Broken Crown

[Hazel Scheler]

An RP session between @Sarge Potteiger and I off the forum.


Touch my mouth and hold my tongue
I'll never be your chosen one
I'll be home safe and tucked away
Well You can't tempt me if I don't see the day

It seemed Ivy was stuck in a rut of running from one extreme to the next. For nearly a week she'd trudged through the jungles of Kashyyyk chasing down a Republican criminal. Now she found herself on the dry, painfully hot sands of Tattooine. Despite the temperature she had yet to forgo wearing her brow traveling cloak. It might've made the heat even more unbearable, but the fabric kept the sun off her skin. A higher percentage of people died from exposure, right?

With The Egris settled low over the sands just outside a market settlement, Ivy set her remaining operational DRK-1 Dark Eye Probe Droid to finding a new target: anyone with a large amount of spare parts. It was said you could find just about anything out here in the wastes, and what she needed were parts to her other broken Probe Droids. Parts that were centuries old and likely hadn't seen the light of day in just as long. Hopefully this wasn't going to be a needle in a haystack.


Sarge Potteiger:
The faint rumble of massive treads grinding across the desert wastes of this woebegotten world heralded the arrival of what was surely the biggest eyesore on this hellhole of a planet. Shoving through the dunes was a massive sandcrawler, home to the trader Jawas.

Marching in front of it and off to the side in front of a small group of mercenaries was a solitary figure in the dark, muted reds of the ancient Mandalorian Rally Masters. His armor spoke of a similar heritage, and the dangling Blas-Tech CC13 spoke to his skirmisher ways.

Little was left to indicate that this apparent Mandalorian leading a ragtag band of misfits was the oft-whispered assassin known only as Sarge. He was sweating up a storm beneath the beskar armor, his T-Visor automatically marking the probe droid out as a non-hostile target.

He waved a hand to his men and signaled to the cockpit of the Jawas, who brought the massive crawler to a stop just outside it's usual destination. They could, feasibly, set up shop here. Jawas were always happy to do trade, and it was close enough that they could unload and he and the other hired help could disappear back into the small town.

No such luck for him though, he imagined, helmeted head cocking to the side at the sight of the droid. "Anyone signal for one of these?", he asks to the mercs, getting a chorus of negatives.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

As the low rumble of the sandcrawler wound into silence it was soon replaced by another of higher tone. Coming from a distance was the visible silhouette of a person aboard a speeder. They didn't seem in any particular hurry, and in all truth they weren't. Ivy had long since outgrown her youthful need to push the limits of all things, and instead enjoyed the jaunt across the desert expanse with the hot winds tearing at her cloak and hair, and sand pattering over the lenses of her goggles.

With the gathered men in her sight and the bulk of the sandcrawler sitting prone beside them, Ivy knew now what it was her Drone had found. The air above the sand was so hot that it dissolved the men's legs into a shimmer, a dark confusion of colors, to that the Mercs seemed to be floating on a cloud made of some enchanted substance, free as the thoughts of a woman riding a speeder across the dunes on a hot desert planet.

Ivy screwed up her eyes against the glare of the sun on her goggles and saw the light gleaming on the barrels of their rifles. These weapons were more distinct than the men who carried them. They held their firm, straight lines while hte men beneath them shimmered. In this way the weapons rode the men like mules, proud and gleaming in the sun, knowing that when a beast beneath them died, they would simply ride another.

This was how the future played out in her mind. She could not think. It was too hot and too late in the afternoon. Coming upon the group, Ivy pulled her speeder to a stop a fair distance away. Dismounting, she tapped a finger on the control device and watched the drone, currently on a slow rotation around the behemoth machine, change course to float towards her like a dog recalled to its master.

Merc regarded Mercs, making no reach for hasty conclusions.

"That's quite a crawler you've got there," she said finally, her short brown hair whipping about her head wildly in a sudden sandy gust.



Sarge Potteiger:
The Mandalorian in front raised a hand, dropping the rifles of the mercs who'd been anticipating a Raider attack. "Ain't my crawler." Voice heavily modulated, the figure hadn't even hefted the rifle from where it was slung over his shoulder.

