New Place, New People, No Understanding(Open)

[Leten Snat]

The 13 year old, former street boy, Leten Snat, finaly decided to brave the street just outside the LQ. He hardly looks like a new student at the order, expecaly due to the fact he is still waring his old riped clothing that he came to the order in yesterday, and that he is snooping through whatever garbage can he can find...

As he is walks past one of the garbage cans he looks in and pulls out a few beverage contaners, a broken comlink, half blade of a pocket knife, and a riped peice of cloth and places them in his backpack.

As he moves the cloth he see something odd at the botom of the garbage can. He cant quite reach it so he climbs on top of the can, and stick his upper body into it. It must look odd seeing a set of leg sticking out of a garbage can in front of the Jedi Living Quarters, and he hope that not many people will notice.

[Kale]

For a new recruit, Kale didn't spend a whole lot of free time inside the Jedi LQ. It felt stuffy and institutional to someone used to the open smog of the Coruscant streets. The B & G was a good place to kick back for a change, but the food as a regular affair was a little outside his budget. So he'd finally taken to patrolling the alleyways and avenues like he used to.

This wasn't too far removed from Kale's old hunting grounds six blocks away. Old, official buildings drew tourists, and tourists were always the best for his kind of business. Of course, he was a Jedi now. He'd given up his old habits.

Sure he had.

Now fifty creds richer than he'd woken up this morning, Kale was on his way to the LQ's side entrance--the main one was a just a bit too official-looking for his sensibilities--when he saw what looked like a beaten EG droid turned on its head with its legs flailing in the air. Curious, the undersized fifteen-year-old shifted course toward the spectacle, his old sneakers scuffing silently over the pavement.

A smirk crossed his face when he realized what the kid was doing.

"Hey, kid, the dumpsters are better by the office building across the street. Jedi barely carry anything worth keepin', let alone throwin' it away."

[Leten Snat]

Leten Grabs the Item that caught his attention, then quickly pulls himself out of the garbage can and looks at the young man looking at him.

"Thanks for the infromation, but I have been finding some nice stuff here. I've gotten almost 2 credits worth of beverage contaners that I can get the deposit for, a broken comlink that looks like I might be able to repair, an almost sharp blade, and some cloth that...I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... and this thing..."

Leten holds out his hand with the item that he just pulled out of the garbage...In his hand is a damaged training Lightsaber. All that is wrong is the power supply is damaged and the emitter is slightly bent...

"I'm not sure what it is but it looks like I might be able to get a few Credits for it."

[Kale]

Kale nodded approvingly at the stash Leten had accumulated. It wasn't a bad piece of scavenging--he could tell the kid had done this before--but it was a long way from what a body would need to survive a day in the streets. He didn't know Leten was a new Padawan, and, since Kale was in his old jacket and pants, there wasn't much reason for Leten to know he was one. A casual observer would probably just end up wondering what a pair of street kids were doing outside the Jedi Temple.

At the sight of the broken lightsaber, Kale's interest jacked up several notches, though he didn't let anything on through his facial expression. He didn't know much about the weapons, but he knew that they weren't the kind of thing you throw in the trash when they stopped working.

He sensed a lucrative opportunity here.

"I've seen these things before," he said, adopting the tone of one who's seen it all. He pointed to the cracked emitter tube. "Inducer's all out of alignment. That'd be tough to replace. And the power cell's probably burnt out. It's a piece of junk, really. I'll give you five creds for it."

Kale had no idea what was actually wrong with the saber, except that it looked generally broken. But he was sure he could make a profit off the spare parts at the least.

[Leten Snat]

Leten Looks at Kale with a sceptical look...

"I don't know....May be I would have gone for that deal if I was in REAL nead of the money...But I think I'll have somebody inside take a look at it before I sell"

He looks down at the training saber in his hand, then back at Kale.

"Anyways...If it's junk, Then why would you give me 5 credits for it?"

[Kale]

Kale shrugged noncommittally, disappointed he hadn't made the deal. But something Leten had said struck him as odd. "Maybe I know people you don't. Where were you plannin' to take it, anyway? This ain't the Salvation Army bureau, you know."

