Steal from the Thief, Give to the Scum [Archive]

d'Art Lefou

Oct 25th, 2011, 05:04:03 PM

There were some people who’d say Arcan IV had gone downhill. If the news reports were to be believed, then it was a surprise if you weren’t raped, mugged and murdered as soon as you set foot out your front door – not necessarily in that order. Anyone who actually lived there, thought, in the cities and neighbourhoods those reports focused on, didn’t believe them. Rather, they didn’t believe that things were getting any worse; they knew that Arcan IV had been a shithole as long as they could remember.

It wasn’t quite so dangerous that you couldn’t live a long life, but the chances of it being healthy or happy the whole way through were at considerably weaker odds. You’d get one or the other, or if you were damn lucky, you’d get one and the other at different times.

It was the pirates to blame – the smugglers and thieves and ne’er-do-wells who came in with their spices and their stolen goods, used the decaying planet as the backdrop for their meetings and trades. A lot of the cargo and credits that they brought in didn’t stay on Arcan, but was carried off to Nar Shadaa and Ord Mantell and Coruscant’s plethora of seedy underbellies; places that prospered and thrived, populated by people who lived and breathed their crimes, rather than trying to get by around them.

There were locals caught up in all of it, of course, but rarely did they achieve more than fighting over scraps when the smugglers went off on their next ventures. There was in-fighting and terf wars, and all around them, especially in Ciren, there was a population of mostly-innocent people thriving and dying at the same damn time.

That was why d’Art loved her Dogs. Folks who were Arcanian born and bred, who loved their city and their planet no matter how much of a shithole it was, no matter how much it refused to love them back. They squatted in buildings that had gone unused for decades, thieving what they needed from the ships that came in, bloated with stolen or flat-out illegal goods. [i]A tithe, they called it; most of their victims wouldn’t agree. All the same, it was a good business so long as they didn’t get too greedy.
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A hushed, hissing swear broke the silence of the dark hangar, followed soon by a snort of laughter and peals of giggles, their sources trying – and failing – to silence them. The heavy door slammed shut behind the trio as the two women all but tripped over the fallen shape of their male counterpart.

“Koochoo,” accused the shortest of them: d’Art, who stood at only five-foot-four, even with the thick, heavy soles of her boots. Shaking tangles of shortish blue hair back from her face, she grinned and untangled her feet from the younger man’s legs.

“What did you even trip on?” Eula asked – the oldest of them, with as many scars as lines across her tan face. She nudged at Bot’s side – so named for the fact that his arm and half his other hand, along with his jaw were all raw metal cybernetics – and stepped around him so that she could squat down and pick up the plain grey canisters he’d dropped.

“Didn’t trip,” Bot argued glumly. “The door was jamming.” He shot a glare up at d’Art when she let out another scoffing laugh. Her right cheek and brow twitched, the only visible sign that she’d winked under her brown leather eye patch.

“Yeah, Eula, the door jammed.” She fought back another giggle, mostly because Bot was dragging himself onto his feet and looking fit to deck her if she did. “Just like the floorboard snagged the other day, and that plate that just happen’ ta flip over on itself.”

“Shut it.” The boy warned gruffly. He snatched one of the canisters from Eula and twisted one end off to peer inside. It was nothing more than protein supplements, but it was more than enough to pass around outside the Guarddogs and still last them a week.

“C’mon, let’s get home.”