Fortune Comes in Many Guises

There's a funny thing about pirating: as much as you call your ship your home, as much as you never want to leave, eventually you gotta make port. Supplies and all that. Doing that sort of thing, picking where to go, that sort of dren was left up to the Captain. Good thing too. If it was left up to the rest the lot would probably fly around endlessly until their fuel burned up and their systems burned out and that wouldn't be any good. Well, at least as far as the crew of the Red Sky were concerned. Morons, the lot of them, content to follow orders and get their share of credits and throw it away on whores and booze.

Most of them anyway. The Captain had half a mind, a Weequay who had grown up on the run, man with nothing to lose who picked up on the pathetic masses he ran across and scooped them up into service in the rather illustrious career of being a space pirate. Crap job, crap hours, crap pay, crap for brains... yeah, they fell for it.

Not that Lesai was much better, but it wasn't the credits or the fame or the booze she was in it for. It came to much simpler exploitations. You could hurt people as a pirate and most of the time you got away with it. Not that making people scream was exactly all she was in it for, but it provided a rush no amount of spice was going to contend with. Fun and games. It made the Captain of the Red Sky nervous, made the rest of the crew leave her be, and that basically let her do what she wanted... within reason, of course.

So when it all came down to it, whereas the Captain ordered most of the crew when to get back to the ship after touching down on Nar Shaddaa and had given a few of them errands to run, with Lesai it was almost more of a request. The Captain knew damn well if a better deal came along the woman would be off and running elsewhere, but she had her uses and those uses were worth keeping around. She wasn't referred to as their Seer for nothing. Not that Lesai told fortunes or any of that dren, but most of the crew didn't know that. The less they knew the better.

As the crew went about their temporary parting of ways, a small group naturally went off in search of the nearest bar, Lesai followed. And when the others found a table to take over for the night, she went to the bar directly. Sitting with them would only have resulted in the lot returning to the ship for a trip to the medic, and sitting in a booth in the shadows resulted in poor service and far too much intrigue.

Of course sitting at the bar meant you had to order something too, which left Lesai with a small piece of flimsi in hand that had the general list of what was available. The bar tender only had to be glared at once or twice to let him know she'd order when she was damn well ready to.

“I didn't mean to.” Antho was walking into the bar backwards, his palms upturned. A hand reached through the doorway and jabbed him in the chest and he wobbled a little. An arm followed the hand and in strode the pirate Ruby Bliel, her eye shadowed with a frown.

“You never mean to, Moorheart. That's the problem.”

The boys' shoulders sagged as he twisted away, making way for the Captain to stalk by towards one of the bars many booths. Antho watched her go, knowing there would be no reasoning with her. It wasn't his fault that the Herglic they had been planning on trading with had been such a poor gambler, was it? Or that, in the commiseration that followed, he hadn't been able to hold his booze? He was bloody huge! Then again, his brain-size didn't exactly seem to match up to the rest of him...

Self-awareness assaulted Antho, who realised more than one pair of eyes was on him. In the dingy darkness of the bar, his garishly coloured clothes and even more garishly coloured skin stood out like – well, a Herglic on Mrlssti. He smiled, one side of the expression higher than the other, then sauntered up to the bar with a generous roll of his hips. If he was being watched, why not give his audience a little something to look at?

When every eye in the place went looking, damn right Lesai did as well, it was stupid not to. Sometimes it meant that someone who was going to frak dren up had just waltzed in, other times it was some woman who was dressed to catch eyes and then got mad when it happened, either way it usually signaled trouble of one form or another. Only an idiot goes and ignores that sort of thing.

Didn't look like much this time around, some Zeltron male getting told off by a red haired woman with an eye patch. The woman slunk off to the shadows, the male, well, he lingered and he knew it. That swagger couldn't help but be seen by just about everyone. A few of the more curious individuals may have given it the up and down it deserved, Lesai though?

"Tsch..." Her eyes rolled, being the first movement that lead her head to be turned back to the bar and the waiting gaze of the bartender once more.

Lesai pursed her lips in a look of utter disenchantment before finally rolling one of her shoulders as if to work a kink of her neck. "Yeah fine, let me get a durindfire."

No sooner had the bartender turned away to start mixing up her drink than Lesai caught sight of the Zeltron pulling up alongside her. She didn't bother facing him, but with no one else really near her it was obvious her next words were directed at him. "Nice show. Keep that up and you might get the prize of getting dragged off to someone's hideaway. Of course whether you actually want to go or not would be another matter entirely."

“Make that two,” Moorheart called to the bar-tender, who paused for a moment midway through mixing Lesai's drink to give Antho a look them seemed to say: Are you sure you're old enough?

