A Different View

[Mala]

Coruscant Undercity

The time of day meant little to the residents of this cesspit, it was always dark down here, no matter what happened up there. Dark, damp and full of tasty little treats if you knew the best places to look. Urchins ruled the back alleys, defending prime spots with whatever devilish things they could. Some were lucky enough to seize weapons, others made them.

Mala opted for a different approach that involved mints, a mouthful of whatever fizzy drink she could get her hands on and some wonderful theatrics. People avoided the alleys the squib seized on the grounds that catching something down here was easy enough, without the help of some rabid squib who had a tendency to bite ankles or drop down from pipes above, removing ears, noses and whatever else protruded from faces with nasty little teeth.

It turned out it was just as good at earning her territory as it was defending it. She has a network of darkened paths, stinking sewage tunnels and prime spots on pipe work that fed the world above. He favourite places were those with back entrances to clubs and bars, where bouncers did their dirty work and let her come down to pick the corpses clean of anything of value, or robbed the blind drunk ones.

She saw a great deal, though she pleaded ignorance, because who needed that hassle.

Today was a day like any other. She crawled from her dumpster, rubbing sleep from her eyes and yelling at by standers who'd strayed too close. Rifling through yesterday's rubbish she'd find a price of something to chew on, often not looking too closely at what it was or how it smelt, provided it resembled something close to food she didn't care. While she chewed she religiously checked her horde. Hidden in a large drain beneath the dumpster, she'd sink into the sewage and select her favourite items of the days, stuffing them into a pack that secured around her waist before starting the days patrols.

Water splashed underfoot, making her giggle like a child, splashing in it to she was soaked, before remembering she was supposed to be doing something important.

Her first stop brought her directly behind The Purple Bantha , pushing the drain up without looking she found two bouncers staring as her, each with a cigar halfway to their mouths. She grinned sheepishly, revealing yellow teeth and scrambling up the wall before they could react, her small frame disappearing into the pipes. Two solid thuds impacted the wall where she'd been seconds earlier.

"Nasty bastards, picking on poor Mala." She mewed, she hooked her legs on the pipe hanging upside down and retrieving the two knives.

"Ain't nothing wrong with picking on vermin." One of the growled.

She lifted herself up again, disappearing into the darkness above. They eyed above their heads waiting for her to appear. She hovered above them, holding the ends of the blades and dropping them.

The hilts slammed into the tops of their heads, a stream of curses rippling from their mouths. She cackled merrily, staying out of their reach. This was a monthly routine with the new meat. Eventually they learned to let her be.

A call lured them inside and Mala took up residence above the door, waiting to see what the first hours would offer.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

The Purple Bantha was a hole-in-the-wall establishment, currently under it's seventh or eighth change of management. Before, it'd been Cabanala's, The Battle-Aft, Stem & Pistil, and a local favourite of nostalgia: The Tight Lane. It waited at the T-junction at 3398 and Washer's Turn, cramped in between a former cheap hospice turned even cheaper hostel and a stocked and caged pharmacy. The evening's sidewalk crowd included the 'Physicists': nihilistic teenagers, products of back-alley splice clinics and low-grade augmentative surgeries, chatting in a dozen AR chatgroups at once while wondering how best to crack the pharmacy. Street buskers performed further down the 3398, kicking up jaunty notes and dedicating the night with a rebel's anthem.

The evening's bouncers were a stern pair of broad Gran with old cartel acid-scars wove round their eyestocks and fingering knuckle-plates of shock steel. Something thin, gangly, finished vomiting past their shoes and crawled aside over the walkway, bruised with electro-welts and contusions. Purple Bantha bragged it allowed an eclectic atmosphere to stew past the gated, neon-ringed doors but discouraged the more hardcore users from skipping inside, raising hell while feeling the dancers for spare credits. One Gran, to the right, 'Eek-Ragh', nodded emphatically down Washer's Turn.

<Here comes one.>

<Boss type. Real boss, thinks he is,> Aak-Yan, Gran to the left, snorted over blunt teeth and drew a lho stick. <What's in the bag, boss?>

Cato Fett tugged on his duffel-sacks shoulder cord. He was human, baseline, somewhat tall with the sinew and figure of a career fighter, missing an eye, one hand, and spiked through his skull above the right eyebrow with a jagged horn of slagged durasteel. The left hand rose, scratched at his neck: a red-plate prosthetic that articulated just like, if not better, than the lost appendage it replaced. Cato reached behind his waist belt and freed a chemical-cigarra, looking between the Gran.

“Light?”

Eek-Ragh obliged. The trio shared a brief drag, watching a flock of dirty children race away, cackling, from a chasing gang of older miscreants.

<What's in the bag?>

“Work related,” Cato answered.

<You bring work home with you?>

“Always.” He slid his arm away under the old, patched rain poncho, looking hairy with an unkempt mullet tied into a short tail. Felt his false-fingers into his side-arm, a steel-machined pistol chambered in .45 SW. “Boss in?”