[Leten Snat]

"I was going to take it in to the Living Quarters ... I'm sure there are people that can tell me what it is and worth ... I think I'll see If Liu Fong can tell me ... Him and Kyle are really the only people I know at The Order, they got me recruited yesterday"

[Kale]

That little revelation caught Kale completely by surprise. "Y-- You're with the Order? Then what are you doin' in trash cans?"

Then Kale's mind made the connection. Leten must have been a street kid like he was with some sort of latent Force sensitivity. And he was probably out doing his old thing for the same reason Kale was--because he was used to it.

"I'm in the Order too, about a week now. Where are you from, kid? I didn't think the Jedi got that many streeters."

[Leten Snat]

"I'm in the trash cans because I have nothing else to do.. And I have been doing this stuff since I could walk.."

Leten slips the training saber into his backpack...

"I came in yesterday... And I grew up on floors 0 to 6 here on Coruscant, and look for salvage on 3 to 89, and sold the stuff I found at a pawn shop/salvage yard on floor 99.

Yesterday was my first day going higher than floor 100, and Some thugs I owed some stuff to folowed me up and attacked me. They got me traped in a dead end ally... Liu and Kyle help me get away, a brought me here because, I apperantly used some funky power to make myself invisible so the thugs couldn't see me, And I didn't know I was doing it."

[Kale]

Kale lofted an eyebrow at Leten's short autobiography. It sounded uncannily familiar, if you changed the first location to Kuwaruk Re and the career from salvage to pickpocketing.

"Strange... really strange," he muttered. "You said invisible? Heh, what do you know about that..."

Noting that he probably sounded strange talking to himself like that, Kale quickly cleared his throat and said, "Guess you got a lucky break. It was pretty much the same with me, actually. I ran into a Jedi, and he told me I had some sort of Force connection, so here I am. Not a bad deal, though I'm still a little confused by the whole Jedi schtick."

Seeing as the kid was probably going to be sticking around, Kale stretched out his right hand, open-palmed. "I'm Kale, by the way. Don't got a last name and don't need one. You?"

[Leten Snat]

"I'm confused about alot of things, and this jedi stuff is just making it even more confusing"

Leten looks down at Kale's hand, Zips up his backpack, grabs Kale's hand to shake and uses his other hand to protect his pack, and pockets.

"Nice to meet you Kale, I'm Leten Snat. I was only given the name Leten but I kept on being called a little Snat, and so I don't get insulted I took it on as my last name. On the ground level where I grew up, A Snat was a insect that feeds and thrives on the waste of others."

[Kale]

Kale smirked as he saw the way Leten guarded his backpack as he completed the handshake. That was the kind of wariness a person showed after living a while on the streets, and it wasn't a bad idea with someone like Kale around.

"Not bad," the older teen returned. "I've lived on Coruscant four years myself, one of the mid-floor ghetto districts. I roomed with an older kid; he payed for the rent with his... er, sales."

Kale hesitated, not really because he thought it'd scare Leten, but because he wasn't sure he knew what Sharkeid had been selling. Deathsticks were certainly part of the deal, but from the money he'd been hoarding, Kale doubted that was all his old roommate was involved in.

[Leten Snat]

Leten nods in understanding

"And I'm guessing that you are a pickpocket. I don't know how I know but I guess I've seen enough of them I can tell when a person is one."

[Kale]

Kale furrowed his eyebrows slightly, annoyed that Leten had pegged him so quickly. Picking pockets wasn't the sort of profession you wore on your sleeve.

But he just shrugged. "Not a bad guess," he said diminutively. "I do what I have to do to get by. But you don't need me to tell you that."

Kale dug his hands into his pockets and fingered the pair of pocketbooks that represented his day's earnings. Back home, he'd have sold the ID's and credit cards for a nice bit of coin, but it'd be too much of a liability to hold that sort of plastic around the Jedi temple. He'd clean the cash out of the wallets and then leave both of them, ID's and all, somewhere on the street for someone else to find. Cops, thieves, it didn't matter to him. Just as long as he never got caught.

Smirking, Kale added, "Don't tell me you survived your whole life on the streets on nothing but old soda cans and box tops. I ain't ashamed of what I do."