Clearly he'd been the only one not anticipating trouble.

"Something to throw, assholes." He barks and a man throws him a small slugthrower bullet. "Thanks." The Mando grumbles before spinning, winding his arm back and chucking the small shell straight for the tiny windows at the top of crawler.

A pair of bright yellow eyes disappeared and a hatch slid open on the side of the crawler. "Jawas will be out shortly." He says quietly. "Name and business." It wasn't a question. It was safe to assume she was here to buy - the probe droid told him that, but who she was was a mystery to him.

His arms folded across his chest, shoulder muscles tensing to accomodate the movement. It was evident from the faint hunch to his posture that he always expected a fight, and despite not clear threat from her... he was still prepared.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Egris," the woman replied. It wasn't her name, it was her ship's name, but she'd played games in territories like this before and she knew when to keep and when to fold.

Ivy watched the Mercs with a passive stare and made no further movements of any kind, "I'm looking for parts to fix up some more of these," she flicked her head towards the Drone bobbing slowly at her side, waving slightly in the stray gusts of hot air.


Sarge Potteiger:
The man gives a lift of his chin that was likely coupled with a mouthed 'oh' and he snorted as a few small figures wiggled their way down to the sound. Turning away to walk back toward the scurrying rodents, the Mandalorian strode through the parting group with the confidence one would expect of one of the proud warrior culture.

Even from where she was, she'd hear him speaking the Jawa trade language and pointing to the probe droid. The dialogue continued for several minutes as the mercs attention remained solely on her. It was atrociously unusual for mercs to be moving with sand crawlers, but stranger things had happened.

Finally, he turns and begins walking back towards her, motioning her to come towards him. He didn't buy the name for a second, but that didn't mean the Jawas didn't. Stopping in the middle of the group he waits for her, clearly expectant.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

It had occurred to the woman that the situation was terribly odd, but she wasn't in the business of asking questions where they weren't warranted. Or paid for. She waited with the patience of someone who had nothing pressing on their schedule. Really, between jobs, there was nothing pressing except perhaps the need to wet a parched mouth.

When beckoned she moved promptly, striding across the sands with her cloak billowing about, exposing the tired white armor beneath. Ivy was not armed with her big guns today - Tattooine wasn't known for its hospitality, no, but there wasn't any need to scare off a potential trader ...or buyer for that matter. She maintained an assortment of smaller, more easily concealed weaponry for defense, a far cry from the armament of these men.

"What's the verdict?" she said, peering at what she presumed to be the leader of the outfit who also happened to be the one previously speaking with the Jawas. Ivy came to a stop several feet before the group, keeping a comfortable amount of space between herself and what could potentially be a bad day.


Sarge Potteiger:
"Verdict is... if you're lookin' for parts, you get the same deal as anyone else. You get to go into that stinkhole and search for 'em yourself. The parts are too numerous for them to keep track of, although they do try to organize them a bit."

The man shrugged limply, as if a bit annoyed. "And I get the joy of watching you dig." He adds, sounding none too pleased about that. At least he had an air filter so he didn't have to smell the terrible stench of the desert traders.

"Just to make sure you don't try to steal anything." He tilted his head back towards the crawler. "By your leave."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Fair enough," the woman replied and at his word she pressed her toes into the sand and trudged off towards the entrance ramp, Probe Droid bobbing gently behind her, droning listlessly.

The stench, of course, was not something she had been altogether prepared to encounter, but Ivy took this challenge in stride by pulling the folds of her cloak at her shoulders up over her face just as they had been on her ride across the desert to protect her skin from sand. This in no way offered her refuge from it like a mask might, but it worked well enough to keep her brain from getting addled.

Pausing at the base of the ramp, Ivy pulled out the same device from before and keyed in new target commands to her droid. With any luck and a few slight calibrations the droid could search out compatible parts.

"This should speed things up a bit," the woman muttered as the droid gave a beep. Striding up the ramp she entered the sandcrawler with man and machine in tow.