<Yeah.> Aak-Yan nodded in direction of the neon doors. <Little testy. So are we. Who are you supposed to be?>

“Contractor. Here about a notice. Your employer checks out, marginally, so I'm here to negotiate pricing.”

<Ahhhh~> Eek-Ragh stambed on his lho-stick bud and cocked a fat, gnarled thumb past his shoulder. <Boss said something about expecting 'characters' in the next while. Fine. Head in. But the second you pull trouble - >

“I'm so much gristle,” Cato swept past, already pushing inside, hunched.

~

The Purple Bantha had transitioned through restaurant, club, parlour, and dancing phases. It had settled on a combination of bar, grill, and sleaze: a long bar shelved with rheumy laser-cut bottles, in-house taps, and a steam-soaked kitchen behind. Tending bar for the evening was a high, narrow Rodian missing an antenna stalk and two fingers on one hand, Clientele ate and boozed in a 'pit' tabled with scavenged teak wood on iron leggings, facing either the bar or a long performance stage jutting out from gaudy shimmer-curtains. Three girls were performing between four sets of halogen poles, shadows of leather, cotton, and painted skin.

He counted four doors leading into varied store chambers and one locked hatch in the kitchen's back, opening into the alley and trash receptacles. An iron stair-screw curled up beside the bar into the ceiling: VIP lounge, maybe, or office spaces. Two joeboys, heavy graft muscle minding that back alley entrance, staggered in through the kitchens and upset their way into the bar. The tender protested as they helped themselves to a store of Corellian whiskey. Both were beginning to sprout swelling 'eggs' on their foreheads.

“Fething animal!” One muttered.

“Boss puts up with that, but not me. Where's that riot gun...” The other knelt, scattering wrapped glasses and napkins out of his way rifling through the store shelves.

<Oh hell no.> The Rodian hauled them out by their ear lobes. <Raise racket and that's it: you're terminated terminally and the furry queen gets to keep your chains anyway. Just stay outta her way, throw her the odd bone, it keeps her happy. Keeps the boss happy too. She wraps up loose ends: who's ever gonna find any of that 'ident' jewelry when it's all stuffed in some hole? Now get up stairs.>

“Feth off, why?” One complained.

<Boss wants extra hands on deck. Got an operator coming through.>

“So what?”

<Mando operator.>

“Oh definitely feth that,” The other swore but staggered up the screw-stair in time with his partner, shrugging small 'boxes' clipped against their pants pockets. Micro-machine pistols, Cato saw. Collapsible models that could articulate into a non-suggestive carrying cases. He glanced and checked the recessed security turrets sleeping in each corner of the main establishment, the disguised blast doors hidden in the door jambs, the extra guard trying to look inconspicuous by the bathroom doors while observing the dancers, and the stilleto-pistols subtlety woven into the fashion of their outrageous heels.

He stepped down a low flight of velvet-lined steps, into the seating pit and toward the screwstair. The tending Rodian just nodded from his place along the tiered rows of alcohol and said nothing when the Mandalorian mounted up the steps and hand-rails. Red light, narcotic smoke, and pound music greeted him from above in the hatch. He couldn't dissuade his nerves from spiking with caution.

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

The second floor boasted an array of clientele with more cash in their coffers than your average lower level resident. Gang leaders, spice traders and the like, that has a business arrangement with the Boss. Wider than he was tall, a zeltron and two twi'lek girls were draped over his frame. He looked up from admiring their curves, midway through a take that brought false giggles through their lips as the back alley bouncer made their appearance.

His face soured a little, noticing the lumps on their heads. "The feth did you two do?" He growled at them as they approached, waving the girls away.

They avoided eye contact, and opted for silence. "Morons, leave the girl alone. We've an arrangement, she an' I. Your expendable, she ain't." He glanced past them noticing the new arrival, stubbing his cigara out in the tables ashtray he raised a hand to beckon the one eyed bounty hunter their way.

"Make yourselves useful in the office, if you can manage it." He dismissed them, a broad smile that didn't reach his eyes appeared on his face as he rose to greet the mandalorian, extending his hand in greeting. "Mister Fett," he called over the din "glad you could make it. This way please."

He led them past an line of large booths, through a small door at the back of the room. The 'office' was lavish enough for where it was, it boasted a large wroshyr desk, high backed leather chair behind it facing the door and two smaller before it. A long coach in the corner was groaning under the weight of the men from downstairs, both eyeing the man that followed their boss.

A grubby purple face was pressed against the glass behind them. The boss noticed, but acted like he didn't, settling himself into the leather chair he went through the process of removing rings from his swollen fingers, placing them carefully into his top drawer and locking it tight.

"Open the window." He snapped at the first, who look confused for a moment before turning to do so, Mala vanished from sight before he spotted her. It want often that Mala came this high up, but the chef had mentioned he might have something for her, so naturally, she obliged his summoning a in the only way Mala could.

She rolled in the window, flopping unceremoniously between the pair. Yellowed teeth bared. A huttese insult slipped from one of their lips and she spat in his face in response, a blur of violet as she shot across the office floor to the bosses side before he could retaliate. He held out a hand and she rubbed her face against it.

