Private Carlaci Nights

[Reva Giedfield]

Post: 1 | Wearing: X | Focus: Noel Strasza | Weapons: Fists | Equipment: Pristine Cigarettes | Date: Present Day

​

It had only a few weeks after the events at the reactor when he arrived on the cold world of Carlac. But New Bakstre felt like years ago. More and more skirmishes with the rising threats of cults, the Sith Empire itself, and a number of other messes the command felt necessary for Sixty-Six to deal with. More and more killings, assassinations, murders, explosions.

It all had made him as happy as can be and as depressed as can be - the latter due to the fact that he had yet to encounter his father during any of the missions as he so greatly desired. He thought on this as he trudged through the snow-laced lightless slums of Asoport, the capital of this frozen planet. Fury burbled at the base of his stomach.

"One day it'll happen. I'll see his face and I'll carve it open. Make him suffer," he grumbled as the cantina he was ordered to enter appeared in the distance. A corner-side cantina without a legible name was surely a proper place to meet the commanding officer of his new damned task force. This has to be a joke.

The red cantina lights flashed in his eyes faster than a blaster rifle barrage as he walked through the front doors. The cold outside had bitten at his face and frozen the edges of his facial hair - he could almost snap them off - but the heat of sweat and liquor warmed him up almost instantaneously. It was a nice warmth, a welcoming feeling on his iced skin as he began searching for the one that had summoned him to this place. This nameless bar of hooch and spice.

Except it wasn't fully welcoming.

The patrons - Nikto, Human, Twi'Lek, Zabrak, and more - all gazed at him when he had entered and he easily understand why as he took his seat at the bar, unable to find his target during the preliminary scan. Seven and a half feet tall, built like a star destroyer, covered in a menagerie of scar tissue and hair, and dressed in clothing far too rich for this slum. A single eye of golden pride met each gaze with annoyance, furrowed brows signifying a deep-seated distrust of all around him and a dislike for their presence in general.

Why had his target wanted him to come here? This slum hub of degenerates was nowhere near worthy of their time. The decore was adequate at best, there was a stench of old steel and urine, and the drinks and food were most certainly subpar at the very best. Was that his innate cravings for the fancies of the galaxy speaking? He didn't know, nor did he care. In fact, he likely wouldn't care about the quality of what he consumed as long as he got a buzz from it all and didn't feel hungry by night's end.

And so he ordered the most expensive drink the keep could offer him and waited. Waited to see just what this person wanted to talk about.

 

[Noel Strasza]

R E D L I G H T _ N I G H T S
N O E L
focus // Reva Giedfield
attire // [ x ]
weapons // SH-9 | "Deader" | A Cutting Wit

​

Carried underground by the silent treads of boots and kept warm by the nature of her frame, Noel Strasza was no stranger to the slummier portions of the city she had once been an immigrant to. She was dressed warmly enough, with the nature of her robotic form concealed up until her neck and face, but even the living tissue of her features were unbothered by the cold. Some feat of engineering, probably. She always just assumed things were working as they were intended to, it made the stress just a little bit more palpable. Blackened steel hands dug deep into the pockets of her outer layer, and she tucked her elbows close to her ribs, narrowing her silhouette as she slipped through the hurried crowds towards the dive bar arrangements had been made for. The cyborg looked tired; dark circles having long since made her eyes their homes.​

Neon signs cast light out into the darkness, and high, high above suspended from the cavernous ceiling, the lights installed to keep both the underground reach warm and illuminated barely seemed to reach this street. The autocracy had known there were going to be criminals and less-than-desirable peoples arriving on the world eventually, given its rise, and she figured it was easier to give them areas to work and keep to in order to keep them in check. But that notion is exactly why she had wanted to meet here, rather than risk meeting somewhere she could have been recognized from her time as a planetside patrolman in the higher levels of the planet's society. Enemies were easy to make when you stood firmly on the side of the law.​

Even if times were much simpler then.​

She paused on the other side of the barred window, glimpsing inside the rather rundown bar before turning her shoulder into it and pushing her way inside. The faint ring of the bell overhead signaled her entry, as it did the other patrons, and she spotted the familiar outline looming over the bar. With cigarette still tucked firmly between her mismatched teeth, Strasza approached him, hooking the leg of a barstool out with the toe of her boot and dragging it backward. "Hey," the cyborg started, ignoring the stares heating her back, "sorry I'm late. Train was taking its sweet time." A lie, that was, but it was almost impossible to tell she was merely bluffing, given the nature of her face. No twitch of her lips. No tense of her jaw. ​

But she definitely wasn't about to say "Hey sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come." to the person she had dragged out to this ice rock for a drink or two. She wasn't sure why, out of the two of the new team she had met, he was the one she felt more comfortable and familiar with already. Maybe grumpy souls had to stick together, right? Another night in her apartment waiting for assignment and killing time with liquor and video games wasn't exactly always the best way to wind down, and it certainly wasn't doing anything for the crippling isolation and loneliness she had found herself wrestling with.​