Sarge Potteiger:
Turning after her, he found himself behind the clearly middle-aged woman, a look of annoyed disinterest on his face. He just needed to get the crawler to the nearby town and he'd be good, but it was never a straight shot.

They always got held up by -something.- Usually Tuskens, but he'd take a customer over that. A faint beeping attracted his attention as the woman moved up and into the crawler, droid tearing off to hunt down what she wanted.

He scoffed quietly, shaking his head as he ducked under the lip of the entryway, needing to avoid bashing his head into the doorway. "Take your time. No skin off my back.", he says, coming face to face with the mountains of parts piled against the walls in the holds.

Jawas were hoarders, and for good reason. Didn't mean he enjoyed being in this slophole though. "I really wish they'd get their shit together...", he mutters darkly, scanning the horizon behind him with his HUD before following her fully inside the dank cavern of the crawler.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"/Weh/," the woman made a sound of something between disgust and disbelief as she pulled the goggles from her head to get a better look.

This, she decided rather immediately upon rummaging through a nearby pile of junk, was a rather hopeless endeavor. Likely she'd have far better luck in the settlement seeking out a mechanic - likely she'd probably pay more for what she needed, too.

The woman glanced to her escort at his words. He didn't sound public school. There was a touch of roughness in his vowels, or a sense of some wildness reined in, as if he was making an effort. It was hard to place his voice and even harder to place his demeanor beneath all that metal. Her Lorrdian-taught skills were little use to her here.

A sound came from nearby that drove her from her distaste and she turned to watch the diminutive form of a Jawa toddle closer. Toddling ... what a curious gait it was. A sort of teetering, really- each step a hasty improvisation, a fall avoided by luck as much as judgement. A sort of life on short legs.

Ivy was left wondering if the traders were drunk on their own stench, but the thought came only fleetingly as she was presented with what appeared to be another damaged Dark Eye Probe Droid. It'd taken a blaster shot God knows how many years ago. The Jawa presented it proudly and Ivy blinked in surprise, brows disappearing beneath wild bangs.

"That's a good trick."


Sarge Potteiger:
If he'd known she figured he wasn't the most well-educated... well, he might have smiled at that. For most of his life he'd acted like the intelligent man he was, but it had garnered him no friends.

So he'd roughed up as he'd aged, until it had become as much apart of him as the heart of gold which still beat in his chest, coated with beskar though the organ may be.

Still, he managed to outright bark out a laugh as the Jawa brought the droid to her. "Well, that's about as good as you're probably going to get. They don't believe in fixing what they find, only in finding those who are willing to fix it themselves."

A snort could be heard. "They have a saying, something about salvage that more or less says that when they find something, keep it, but don't fix it. If someone wants it for their own, they can put in the work themselves."

This particular Jawa didn't speak Basic, or understand it, so he was saved the painful process of a Jawa trying to tell him to mind his manners.

Not that he generally had any.

"Take it or leave it, friend, cause that's about as close as you're gonna get 'round here."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

A wane smirk shifted across Ivy's face, though the man wouldn't see it for the folds of cloak there.

"You're probably right about that," she wasn't going to continue rummaging to find out if he wasn't. Though she had a handful of these droids to repair and this discovery would likely only fix a few things, it was ten steps forward from where she'd been previously.

The woman gave the Jawa a definitive nod and held out her hands to take it. The Jawa, however, wasn't quite so ready to give up its prize. It bleated at her in its indiscernible tongue, holding the broken droid away on one arm while making the motion to 'pay up' on the other.

"I don't think you're interested in credits," Ivy said with a frown. Credits she had, and other than her ship and a few personal belongings that was about it. She wasn't about to bargain with her weapons or tools, so that left her speeder. The thing made travel more convenient but it came with her ship and she wouldn't be out any money, but the thing was certainly worth far more than this dead droid.



Sarge Potteiger:
"He is, in fact, interested in credits." The man says with a tone of voice that had taken 'amused' and surpassed it by a few meters or twenty. "He says a hundred credits for it."

Yeah, the Mandalorian was definitely more than a bit amused. "Probly ain't worth half that, but Jawas ain't been known to be fair in pricing." A hundred credits for a blaster destroyed wreck? He could get a better bargain from a Toydarian.

