.(The KDY 10:03 Part Tram Heading Spin-ward). Since then it had been a long run across districts, and with these Bantha-Veks dogging her the entire way.
She takes this brief pause in her flight to stow the coupling into a cloth, and then ever so delicately slips a couple of broken hydro spanners out of the pile and into the cloth with it making it a neat bundle and then stows it in her satchel. She fumes to herself, "stupid, stupid, stupid!" It is not like she is any good at this. "Well..." she admits to herself, she is amazingly good at a snatch and grab, but people tend to see her coming a mile away. Giving a sigh she tells herself she needs to stop being so jumpy; however as luck would have it a Drau-rat crawls across her leg startling her, as her leg kicks out instinctively to get the blasted thing off, it throws her off balance, her hand reaches up for the nearest thing to catch herself; the compression strut sticking out of the junk-pile.
Gervikz, hearing the crash and clatter behind him turns around from where he and his boys were menacing a couple of down and out spacers to figure out where that little wench went with his stuff.
With a sharp bark Gervikz jolts his dim-witted cronies to action; "Moosh! Rocna! Grab the minx!"
His two thugs, stumbling over the spreading pile of once neatly stacked parts close in on the stunned girl. With heavy calloused hands they grab her arms and haul her to her feet. When she starts to struggle, the one called Moosh punches her in the side of the head; she sags between them the fight having gone from her.
With the special section of pipe that is his club, Gervikz tries to lift her chin, but Moosh's punch apparently had stunned her so badly that even the uncomfortable pressure of durasteel against her face was not enough to cause her to lift her head. He lightly slaps her cheeks a few times to rouse her, with a start she comes back around and then quiets.
With slovenly anger in his voice, he questions,"Ok spice-pixie, who put you up to it?" Gervikz punctuates his query, jabbing the girl in the mid-riff with his club. Not getting the immediate response he desires, he switches his club to his left hand and grabs her chin and raises her head. With spittle projected "Who sent you to steal my flarg! Was it Hasbuuk or one of his lot?!" he screams referring to the Rodian crew that operates primarily in the next district.
While still holding her chin he turns to look at Rocna, "I hate to do this to a fellow human, but no one mynocks in on my deals! Break her hands Rocna, make sure she can never grab anything again!"
If Gervikz had been looking at her face when Ayu'lesh finally shook off being pummeled, he
would have seen her eyes snap open and the deep unforgiving blue hue they had, and his life would have probably been better in the end.
She was aware of someone gibbering at her, and holding her coarsely by her chin, his hands smelled; he had the rot that was sure, it made her stomach roll at the thought that came next, but her mouth did it anyhow. Puling her head back sharply and lunging forward again, Her teeth clamp down on Gervikz' reaching hand. She just about gags feeling his fingers spasm in her mouth, and as the muscles in her jaws tighten like steel docking cables under load, with a "pop-crunch" Gervikz would forever after be known as Lefty-G.
Moosh, being a brute but not of a very sinister nature lets go of Ayu'lesh's arm seeing the
carnage in front of him. This saves him from the savage mauling he would have received, unfortunatly for Rocna...
Her head turns just as her stomach flips one last and final time, giving its own "little extra" as she spits the severed digits into Rocna's face. He screams and lets go of her arm as he wipes at his eyes. Immediately his instinct is to swing wildly while partially blind, and this did work most excellently.
As Lefty-G is hopping around screaming one of Rocnas big fists catches him and sends him reeling to the other side of the alleyway. Ayu'lesh in a crouch, tries to roll out of the way, but the brute knee-checks her up against the wall.
Still unable to see clearly, his eyes burning; he grabs for her while she is winded. Rocna manages
to catch her throat and shoulder and he drags her in tight to snap her neck, his thoughts "Mung it with just breaking her hands!"
With a quizzical tilt of his head Rocna lets her go, he must have over did it working out early this morning, his chest feels funny, hard to breath... why is vision... getting fuzzy...