"Mala, this is Mister Fett. Do you see him?" Wide blue eyes looked at Fett, as if it was the first time she noticed him, eyes flicking continuously up to the shiny steel above his eye. "Do you hear him?"

"Hmmm?" Mala looked back at the boss, holding a hand out expectantly. "Mala sees nuffin. Mala hears nuffin. 'Cept maybe meat heads." Behind Cato, the bouncers bristled. "Atta girl, bowl is in the corner, help yourself." Mala's head snapped round eyes going wide at the sight of a fruit bowl piled high.

A squeal of delight escaping her, she bounced across the room climbing up in the sideboard, and moving the bowl in between her legs and proceeding to stuff her face, shoving some in her pockets as she chewed.

Finally the boss, turned his attention back to the bounty hunter, gesturing at a chair opposite him. "Don't mind the urchin. Now, to business."

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“The squib.” Cato hooked a thumb at Mala: her pouch-cheeks were staining with fruit juices and swelling fat from storing partially chewed seed stones. She looked content to ignore and be ignored, wholly focused on her dessert, popping a ripe peach and several oranges into sewn on vest pockets.

The boss shrugged and spread either, skin-hanging arm widely as he leaned back from the broad wroshyr desk and its scratched, unseasoned finished. His mode read 'languorous', to a point. He could not shake the steely intensity emitting sharply from the Mandalorian's one eye. Or, surrounded by an office space capable of activating void shields to lock in the entrances, with a pair of vetted joeboys and a hidden, tape-packed heavy blaster strapped in under the desk, how he appeared unperturbed. The boss just smiled generously. “What of her?”

“Squib's are excellent, far as haggling goes,” Cato said.

The smile waned. “...They are, yes.”

“Does she tell you if operators are cheating you on pricing, too?”

“No.” The boss leaned in, dragging skin folds with his elbows across the desk. “That I can feel for myself. So what's your rate, anyway?”

Cato unzipped the duffel-sack waiting on his lap and reached past a selection of steel and hard polymers. The joeboys seated on the nearby sedan pricked up, fidgety at the hints of slug-round hardware. He shook out a battered length of flimsi and slid it reach of the boss' sausage fingers. The boss grasped it, held it close, frowned through a phlegmatic sigh and placed a set of myopic-correction spectacles on his broad nose bridge.

“...And what are we charging?” The boss ran a cracked thumbnail down the pricing list.

“Premium,” Cato said, consciously flexing the servos and synth-muscle in his false hand.

Something in those small, wet eyes curdled. “...Premium. For a mark.”

“Yeah.”

“...That's a little exorbitant, isn't it?” The boss slaked his throat with a draft of dark lager. “Mmmn. Just a little, yes. We're talking of a local mark, a welp-stain. Not a blooded mafioso. No, I think we - “ And he slid the thumb down the price rung by five tiers. “Will go with this. Yes. Mala?”

He called to the feasting Squib, gesturing to the seated Mandalorian. “Dear, sorry to take you out of your meal. But would you 'appraise' him for me?”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

Delete!

 

[Mala]

Mala paused, looking up from her feast, fruit juice crippling down her chin. Her cheeks stretched to almost full with in eaten seeds. She looked around, as if searching for something. Sliding from the desk, she kept one bright eye on the contractor, cheeks still swollen, dirty paws grabbed the edge of the wroshyr desk, pulling herself up. She picked up the bosses hand and emptied the contents of her cheeks into his hands.

A nerve above his eye twitched, eye widening slightly in horror at the messy contents that dribbled down his wrist. To his due, he didn't move, offending Mala was not worth the risk. It wasn't really necessary, but she liked the way he ticked when she did it.

Her eyes settled on the duffel sack in his lap, catching a glimpse of the treasure trove of objects within. "Wozit?" She asked over her shoulder. Boss man cleared his throat. "A hunter."

"Zel?"

His expression darkened. Zel was his son, estranged at birth, he'd risen through the ranks to become a dangerous competitor. Who else would he need a hunter for? The fact that Zel owned another establishment Mala lurked around was neither here nor their. Loyalty was not something she was familiar with.

"Aye."

Mala said nothing sitting in the desk, legs swinging over the edge she pointed at the duffel bag, then at the floor. Waiting for him to remove it from his lap. She jumped into his lap, with zero regard for personal space.

"I wouldn't resist of I were you." Boss man said, still eyeing the pile of half chewed stones in his palm. "She's got a nasty bite."

She was meticulous in her appraisal, taking each of his hands and rubbing them against her cheeks. The scents of gunpowder lingered, mingled with oil and the scent of working servo motors in the joints of his mechanical arm and the fresh stink of Iho stocks. She proceeded to hug him, her fur drawing in scents from all over his body.

Blood never washed away, the scent lingered for months after a kill, death even more so after it had been washed away. She withdrew, ears drooping slightly. She understood death, she had no issue picking corpses but she disliked it and those that dealt it were unnerving. Still it was something she was coming to get used to here in the underworld.

She tapped a finger on the metal horn, wondering for a moment, of she could get it off him. Recognising she was done, and simply looking for something to steal, Bossman cleared his throat, Mala grinned at the one eyed hunter, retreating back to the deal with a light leap.