When the keep turned to tend to her, she ordered herself a malt whisky.​

"Glad you found it okay." She finally added, turning her head to look at Reva as she reached for the ashtray on her left and tugged it closer, fixing it between them with the memory he was a nic-fiend too surfacing in the back of her mind. ​

 

[Reva Giedfield]

Post: 1 | Wearing: X | Focus: Noel Strasza | Weapons: Fists | Equipment: Pristine Cigarettes | Date: Present Day

​

The woman was late, entering the bar like some gang-punk devil. She had hidden most of her robotics under the thick black clothing, but it wasn't enough to hide her status as a cyborg. Was she a cyborg? Did she even have a semblance of humanity that connected him with her? He couldn't tell. Not the first time he met her, not through the first few missions they ran together.

He just couldn't tell and that...frustrated him. How was he going to so willingly place his life in the hands of a droid? Something that can be powered on and off with a switch of a burst of EMP? His father had droids. A lot of them. Each one was a killer, a servant, a butler, a cook. How was she different from them besides sentience? He couldn't tell. And that frustrated him so greatly.

"You're fine," he grunted as the first of his drinks slid to a stop in front of his massive hands. The ice clinked as he raised the clear brown liquid to his chapped lips and sipped. It was cold but burned his throat as it went down and warmed his stomach. The power of alcohol. Refreshing, warming, addicting.

Like cigarettes which he pulled from his coat pocket and quickly lit to mimic the woman on his left. This one was strawberry flavored, and the paper was a light pink to match. It was smooth, smoother than a cigarette had any right to be. But it was hot. Very hot. Scalding even. He couldn't figure out if it was because of the white smoke mixing with the trace alcohol on his tongue, but it burnt nonetheless. It reminded him of Credence, where his father made him march for hours on end through the hot magma deserts. Barefoot.

His feet would be scarred, burnt, practically inoperable by the end of his marches. Then he would have to fight his father's champions. He would either win or lose, and he never wanted to lose. The punishment was unbearable and his father would only heal them after he begged on hands and knees. How he ever escaped, he will never know.

"Glad you found it okay."

Reva stamped out his cigarette next to hers, noting the previously piled ash in the tray. A lot of stamping. A lot of loners. He nodded to the woman, "It wasn't easy. This place is a fucking labyrinth. Half expected to run into a Roggwart." He took another gulp from his drink and ordered two more. He wanted to get drunk. To forget the burning sands. But he also wanted to know why he was here, why this practical droid had called him.

"So, why did you call me here, Noel?" he finally asked, lighting another cigarette from his pack and offering one to the woman. A pact of civility made through nicotine, at the very least.

 

[Noel Strasza]

R E D L I G H T _ N I G H T S
N O E L
focus // Reva Giedfield
attire // [ x ]
weapons // SH-9 | "Deader" | A Cutting Wit

"So, why did you call me here, Noel?"

A gentle shake of her head signaled her decline of his offer, as she was still nurturing the smoke between her lips. That was until she seized it between two knuckles and drew it from her face, expelling the tendrils of hissing vapor from her nostrils as she did as much. She knew the answer well enough. It resonated in the back of her mind and drew attention to some level of struggle she did not want to willingly admit she suffered under. Why? She was still human, wasn't she? Somewhere in the metal skin she had been outfitted with, lay a soft heart and flesh. Somewhere. Her dark, split brows pinched together. ​

​

Yet before she could answer him, the bartender placed her glass down before her, earning a nod of gratitude. The cyborg seized this, drawing it to her lips for a long pull and quick series of gulps after. "Well." The woman finally started, hunching down with her elbows against the beaten steel before them. She watched the smoke trickle from the smoldering cherry of her smoke, the same hand holding it now curled around her glass, "Shit sucks out here." That was a rather obvious answer, and the understatement of it all really could not be any clearer. Noel sighed heavily, muttering something in Mando'a beneath her breath as she recognized he deserved a better answer than just that. "It's better not to drink alone, all the time."​

Some part of her mind hoped he understood. The other parts found it easier if he didn't. Truth be told, the major didn't have any friends, only comrades. Her friends resided in barracks far from here in the walls of the stalwart fortress- Icorith- that she had once considered her second home. But most of them were off elsewhere or had died, by now. That was the nature of Doom Division. The nature of being a shocktrooper, period. You signed up to pave the way for the rest of the forces.​

She didn't mind her reassignment now that it had time to sink in and she could process it all properly- at least those under her command and watching her back were actually all living. Fighting alongside the undead forces The Vulture often pulled from the bloody ground had never boded well with her, and always, it made her feel sick to her stomach. ​

"Sulking in my apartment loses its charm after about the tenth day in a row without talking to anybody." She glanced up at the holoscreen posted behind the bar, watching the evening's news play. There it was. A bit more of the honesty he should have expected from her. She sniffled softly, drawing curt breath through her nose as the whisky burned her sinuses, and promptly stung them with another gulp. ​