Screaming from across the alley Lefty-G, his eyes blurry from pain as he clutches the bleeding remnant of his hand; "Kill her you idiot!, just kill her already!" He winces for a moment from
the pain, the tears and the blood in his eyes, and when he looks back up Rocna turns and takes a step away from the girl, a confused look on his face as his fingers pull at the holes in his shirt and the expanding stain of blood. Rocna looks back up at Lefty-G. Confused still, he topples forward onto the remnants of the part pile and gurgles his last.
Ayu'lesh steps forward, not quite sure what comes next, she didn't think she'd ever killed anyone before, well not like that. Living down here in the depths, she had seen a couple of people off before, but that was different. They were suffering and for some there was no other way to help than to see them off. She had fought for her life before, but actually killing someone was different. This obviously was no ordinary thermocouple she swiped.
She takes another dizzy step forward closing the distance between her and Lefty-G, she looks down at the knife in her hand, kind of curious to how it got there, she knew she was trying to pull it when that wookiee of a man grabbed her, but it all happened so fast and she knew she was severely
concussed. "Ugh!" the retched taste of that man's fingers! She spits the taste out of her mouth, and seeing the shape her own hands are in, instead she scrapes the ich off her tongue on her teeth and tries desperately to work up some saliva to spit it all out. "Ugh!" she thinks to herself, she takes another wobbly step forward, she knows she needs to get outta this alleyway before she passes out... "Now what is this guy wimpering about and why is he curled in a little ball?"
Ayu'lesh may have been having a bad morning, But poor Lefty-G was in hell.
How Lefty-G understood it was like this:
Boss Gagath was to make purchase some item for one of the Hutts. Boss Ganth didn't want to have his crew do it so he kicked it to Murza, and Murza had something going on with all the hullaballoo down at that old super-dock, so it got kicked to him. While it was going down, he had seen the shifty, strung out looking tramp out of the corner of his eye, and knew something wasn't right, but he thought she was going to pull the "Is that my daddy" crap on the suit.
Nope, with a sudden lunge, just after they handed over the account code, just as the bloody thing touched his hand... Bam!, she shoulder checks him and down the Plaza she goes with it.
Of course the suit, bank code secured, bolts. So off he and his crew go giving chase. At first, he was sure this was a setup by the suit or his handlers, but if it was, he would have been dead by 10:10 instead of now as he was sure he was about to. That rotten tramp would have ducked into the first alley, and as they followed her in, her hired thugs would have cut them to pieces... That is how corp-trash worked; or rather, just killed for what they wanted.
But no, she was as she appeared a Mynock, and just his rotten luck not a half bad one. He for a
while even considered when they caught her, he would put her to work for him. That of course if he got the item back and didn't wind up as some Hutt's Rancor-Chow along with his crew, Murza and Boss Gagath.
They though they had her a few times, but she would double back, or cut across the high-speed corridor of the Plaza-way like a maniac. Ruffo took a taxi in the shins, Hezog got nailed by the falling pipes when she cut loose the straps on the loader parked on the side-way. Later thinking he was being smart, he sent ahead Ruggy, Toab and Xanx up to the end of the Plaza to work their way down. Not long after he sent them off, she of course goes to the edge and hops on top of a damn way-tram going down.
So it was only the three of them to follow her down here into the alleys under the plaza. This would not have been so bad, but even down here everything was frantic. One of the big suckers was apparently heading out bound on short notice, and everything was jammed up. He could not get through on his com to get Ruggy and the boys to update them, and could not even get ahold of Muleeb or however you pronounced that jerk-wad's name.
"All lines tied up- All lines tied up- Enter priority Code"...
"Yeah I got a priority code for you right here." he thought at the time. So through the under-sprawl they went, that Mynock-pixie-whore-spawn staying just one step of them the entire way. Then, they thought it was all over. Rocna caught the back of her coat, but it tore away after her hand whipped
out at the last second, without her even friggin' looking! and grabbed that quickloader.
Then to his delight he thought his luck was improving when the quick-loader came to an abrupt stop a few alleys down, this one in fact. She
sure looked surprised when her ride did a no-go on her.