"Shiny." She said scooping the chewed seeds from his hand and stuffing them back into her mouth. Before plucking the slate Fett had provided from the desk. She couldn't read, but she knew her numbers, and had come to understand their value to others.

She tapped a number further up the list, two from the top to be precise. He scoffed, pushing Mala aside on the desk shaking his head. Mala protested with an odd mewling sound shaking the slate and tapping the number again. He ignored her.

The fur on her body stood on end. She ignored people, they did not ignore her.

"Umm...boss..." He looked at her, and received a face full of fruit stones. The joeboys jumped up, the first who'd been hunting for the riot gun earlier made to grab her from the desk. She spun on him, leaping into his torso and sink in her teeth into the soft skin of his ear. It came away with a scream of pain.

Then she was away, darting between the seconds legs and out the window she'd come through. The slate still clutched in her paws.

"Little queen, bit my ear off!" He looked at his boss. "Now can we kill her?"

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“Let you off easy,” Cato said, pulling the duffel bag across his knees. The second Joeboy, blood streaming between his knuckles, rounded on him, redfaced and aching too sorely for a rumble.

“What?|”

Cato reached, tapping two fingers across points along the clavicle, throat, and a spot under the Joeboy's arm. “Could have bit clean through your neck or tore out the arterials in your arms. Either way, she'd have left you bleeding to death on the floor.”

“Little queen,” The thug swore against his palm and staggered out of the office. He'd become mindful of his employer's increasingly pointed stars, the quality of the Jhapenagar plush rugging, how his leaking ear was depreciating that value with every audible drip, and that the Bossman would be subtracting the steam-cleaning fee from out of his next cheque. He busily vowed vengeance on the Squib under his breath and through clenched teeth. Cato observed the boss neatly wipe down his deep palms with lengths of wet tissue paper.

“Squibs. Testy, as you saw,” He said, smoothing out his buttoned silk shirt.

“You got your expert's appraisal. So where do we stand?”

“...We can negotiate,” The Bossman placated. “But only after you've showcased me results.”

“So tell me about Zel,” Cato reached into a harness pocket beneath his poncho, withdrawing a pencil and notepad. Old-world tech. He erased an old smudge and waited on the Fat Man to elaborate. The boss sucked in air, refilled a rectangle glass with more of the heady lager, drank, and wheeled in his chair to stare out the office window.

“...He portrays himself as something like... exotic, I think,” He began. “He's also young and bloodthirsty for his age. This place down here does that to every generation. He's competent, with vision it seems, trying to... edge me out. And he's making enough money and possesses enough personal charm to ensure his soldiers like him, like his money, and want to see him in a position that ensures them more money.”

“Specifics,” Cato said. He'd only jotted down a sparse handful of key words.

“...Fine,” The boss leaned his gut over the desk edge. “Twenty-something, no one's sure of his age. Human. Here - “ He dislodged a thin pit of printed flimsi from under a paperwork pile and slid it into Cato's reach. The mark was a young man, with hooded eyes, a pouting face, long hair kept neatly combed down his nape, with an industrial-chi wardrobe. And seemingly in a love affair with thick sunglasses. “Keeps a small army of hired hoods as a close entourage over in the Barrows, down by the old pre-fab highrises. It's all been converted over into cooking space. He's manufacturing spiked product and having it interlaced in with my own. It's killing off my buyer base, the piece of shid.”

“Tragic for you,” Said the Mandalorian. His sarcasm was acidic.

“Hmmn, but that's not your bit,” The Fat Man pushed his belly off the desk edge. Stamped his palm across the flimsi pict, shaking the desk, flooring, and Cato's gouged, worn chair. “You're going to clean him out. I want indisputable proof. His head in my heads or whatever is next sufficient. And now, I think, you and I are finished.”

“No.” Cato rose and the lines of his holstered pistol showed as his poncho shifted. He shouldered his duffel bag, noting the remaining Joeboy at his back, glaring. Noting the Fat Man trying to ease his wrist under the table so he could reach and reliably draw his taped up gun. And the dancer at the office door on her break, who wasn't quite inconspicuous enough. “We still have pricing. But that comes later, for now. Premium, 'boss'. I got overhead too.”

“What could a mangy buckethead like you,” The Fat Man finally hissed over his tongue. “Have to worry about?”

The Mandalorian made his point in three seconds. His boot slammed into the forward table edge and crushed it against Fat Man's gut and the inside of his elbow. Then, turning, addressed the Joeboy, battering him into the sedan with sequential blows, poleaxing him while simultaneously pinching off certain nerve clusters across his torso and hips. Finally, a second turn, his side-arm came up drawn and aimed for the boss' glistening skull. No one had seen how he'd managed to draw a combat knife into his off-hand either. Fat Man sweated in his leather recliner: both arms were crushed back by the wroshyr wood.

“Alright...” Fat Man wheezed. “We'll talk. Alright?”