Not that he wanted to deal with them in the slightest.

He'd take the Jawas over those flying, pudgy pricks any day. There was another mad bleating of gibberish. "That's non-negotiable.", he adds.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

That was a bit steep, but a hundred credits was a far better price than trading in her speeder which was worth quite a bit more. The woman's nose twitched in thought.

Beeeoooo.

Her working Probe Droid had smoothly swung into the air above the Jawa, it's scanners visibly taking in the partial droid it held, and signaled that it had found something.

"Hm," Ivy grunted, unimpressed. Either there was nothing more to be found here or the thing needed further calibrations, "100 credits it is then," she fished through her cloak and produced a credit chit, offering it to the Jawa.



Sarge Potteiger:
A faint clank of metal on metal indicated another shrug from behind her. The Jawa took the chit... stared at it, and then dropped the droid at her feet. It didn't hand it to her. It didn't set it down. It dropped it.

Typical Jawa.

Then, it scurried off with what amounted to a squeal of delight, clearly eager to go hand the credits over to the Clan-Chief in charge of this particular crawler. "Strange lot."

Talk about an understatement.

Disorganized. Smelly. Unpleasant to see or listen to. They were the opposite of a good time.

But, hey, they were paying him for the escort at least. "Need help with that?"

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy watched the creature scurry off with a ponderous look, feeling her fingers itch after the quick money lost. Oh well, if it helped repair her droids then they could only make her work easier. Two had already proven that fact on Kashyyyk.

She blinked at the man's garbled voice behind her and slowly turned her eyes down to her prize on the floor.

"Rude..." she said under her breath before stepping back and nodding to the man. The droids were heavy, not necessarily for a Epicanthix woman in her prime, but Ivy wasn't one to step on chivalrous toes.

"Long as it doesn't cost me extra," she replied, "my back appreciates it."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Won't cost ya nothin' but ya' real name." Ain't nobody ever named their kid 'Egris.' If he didn't know any better he'd say it was either the name of a ship, or perhaps the name of a favorite pet or weapon. There was endless possibilites, one of course being that it was her name.

But he couldn't fathom anyone coming up with that stupid a name for their daughter. Walking over, the Mandalorin grabbed it with his left hand, hoisted the droid up in a large palmed grip... and tucked it under his arm.

He needed the right free just on the off chance she decided now was the time to start funny business. He was a right handed shot.

"Ain't as young as ya used to be?", he asks, clearly just trying to make conversation as he steps back out and into the sun, visor automatically polarizing as he took slow steps down the ramp.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Oh so he didn't like her name did he? She supposed, pronounced under his presumed accent that /Egg-ris/ was a pretty awful name, especially for a woman. However, given the proper Panathan inflection, an egg transformed to the graceful swan-necked white Egret, native to her homeworld and sigil of her old family name before taking that of her husband's. /Ee-griss/ was an honorable name and one heavy with sentiment.

The woman sighed behind her makeshift mask, "name's Hazel."

She stood back and watched him heft the broken droid, brow larking at his comment on her age as she followed him out along the ramp, pulling her goggles back over her head as they stepped back into the blazing sun, "I'm only as young as I feel," Ivy said in return.


Sarge Potteiger:
"Right, Hazel it is. Better than being named after the synonym for an exit hatch." Good ol' Egress hatches, never worked when they needed too. The man gave a faint laugh as he walked through the small knot of mercs, who gave a few strange looks at the noise.

Still, Hazel was another strange name. He'd not bring it up again, though. After all, he went by Preacher. Hardly a real name by any stretch of the imagination. "And how young you feel right now?"

Clearly, when bored, it became twenty questions.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Oh," the woman remarked with a strange look of her own to his comment, "I'd say about 54, give or take. Once I get a drink in me I'll feel even younger."


Sarge Potteiger:
Again, he laughed, walking towards her speeder, one hand grasping at the sling over his shoulder and the other still hefting the small black orb of the droid. "That young, eh?", he asks.