He had entered the alley quite confident, when he saw it lead to a unoccupied deep-shaft he knew they had her. Even if the heavy lifter was just leaving they had time to run the length of the alley and make it, those suckers are ponderous, not to mention bloody slow.
Now he wasn't so confident, as a matter of fact as Rocna collapsed and blood burbled from his mouth he was pretty sure he soiled himself... again.
Fighting back the stinking tears he looks up trying to get a bead on her. He has his holdout blaster in his pants, but he is afraid to let go of his right hand, not to mention he is useless with his left hand with it. Gritting his teeth he balls up the remains of his right hand into a fist, and pulls the blaster.
Fumbling with it, he looks up expecting to see her crying or staggering around or something but what he finds is blue horror...
The Mynock, the hell-spawn Mynock is glaring at him, her head tilts from side to side and she grins - "Gods! look at her teeth!"
Her red hair is plastered to the side of her head and face with his and Rocna's blood. Her arms are covered to her elbows in it. The ripped rags of her
clothing dance around her like specters, as the out-draft and growl of an approaching Heavy-lifter pours out of the shaft. She takes a step forward over Rocna's corpse and looks down at the wicked dagger she has clutched in her bloody talons. She looks at him and grins evilly again, for she will eat his liver he is sure. She licks her lips and savors the taste of her victims-
"Oh God, I don't want to die like this!"
All the while her unblinking wicked blue eyes are locked on him, like two baleful novae; the deep ones that suck you into their gravity wells and crush your soul. She hisses and spits at him, he tries in vain to raise his blaster to shoot this Mynock, or himself, either would be acceptable-
"Oh Maker! save me! save me!"
His body has betrayed him, nothing left in him he tightens into a little ball, hoping that she'll grow bored and kill him quickly... All the while muttering to the Jawa god for deliverance... Or more specifically what he thinks is the Jawa god from the movies-
"ATTINI! Attini... attin...ahhhh."
Blackness.
About twenty minutes later the Heavy Lifter, having passed back out of the security zone, passes the plaza-level again, It was nice to have seen the upper Concourse, though she had to admit trying not to pass out was not as fun as the last time she rode up with "what's his name?-oh well" Granted, she did not get to see much of the Concourse then either.
She makes a brief dash for the edge and lands in the "slot-way" between the Plaza and the first level of the Alleys. She tries to rise, but she just manages to roll to her hands and feet to throw up.
"Craptacular!" she thinks to herself as she spits. She had known the outside of her mouth was split
open from being roughed up, but she had not realized she had bitten deep into her own tongue as
well. Now she would have to try and get to a clinic or steal some meds. Rot is a terrible thing to have to deal with, the sooner she gets meds, the better.
She catches herself dozing, and knows that if she does, she stands a good chance of going into shock and never waking up. She crawls along the Slot-way trying to find a water pipe with a spigot, and after a few more bouts of sickness, and a lot of crawling she finds one. It is relieving to finally manage to rinse her mouth out, wash her face and arms, and since this is a sub-line and is filtered, gets a good drink into her. After a few minutes of considering, she teases her memory of recent events to purge her stomach a few times before she settles back after re-hydrating.
She takes off her gear and goes through it all, seeing what she lost on her haphazard escape.
Her gear seems relatively intact, a few loose odd and ends that are fairly easy to replace are the only things missing. She opens her satchel and pulls out a couple of expired protein bars. Her stomach protests only slightly more than it usually would to these, but holding her breath she manages to wolf one down. She learned long ago the expiration only had to do with the flavor and smell, they were good for years beyond that as long as the wrappers were intact, or of course you did not get a bad batch, but those would make you sick even if they were a day out of the factory and still "good".
There were only two real problems of these being a
constant diet for her, as they had been for years. Well, really three if you count the holding of one's breath developing into an automatic function while eating as problem; But number one, was solid protein nutrient played hell on one's insides. She could understand that for soldiers the idea of not
having to go for potty breaks more than once every other day was a good thing, but frankly chronic constipation was not a life-style she wanted to keep. The worse part was, she was supposed to be a girl. Sure, she had all the right bits, but being able to out-arm-wrestle most dockworkers since she was 14 was great for getting free drinks, it really cut down on her social life among the crew-boys her age. Come to think of it, this was not so much of a drawback, since they were all pretty scummy.
