Montegue: Chronicles - Proverbs

[Hugo Montegue]

It's been a while, but here we go: another Montegue: Origins story from the 'Chronicles' set; Part 1 of 2, followed by Wisdom.

Mon Gazza - 7 BE

"Experience is the mother of wisdom."

There were times when this job sucked a thousand kinds of multi-species, multi-stellar ass. There were the times when you dragged yourself through mud, and swamp, and presumably sewage from whatever native creatures and critters were running about the place in complete and blissful ignorance of the notion of sanitation. There were times when ice monsters beat the crap out of you, and left you bleeding and semi-conscious on the floors of their frosty caves. There were times when huge-ass dino-beasties tore trees clean off their roots, and threw things at you. There were times when the quarry you chased was intelligent enough to fight back with clubs, and axes, and guns, and stuff.

Then there were times like this, when you got to kick down the door of some seedy, backwater bar, and scare the living Sith out of everyone inside with the farking great flamethrower you were carrying.

A grin broke across Hugo's face, as he fixed the 'thrower with a loving gaze. And Victor said I should leave you at home.

Several shouts and grunts along the lines of 'what the dren is going on?', 'out of my frelling way!', and 'yotz!' resounded from the crowd of patrons frantically attempting to vacate the bar, no doubt relieved as frak that neither of the Sithspit crazy hunters that had just entered was doing anything to try and stop them. Clearly the duo had business; the fact that it wasn't with them, and a powerful need to not die, made the whole situation absolutely none of theirs.

The only ones who didn't move were clustered on the far side of the bar, nestled in a booth that no doubt seemed pretty defensible to them, especially when compared to the relatively open entrance-way into which Hugo and his brothers had stepped. There was an air of smug confidence that radiated from what Hugo knew to be mercenaries; were it not for the fact that they were about to have their mivands thoroughly plathered across at least three of the cantina's walls, he would probably be annoyed by that.

"You've got some nerve," the leader amongst them called, frustratingly calm. He looked human; almost pretty, Hugo would have thought, if it weren't totally gay and emasculine to do so. A rippling of the skin across his cheek belied the fact that he was something else: a Clawdite; a shapeshifter, in fact. Apparently - if his tone was anything to go by - he'd shifted himself into a pompous ass this time around. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

Hugo's hand delved into his pocket, pulled out a Nubian cigar, and brought it to his lips; his hand hesitated a moment before his teeth could grip around it. "Dan Kessel, right?" It was a statement, more than a question.

"Funny," Victor chimed in, the note of snark that laced his every word as thick in his tone as ever. Though his eyes never strayed for an instant from the mercenaries ahead, his words were clearly directed at his brother. "He looks more like a Phil to me."

Dan looked frustrated; Hugo merely grinned, and chuckled lightly as he lit up off the few whisps of flame still crackling from the barrel of his 'thrower. He took a long pull; let the thick, acrid smoke linger before puffing it out into a lazily dissipating cloud. He freed the cigar from his mouth with two fingers, adding a thumb to let it twirl slowly in his grip. "Here's the thing, Dan," he explained, gaze flicking from cigar to shapeshifter for the briefest of instants. "Some guy, called, uh -" He glanced to Victor for prompting. Victor shrugged. Hugo considered a frustrated sigh, but decided against it, and merely mimicked his brother's motion instead. "- to be honest, we weren't really paying attention when he told us his name. But this guy, whoever he is, wants you dead. And he's paying us a frak-load of money to make that happen."

"A frak-load," Victor echoed, with a sage nod.

That changed the attitude radiating from the mercenaries from smug to something a little different - a little hint of brown in their aura, maybe? - but even so, Phil, or Dan, or whatever his name was still looked like a pompous, smirking son of a Bith. He even had the nerve to laugh. Ass.

"The two of you are going to kill me?" he asked, the chuckle forming a bass line to his words.

Hugo nodded casually, still paying more attention to his cigar than his mark. "And your guards," he clarified.

That Hugo didn't back down clearly irritated Kessel; his grin slipped a little, though he managed to prop it most of the way up with sheer arrogance. Either side of him, his guards bristled, reaching for concealed weapons, ready to draw when prompted. "I'd like to see you try."