"Well, I'll tell ya what, you wait at the settlement nearby and I'll get you a drink, see if we can't get that number down. Should be there in a bit under an hour." He flicks his head briefly towards the crawler. "Thing moves a bit slow, I'm afraid."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Running gloved hands through her hair, Ivy pushed her bangs from her face long enough to adjust the goggles over her eyes. As soon as her fingers left the dark brown tresses they were flying wildly again, intent on dancing to their own tune in the winds while she carried on calmly with her words.

"That's a good plan," the woman said, tugging at the fabric in front of her face, behind her the Probe Droid hummed and bobbed, hummed and bobbed.

"You take your time," she mounted the speeder bike with the finesse of someone far younger than she felt, "I've got a bit more rummaging to do." Ivy pulled open a sidebag on the bike for him to deposit the droid.


Sarge Potteiger:
"Sounds like a plan.", he says, dropping the droid with all the care he could muster into the sidebag. "Only one cantina in the place, so shouldn't be too hard to find you."

He gives a bit of a chuckle, bringing a knifed hand to his forehead in a brief salute before shutting the bag and giving the bike a brief pat. "Be safe. I'd rather not stumble across a Raider-ruined wreck on my way into town."

With that, he pulled his rifle from his shoulder and began walking back to the mercs, barking out orders as the crawler's engines warmed up with a series of loud bangs that could be felt as well as heard.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy returned the salute, her amusement well concealed behind her cloak. The rumbling of speeder and crawler engines sounded in unison, and without any further delay the woman set off back across the sands in the direction from whence she came, her pace easy but with purpose.


Sarge Potteiger:
Marching with purpose, the mercenaries made decent enough speed along the flank of the Sandcrawler as it slowly ground its way closer and closer to the nearby settlement. True to the timetable he thought, they were there just outside an hour after the womans speeder had disappeared across the horizon.

Credits were paid out to each member of the band, with Sarge taking the largest haul as he'd been brought on as an experienced contractor to lead the otherwise inexperienced - by comparison - bunch.

He made a brief stop at his rented room to drop off his blaster rifle before heading further into town.

There was only one cantina, so he knew where to find her... but he imagined without goggles it may be hard to find her amid the darkness of the establishment.

Pausing just inside the door, he began scanning the crowd, looking for the brown hair he'd seen earlier, even if it was now no longer being tossed about by the desert winds.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Looking for me?" came a sudden voice behind the man.

A bit on the shorter side from him, when he turned he would look down to find the woman staring up at him from behind her own goggles and the layering of cloak cloth wrapped around her shoulders. She reached up to push her own goggles from her eyes and onto her forehead, leaving behind clean circles of skin surrounded by flesh red from the sun and flecked with sand.

Her eyes were hazel - a curious combination of brown mottled by gleams of green and bars of gold. Perhaps Hazel wasn't such an odd name after all.

She was carrying a black back wrapped over one shoulder and it appeared, gauging by the gleam of metal beneath a flap that gapped open from the large haul, that she had been rather more successful in town. Traders here were far easier to bargain with than Jawas, turns out.


Sarge Potteiger:
Perhaps he'd have been startled, but Mandalorians knew how to make helmets, and his expansive field of view had indicated movement to him long before she'd opened her mouth.

He had, however, not realized who she was as he'd been focusing his attention elsewhere. He recognized the failing and would be sure to correct it.

"No, I was looking for the other person I was gonna buy a drink for.", he replies with dry sarcasm that was almost as arid as the planet they were on.

Turning his head to regard her, he found himself face to face with an older, solidly built woman going on middle aged. With humans living to over a hundred, she was probably just at the threshold for the middle of her life.

That, or the sand was adding age to her. He couldn't tell, not in the poor lighting. "Come on, let's grab a booth before the bartender yells at us for blocking the door. I take it things were more successful in town?" With that, he turned and headed towards a booth lining the wall of the U shaped establishment.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Surprisingly so," Ivy replied, following him in without missing a beat. Dry humor she could handle just fine.

The woman took a seat across the table, pulling off her bag and setting it on the bench before doing so. It landed with a favorable clanking of droid parts.