The pistol safety clicked. Cato holstered it away, picked up his duffel bag and slung it back across one shoulder, striding for the office doorway. The dancer whistled to herself at his passing and glanced it, watching her employer attempting to bulge his way out of the desk pinning him to the chair and wall beyond.

~

Aak-Yan and Eek-Ragh handled the evening line. Tonight, as advertised, 'Serenja' was performing a limited 'erotic cabaret' act. Afterwards, 'Snow-Tight and the 7 Etti' were slated to close the night. The Purple Bantha played host to grey-faced salary workers venturing down from the high corporate spires above, fondling pre-paid credit bars and bare of adornment: obvious augmetics and precious metal jewelry invited the underside black clinics to wake and swallow them up, where they'd survive as donated organs. Bleary, dull and aching from cubical tedium, they waited for the privilege of getting lost under laser kaleidoscopes, drugs, and bare flesh dancing through clouds of narcotic smoke.

The Gran nodded at Cato Fett walking out into the street light and up the avenue. Meeting with 'Fat Man' had been another compromising episode. He would go with the Squibs recommendation, if only to appease. The alternatives were luring him into the establishment and initiating an ambush, or the Mandalorian taking the initiative himself. Cato entertained the notion of slagging the Purple Bantha to the ground. ...However, the dancers needed room and board to work, and men like 'Fat Man' never really 'died'. Just replaced by ambitious contemporaries. It would require munitions, planning, and energies better spent keeping a flow of credits running. He did have overhead.

Sixteen comatose bodies in hard regenerative bacta traction, in a private hospice below a Polis Massa hospital. Doctors Gyodr and Keqùil gave their prognosis another standard year and a half. Afterword, recovery regimes would begin to bring them out of technical 'brain-death' back into functional consciousness. Cato would be there. They would need a familiar face...

“What the hell?”

He'd parked a small, rented ground-car up the 3398, and secured it against vandalism. Approaching along the side-walk, the comm antenna, side mirrors, door handles, the front cooling grill, and three out of four hubcaps were gone. Ripped from their fittings, save for the hub-caps. A rod of old plumbing had been sharpened to a wedge and used to lever the chrome out of place. Cato picked up the pipe, pacing round the vehicle. Nonplussed. There went his damage deposit.

Metal fell and smacked against tarmac in an alley four doors down. Running on automatic, Cato had his pistol out and readied, hugging the poly-crete and rough brick siding. At the mouth of the lane, he peaked in. ...A low, fur-shagged shadow, cackling, all too pleased, admiring itself in one of the side-mirrors. ...The chrome. 'Shinies.' Logic snapped itself together and Cato sighed quietly.

“Theft's a little less than polite,” He called in.

[member="Mala"]

[P.S. If you want the last bit edited, just let me know.]

 

[Mala]

Mala jumped to her feet at the voice, rapidly trying to stuff her new toys out of sight, serving only to make more noise. She bared her teeth at the intruder, standing over her pile of treasures defensively. Only then did she realise who was standing there.

The hunter. The man who was likely to bring death to Zel and no doubt suffer in the process. Boss didn't part from money he didn't have to.

"What's..." She paused trying to remember the word he'd said. "Pole-ight?" She moved carefully, picking up the smaller pieces of crhrome and shoving them hastily into her belt, not taking her eyes off the man as she did, her mind working rapidly to recall the layout of the alley and wondering whether she could stuff the rest out of reach before he caught her.

Not likely.

"Mala doesn't know this." She caught her reflection in the hubcap a wide grin spreading across her face, she forgot about the hunter completely. Picking it up she proceeded to make faces, giggling at her own reflection. "Shiny, shiny shiny" she squeaked in a sing song voice.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“Polite's not taking what's mine without asking,” Cato said.

Her haversack bulged. It reminded Cato of a sliced inner-tube stitched raggedly with steel wire against burlap, tarp, ends of silk, and cotton sleeving. The Squib's evening take included cheap valuables paint-sprayed too brightly in candy colours and oily, metallic titaniums and greys. Her fixation stemmed from an obsession with reflective surfaces: gleaming equalled worth. Cato guessed the act of thieving itself was a kind of high, a sensation to sustain her habit and make each collection worthwhile. He wondered if she was hungry...

“You're Squib, right?” Cato went onto a knee and reached inside suit shirt. “We can barter. I need one of my mirrors back. You can keep the rest. Shiny for this.”

He held the protein bar up for appraisal but out of close reach, clamped in his false-hand. “Trade? We can trade?”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

Mala peered over the top of the hubcap, eyeing the hunter and the bar in his hand. She inched forward, one hand clamped tightly on her prize the other rummaging in her belt. Her first dig found a squashed peach which she shoved into her mouth. The second attempt found his flimsy, the one he produced to the Fat Man.

She was within grabbing reach should he decide to seize her, she held out the flimsy for him. "This is hunters." She turned her head aside to spit the stone away. "Mala took, without asking. Hunter has it back. No trade." She dropped it at his feet and jumped back out of hands reach.

"Shiny is not hunters, shiny is Mala's." It wasn't hard to recognise rented vehicles, the often supported small logos which it paid for the urchins to recognise. There was a reason the deposit was so high.

