Public Kiss Land

[Isar]

Coruscant
Uscru Entertainment District

People were screaming.

Isar looked down. He held a blaster, barrel smoking. In front of him, a human lay on the ground with a scorched hole in his chest. Isar ran a tongue along his gums, tasting the glitterstim residue.

The thump of the electronic music inside the club still drowned out most of the screaming. Isar let out a laugh. He knew he sounded deranged, even to his own ears. The Zeltron wore a black and gold jacket over a dark red shirt.

"Well, I told you not to keep talking, idiot," he said to the dead man. Isar holstered his blaster pistol, took a long sip of his Corellian whiskey, then tossed the remaining contents onto the body.

"Rest in peace."

Isar walked out the exit, waving a hand and muddying the minds of bouncers racing toward the scene so that they let him slip past and out onto the street.

Lilac eyes flicked one way, then the next along the street. He started walking. A few blocks later he entered another club and went up to the bar, found a guy selling spice in the crowd, and then went up to the bar.

"Corellian whiskey, on the rocks."

Isar tried to gauge if he could feel any type of way about what just happened.

He decided he didn't give a shit. He just wanted another drink. The blare of the music and the dancers inside drowned out any other thoughts. The alcohol and spice did the rest.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

"And then he asked if I had ID, and I said - does anyone in this place -"

Again and again, Tansu replayed Talin Treicolt 's story. The line sounded so cool, so cavalier, and so perfectly delivered that it struck a chord of envy deep in Tansu's soul.

Talin's story ran through her mind now because she'd taken a wrong turn on the way to Hollow Heart Enclave and was somewhere abundant in saloon-looking establishments.

With all the pandemonium they'd gone through to trying to find the Enclave, finding it again for a second time, or a third time, proved a challenge. She'd made it to the lower levels well enough, but had taken a wrong turn or two.

And now that she was here. Wherever here was. Here was just another somewhere she'd never been before. As much as she knew she should turn around and walk out of the neighbourhood, the glittering lights and flashing neon held too much allure; even if what the bright advertisements were trying to sell didn't interest her.

Plus, she reasoned with herself, she could ask for directions from someone what worked here. Maybe she'd even get the chance to use Talin's brilliant line for herself. It was as good a plan as any, and Tansu made up her mind.

The bar she chose to walk into was busy. So busy that people didn't pay her much heed as she walked in. It was an outrageous assemblage of humans mixed freely with alien counterparts. Tentacles, claws, and hands all curled around drinking vessels of varying shapes and sizes. Conversation was a steady babble of human and alien tongues, all of it indistinguishable.

At the very back of the bar was where people ordered their drinks. That's where she'd ask for directions. To prepare for the inevitable question of her identification, Tansu would simply dispense the same line Talin had used and ooze so much charisma that she would not be denied.

Tansu puffed up her chest, ran the line through her mind one last time, made eye contact with the bartender and immediately chickened out and veered hard right and into the refresher instead.

It wasn't empty. She could hear noises coming from the stalls, but she focused on the mirror instead, and used it for a pep talk.

She was almost ready to try again when a sound rattled the walls. It sounded like a blaster! And then screaming!

Tansu darted out of the washroom. The scene was chaotic. Energetic music thumped, patrons darted around without agenda, and someone with a smoking blaster was pouring a drink on the dead body.

What she couldn't understand was the inaction. Nobody was doing anything. Nobody was checking the pulse of the body, and absolutely no one was chasing the leather jacket-wearing murderer out into the streets. It didn't even look like anyone was calling the marshals.


Without thinking, Tansu slid next to the body, checked for a pulse and found none. She pleaded for someone to take care of the situation, was met with apathy, and decided her time was best in pursuit of the killer.

"Hey!" She yelled out into the streets. It was busy. People kept their heads down and ignored her. She stood out like a sore thumb because civilians in the lower levels kept to themselves and here was some backwater teenager shouting out for attention.

Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man what would Kyric do? What would her parents do?

Streetlights caught a glimmer of gold up ahead, and Tansu recognized the shape as the silhouette that had stood over the dead body. She darted down that pathway and into yet another bar.

"Hey!" She reached for the blaster holstered at her thigh and pushed through the crowds to interrupt the fellow hunched at the bar. It seemed like a good idea to point the blaster at his power back while he sat there, not looking her way. "Hey, you! You just killed a guy! You're under citizens arrest!"

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Isar
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[Isar]

The bartender slid Isar his drink: a simple glass with a perfectly shaped cube of ice floating amid the brown Corellian liquor. Isar lifted it to his nose, drank in the smells. Notes of dried cherry, nutmeg, and anise.