In compliance, Victor rose his arms, bringing his own weapon of choice into view. Kessel barely had time to widen his eyes before the ion-propelled rocket leapt forth from the cavernous barrel, hurtling across the distance that had seemed pretty reasonable up until someone brought a frakking rocket launcher to a blaster fight. It impacted, tearing a crater in the duracrete beneath Kessel's feet, converting the table and chairs in the booth into shrapnel, and turning Kessel himself and his guards into even smaller, soggier, and squishier fragments that scattered in every possible direction.

Hugo gripped the cigar in his teeth, and shot Victor a sidelong glance, speaking around it. "Thanks for letting me get in some profound final words there, bro," he muttered, with a slight bitter edge.

"We just killed a guy," Victor bit back. "You shouldn't enjoy that this much."

Hugo shrugged. "Technically, you just killed a guy. Seven guys, in fact." Victor scowled, and growled; Hugo held up the hand that wasn't laiden with flamethrower in an attempt to forestall a response. "Seven very bad guys, who would have gone on to cause harm to thousands of those innocent civilians you like protecting so much; maybe more than thousands."

Victor hardly seemed convinced by the justification; but whatever. A job was a job. It had been a long time since Hugo had given a flying frak about what he killed, especially when it was one of these supernatural freaks. It was vengeance for what had happened to him; he knew that, and accepted it. Victor on the other hand was way too hung up with the old code; stuck in the mentality that he could cling on to his now archaic Republic ideals. It's a New Order, baby; anything goes.

Sarcastic tones emanated from under Victor's breath. "It'll be easy," he muttered. "Just a shapeshifter; we've killed a ton of them before. Simple. Routine." He shook his head in disgust.

"Cram it with vweilu nuts, ugly," Hugo fired as a retort; his fingers steadied the cigar for another drag. "You're just cranky because you had to use up one of your rockets again."

"They're kriffing expensive!" Victor grunted.

Shaking his head, Hugo sighed. "Quit your bitch-whining: I'll buy you another one." With a heave, and the assistance of his free hand, he hefted the flamethrower up over his shoulder, and left it balanced there while he withdrew the cigar from his mouth, a practised flick depositing a small cluster of ash on the ground at his feet.

"C'mon," Victor grumbled. "Lets get the hell off this rock, before whatever piss-poor excuse for law enforcement they have around here shows up."

"That's our time-frame?" Hugo asked, with a quirk of his eyebrow; he struggled to fight an impish grin from his face. "If we've got that long, I vote we find a brothel. Maybe the opportunity to discharge your main cannon will make you less trigger-happy with the rest of your arsenal."

Victor rolled his eyes, turning away from his brother to migrate towards the exit. "Shut your whole, jerk-ass," he fired back, though admittedly was fighting a grin of his own. "At least the women won't experience a burning sensation after touching my weapon of choice."

"Not even gonna dignify that with a response," Hugo muttered, falling into step behind his brother and adding as an afterthought: "Though the idea of women going anywhere near your 'weapon' is funny as hell."

Stepping over the door, Victor shrugged. "You're just jealous because I'm the one who wound up with the looks in the family."

"Uh-huh?" Hugo responded, sceptically. "Too bad for you that I'm the one who wound up with the brains. And the awesome. And the -"

"- skills with the ladies?" Victor interjected, completing the well-worn and often used banter.

Hugo's eyes narrowed. "Damn right, skills with the ladies," he muttered darkly. "Now hurry the frak up; Little Hugo wants his play time."

Victor grinned, broadly. "Emphasis on the Li-"

A flamethrower jabbed him hard in the small of the back. "Lets see how well you perform when I turn your man-jewels extra crispy, shall we?"

Mind wandering, ponderance graced Victor's face. "Extra crispy, you say?" A contemplative pause followed. "Groinal shine time can wait a few; lets find a bar we didn't just blast, and get me some barbeque Nuna wings."