She puts away her other protein bar and goes to slip her satchel back on, then pauses and figures she might as well take a look at this prized coupling that all the fuss was about.
She heads deeper into the Slot-way and a bit farther down checks a side shaft, finding one she slips into one of the old abandoned programing rooms. She takes out her good hydro-spanner and grabbing a piece of duraloy comp-casing she secures the door.
Back a few years ago it had been easy to slip into this level, but security kept getting tighter, and now the big load lifters going up and down the Deep-Shafts were the only way to get here, the old accesses all guarded now or welded shut. The problem with the Deep-Shaft entries was the brutes did not run on any set schedule that she was able to find... so one could get stranded down here, and with the distances between the Deep-Shafts,if they were pressurized, again no telling when you would catch one at the right place. People looking for shelter had tried anyhow and starved to death before getting out. At least she had several weeks worth of protein bars and fresh water access... "Oh joy" At least she is safe in here for a short time, for the gangs will not be stupid enough to come in here looking for her.
She goes about making her little nest, there is plenty of derelict cabling to make a decent mattress of sorts, and she hunkers down and pulls the cloth wrapped bundle form her satchel to examine it. After a moment she sighs and goes over and strips a light panel off one of the old stations and drags it over, she ties it onto the grating wall with a hunk of cable insulation. "Ah, now I can see what I'm doing." She unwraps the bundle, and the first two hydro-spanners are actually decent ones that either the main drive burned out or the power-cell would not hold a charge any longer. She could take these down and get a few cred each for them, enough possibly for the meds she was going to have to get. Finally she uncovers the thermocouple. It is a small one, "maybe it is for a new fighter design" she thinks to herself. "That would explain why they chased me so long." After a brief fantasy she realizes that unless he totally lost her mind and tried to sell it to one of the big bosses, she was only gonna get like 30 credit for it. Cool parts inside or not, if you don't have or know the special thing it is for, it ain't gonna be worth much, Mystery part-XYZ abound.
As she is examining it, she finds a charging port, adjustment controls, and realizes it is not a thermo-coupling of any sort. She holds the one end away from herself and touches the activation plate.
With a pop-hiss the interior of the little room and her face are illuminated red. In this light her eyes, look black-
"Oh bloody hell!"
((OOC Notes, in a fine tradition that has plagued all of my games since I started them, two red-shirt thugs, almost always receive the names Moose and Rocco, or reasonable facsimile thereof. This is a nod to one of my favorite lines in Caddyshack, spoken by the late, great Rodney Dangerfield.
"Moose, Rocco, help the Judge find his Wallet!"
Judge Smails of course being played by the equally late and great, Ted Night.
If you enjoyed this, fabulous! if you were able to follow along without too much difficulty with the overlay or perception, recounting, changes in tense and person, even better. I do not find I am a gifted writer, so it is a long-shot on understandability. The whole story is meant to be an introduction for an NPC, and morphed into a gritty look at the under-life of one of the great spaceport-cities. Of course this is a cheesy attempt at something along the lines of Q. Tarantino.
More installments will be forth-coming since, well it ain't over yet.
Oh and yes, (unless there is a real big problem with it, in which case catch me in c-box or PM me to edit it) it is meant to be in-time with the early November 2010 posts on Kuat Orbit and the launch of one of the Eclipse class.