A blast of hot air hit her back as air conditioning units kicked into life. It brought with it an array of smells. Something sour, rotting away in a dumpster, stale sewage mixed with the sweetness of spice. There was a tang of vomit too. Mala's fur stood on end absorbing them all, ears twitching, listening for anything out of place.

There was something else on the wind, fresh blood and a strong aftershave she knew all to well. Ears flat against her head she ripped both mirrors from the belt, shoving them into Cato's free hand.

"Save Mala."

She dropped the hubcap and made for the wall, scaling it with incredible speed and disappearing into the shadow of the pipes above just as the bouncer missing an ear stumbled into view, a shotgun in hand that he cracked loudly, before taking aim.

BOOM.

The first shot ripped open a pipe, shaking Mala from her hiding place. She scrambled desperately to pull herself back up.

"Little queen, I've been waiting to to this all week." He snarled.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

The bouncer was operating on a mixture of strong grain alcohol and a methamphetamine cocktail, spiking his emotional plate, running heady with a killing rage. His ear had been staunched with duct tape and cotton. He racked the shotgun and spun about, looking to bead Mala's skittering profile jumping from pipe to AC unit to wire nest. Cato dropped him.

Three shots: through a shoulder blade and spine as the bouncer spun about, the last smacking into the occipital bone cradling his brain and out through his forehead. The bouncer juddered on his feet, almost struck at once by the bullet grouping, before cantering over on his toes and smashing onto the rotten concrete and refuse puddles. Cato lowered and safety his pistol, kneeling and retrieving the stolen side-mirrors. Next he was tending with the now-quieted bouncer. Emptying coat pockets of heavy gauge slug-shot, taking the old Veddington 12-A into his hands. The but-stock was replaced with a taped pistol grip and the barrel cut and filed down, a makeshift close-quarters weapon. No safety toggle. Cato vented out the remaining shots waiting in the magazine chamber and holstered it under an armpit.

“Mala's fine now,” He said up at the cross of power feeds, air-conditioning exchanges, and labyrinthine plumbing. Steam from a half open sewer hatch wafted round him. “Mala can come down.”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

It took several minutes before Mala reappeared, sliding down a cable shot loose by the only shot he'd managed to get off. Her ears were flat against her head and she was trembling slightly.

It'd had been a long time since she'd come that close, so careful to stay out of trouble the 'ease' of life that she had gotten used to down here, had made her rash.

She kept her back to the wall, eyeballing the dead man with wide eyes, worried he might get back up, hoping that the ground would swallow him up. She'd watched it spit (if you could call swelling like a zit and oozing out in a mass of puss as spitting) a man out before, why not the other way?

Gradually, she found the courage to come forward, tiny arms wrapping round Cato's leg for comfort. She looked up.

"Fat Man doesn't pay. Only pay is death." She indicated to the bouncer. "Mala help hunter," she jabbed his leg "and hunter take Mala away from here. Trade?"

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“The Resol'nare defines us. But it doesn't divorce us, Cato. We cannot and must not pretend that life outside the clans is just 'something else'.”

The Squid was short, agile and capering, selfish, streetwise, content, lonely, and vulnerable. Another month running scavenging hunts, taking the shinnies or scamming the brute muscle in the underlevels, and someone would get her. Another vatgrown muscle joeboy like the bouncer, some ratty assassin tired of being cheated out of the better steals and takes, one of ten thousand youth gangs left to die young and were bored waiting for the rumble, or a rare GA hit squad raiding an underground presence to stem drug and black market weapon flows reaching the upper levels. Cato could leave her to it: their debts were squared and obligations ended with the death of the bouncer. He could.

And he thought of the twenty comatose bodies slowly reconstituting themselves in vats of bacta, in a sub-level basement under the pylons of a moon built Polis Massa hospital. Cato could leave them too. But responsibility, loyalty, morality argued against cold self-preservation. He looked down at Mala shivering against his leg and felt a connection: everyone had a want for animal comforts. Food, company, and a place to sleep. What had Yuna'sif warned against? The Buckethead Paradigm? Ruthless, faceless things inscrutable to all? “It'll kill us.”

...Cato patted the space on his shoulder and waited for the Squib to crawl up and settler herself beside his head. He turned, leaving the corpse for other sorts of scavengers, keeping the pistol gripped on their way back to the ground-car. As he screwed the side-wing mirrors back into place and slid into the vehicle cabin, he outlined to Mala his expectations.

“Fine,” He said. “Trade. But we're not gone until I get my pay. 'Till then, 'till we're offworld, you're gonna do two things: listen to me and use your head. Got it?” Cato twisted the ignition key. The forward motor coughed, then shook, and finally eased into a mechanical purr.

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

Mala contained her squeak of excitement, but only barely, climbing carefully atop his shoulder, she eyes the metal on his head once more. It really was pretty. She jumped into the speeder and froze.

Chrome lined the panels inside. Little gems of reflection and joy. She dared not move, recalling the speed and efficiency that he'd employed to dispose of the bouncer. Every instinct was screaming at her to snatch it before everyone else did.