"Tell you what, though," she began pulled the wrap of her cloak from her face, briefly using the excess material to wipe the lines of sand from her skin. It left her looking bright, but not necessarily younger. The pinking from the sun tended to do that. Visible scar lines appeared as well, though these had a faint red glow to them that was terribly unnatural.

"Finding a language to bargain in was a challenge. Really had to dig deep for that. Good thing people 'round here like money. Found all sorts of useful friends for a few credits."


Sarge Potteiger:
Sliding himself into the seat, the Mandalorian set both hands no the table and folded them together as he sat back, puffing out his chest in an apparent attempt to crack his back a bit.

Before he could say anything, he briefly considered the scars, them remembered that some of his had, at one point, done something similar. It had faded with time, or maybe he just didn't notice anymore.

He wasn't sure.

"If language was that big of an issue, you could have just waited for me. I'm conversant in more than a handful. Huttese is always a good one to learn for here in the Outer Rim, too, since most out here defer to them as the ones in charge."

Tattooine had more than its fair share of fat slugs in charge. "Alternatively, travel with a protocol droid."

Speaking of, the waiter droid was still a few tables away. Whatever, conversation was always good.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"My Huttese is more than a bit rusty but I made out alright," and anymore nonexistant. She remembered key phrases, but it had been a long, loooong time since she'd had to pull that rabbit out of the hat.

"Bit surprised to hear you speaking to the Jawa earlier. You must have a gift for glib. I never was much good at it," the woman grunted, recalling the attempt to learn her late husband's language without great success. Of course she hadn't been learning during an ideal time.

"And I don't care for protocol droids. Freak me out a bit if I'm honest."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Why don't ya like droids? Other than the fact that they're insufferably pleasant." The man gives a faint bit of a chuckle. "The Jawa trade language was made for others to be able to speak. We can't speak their language at all - it's got a lot of body odor involved. I wish I was making that up."

That was, partly, why their crawlers smelled so gods-awful. They communicated everything from mood to arousal to clan by smell, and it didn't help that they were basically bipedal rodents.

They wouldn't know what 'clean' was if they were selling it by the ton.

"I've found my gifts lie in other areas of expertise; like how to shoot a rifle properly." He rolled his eyes and it came across in his voice. "So long as you found what you need though, who cares. Who'd you get the stuff from?"

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Some old Toydarian called Kibik. Found him on the edge of town, looked like he was down on business. Had a mountain of antiques but hardly anything of modern fair."

She elbowed her bag of goodies, jostling its contents about. The sound was music to her ears.

"He was plenty happy to break a deal once I snagged a kid who could translate for me."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Can't stand Toydarians. I'm ornery enough without trying to deal with ornery aliens who are like that due to biology." Snorting a bit, he lifted his head as the protocol droid clambered up to the booth just before theirs.

"Kibik never did know much Basic - I think he did it as a means of trying to con more credits out of people by forcing them to pay his help to translate. It seems right up his alley. Could be wrong."

With a laugh, he paused as the droid made several heavy steps up to the front of their booth and turned. "Hello!" Naturally, the thing sounded like it had just won the jackpot. "I'm RA-7, can I get you anything today!" It wasn't a question insomuch as it was a jubilant exclamation of service.

How he loathed droids like this. But, at the same time, they did cheer him up a bit. So, ya know, contradictions were something you just had to deal with. "Nothing for me.", he says with a shake of his head, raising a gloved hand for the woman to order what she wanted.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"That's a good trick," Ivy admitted with a nod of her head, looking strangely amused to have been hoodwinked. She could respect a solid plan, even an underhanded one. No matter, she made out like a bandit so far as she was concerned. Assuming no one came around asking for the parts she was, ever, she bought him out.

Always good to have a spare.

The woman made her order for a glass of whiskey, or whatever was closest to it they had.

"Still on the job?" she asked, settling back into the booth, propping her arms up along the top of the seat cushion at either side.



Sarge Potteiger:
"Not at all.", he says as the droid totters off to get her the requested drink. Whiskey was common enough - good whiskey was another thing entirely. "Job was to get the crawler here. That's what I did."

