The Race Of Thieves

[Rygal Croft]

The evening sky was clouded over with whispy, methodical curls and blotches of smoke that most looked rain heavy and black. Just Ry's luck that it was forecast to rain tonight...just his luck. Just as that thought crossed his mind a light patter of rain broke from the air and started to spit lightly down upon him as he walked along a main catwalk in Coruscant. His thick brimmed hat clung to his head and his leather coat was wrapped around him for warmth, something was going to happen tonight. Something big.
The lightly clothed man had not done what he was planning to do for a long while but it just so happened that his old contacts had pushed him back into action in the only way they knew how,money.

The old FS tower stood 2000 feet high and housed one of the major computer corporations on the planet of Coruscant which manufactured computer components for home computers and some for speeders and the like, it was none of this that interested Ry' or his clients it was inside the building and the air tight safe that made there eyes spring to life a perfectly rounded precious gem worth around two million credits or more. A prized positions in the right hands. Or in the right bank.

It was time to get ready.

The man pressed a button, walked into a apartment block and was not seen next out on the street until night fall. It was going to be one heck of a long night.

[Lauredo Cront]

“Ma’am.”

A young woman, mid-twenties, looked up from a file spread open in her lap. The somewhat doddering, elderly man in front of her, carrying a linen towel over his arm with a hooked nose that you could use as a shovel, made a sort of aherm noise.

“Yes, Sebastien?”

“Will you be requiring the car tonight?”

“I shouldn’t think so, Sebastien – but do fire up the swoop for me.”

The man, made another noise that suggested uncertainty. The last five swoops owned by his ‘mistress’ had all been destroyed in gratuitous, yet accidental, explosions, or crushed under boulders that some how magnetically followed them. Lauredo, it was clear, had a knack for attracting trouble.

Some ten minuts later, donning a light jacket and slipping onto the swoop, the young Miss Cront was departing from her upper Coruscant apartment (not quite the mansion back home, but old Sebastien made it feel just like home) and heading for the FS Tower. A tip-off from the archaeologist’s sect she worked so often with had alerted her to the presence of a rare and precious item, nestled within Coruscant itself. Quick off the mark as always, intrepid explorer and adventurer extraordinaire Lauredo Cront was on the trail and pulling up at the building within an hour of hearing of the find.

She stepped into the lobby and glanced around, wincing at the would-be haute music tinkling out of overhead speakers. Under her breath, she muttered:

“How delightful.”

[Rygal Croft]

'Alright, alright i will pay you when i get back tonight...jeez.' Once again the bloody landlord had asked for Crofts rent which of course from the raiders recent laps in jobs he had little or nothing to pay the man with. The raider slammed the door to the grotty looking apartment behind him and made his way to his equally grotty looking swoop bike, an older model from the one that Miss Cront slipped about in. With only a dark brown leather jacket, cream shirt and pants and a brown brimmed hat the man set off into the direction of the FS tower.

The journey was full of different thoughts shooting through his head. The plan, the mission, the up coming glitches and suprises. No matter how much you expect to be not suprised at intrusions, something completely out of the oridinary always got in the way...at least with Rygal anyway. Nearly running into a pair on speeders on the way there, ut thankfuly survived. The man jumped of his bike and made his way into the lobby to the large building. Corney tunes sang quietly from the overhead speakers and the place smelled new and like a friggin bank. He ignored the lookes he got. he was of course wearing dirtyish cloths, HELL he HAD been crowling through tombs with them for Christ sake.

Taking a quick glance around, a very pretty woman came into view, tilting his hat in greeting and with a smile he walked past the woman known as Cront and approached the desk, he had no real plan, only a direct mission and was told to get it anyway possible. if it meant doing it the rough way, so be it. But he would try and perform the suttle way first off all. hell anything was worth a try once.

' Hello, My names Micheal i wonder i i could make an appointment to see the recruitment officer?...' He asked a well dressed woman. The snooty female humphed slightly and said ' Wait a moment i shall see if i can get someone to attend to....you...' Rygal made a fake smile and turned from the big headed woman around to openly don his dirty cloths, covered in dirt and soot. Clearly the man had been on a recent expedition of his own.

' Mr. Shazzar will be right down, you are looking to work with us correct?...' Rygal nodded and the woman sighed quietly and looked down, clearly unimpressed with Croft. This time a real smile escaped his lips. He would wait. He needed to get out of the public eye, the lobby was to crowded.

[Bhen F'shar]

C-chict. C-chict. C-chict

Bhen's furry thumb spun the striking wheel on the cheap lighter he had recieved as a free gift with his last cigarette carton purchase. Just like all the other free lighters, it was worthless and rarely struck up a flame.

"Piece of crap," he muttered, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as he dropped the free lighter into his coat pocket where it lightly tinked off of about three more just like it. A steel-cased zippo with the seal of a long-gone-under auto manufacturer was drawn from his pants pocket and with one flick produced a healthy flame with which he lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply from it before snappignt he lighter shut and exhaling a smoke-laden breath.