[Leten Snat]

"I Have lived my life on what ever I could find. If it already belongs to somebody, I do my best to return it to them. If it is not clamed I keep it or sell it. I think I've done rather well for a street boy. In the lower levels I was making about 175 credits per day, with the salvage I was finding. On a good day I could easly make up to 300 credits. then there always is the bad days where I would still make about 25 credits. the most I have ever gotten in one day of salvaging is about 1035 credits."

[Kale]

OOC: Just out of curiosity, what is the value you're using for a credit? The only Star Wars I'm really familiar with is the movies themselves, so I don't know if there's an official value. I've just been thinking of them as analogous to U.S. dollars, but if you could make $175 a day on salvage, you wouldn't be living on ground level. And even if they're worth a tenth of a dollar, that's doing pretty well for salvage.

[Leten Snat]

OOC:I'm using the same....But I never did say how often he went out looking for salvage, weather he gave some of the money away, how often he got robbed, what he spent it on, how much things cost on the lower floors.... And on the lower floors of Coruscant, it would not be unreasonable to gain that kind of salvage. It's not only junk he would be picking up. He would also be finding rings that people droped by accident, and stuff like that....It can add up.

May be he stayed down there because he had friends there....He wanted to help the others down there..... or may be he didn't know how to get to the higher levels. You don't know.

[Kale]

OOC: Even so, that's over $60,000 annually, $45,000 if you don't work weekends ($175 x 5 days x 52 weeks). That's comfortable living pay for a young family, let alone a single kid on the streets. Even if Leten happens to be really good at salvage, if that kind of money could be made, there'd be a lot more people doing it, not just whenever they needed the money, but every day. How many rings do you think people lose a day in just the right spot so that Leten finds them before anyone else does?

If you want to say that Leten has an affinity for finding valuable things through the Force, I may give you that, though it still seems an inordinate amount to me. ($1,035 in a day means $86.25 an hour if you're looking for 12 hours.) I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to be realistic. Anyway, Kale's going to jump down your throat if you're talking about making that kind of money as if it's no sweat.

[Leten Snat]

OOC: He does use the force to find things of value, that is how he can get that much, that's also how he was in the right place at the right time to bump into the people that recruted him into the GJO...He only really worked 1-4 days a month for about 20 hours a day.... he had to spend alot on medical suplies for himself, because he got hurt alot getting to the places where he found all this stuff nobody else picked up. Then there was food..He found most of the stuff HE ate but bought food for starving people around him because he doesn't like to see people starve.

He is a complex boy and I Have thought out how he did this, why he is not REALLY rich, and why he stayed in the lower levels for so long. Have Kale react how ever you want....Leten can explane himself.

[Kale]

Kale's jaw dropped as Leten rattled off numbers he'd only ever dreamed about. "One hundred seventy-five... a day? What the frell--you're a liar one way or another, kid, either you don't make that kind of cash, or you ain't no frellin' streeter!"

Kale pushed forward, backing Leten against the garbage can he'd just been patronizing. He hadn't touched the kid, but his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as if he was considering popping Leten a good one.

"I don't care how good you are, no packrat makes a hundred a day on salvage," the thief snarled. "I worked hard for the money I got, stolen or otherwise, and I don't need to hear some grounder like you braggin' on numbers like that. You got some explainin' to do, kid."

[Leten Snat]

"I'm not lying! I have always been good at finding things... And I did make that much in a day! I just could only go out once, twice, maybe if I was lucky, four times a month! That 175 Credits had to last me and my 3 friends I was helping for 2-4 weeks. Then there was the cost of getting better after I got hurt on the job...Which happend ALOT... You don't find good salvage in safe places to walk... I've almost killed myself more times than I can count, Just trying to get the salvage out of where I found it! It didn't help that it cost me 150 credits for a med pack that would last me 1-3 salvage runs!

I work hard to for what I got....probably harder than you did! How often did you thing you were going to die well you were lifting a person's wallet out of their pocket!? The farther down you go the more dangerous it is going to be, and the more expencive things get!"

[Kale]

Kale narrowed his eyes and scowled at Leten--he still didn't believe the kid could pull in that kind of cash in a day, no matter how much he had to budget for on-the-job injury.