He lifted the glass to his lips and titled the glass. He could already imagine the sensory prickles across his tongue of brandied fruit, chocolate, and -

“Hey, you!”

Isar paused and turned, one lilac eye staring the interloper up and down. Just some teenager, way out of her depths by the look of it. Of course, she did have a gun pointed directly at him.

He finished taking a sip of the whiskey, enjoying the burn as it trickled down his throat. He regarded the glass with the expression of someone longing for another sip, but his long, magenta fingers set the glass back down on the bar. One indigo-painted nail tapped against the glass. A soft clink-clink, completely lost amidst the hum of the bar and the loud music.

The fingers of his other hand came up and stroked the edges of his mustache as he tilted his chin up and settled his full attention on the girl.

“Your parents know you’re here, Blondie?”

Didn’t seem like anyone noticed her brandished firearm yet. That wouldn’t last. Isar leaned against the bar, an eyebrow arching. The smell of lavender was heady.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu instantly bristled. Her brows knit downward, her mouth became smaller, tighter, and pinched up, crunched in barely-veiled indignation. She could not let a comment like that get under her skin.

But she did.

"Do your parents know you're a murderer?"

Very uncool. That comment sounded so lame. The only thing that kept her relatively credible was the blaster she kept pointed at him. She lowered it a bit though, for discretion, so it rested more at her hip height and right at his belly that he'd exposed by turning around.

It was clear that this was not the first time he'd had someone point a gun at him. He was as unaffected by it as Dax had been on Castell. Tansu was very close to understanding how demoralized Talin Treicolt had felt.

"List'n bub, you just killed a man." She asserted, and took a step forward. He seemed so unbothered, and that bothered her. "You 'n me, we're going to the marshals. Good idea not putting up a fight, so, let's go."

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Isar
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[Isar]

"Heh."

A long finger traced the rim of the glass, slick with a bit of the whiskey. Isar nodded with his chin toward the blaster, his lilac eyes flat and devoid of expression though his lip quirked beneath the mustache in an annoying smirk.

"You ever shoot that piece before?" Then he bobbed his head to the side a little. "Eh, no I bet you have. You seem like a farmgirl type. What'd you shoot..."

He picked up the glass and lifted it to his lips, took a long sip.

"Womprats?" He set the glass back down, eyes never leaving hers.

Isar took a step toward her, keeping his hands slightly raised where she could see them, wondering if she would even notice the lavender smell in the air from his pheromones influencing her emotions. Telling her to listen. Telling her not to shoot.

There were other odd things going on, if she noticed. For one, the loud thumping of the club seemed to be surrounding them, yet Isar's words came to her as clearly as if they were alone in the room. Everything else was just a dull background noise. Another, nobody seemed to notice them, despite her blaster waving. The air did seem to shimmer at the edges of the space around them, an almost imperceptible bubble.

"Ever shoot a person with it? Probably not." Another step forward, "There's this sound blasters make, you know. When the plasma hits someone, causes their flesh to superheat." He wiggled the fingers of his right hand at her. Three of them were cybernetic. "Its a popping sound. Like a log on a campfire. I'm sure you've been around one of those before, eh Blondie? All that sap in the wood overheating." He mimed an explosion with one hand. "Pop."

The longer he spoke, the more distracted she was, the more the pheromones would take root in her mind - giving him influence over her.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"Womprats." Tansu parroted voicelessly. Her mouth, moved and in her head her voice ricocheted, but words seemed faraway. Her eyes felt bulgy, wet, and her whole body just slipped into a wrap that felt warm and woozy.

He smelled so pretty. Powdery, like flowers on a summer's afternoon.

She had no idea what was happening to her. Wasn't even aware that anything was out of the ordinary. All she was doing was watching this guy lazily sip, step, gesture and mesmerizingly motion through his evaluation of her gumption. He seemed so unbothered that she felt the need to second-guess herself. Was she in the wrong?

Initially her motive had been to use the weapon to get the fellow to capitulate to arrest. Now, that seemed not the case. It was as though he'd recognized her moral compass and its inability to pull the trigger in a deadly way. He was too confident in his aversion; however her motivation for justice wasn't wholly eroded or overcome. It was just severely impeded by inaction.

At the pop, she flinched.

"I can't." She admitted, and felt heat bleed across her cheeks. "I can't pop a guy."

Without a shed of defensiveness, Tansu repealed the firmness of her grip. Finger slid from the trigger. Hand loosened, knuckles slackened, blaster hung loosely from her fingers.

Her downward sloped brows lessened, and pitched upward, questioning: "Why did you shoot that fella?"

The words swirled around her, like uninked tattoos sailing through the air. "Dont'cha'feel bad?"

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Isar
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