Location: Sub-Alley, Kuat Ring
Having lost them for a moment, she slides in behind one of the ever-present piles of trash parts and lies still, it is only mid-morning and it has already been a completely bad day. It had started out so simple, a brief walk a few districts over, and she could find some spacer with too much money that he was just going to blow in some seedy place on Twi'leks of highly negotiable affection. But oh-no, not her, she sees some shady looking suit talking with some of Murza's boys, and decides to do a run-through and snatch the part... Hmm, she didn't know of Murza being into corporate espionage, but maybe he was having his boys run it to Boss Gagath. Getting up close to them was easy, she started her run just as the small one pulled the silver and black thermocouple from the case of the suit and bingo, it went off without a hitch... Until she collided with that drunk dock-worker coming out of Muriell's, it delayed her long enough to miss snagging the handrail on KDY-10:03SW by a fraction of a second.(The KDY 10:03 Part Tram Heading Spin-ward). Since then it had been a long run across districts, and with these Bantha-Veks dogging her the entire way.
She takes this brief pause in her flight to stow the coupling into a cloth, and then ever so delicately slips a couple of broken hydro spanners out of the pile and into the cloth with it making it a neat bundle and then stows it in her satchel. She fumes to herself, "stupid, stupid, stupid!" It is not like she is any good at this. "Well..." she admits to herself, she is amazingly good at a snatch and grab, but people tend to see her coming a mile away. Giving a sigh she tells herself she needs to stop being so jumpy; however as luck would have it a Drau-rat crawls across her leg startling her, as her leg kicks out instinctively to get the blasted thing off, it throws her off balance, her hand reaches up for the nearest thing to catch herself; the compression strut sticking out of the junk-pile.
Gervikz, hearing the crash and clatter behind him turns around from where he and his boys were menacing a couple of down and out spacers to figure out where that little wench went with his stuff.
With a sharp bark Gervikz jolts his dim-witted cronies to action; "Moosh! Rocna! Grab the minx!"
His two thugs, stumbling over the spreading pile of once neatly stacked parts close in on the stunned girl. With heavy calloused hands they grab her arms and haul her to her feet. When she starts to struggle, the one called Moosh punches her in the side of the head; she sags between them the fight having gone from her.
With the special section of pipe that is his club, Gervikz tries to lift her chin, but Moosh's punch apparently had stunned her so badly that even the uncomfortable pressure of durasteel against her face was not enough to cause her to lift her head. He lightly slaps her cheeks a few times to rouse her, with a start she comes back around and then quiets.
With slovenly anger in his voice, he questions,"Ok spice-pixie, who put you up to it?" Gervikz punctuates his query, jabbing the girl in the mid-riff with his club. Not getting the immediate response he desires, he switches his club to his left hand and grabs her chin and raises her head. With spittle projected "Who sent you to steal my flarg! Was it Hasbuuk or one of his lot?!" he screams referring to the Rodian crew that operates primarily in the next district.
While still holding her chin he turns to look at Rocna, "I hate to do this to a fellow human, but no one mynocks in on my deals! Break her hands Rocna, make sure she can never grab anything again!"
If Gervikz had been looking at her face when Ayu'lesh finally shook off being pummeled, he
would have seen her eyes snap open and the deep unforgiving blue hue they had, and his life would have probably been better in the end.
She was aware of someone gibbering at her, and holding her coarsely by her chin, his hands smelled; he had the rot that was sure, it made her stomach roll at the thought that came next, but her mouth did it anyhow. Puling her head back sharply and lunging forward again, Her teeth clamp down on Gervikz' reaching hand. She just about gags feeling his fingers spasm in her mouth, and as the muscles in her jaws tighten like steel docking cables under load, with a "pop-crunch" Gervikz would forever after be known as Lefty-G.
Moosh, being a brute but not of a very sinister nature lets go of Ayu'lesh's arm seeing the
carnage in front of him. This saves him from the savage mauling he would have received, unfortunatly for Rocna...
Her head turns just as her stomach flips one last and final time, giving its own "little extra" as she spits the severed digits into Rocna's face. He screams and lets go of her arm as he wipes at his eyes. Immediately his instinct is to swing wildly while partially blind, and this did work most excellently.
As Lefty-G is hopping around screaming one of Rocnas big fists catches him and sends him reeling to the other side of the alleyway. Ayu'lesh in a crouch, tries to roll out of the way, but the brute knee-checks her up against the wall.