"And you fit a thousand thirty-five's worth in that backpack? Did a jewelry store collapse on top of you?" He snorted, then backed off a step. "What the frell. It really doesn't matter. I was down to ground level once, and it was enough to tell me that nobody rich enough or smart enough to leave is gonna stay down there if he has a choice. So what were you doin'? Charity work?"

[Leten Snat]

"Not all the salvage fit in my pack, in fact most of it didn't .... I would plan ahead what section/floor I would be working on in advance, tell the salvage yard, and they would give me a drop site for where they wanted me to bring the salvage. They would also let me rent a hover lift for 25 credits a day.

I stayed down there for a number of reasons....

1) Intill two months ago I still had family down there

2) It's my home and I know how to live down there

3) I didn't know how to get up higher than the 100th floor intill 3 days ago."

[Kale]

Salvage yard? From Kale's experience, you took street salvage to a pawn shop, or maybe to a recycler; he'd never heard of a packrat working for a salvage yard. Maybe Leten was pulling parts out of old industrial mechs, but that hardly seemed the job for a pre-adolescent streeter. They paid demolition crews for that sort of thing. And who ever heard of a packrat renting a hoverlift?

This could go nowhere fast, and Kale was just getting hotter under the collar.

"Look, just forget I asked," he grumbled, waving the kid off. "I'll name you the patron saint of packrats, and I won't ask you any more questions about it. Capeesh?"

Kale turned and stormed toward the LQ side entrance, then caught the doorjamb in his hand and paused. "By the way, kid, that trinket you picked up--I really don't know that much about 'em. Just saw an opportunity same as you did, you know? No hard feelin's."

[Leten Snat]

Leten Looks up at Kale...

"I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't meen to if I did.... my mother always said I was really lucky, and that I am much better off than most Streeter, let alone grounders. I like to help.... I also Like to use my luck to help others....So if you nead anything Please ask...I'll go back down into the lower levels to see if I could find it. And there no hard fealing from me."

[Kale]

Kale hesitated again at the doorway. In a way, he felt bad for having flown off at the hilt now that Leten was apologizing. Especially since he was probably the only other person in the Order who'd come off the Coruscant streets.

"Well, you did offend me," Kale replied, turning to face Leten. "But it doesn't matter. Maybe you are lucky. I can't really hold that against you. That might even make up for the rest of us streeters."

Kale smirked and gave enough of a chuckle to let Leten know that was his brand of a joke.

"Don't worry, kid--Leten, sorry. I probably shouldn't've come down on you so hard. Need any help cartin' your stuff up to your room? Where are you roomin', anyway?"

[Leten Snat]

"I'm sorry about offending you...."

Leten laughs slightly...

"I've seen alot of bad thing that streeters have done and I don't I could make up for even 1/4 of the things that I've seen done by streeters"

Walks up to Kale...

"All the stuff I have right now is in my backpack. And my room is ....well..... I don't know the number yet .....but I could show you if you want...."

[Kale]

Kale shrugged. "Why not? I'm on my way up there anyway. I have to... you know, drop some stuff off."

The teen shoved his hands in his pockets and walked through the automatic doors, then led the way down the side corridor toward the nearest bank of elevators.

"So, your mother still live on ground floor?" he asked, killing time more than anything else.

[Leten Snat]

Leten walks with Kale...

"No she died about a month ago, she was robbed and beaten by some thugs and died due to internal bleeding."

[Kale]

Kale stopped and laid a hand against the wall. "Oh... I'm sorry."

Leten had said he'd used to have family on ground floor, but Kale hadn't taken it that way.

He punched the up arrow by the elevator door to buy himself some time, then said, "I barely even remember my parents. I don't know what happened to 'em, or if they're still alive." Kale didn't mention his next thought: Or if I care. All he knew was that his mother and father hadn't been there for him.

The elevator chime saved him from expounding, and the door to the right rolled open. As luck would have it, the car was empty. Kale stepped aboard and hit the button for his floor.

[Leten Snat]

"Nothing you could have done...So why be sorry....That's just the way life goes."

Leten steps into the elevator, and sees that Kale has just pressed the button for his floor as well.

"It looks like we are both on the same floor. I'm just 10 doors down the hall and the left side."