She made an odd strangled squeak, swinging her gaze to look at the hunter with wide eyes. His words having fallen on utterly deaf ears. She became aware that he was expecting an answer. She scrambled out of the way as he climbed into the drivers seat.

"Hmmmm?"

Her eyes kept drifting back to the chrome in the panel. She could get her nails under it easy enough, maybe even stash it in her pockets before he noticed.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

Stray claws and a tremulous paw tried edging up over the dashboard. Cato took a hand off the steering and smacked her knuckles, earning a growl, a fierce hiss, bared teeth, and sullen glances. They drove up the remains of a freeway entry ramp and onto a broad but mostly abandoned highway. Underworld, Undercity, Downside, the Pits, however it was monikered, lacked Coruscant's surface verticality. An artificial weather system composed of acidic fog drifts and chemical rain clouds crowded around immense pylon rods driven down through the thousand plus levels of urban habitation. Speeders were an impracticality, unless settled into low hover modes. Cato discovered a second hand market dedicated to various makes and models of cheap, vintage ground-cars. One service rented out. He checked a route pencilled onto a paper map, adjusted their heading, and drove off the highway.

The Barrows were a once remarkable quarter; upon a time, they played host to thriving portions of Coruscanti high-middle class and student bodies that had credits left over from tuition to pay for a suite in one of five highrises. The community projects loomed against a backdrop of raked brown and thermal, bloodied red, a backwash of colour engineered by the proximity of fuel refineries pumping synthetic petrol up toward the surface. Cato slowed, drifting the ground-car along, pistol half drawn but out of sight. Sidewalk traffic was a different community, naturally feral compared to the slicker, crystaline numb costumers and locals inhabiting Fat Man's end of the dismal level. Eyes were white and drawn back, bloodshot with disease, insomnia, and simple, animal hunger.

“...It's a little bad,” He said, later. They'd rounded a corner onto a one-way street and sloughed to a halt. The bodies of nine undressed former gang soldiers hung from individual lamp poles, headless and pained in blood and grime. A thoughtful message was painted in broad strokes along the sidewalk, against a level of old brickwork. In Bocce: The 2nd Suns Will Pay In Full For All That Was Done And Taken.

“Do you - “ Cato paused. Half the dashboard, the AC vents, and the sliders along the canopy interior were filched. “...Tell me about Zel. Seemed to have an idea about him.”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

Dead eyes watched them from the sidewalk suppprted by equally dead bodies. Movement was slow, jaws working to chew what wasn't there. Mala edged across the bench seat till her back pressed against Cato's arm.

This was rock bottom, there was no lower for someone to fall and Mala had been here. Here was where she'd started her life as an urchin, here was where whispers started in the back of the mind. She shuddered.

"Spawn from hell." She began baring her teeth at one who strayed to close. "Son of the Fat Man, shunned, full of hate and anger. Likes dependants. Enjoys sucking away life when debts not paid, so much death. Zel likes them not to be able to pay." Ears pressed flat against her head. "Has a stick of fire. Magician." The last word she whispered.

She looked at Cato, fingers plays with the trim from around the air conditioning vent. "Mala's felt Zel's grip, felt a squeeze without touch." The trim slid over her wrist like and oversized bracelet as she touched her throat. It was like she could feel it now.

Find me something pretty, Mala, not this junk. Better is needed.

"Mala doesn't like it here."

Another user approached the car on her side, hands extended, a whispered plea passing between charred lips. She jumped forward with a hiss, fur raising and teeth bared, the user stumbled back, tripping on the sidewalk edge he tipped back, head cracking on the duracrete.

He didn't move again.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

Cato toed the pedal. Their ground-car ambled along, under the hanging 'decoration', forward into emptied sections of ancient suburbia and gang fortified cul-de-sacs. They pulled up a section of old boulevard swinging northward along a tract bordering the Barrows' typified landmarks: the tall highrise trios, apartment complexes sheltering a deep courtyard strung up with patio lights and scavenged, deep-dish industrial lamps. Shadows mounted along lower roofs watched after them: once, a warning shot cracked through the trunk space. It took a moment's willpower, overriding in-built cautions that demanded immediate egress from danger. Cato only seemed to mildly 'tsk' at the oil gauge and turn them onto an exit ramp. Smoke still roiled in columns across the high level 'ceiling'.

“Out.” He parked them in the skeleton of a garage beneath the boulevard overhang. Sections of the ignition and steering column were carefully pried out, bundled into a nondescript shopping bag appropriately dirtied and rent. Cato gave Mala a warning glance before burying it under the forward-right tire and rolled into place. Assuming he couldn't procure better transportation over the course of the hit, the shoddy little Batsun Z-39 would be safe enough from hotwiring. ...If the wheels, transmission, gas, and every other piece of the engine block wasn't lifted. The Mandalorian retrieved his rifles from the backseat duffel-sack, clipping on an old, threadbare weight harness and slotting in slabs of magazines and bare kit. Cato rose, battle rifle in hands: an ancient MRA model with a scratched finish and signs of soldered repairs.