He perched himself on a barstool, the leather of his form-fitting leather trousers giving an appropriately saucy squeak. “Dragged?” he parroted the bald woman with, at first, a twist of disbelief on his brow and lips. Then, the merits of such a possibility becoming clearer before his minds eye, the wrinkling of his forehead smoothed. “Well, it's not like I've got anything else planned.”

A small upturn at the corner of her lips was fleeting and vanished after a small exhale of air that barely counted as a scoff.

"Adventurous..." The one word summation of the Zeltron was said in a slightly mocking manner.

Lesai knew it was her own damn fault for speaking to the guy, but it almost seemed nice to strike up a conversation with someone who seemed the type that to be the guy who ended up stabbed in a back alley than the guy doing the stabbing.

As the two glowing drinks were placed down in front of them, Lesai figured why the hell not and actually dared to raise her glass just slightly to the guy in some sarcastic gesture of a toast.

"To not having plans, then. May you not end up in a ditch somewhere and find you're missing a kidney."

Antho vaguely lifted his glass to toast and managed only to echo the word kidney before his drink was pressed to his lips, a generous gulp of durindfire soon rolling down his throat. As the taste of the liquor spread across his tongue and through his belly like the flames of its namesake, Moorheart smacked his lips and frowned a little again, as he wondered – in his ignorance of his own body – just how many kidneys he had, and how many of them he could sacrifice to the gods of wild parties and subsequent unplanned stays in ditches before he was rendered permanently incapacitated. He blinked and realised he was staring at the woman sitting along side him. He stared a moment longer then, lacking the patience or graces to enter into polite conversation, gave voice to the first thought that entered his head.

“So, what's the deal with the tattoos?”

Lesai waited until the burn of the drink subsided before even considering answering the question. The temptation to come up with some bantha poodoo story was stronger than it really should have been. The crew of the Red Sky avoided her for the most part, and none of them had gone so far as to ask her any even remotely personal questions. The Captain had tried once and all he got was a bit of a laugh and a glare in response.

It was good to be around other people, they were blissfully ignorant. No fear. More fun to toy with.

"Memories." She glanced at the particular mosaic on her left arm. "Good ones."

The shot glasses and tin mugs on the bar top jumped, each leaping a good half-inch into the air, toasting as one as someone or something hit the bar. A Rodian with a line of thimble-sized glasses squeezed between his hands could only watch as his pricey round of hard-hitting liquor sloshed, spilled and soaked into the wooden counter of the bar, bubbling and sizzling like acid. Slurs came tumbling out his rubbery green lips -

“Ittu, gen! T-te jacta-!”

- but as he turned to confront the person responsible, jabbing a bulbous finger through the air, he froze. The point of his finger was resting against what looked like a huge slab of duracrete, only it was attached to – well, man would have been selling him short and short was definitely not a phrase that came to mind at the sight of Dozer. The Rodian's bulbous eyes tracked upwards - from the over-sized arm to the parsec-wide shoudlers and the stumps of what had once been horns - his mouth fixed in a soundless twist as he stared up at the red devil towering over him.

“Who's a guy gotta pummel to get a glass of blue milk around here?”

“Oh really,” Moorheart leant one elbow against the bar and gave his drink a slow swirl inside its glass, before dipping his fingertip into the liquid in what he imagined must have looked like a fantastically debonair gesture. “I've got a couple of scars like that...”

It was at that moment that someone behind Antho dropped an Imperial fraktonne onto the bar, sending a full-body tremor through the skinny Zeltron that tossed half of the contents of his glass into the air – and the other half into Lesai's lap.

The interruption was a blessing in that it saved her from having to roll her eyes again at the Zeltron. Of course, the thought of doing so didn't even have time to form before half his drink found its way on her.

A mixture of emotions flooded her senses and her initial reaction to somehow lash out at the young man was contained... barely. Lesai's eyes focused firmly on Antho and she let out a slow breath.

Yeah, somewhere in the back of her mind was a voice screaming that it wasn't really the Zeltron's fault, that someone else was to blame, that it was, well that big red thing she could see standing behind the boy... but that voice was quieted rather violently.

Her shoulders shrugged in the slightest and another long breath was taken.

"Hey, don't worry about it..." There was a deadly chill that cut through her words, telling of the venom that was about to be unleashed. "Because, honestly... you need to worry more about this."

The movement was quick as she moved towards he Zeltron, her hand coming into contact with his shoulder and a sharp strange push was given. Strange in that it wasn't meant to injure him, nor even really topple him. Instead it was strategically placed in such a way that Antho ended up driving an elbow hard into the big red guy's side.