Still unable to see clearly, his eyes burning; he grabs for her while she is winded. Rocna manages
to catch her throat and shoulder and he drags her in tight to snap her neck, his thoughts "Mung it with just breaking her hands!"
With a quizzical tilt of his head Rocna lets her go, he must have over did it working out early this morning, his chest feels funny, hard to breath... why is vision... getting fuzzy...
Screaming from across the alley Lefty-G, his eyes blurry from pain as he clutches the bleeding remnant of his hand; "Kill her you idiot!, just kill her already!" He winces for a moment from
the pain, the tears and the blood in his eyes, and when he looks back up Rocna turns and takes a step away from the girl, a confused look on his face as his fingers pull at the holes in his shirt and the expanding stain of blood. Rocna looks back up at Lefty-G. Confused still, he topples forward onto the remnants of the part pile and gurgles his last.
Ayu'lesh steps forward, not quite sure what comes next, she didn't think she'd ever killed anyone before, well not like that. Living down here in the depths, she had seen a couple of people off before, but that was different. They were suffering and for some there was no other way to help than to see them off. She had fought for her life before, but actually killing someone was different. This obviously was no ordinary thermocouple she swiped.
She takes another dizzy step forward closing the distance between her and Lefty-G, she looks down at the knife in her hand, kind of curious to how it got there, she knew she was trying to pull it when that wookiee of a man grabbed her, but it all happened so fast and she knew she was severely
concussed. "Ugh!" the retched taste of that man's fingers! She spits the taste out of her mouth, and seeing the shape her own hands are in, instead she scrapes the ich off her tongue on her teeth and tries desperately to work up some saliva to spit it all out. "Ugh!" she thinks to herself, she takes another wobbly step forward, she knows she needs to get outta this alleyway before she passes out... "Now what is this guy wimpering about and why is he curled in a little ball?"
Ayu'lesh may have been having a bad morning, But poor Lefty-G was in hell.
How Lefty-G understood it was like this:
Boss Gagath was to make purchase some item for one of the Hutts. Boss Ganth didn't want to have his crew do it so he kicked it to Murza, and Murza had something going on with all the hullaballoo down at that old super-dock, so it got kicked to him. While it was going down, he had seen the shifty, strung out looking tramp out of the corner of his eye, and knew something wasn't right, but he thought she was going to pull the "Is that my daddy" crap on the suit.
Nope, with a sudden lunge, just after they handed over the account code, just as the bloody thing touched his hand... Bam!, she shoulder checks him and down the Plaza she goes with it.
Of course the suit, bank code secured, bolts. So off he and his crew go giving chase. At first, he was sure this was a setup by the suit or his handlers, but if it was, he would have been dead by 10:10 instead of now as he was sure he was about to. That rotten tramp would have ducked into the first alley, and as they followed her in, her hired thugs would have cut them to pieces... That is how corp-trash worked; or rather, just killed for what they wanted.
But no, she was as she appeared a Mynock, and just his rotten luck not a half bad one. He for a
while even considered when they caught her, he would put her to work for him. That of course if he got the item back and didn't wind up as some Hutt's Rancor-Chow along with his crew, Murza and Boss Gagath.
They though they had her a few times, but she would double back, or cut across the high-speed corridor of the Plaza-way like a maniac. Ruffo took a taxi in the shins, Hezog got nailed by the falling pipes when she cut loose the straps on the loader parked on the side-way. Later thinking he was being smart, he sent ahead Ruggy, Toab and Xanx up to the end of the Plaza to work their way down. Not long after he sent them off, she of course goes to the edge and hops on top of a damn way-tram going down.
So it was only the three of them to follow her down here into the alleys under the plaza. This would not have been so bad, but even down here everything was frantic. One of the big suckers was apparently heading out bound on short notice, and everything was jammed up. He could not get through on his com to get Ruggy and the boys to update them, and could not even get ahold of Muleeb or however you pronounced that jerk-wad's name.
"All lines tied up- All lines tied up- Enter priority Code"...