He pointed to a spot near his boots and waited until Mala had complied... Making sure she was not without her mobile stash of shiny goods. “...Time to earn our keep. I can leave you here and you can nest in the trunk, or you reach places I can't, steal what's bright there, and tell me what you see. Options are up to you.”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

Mala inched forward sheepishly, like a child who'd been caught doing wrong, a small smile appearing on her face as she inches to stand with him.

Her ears dropped and she shook her head rapidly at the idea of staying here...alone. She glanced around, aware of how the shadows seemed to be moving.

"Mala not stay here! Nope, nope, nope. Mala been here before. Not safe alone. Not safe...not ever." She inched closer, paws looking to cling to his leg again.

"Safe here. Mala go with you. Mala help, said she would. Trade, remember?" Her ears twitched. "They see us." Her ears angled to catch the sound of those moving up high, whispers passing between them, old boots catching on the network of pipelines and wires above. There was a soft click, the safety of a gun.

She reached to tap the one in Cato's hand. "This....shiny?" They were getting closer. If she looked up she was certain she would be able to see their eyes gleaming in the low light. Her fur began to rise, ears twisting to pause at each of their locations, trying desperately to convey the message to Cato.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

Calm could be distressing in its own right. With no great alert, Cato wedged sound-plugs into his hears and handed a pair into Mala's paws, helping her hang off his back by the harness straps. It made for a kind of backpack weight, her muzzle over a shoulder. He tapped a finger against the magazine feed, nodding, picking up into a fast walk as his own safety clicked off dully. They were moving from the garage, out an unlit back door, down the length of a tight alleyway toward the immensity of the highrises. Sounds and sick breathing sounded behind, bouncing with doppler effects up the skinny, dirty walls lined with exposed plumbing and disused power feeds. Moisture dripped from an old AC unit hanging crazily out the portal of a broken window.

His hands did something, just out of sight. Back along the alley, at the mouth of the garage side entrance, a force planted its weight against the old particle board. It gave out, splintering into wet dust and soggy spars. A shape shouldered forward with a dark shape clutched loosely in its hand. Cato didn't seem to pause. He swung at the waist with the AMR hitched in snugly at the shoulder, now with a home-made silencer clamped at the barrel end, and squeezed the trigger. The shadow dropped, killed. The ejection port dry rattled. A second shape screeched and tossed off its heels.

Cato brought them out onto a two-lane street, a long suburb canyon of townhouses missing much of their facades. Duraluminium, rotten board, lengths of hosing, and more unidentifiable trash littered the sidewalk, meters deep in some places. The Mandalorian slowed; they tucked from shadow to shadow, braced and tense. Sounds of 'presence' dipped and reverberated around, shivering up through manhole covers, coughing over the sides of stacked, angled roofs. Every so often, Cato's hand, the prosthetic, would reach back behind and stroke one of Mala's ears. Calming measure. He crouched low, scurrying them in through a downstairs kitchen, living room, out a hole gnawed in the plaster and support studs. The pair halted behind the cover of a trash bin. Bodies whisked down the sidewalk, barking animatedly. Cato checked the magazine bar for an ammo count and clapped it back into place.

He climbed them up a rickety drainage spout just barely screwed into a side of brick walling. Cato hung off the gutter, jutting boot toes into gaps in the mortar. Whispering back at Mala: “See what's on the roof. Take their shinies. I'll be right behind you.”

[member="Mala"]

 

[Mala]

Mala shuddered with a mix of fear and excitement, pulling herself free of the makeshift harness she climbed swiftly up balancing on Cato's shoulders to peer over the roofs edge ears twitching to locate the lookouts. Pulling herself up with ease she darted across the flat roof heading for the shadow of the nearest air conditioning vent. Two stood in the centre sharing a cigarette between them and talking in low voices, two more on the furthest corners.

The shinies, as indicated by Cato, rested against the unit closest to them, black and glinting in the fading light. Mala licked her lips in anticipation before darting from one shadow to the next, keeping them in her line of sight at all times. She pressed herself close to the next vent, inching round to peer at the rifles. she couldn't see the appeal personally, but if she was to get off planet, she needed to do what was asked of her. She inched round again, reaching for one of the guns straps she tugged it hard and let go. It slid, and she darted back out of sight again as it tipped to knock the second, triggering the weapon and scaring the hell out of all four of them.

"You left your safety off you idiot!" one barked.

"Ah, feth off, no one's hurt, innit?" his boots stepped within her reach and she spotted another tucked into the front of his boot. Her hand shot out without thought and she grabbed the trigger and squeezed. The scream that followed was sickening, but Mala didn't pause tugging the small pistol free and sliding it across the rooftop towards Cato. Skirting round the vent she leapt onto the back of the second sinking her teeth deep into the top of his shoulder.

The click of an arming weapon reached her ears and she released her grip, darting between his legs as the shots meant for her slammed into him with a soft thud. She snatched the rifles up and zigzagged back to her first hiding spot, bullets peppering the roof either side of her until she vanished from their sights. The rifles clunking against the roof edge where Cato hung.

[member="Cato Fett"]