Hugo seemed to muse the notion for a moment as well. "Snack time before sack time," he agreed with a nod, shifting the weight of the 'thrower on his shoulders. "Lets eat."

[Hugo Montegue]

Dee'ja Peak, Naboo

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

The Lieutenant cursed under his breath, slamming the heel of his palm into the edge of his desk. More mysterious fatalities had occurred in the foothills of the Gallo Mountains. First it had been hikers and tourists; it was a sad truth, but such visitors to the region did on occasion underestimate the ferocity of Naboo's native wildlife, and fell foul of the natural predators that stalked the foothills and the nearby Lianorm Swamp. A couple of such instances were tragic, but unfortunately not unexpected.

But then the numbers had mounted. A few days ago, a seasoned wilderness veteran had disappeared while working as a guide for some offworlders. He certainly wasn't the kind to underestimate anything that was out there; and now today, a report had come in that the search party they'd sent out to search for traces of the guide and his party had become unresponsive; further scouting parties discovered their speeder, utterly trashed and torn apart, but no sign of it's occupants.

More swearing tumbled out beneath his breath, some of the words in a language that by rights the "Amos Iakona" he attested to be shouldn't have known. It was a deception, but a necessary one: given how his Mandalorian cousins among the Kyr'tsad - the Death Watch - had sided with the Separatists during the Clone Wars, advertising his heritage wasn't exactly wise; and with public sentiment towards the Empire in a downward spiral, the fact that he was one of the Cuy'val Dar - the Mandalorians who'd helped to train Palpatine's army of Clones - would hardly serve him well, either.

In the old days, he would have leapt into action; charged into the Swamps with nothing but a blaster and a vibroblade, and would've likely come back with the responsible creature's still-beating heart pulsing away in his hands. But that young, reckless, Mandalorian through-and-through version of Amaros Koine was long gone; he was from another time, before he'd lost everyone dear to him; before he'd grown disillusioned with the galaxy; before he'd become old and cynical. He truly was Cuy'val Dar: Amaros Koine did not exist.

So, it fell to Amos Iakona to act: the immigrant to Naboo who had served with the Naboo Security Forces for nineteen years; who lived here, in idyllic Dee'ja Peak, with a wife, and a son, and a state pension on the way. It fell to a man whose hands were tied by protocol, and politics, and his duty to his station. As that man, Amos didn't have a kriffing clue what he was supposed to do.

"K'atini," he muttered under his breath, scowling at himself. It was a time for action, and not for doubt; his people were waiting for their Lieutenant - the man in charge of the diminutive police presence up here in the secluded mountain village of Dee'ja Peak - to get them off their collective shebse, and tell them how the frak they were going to fix this.

He rose and strode confidently from his office, his presence cutting a silent swathe through the ambient chatter that had existed before. Despite the gravity of the situation, the Lieutenant still felt a spark of pleasure at his ability to inspire that response in others, merely with his presence. He didn't allow himself to dwell, however.

"What have we got?" he barked, gruffly.

The assorted Constables and Sergeants seated before him seemed as frustrated and at a loss as he. One of them nominated himself to sum their sentiments up perfectly. "Sweet forn all, boss," he muttered, bitterness in his tone. "We know we're looking for something big enough to tear through a speeder like it's made of moss and tree bark; far as I know, there ain't nothing that big and beastly living on land around these parts."

"I've heard stories about Sandos surfacing, and preying off the herd animals at lake edges," one of the Constables - Lisa - offered, helpfully.

The first to speak, a Sergeant, Tommy, shook his head. "The speeder was trashed a good mile from the nearest open water. Sure, Sandos have those gnarley arm -" He waved his hands vaguely in front of him. "- things, but even with those, I doubt they could drag themselves that far out of the water, pounce on a speeder faster so fast that they couldn't steer away, and then drag itself back without leaving even the slightest trace of an, oh, I dunno -" More waving; slightly frustrated and sarcastic waving, this time. "- drag marks?"

"Tommy," Amaros warned, an edge in his voice.