Lesai didn't figure it would hurt the big guy, but it certainly would look like the little Zeltron was trying to start something and that alone would work out nicely enough if it went as planned. After all, this was Nar Shaddaa and no one really took to being hit too nicely. Especially when the hit was delivered to someone who had just upset a decent portion of the bar goers.

All there was to do now was wait for the fight to start and flag down the bartender for a towel or something to try and mop of some of the excess drink on her.

And well, if it all didn't go as planned, she could always outright deck the Zeltron herself.

The Devaronian didn't flinch – didn't so much as acknowledge the fact that he'd just been given the elbow – until a high-pitched yelp assaulted his ear drums. Frowning, he glanced down at the source: a Zeltron, cradling a limp and lame looking noodle of an arm against his chest. The kid's eyes were ringed red (redder than usual) with tears and when he saw Dozer looking down at him, his lips bunched up into a tight pout.

“Easy, little guy.”

“I think you broke my frakkin' arm!”

“You hear that?” grunted someone else. “He broke the kids arm!”

Dozer's right eyebrow lifted and fell, then the left repeated the motion, as he turned and looked at what had moments ago – presumably – been an average bar crowd, either apathetic from drinking or drinking apathetically to pass the time. Now, their faces were crumpling into frowns too. Their voices began to rise, into a single peevish drone.

“Who in the blazes do you think you are, huh?”
“Spilled my damn drink!”
“Think you can just walk in here like you own the place, alien scum.”

“Now, fellas...” he held up both hands, though there was something decidedly undiplomatic about a pair of hands that could make fists like wrecking balls. Not willing to wait and find out what kind of damage they could do, a strung-out spacer jumped up from his barstool, let out a quivering war-cry and smashed a bottle over the big red bastard's head.

Dozer wavered, momentarily dazed - and then was on him in a second, one sledgehammer of a hand knocking the wind and sense out of the guy as he slammed him back down against the bar top with an unfortunate crack of broken glass. Too shocked to struggle, and frankly too weak to do anything but lie pinned under the Devaronian's rock solid grip, he stared up wide-eyed and increasingly purple-faced as Dozer licked at his lips.

“What is that?” His yellow eyes crossed, as he looked at the blue droplet trickling down the centre of his nose. “Tovash? Oh, tell me you didn't just smash a perfectly good bottle of Gruvian Tovash over my head...”

Oops. Well, she hadn't quite meant for the Zeltron to get hurt right off. She must have pushed the boy harder than she thought she had. That wasn't really anything new, sadly.

Lesai watched the next events happen, like a slow boiling pot where the lid was kept on. Seemed everyone in the bar was against the big red guy. Lesai couldn't care less except he seemed like the kind of underdog that she would actually back depending on how he handled the situation.

The Zeltron scampered away from everything to her dismay, he seemed like he might have actually been fun to mess with, especially with him now injured. That left 'Big Red' who was coming to the realization of the Tovash that was dripping down his face.

It wasn't quite her style to nudge the large Devaronian towards violence on account of the value of the alcohol that was sacrificed atop his head, but something in her wanted to push him just the same. The woman had managed her goal of catching the bartender's attenuation and was blotting up the wasted drink in her lap with one hand while drinking her own with the other... that left her only able to speak to try and move things along. Not exactly her strong point, but it was worth a try.

Lesai looked to the big guy and shrugged a shoulder. "I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he did. Probably doesn't have much respect for anything else either... maybe he needs to learn better."

The bar found itself at a pivotal moment, some two dozen drunks on the verge of a riot. Whether or not they decided to make like lemmings and hurl themselves over the edge would make or break them in a very literal sense. They were waiting for a sign, a signal to fight or flee and it came with a snap! as Dozer dropped his shoulder and broke the collar-bone of the spacer in his grasp.

“Hooligan.”

He turned away from the bar and into the path of a chair being swung through the air. The wood exploded against his chest and near enough knocked the wind out of him, though the sheer force of the chair colliding with the big Devaronian was enough to toss the Iridonian responsible to the ground as if he'd been the one hit.

Those in the bar not currently considering how they might take out the Devaronian watched with guilty interest, letting out a collective groan as they watched the Iridonian crumple after his attempt.

Lesai however let a small pout form on her lips. If things kept up the way they were going, the big guy was going to handle all his challengers without even breaking a sweat and what fun would that be?

Satisfied that she got most of the spilled drink out of her clothing (what was another stain anyway?) she downed the last of her drink, cringing at the burn it made down her throat.

Her head moved to one side until she felt a satisfying stretch then the other before she called out to the large Devaronian, "So, how many of these guys you think you can handle at once?"

Her tone made it sound more like a bet than a volunteer to give any sort of aid.