If Bhen F'shar had a vice, it was cigarettes. What had started as a smoke or two a week had quickly formed into an addiction. At most any given time, one could find about four or five packs of cigarettes on his person, and it would be an easy wager that he would go through all of them in a day. A small stash of cigars in a leather case resided in his coat's inner breast pocket, just in case he needed something that would last longer and let him use his paws more often. His voice was already growing gravely from so much damage to his throat, and his doctor had warned him he would be dead before the age of forty-five if he didn't stop, but he didn't heed the advice. A cigarette calmed him, and a calm mind was what he needed at the moment.

The Nehantite's funds were not low, persay, but he did know that if he wished to keep his lifestyle the same as it had been, he would need a serious source of income soon. A breifcase packed, and dressy clothes on, Bhen drove his speeder to the parking garage for the FS building where he was greeted well, and made his way inside to see a ragtag man in the lobby. Bhen payed him little heed and continued through to the turbolifts, lighting up another cigarette as he did so.

His name badge read, "Akuthe Johar" and that he worked on the sifty-seventh floor. Half of it was true, he had gotten a job working as a marketing consultant, but he had little intention of remaining with the company for long. After all, it was only two floors down from a room that wasn't supposed to exist.

[Lauredo Cront]

The same woman who had given Rygal any number of dirty looks offered Lauredo a pleasing smile. She was quite familiar with the explorer and had dealt with her on a number of occasions for one reason or another. The two allows got on well – they had a mutual understanding of the fact that neither really liked one another, but got on for the sake of upholding small-talk.

Pursing her lips into a smile, she looked sideways at the somewhat scruffy looking ‘Michael’. He was just the type, she thought. The kind who spent their days traveling back and forth for pennies and doing it all in the same worn-out old space cowboy hat. When her staring was noticed, she simply nodded and broadened the impish smile before looking back away around the comfortable lobby.

Interesting.

[Rygal Croft]

' Well if it isn't Miss Cront the woman of my dreams...' Croft said as walked sarcastically towards his "rival". The woman gave a cockey smile.

' Well if it isn't Mr Croft the bastard of my dreams...' She responded with the same smile, a fake sort of way.

Rygal tilted his hat to her again in greeting and crossed his arms over his chest. The two raders greetings were always the same and always just as sarcastic. The two characters always had a perfessonal relationship and had met eatchtother a few times in the field, he knew what she was after and of course visa versa but would never openly divulge it.

' So how is Sabastian, still lapping up you extremely large ego?...' Croft gave a smile, one that was dripping with sarcasm.

[Lauredo Cront]

“Sebastien is a wonderful help as always. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Well, actually, she did. She’d have to do everything herself, and for an upper-class girl that was almost impossible.

“Let me guess… you’re here for a certain jewel.”

[Rygal Croft]

He shook his head with a suprised look on his face as if he had no idea what on earth she was talking about, he looked around to view the clerk and then back again.

' I am looking for a job here as a Office Clerk. You KNOW i aint' bin' doing that stuff for a Jedi's age.' He gave a toothy grin.
Of course it was all a lie anddeep down he knew the woman infront of him kne that aswell. But it was worth a shot.

' But atleast i know why you are here now...thanks for the pre-warning' He sarcastic smerk escaped his lips.

[Lauredo Cront]

“Yes, I suppose I should give you a bit of a head start now that you’re getting a bit over the hill,” she replied, with a sassy smile.

Turning, she looked to the clerk expectantly. Lauredo wasn’t one for waiting. Deliberately melodramatically, she tapped her foot.

[Rygal Croft]

His smile quickly faded and he turned to fully view Cront. He raised his hand and extended a finger towards her as if telling her of for being a bad girl. ' Look ladie i was doing raids like this when you was still sitting on the floor in your dypers playing with your chew toy!'

' What raid?...' A voice sounded behind him, Mr Shazza.

Corft quickly turned and have a fake warm smile as if pleased to see the man, they shook hands but Shazza was still waiting for an answer. Croft searched for an answer.

' Err Raid? Its a old sport called Raiding and they play it on Naboo, Miss Cront here seems to think shes better at it than i am cocidering my age of ONLY 34!' He turnd as he raised his voice, making sure she heard.

' Ah...MR. Croft yes?. Professor Croft of the Coruscant State University?. Please, come with me to my office and we shall discuss a operning here for you...'

Croft nodded and started to follow Shazza, but not without turning and giving the woman a peck on the cheek. Clearly Sarcastic.

' G'luck'

[Lauredo Cront]

“Luck is for those with no skill, Mr Croft,” she replied as she watched the two walk away.

Turning back to the woman at the desk, Lauredo smiled politely.

“I don’t suppose you could point me in the direction of the refresher?”

“Certainly. It’s just down that hall to the right.”

“Wonderful.”

As she paced away and disappeared into the corridor, Lauredo sighed. Off up a staircase to the left was where Rygal and his guide had gone. Waiting for a moment, to make sure the receptionist wasn’t looking, she tiptoed her way back into the hall and soundlessly moved up the staircase behind Croft.