The Sergeant blinked, eyes veering towards his superior. "Did I say 'drag' too many times? 'cause, you know, this investigation is kind of an, you know -" A grin threatened to form on his face, but in light of the violence-promising glare from the Lieutenant, it thought better than forming. Tommy swallowed, and nodded. "Sorry, boss."

Amaros sighed, arms folding across his chest. "Whatever it is, it's way bigger than we can handle on our own; not without at least getting hold of some bigger guns than we have in that piss-poor armoury of ours."

"We could always put out a bounty," the newbie, McGregor, offered with a shrug. "It's not like the Empire cares enough about the people out here to do anything about it: and to be honest, their solution would probably be to convert the Swamp into a crater from orbit, which wouldn't do the normal wildlife much good; not to mention the Gungans. At least with bounty hunters we know they probably won't go killing anything we don't pay them to, and it'll probably be cheaper than wasting all the ordnance, equipment and manpower we'll have to throw at the job on our own."

Tommy cocked his head to one side, offering a shrug of his own. "McSmartass has a point, boss."

He did, at that; though Amaros wished to all the gods in the galaxy that he didn't. It was true that his aversion to bounty hunters centred around one hunter in particular - the bastard clone son of an old Mandalorian acquaintance of his - but in general he found the breed, and the occupation, distasteful. Mandalorians were thought of as violent thugs by the galaxy, but at least they held true to a code of honour that governed their actions. Sure, bounty hunters held to a code: but it was a code of business, not of morals; it was selfish, warped, and furthered only the acquisition of wealth by those involved. A true warrior fights for honour, not for wealth. Fame should stem from the glory of one's actions; not from the riches one has accrued.

Loath them as he did however, he couldn't disagree with McGregor's logic, though he suspected the Imperials wouldn't waste the time of calling in an orbital strike, and would just flatten the jungle with a few squadrons of TIE Bombers; wholly destructive, and of course wholly ineffective if their suspicions about a sub-aqua culprit were correct.

Amaros let out a sigh. "Alright," he conceded, shoulders slumping in resignation. "Have Amy make the call; lets see who turns up." A grain of solace lingered in his mind. With any luck, it'll take more than the one set of hunters to bring this thing down, and this critter can rid the galaxy of some scum before it dies.

[Hugo Montegue]

Lianorm Swamp, Naboo

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

The clearing was barely wide enough to house the ship at all, but tucking her twin thrusters up underneath her, the Coromon Headhunter managed it somehow. The repulsorlifts kicked up a down draft that sent dust, debris, and small creatures scurrying and tumbling in all directions; hopefully anything squishy managed to get out of the way in time, else the underside of their ship would look rather unsanitary for a while.

The hum of the engines died down, allowing an eerie silence to creep back into the clearing. Moments passed before anything disturbed the peace again: this time the muted whirr of the access ramp as it descended. Too impatient to wait for the sheet of durasteel to lower fully before he began to disembark, Hugo was framed like some sort of holo-movie hero in the hatchway, armour donned and a blaster held ready to open up on anything that so much as dared to move with a pace or manner that he wasn't happy with.

He strode out, confident paces advancing him from beneath the Coromon's expansive shadow. His rifle swept an arc of fire, ready to discharge at any moment. Fortunately, nothing moved, nor stirred within his field of view. He felt - well, heard; his brother wasn't exactly the most stealthy or graceful of individuals, unless it was entirely necessary - Victor appear behind him; he offered a silent nod that the area was safe and clear.

"Ah, Naboo," Victor muttered to himself, a hand extended above him to brush against the plates of the ship's undercarriage. "One of the most naturally beautiful planets in the galaxy, and yet we're going to spend the whole time lurking around in a swamp."

Hugo shrugged, still remaining vigilant, broadening his scope to encompass the area away from where his brother was talking far too much. "Could be worse," he fired back, stepping carefully forward a few places. "We could go to somewhere like Alderaan, where the ancient gods themselves painted the landscape by hand, it seems; and then spend three days without setting foot outside what is probably the only brothel." He frowned. "Why does that notion sound so familiar. Is it - oh, yes!" Bitterness managed to creep into his tone a little. "That's what you did, last time you agreed to take a vacation."

