Gotta Knock a Little Harder

[Dante Sotari]

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V-WGwJJj58[/media]​

She'd chosen Taanab because it was well populated without being crowded, on a main trade route so strangers weren't that strange, their local beer was made from local grains and they didn't ship a lot out.....

Oh yeah, and cause it wasn't anywhere near the Sith Empire or the Galactic Alliance.

It wasn't hard to find a moderately sized, relatively quiet bar. A couple blocks away from the star port, so skewing slightly more to locals but with enough off worlders finding their way there that it didn't cause any fuss. Fuss was the last thing Dante wanted right now.

The blonde had taken a couple of days of leave- she'd been given extra after Thyferra that she hadn't used right away. Mostly because she fully intended on making jaunts like this as often as possible. Go to a new, interesting but not too interesting place, see the sights.

And get blind, stinking drunk.

Preferably drunk enough to not remember any of the pastoral idyll.

Drunk enough to not remember anything.

Dante had been on a slow slide since the death of her husband, since her flight from the crumbling Commonwealth. Despite the increased security and stability of a steady job with the Empire, it had only accelerated. And Thyferra had pushed her farther over that edge. As far as she was concerned, it was no problem, of course. She drank cause she wanted to, not cause she needed to. Have a problem with that? That's your problem, not hers. She could stop if she wanted to. She just didn't want to. She wasn't always drunk. Sometimes she just had a drink or two. So what if by the time she was done with her day it usually turned into five or six? It helped her relax....

And on and on and on.

She sat at the bar, working on her second beer. Dressed casually- spacer, drifter- leather jacket over a tank top, jeans and boots. She'd traded in Imperial credits for the local coinage at the space port, and she had credits to burn.

[member="Mathieu Bahreiko"]

 

[Mathieu Bahreiko]

The green-skinned alien gave a grunt and started to snarl before a gloved hand pushed its head against the coarse brickwork. "Now then, we'll try this again." Mathieu Bahreiko spoke softly as he held the alien firmly in place, a faint, cold edge of steel in his words. Refuse was scattered through the alleyway, the faint sickly-sweet odor of decaying organic waste and spilled meals clinging to the air. The noise from the bar was almost imperceptible from this side of it, but Mathieu could faintly pick out the cantina music and the loud voices therein. "Varzik Lorab; where is he?"

Technically, tracking a wanted fugitive this far out of Galactic Alliance space wasn't legal and might have been viewed as downright criminal by quite a few people. Of course, that was part of why the Galactic Alliance would disavow him if anything came of it; that was the risk of all SPECTRE operatives took. But since Taanab wasn't within the sphere of influence of any major galactic power, the risk of anyone causing a proper stink was extremely unlikely. Plus, Mathieu liked to think he did good work. There wasn't any risk that someone like Bzrok here would try and claim anything to authorities, given that his legal history covered less than what most Twi'lek dancers wore.

Since he had always wanted to do good in the galaxy, whenever there wasn't an operation being run or some manner of war to fight, Mathieu opted to pick up Alliance bounties that had gone cold. The galaxy was a big place, but it helped to know where to look. Also helped that men like Varzik weren't overly paranoid, and had only made the one jump out of Galactic Alliance space. Amusing how criminal types like him didn't ever stop to think about someone else stepping outside the red tape to track them down. "Go kark yourself. I knew all you Alliance soldiers were spineless, but you must not have any tes-" Whatever else he had started to say was drown out by the screaming. Or rather, the attempted screaming since Mathieu shifted his hand and forced the alien's jaw shut before he put a blaster bolt in one knee.

When he finally stopped trying to scream, Mathieu let go long enough for the injured alien to fall to the ground in a heap. He whimpered and stammered unintelligibly while Mathieu leveled the blaster against the being's temple. "So, last chance before I paint this side of the cantina with your brains; tell me where Varzik Lorab is, and I let you go with only the one new hole in your body. Don't, and I get to see just how many holes I can add before you die." This seemed to finally get the message across and Bzrok quickly began to spill the beans on everything he knew of Varzik's little smuggling operation on Taanab, which was quite extensive. Once he finished spilling his guts and sniveling in the dirt, Bzrok looked up and found himself alone in the alleyway. Just as he began to muster up his courage to step back out into the streets, there was a quiet thwwp and a faint red mist disappeared into the red brickwork as Bzrok collapsed. A neat little hole in his forehead stood as a testiment to the cause.

Without giving a second thought to what went down in the alleyway, Mathieu stepped into the cantina and gave the tip of his nose a flick. The usual crowd could be seen; spacers looking to get some questionably real food in them, junkers looking to get their next fix, locals looking to get through one more day. It was the perfect sort of place to get a drink and contemplate life choices. Stepping up to the bar next to a blonde that looked to be very absorbed in her drink, Mathieu flagged down the bartender. "Gimme one of whatever she's having," he said while thumbing towards the woman beside him. Once he had been given his own beer, Mathieu handed over his credstick before taking his first taste of the beer while planning the next phase of his mission.

[member="Dante Sotari"]

 

[Dante Sotari]

"Local ale."

That was all for a moment and then Dante took another long pull from her glass- already past half empty and that drink meant she was ready to knock on the bartop with her knuckles and catch the bartender's attention.

She glanced over at the man beside her, looking down, then up (and up) in clear and frank appraisal.

"It's a local ale, what I'm drinking," she elaborated. "It's got a stupid name though so I didn't bother trying to remember it."

The bartender snorted, more amused than offended. He poured the two glasses (clean, which wasn't always a sure thing), depositing them and accepting the man's credit chit, while making a tick on Dante's tab.

Finishing up this second glass, Dante wasn't drunk. Not nearly, but she was aiming to fix that. Lola Sayu had been a dump. Thyferra had been worse. Best thing to do was to get a little drunk, maybe find some company. Or maybe not. Company hadn't been working out too well for her lately away. Oh, it was fun and all, but they all wanted a little too much more than she was offering.

Messy, that.

Seamus. Morgan. Especially Morgan. Getting messy for sure. They hadn't spent much time together since Thyferra- mostly because she'd been avoiding him.

A flicker of a frown crossed her face, and she reached for the new glass, taking a long swig.

Leave Thyferra out of the rest of the night, Dan. No need to think about that. No need to think about Alexandria..... about.....

"Not a local, I take it," she remarked over the rim of her glass. "Passing through?"

[member="Mathieu Bahreiko"]