"Yeah I got a priority code for you right here." he thought at the time. So through the under-sprawl they went, that Mynock-pixie-whore-spawn staying just one step of them the entire way. Then, they thought it was all over. Rocna caught the back of her coat, but it tore away after her hand whipped
out at the last second, without her even friggin' looking! and grabbed that quickloader.
Then to his delight he thought his luck was improving when the quick-loader came to an abrupt stop a few alleys down, this one in fact. She
sure looked surprised when her ride did a no-go on her.
He had entered the alley quite confident, when he saw it lead to a unoccupied deep-shaft he knew they had her. Even if the heavy lifter was just leaving they had time to run the length of the alley and make it, those suckers are ponderous, not to mention bloody slow.
Now he wasn't so confident, as a matter of fact as Rocna collapsed and blood burbled from his mouth he was pretty sure he soiled himself... again.
Fighting back the stinking tears he looks up trying to get a bead on her. He has his holdout blaster in his pants, but he is afraid to let go of his right hand, not to mention he is useless with his left hand with it. Gritting his teeth he balls up the remains of his right hand into a fist, and pulls the blaster.
Fumbling with it, he looks up expecting to see her crying or staggering around or something but what he finds is blue horror...
The Mynock, the hell-spawn Mynock is glaring at him, her head tilts from side to side and she grins - "Gods! look at her teeth!"
Her red hair is plastered to the side of her head and face with his and Rocna's blood. Her arms are covered to her elbows in it. The ripped rags of her
clothing dance around her like specters, as the out-draft and growl of an approaching Heavy-lifter pours out of the shaft. She takes a step forward over Rocna's corpse and looks down at the wicked dagger she has clutched in her bloody talons. She looks at him and grins evilly again, for she will eat his liver he is sure. She licks her lips and savors the taste of her victims-
"Oh God, I don't want to die like this!"
All the while her unblinking wicked blue eyes are locked on him, like two baleful novae; the deep ones that suck you into their gravity wells and crush your soul. She hisses and spits at him, he tries in vain to raise his blaster to shoot this Mynock, or himself, either would be acceptable-
"Oh Maker! save me! save me!"
His body has betrayed him, nothing left in him he tightens into a little ball, hoping that she'll grow bored and kill him quickly... All the while muttering to the Jawa god for deliverance... Or more specifically what he thinks is the Jawa god from the movies-
"ATTINI! Attini... attin...ahhhh."
Blackness.
About twenty minutes later the Heavy Lifter, having passed back out of the security zone, passes the plaza-level again, It was nice to have seen the upper Concourse, though she had to admit trying not to pass out was not as fun as the last time she rode up with "what's his name?-oh well" Granted, she did not get to see much of the Concourse then either.
She makes a brief dash for the edge and lands in the "slot-way" between the Plaza and the first level of the Alleys. She tries to rise, but she just manages to roll to her hands and feet to throw up.
"Craptacular!" she thinks to herself as she spits. She had known the outside of her mouth was split
open from being roughed up, but she had not realized she had bitten deep into her own tongue as
well. Now she would have to try and get to a clinic or steal some meds. Rot is a terrible thing to have to deal with, the sooner she gets meds, the better.
She catches herself dozing, and knows that if she does, she stands a good chance of going into shock and never waking up. She crawls along the Slot-way trying to find a water pipe with a spigot, and after a few more bouts of sickness, and a lot of crawling she finds one. It is relieving to finally manage to rinse her mouth out, wash her face and arms, and since this is a sub-line and is filtered, gets a good drink into her. After a few minutes of considering, she teases her memory of recent events to purge her stomach a few times before she settles back after re-hydrating.
She takes off her gear and goes through it all, seeing what she lost on her haphazard escape.
Her gear seems relatively intact, a few loose odd and ends that are fairly easy to replace are the only things missing. She opens her satchel and pulls out a couple of expired protein bars. Her stomach protests only slightly more than it usually would to these, but holding her breath she manages to wolf one down. She learned long ago the expiration only had to do with the flavor and smell, they were good for years beyond that as long as the wrappers were intact, or of course you did not get a bad batch, but those would make you sick even if they were a day out of the factory and still "good".