Victor quirked an eyebrow. "Let me get this straight: you like to unwind by fishing, whereas I prefer to frak numerous beautiful women. Why is it that you think that you are the one in the bragging position, here?"

A scowl fired back across the distance between them. "Go to hell," Hugo muttered back darkly.

There was a sudden sound behind him: best described as a weird and unexpected combination of a thud, and a yelp in what sounded like his brother's voice. There was an undercurrent of growling there, too; Hugo spun, eyes and blaster sight settling upon the simultaneously terrifying and hilarious spectacle of his brother trying to wrestle with a human-sized cat-like creature of some description. Hugo's quick memory dredged up an identification - a Narglatch, unless he was very much mistaken. He would have passed the information on to Victor - after all, it was pretty fascinating, especially when you combined in the factoids that Hugo planned to impart - but right now his brother looked a little preoccupied.

Hugo sighed, levelled his blaster, and unloaded a quarter of a power pack into the Narglatch's hide. Within moments it has howled, screamed, and flailed it's way free; not long afterwards the onslaught from Hugo's blaster drove it to collapse a few meters clear of Victor, who seemed extremely relieved.

On the other hand, Hugo was very proud. Narglatch's might have been fairly unremarkable creatures in the grand scheme of things, but they looked damn cool, and thus were worthy of being shot at, in Hugo's mind. He advanced towards the corpse, rifle held ready to fill it with blaster fire at the slightest twitch. It remained perfectly still. Hugo sighed, mildly disappointed. It wasn't that he relished killing - relatively - helpless and defenceless animals or anything. It was just that, well... the blaster was new. He took aim at a tree, just for good measure.

An echoing growl from behind him made him snap around - blaster rising to fire, but not fast enough - to the sight of another Narglatch leaping from the undergrowth, directly towards him. A single shot leapt forth from nowhere, slamming into the creatures flank and tossing it off course. It hit the ground; rolled; sprung up and charged towards the source of the shot as fast as it's frakking huge legs would carry it. Another blast, sniper-perfect, caught it square between the eyes.

A breath of relief escaping him, Hugo turned to thank his brother, only to find him notably absent. Instead, a figure clad in shades of brown and a sucky-looking green colour was striding towards him, naught but a pathetic-looking blaster pistol clutched in his hands. And as if to make the sight even more absurd, a Tusk cat - a creature the size of a Shaak, with powerful-looking claws and a vicious set of teeth, that should most likely be busy chewing the head off the new arrival - was waiting patiently, and apparently saddled.

"Narglatch's hunt in pairs until they reach maturity," the figure informed Hugo, gruffly. He shot a glance between Hugo and his brother, apparently not impressed by what he saw. "You're the hunters we sent for?"

Hugo tried his best to assume an air of confidence, and flashed him a smile. "That we are."

The figure - Amaros Koine - unleashed a heart-felt sigh, his head slowly shaking. "Force help us. Force help us all."

[Hugo Montegue]

Dee'ja Park

"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."

It had taken nearly an hour to return from the landing site to the mountain village, town, city, or alternatively identified urban population centre of Dee'ja Park. Hugo and Victor had wanted to dive straight into the action, and get down to the business of hunting this thing; but the Amos Iakona guy that had come to meet them had overruled that. Apparently, that would have been needlessly reckless of them; it also would have resulted in a great deal of paperwork for them. Hugo had rolled his eyes, always hating it when they got tangled up with all the beaurocracy when they took jobs with local governments; but this time Victor had insisted. Some of that morality bull he still clung on to from his history as a Sector Ranger. At least he'd stopped trying to appeal to that same sense in Hugo; their "You're a servant of the Republic; you have a duty" / "Yes, a servant of the Republic, not this bastardised Empire we're living under" arguments tended to get somewhat circular.

At least this particular bureaucrat had a couple of redeeming features about him. He walked with the air of someone who knew - from first hand experience - how to handle himself in a fight. Oh, and there was the whole shooting a Narglatch in the face, which was pretty freaking cool, and had saved Hugo's life in the process. That tended to make you warm to a guy. Or at least, not automatically hate him based on a perfectly justified and usually accurate prejudgement.