He made no mention of the numerous tusken raider ambushes which had either failed spectacularly, or had simply failed to launch when they'd seen a Mandalorian leading the party.

Sometimes old beliefs ran deep, and Mandalorians weren't exactly pushovers.

"What about you? I can't imagine you came to Tattoine just for the parts."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Hm," the woman gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, sending small fountains of sand spilling from the odd fold of cloak material around them. She supposed assuming any man of armor was also a man of drink had been a bit hasty, but there you have it.

"And when the crawler goes back?" she queried, wondering if he had been contracted to escort the thing across the deserts indefinitely. She doubted that - didn't seem like they could afford a man of his calibre for the long-term. Not just anyone could throw on a Mandalorian suit of armor - it had to be earned, that much she knew.

"Just for parts," the answer came shortly, "I was in the neighborhood, between jobs, had a bit of free time and a new hobby to tend."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Kark if I know. I imagine they'll have a wide berth for a week or two, so they can hire other people when it gets too hairy for 'em. Ironic, really." Shaking his head at the memory of their furry hands.

Exhaling a bit and sending out a wash of static, he shrugged. "I'm just heading through, movin' about, takin' jobs as I can." That wasn't unheard of for Mandalorians, and used to be far more common than it was.

But after the assault on Mandalore by the Sith, it was easy to see why he wasn't keen on sticking around until called upon. Keldabe was part nuclear wasteland now.

"I gather then that you're a merc too, which begs the question of why you're usin' probe droids and lookin' for parts. That's more a bounty hunter thing."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

A brow larked, though the woman did not answer immediately. The droid had arrived with her drink and she took it without a word, eyes narrowing at the server as it bantered pleasantly before heading off. Watching it go over her shoulder, Ivy hunched over her drink in a moment of silent introspection.

She sipped and frowned. It wasn't that good, but she hadn't expected much more than that. It was something, at the very least, and wagering the man came through on his word, it was also free.

"Aye," she said finally, wiping moisture from the corner of her lips on the back of a gloved hand. Ivy sighed, though it was more a holding of a deep breath followed by a slow release, "I came across them on a job last month, rummaging through my employer's hangar for anything useful. Wasn't something I had any interest in at the time, but hell when I wasn't working I had nothing going and I won't lie to you and say I appreciated the company of the people I worked with. We didn't exactly see eye to eye on most things..." seemed she wasn't suited for the Empire, as much as she had thought before signing on.

"I used to tinker with things in my spare time, back when I was youthful and radiant," the woman pulled the goggles from her head and ruffled a hand through her hair, an easy look on her face as she joked on her age, "so I thought to myself 'these look like they could use some love' and I took them back to my room and spent the next few weeks repairing them to the best of my ability. After I paid off my debt I got the hell out of dodge from those yuppies and shored up with another lot halfway across the galaxy. Took another job hunting down a criminal on Kashyyyk and thought that might just be ideal to test the drones out. Turns out I hadn't lost my touch."

She patted the bag, leaving her hand to rest on top of it in a fond sort of manner, "in short, I like to fix things. Never expected to still be any good at it. Figured I could probably sell them once I get them back into working order, hell, maybe I can even improve them and make a profit."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Where I used to work...," he begins slowly, dropping a hand to scratch at his leg where the armor didn't cover. "...I helped build it from the ground up. Sadly, over time, things changed."

"Wasn't quite the place I had come to call home, I'm afraid. I like some of who I worked with, but the others had signed up as more of a prestige thing than a desire to do anything. Incompetence was the new name of the game."

"Up and left. Joined a place called Titan Core for a bit, then shipped out for some solo contracting. Much better than working for companies, at least so far." Still, it kind of sucked not being able to count on people having your back.

It was hard to trust people you'd never worked with before. A thin sheet of beskar was the only thing that kept him from being shot in the back. "Radiance is a mentality more than anything physical. Kind of like the faint bit of swagger in a step when someone has confidence."

Pausing momentarily to touch the hilt of his pistol as someone raised their voice nearby, he calmed as he realized a fight wasn't about to break out. "Guess the question now is... where you headed next?"