There were only two real problems of these being a
constant diet for her, as they had been for years. Well, really three if you count the holding of one's breath developing into an automatic function while eating as problem; But number one, was solid protein nutrient played hell on one's insides. She could understand that for soldiers the idea of not
having to go for potty breaks more than once every other day was a good thing, but frankly chronic constipation was not a life-style she wanted to keep. The worse part was, she was supposed to be a girl. Sure, she had all the right bits, but being able to out-arm-wrestle most dockworkers since she was 14 was great for getting free drinks, it really cut down on her social life among the crew-boys her age. Come to think of it, this was not so much of a drawback, since they were all pretty scummy.
She puts away her other protein bar and goes to slip her satchel back on, then pauses and figures she might as well take a look at this prized coupling that all the fuss was about.
She heads deeper into the Slot-way and a bit farther down checks a side shaft, finding one she slips into one of the old abandoned programing rooms. She takes out her good hydro-spanner and grabbing a piece of duraloy comp-casing she secures the door.
Back a few years ago it had been easy to slip into this level, but security kept getting tighter, and now the big load lifters going up and down the Deep-Shafts were the only way to get here, the old accesses all guarded now or welded shut. The problem with the Deep-Shaft entries was the brutes did not run on any set schedule that she was able to find... so one could get stranded down here, and with the distances between the Deep-Shafts,if they were pressurized, again no telling when you would catch one at the right place. People looking for shelter had tried anyhow and starved to death before getting out. At least she had several weeks worth of protein bars and fresh water access... "Oh joy" At least she is safe in here for a short time, for the gangs will not be stupid enough to come in here looking for her.
She goes about making her little nest, there is plenty of derelict cabling to make a decent mattress of sorts, and she hunkers down and pulls the cloth wrapped bundle form her satchel to examine it. After a moment she sighs and goes over and strips a light panel off one of the old stations and drags it over, she ties it onto the grating wall with a hunk of cable insulation. "Ah, now I can see what I'm doing." She unwraps the bundle, and the first two hydro-spanners are actually decent ones that either the main drive burned out or the power-cell would not hold a charge any longer. She could take these down and get a few cred each for them, enough possibly for the meds she was going to have to get. Finally she uncovers the thermocouple. It is a small one, "maybe it is for a new fighter design" she thinks to herself. "That would explain why they chased me so long." After a brief fantasy she realizes that unless he totally lost her mind and tried to sell it to one of the big bosses, she was only gonna get like 30 credit for it. Cool parts inside or not, if you don't have or know the special thing it is for, it ain't gonna be worth much, Mystery part-XYZ abound.
As she is examining it, she finds a charging port, adjustment controls, and realizes it is not a thermo-coupling of any sort. She holds the one end away from herself and touches the activation plate.
With a pop-hiss the interior of the little room and her face are illuminated red. In this light her eyes, look black-
"Oh bloody hell!"
((OOC Notes, in a fine tradition that has plagued all of my games since I started them, two red-shirt thugs, almost always receive the names Moose and Rocco, or reasonable facsimile thereof. This is a nod to one of my favorite lines in Caddyshack, spoken by the late, great Rodney Dangerfield.
"Moose, Rocco, help the Judge find his Wallet!"
Judge Smails of course being played by the equally late and great, Ted Night.
If you enjoyed this, fabulous! if you were able to follow along without too much difficulty with the overlay or perception, recounting, changes in tense and person, even better. I do not find I am a gifted writer, so it is a long-shot on understandability. The whole story is meant to be an introduction for an NPC, and morphed into a gritty look at the under-life of one of the great spaceport-cities. Of course this is a cheesy attempt at something along the lines of Q. Tarantino.
More installments will be forth-coming since, well it ain't over yet.
Oh and yes, (unless there is a real big problem with it, in which case catch me in c-box or PM me to edit it) it is meant to be in-time with the early November 2010 posts on Kuat Orbit and the launch of one of the Eclipse class.
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)checking the site..realizing no one's here and leaves