Their trip to Dee'ja Park had been so slow mainly because of the mode of transportation. Apparently, the Tusk Cats were used by the local police for a reason: evolved to move around mountainous terrain, they made for a far more reliable means of transit than speeders. Unfortunately, they'd neglected to consider the fact that they would have company returning with them: not only were their saddles not equipped to safely seat two per mount - and frankly, health and safety was practically a religion for these bureaucrap bastards - the creatures themselves were ill-equipped to transport two passengers, and maintain their usual agility. So, they'd been forced to unpack a pair of military speeder bikes from the Coromon, and make their way as best they could.

Iakona's buddy had bounded off with his Tusk Cat to map out a suitable route; Iakona himself had hung back. Initially, he'd passed the time by giving them an earful about the fact that they'd deviated from the flight vector that Orbital had allocated - the one that would direct them to the nice, convenient starport at Dee'ja Park - but they'd batted that aside with the insistance that they'd wanted to make as efficient a use of their time as possible: get right to the heart of the problem and kill this thing, before it claimed any more lives. Iakona hadn't seemed all that convinced, but whatever.

For now, he'd settled into silence, and had even backed off a little. Because of the speed they'd been moving, they'd been forced to converse over comlinks; Victor had subtly signalled to Hugo to switch to a private frequency, probably so he could nag him or something. "What?" he grunted, keeping his eyes more or less on the route ahead.

"I thought you were spending all that time locked up in your bunk because you were researching Naboo fauna." Victor's voice scathed, crackles of static tugging at the edges.

"I was," Hugo shot back, defensively.

Victor sounded skeptical. "Oh yeah? Well, nice call on the Narglatch, and the hunting in pairs thing, jackass."

Hugo growled. "I warned you about the Narglatches, and all the other frakking huge predators out here."

"You said it was only the juvenile ones that hunted in pairs."

Hugo risked a glance across to shoot a glare in his brother's direction. "Those were juvenile ones!"

"How the frak was I supposed to know that?" Victor spat back, firing across a glare of his own.

"Because there were two of them!"

Hugo had become so engrossed in his 'discussion' with his brother that he barely had time to notice how the Tusk Cats ahead had come to a halt, and kill the thrust on his speeder bike. Iakona seemed to be staring intently in his direction; he frowned a few seconds before realisation dawned on his face, and he reached for the comm controls to cycle back to an open channel. He gestured for their employer to speak again.

"Looks like you were right after all," his grave voice intoned, meaningful looks shooting between the brothers. "Turns out there's been another attack while we were in transit."

Hugo folded his arms across his chest, preparing one of his patent pending 'I told you so' speaches. He'd have to eliminate any references to his brother specifically of course, but it'd no doubt be adaptable to the circumstances none the less. Before he could get a word out however, his brother's voice cut in.

"Then we don't have time to waste," he stated, annoyingly calm. "Make sure your officers have everything prepared from us when we arrive, and I mean everything: maps, witness reports, coroners exams; hell, even local rumours and superstitions. The only way we're going to be able to stop more people from dying is by working out what this thing is, and where it is. You're going to need our skills to do that."

Hugo didn't bother to look at his brother; didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing how annoyed he was at missing out on an opportunity to shout down their bureaucrat employer for being a stupid idiot and not letting them do the job that they'd been paid for. He still felt the urge to throw in a few words or, hell, turn his speeder around and zoom back to the Coromon, grab a selection of the biggest guns he could lay his hands on, and then just wander around the affected areas until he had something to blow up. But annoyingly, Victor was right; and as he laid eyes on Amos Iakona, he knew that the Naboo cop knew that too.

Iakona's shoulders slumped, his gaze apparently locked with Victor. "Alright," he muttered. "But let's get one thing straight: I'm only using you two because I'm not licenced to carry a gun big enough to get the job done."

Without further comment, he spurred his Tusk Cat onwards, kicking it into a virtual gallop up the slope. Hugo and Victor lingered behind for a few moments, just long enough for Hugo to turn to his brother and mouth: Licensed?