Knock Knock

[Sabetha Tag]

"Look, you always were a liar but come on. I know that. You know I know that. So how about you just tell me what you did with my gorram stuff?"

Sabetha wasn't the biggest or the strongest. But she was stronger than she looked and it didn't take THAT much to bully a strung out bothan a head shorter than she was. It didn't take long before Charsi was spilling the actual story and Sabetha stopped grinding her face into the table.

"I shouldn't even be surprised you sold it," she grumbled. "You always only took care of yourself. Spice?"

"Yes," Charsi muttered defensively, rubbing her face. "But that's not fair. Always took care of you too." Plaintive.

Sabetha rolled her eyes, turning away to scan the squalid apartment.

There were things you could count on an addict for. Being an addict was one of them. Funny what two years in prison did. In this case, stripped away the bullchit.

"Hey, you were gone for weeks!" Sabetha paused, blinking as she realized Charsi had waited such a short period of time before hocking her stuff. "I took care of your stuff like it was my own."

"That was your mistake."

Sabetha turned around, fast. Fist impacted the bothan's face without warning, and Sabetha felt a certain satisfaction that she knew wasn't good but didn't really care.

"You should have taken care of it like it was mine."

Sabetha left Charsi's apartment with a pocket full of credits (not even close to what she'd sold her stuff for, stupid schutta), and where she'd pawned her stuff. Time to get cracking.

Something other than Charsi's stupid face anyway.

[member="Hard Luck Frank"]

 

[Hard Luck Frank]

So, there I was in a dive bar called The Bonny Hutt, but the all the letters in 'Bonny' besides the 'B' and 'H' in hutt had fallen off or were stolen. So, despite the owner's insistence most locals just called it The Butt. The owner, a older Togrutan, with enough cargo space to park a freighter, if you know what I mean, only made the name more likely to stick. The bar was on a station on the outer rim about 2 parsecs outside coalition space, and about the only place I bothered to call myself a local of.

Officially speaking, I was Corellian but if you knew many Corellians you would have moved too. I lived on the station for the last five years and did so much work for people that I can't remember the last time I had to check my bank account besides that it was one of the few space stations that was self policed and completely neutral. Got a record some where? Head to Jerinad station and chances were no one would waste their time looking for you. And at only five kilometers, they probably wouldn't find the place without already knowing where to look anyway.

The good thing about being a small station was that you were more or less off the galactic scanners. The bad part was if you didn't like scumbags, mobsters and thugs, you probably better go someplace else. Luckly, most of Jerinad's scum stuck to swindling people off station. And when they didn't you had guys like me.

I was a thug, I knew I was a thug, and I was fine with that stunning realization. I was also fine with other people knowing I was a thug. It helped in times like these.

"Come on let me copy your ID card." I said to the Pilot as he sat across from me at the table.

"I'm not giving you my First Order ID." He replied.

"You will give me your identification papers." I said in a spooky voice as I waved my hand.

"The force doesn't work like that. Are you even force sensitive?" He asked as if I was slow.

"I could be." I replied, slowly.

"The force is for emo people with power issues and space monks, man." The pilot said in return.

"Maybe I am emo." I told him, judgy creep.

"Frank you have the emotional depth of a baking sheet." The guy replied.

I didn't know what he meant by that really, but it didn't sound like he was lauding my charm and good looks, not that I had either. If I did have them though, he wasn't lauding them.

"Are there cookies on the baking sheet?" I asked.

"What differance does that make!?" The pilot almost yelled. I knew I was wearing him down.

"Content, man. Content." I said, "An empty baking sheet and a baking sheet with cookies are two totally different things."

"You are the epitome of an empty karking baking sheet then." He replied exasperated.

"So what you're trying to say here is," I began, "If I want the ID to copy for two seconds, you're going to need some cookies. Right?"

"What?" He asked confused.

Thwaap!

The blaster I had been inching my hand toward for the last 30 seconds bucked against my meat hook of a hand and filled him with point blank stun energy. But hey, I asked him first. He had his chance.

I took the ID to the bar where the Togrutan woman copied it in maybe a little more than two seconds and I walked back to the pilot. I licked the ID right there in front of everyone and pressed it to the innert pilot's forehead before taking my cut of the pay and heading off down the street to buy a nice fat sandwhich. All, in a days work.


[member="Sabetha Tag"]

 

[Sabetha Tag]

"You must think I am incredibly stupid."

The Toydarian flapped her wings, backing up a half meter in the air, then made an x over her chest.

"Cross mi 'eart. Dat's da name a da bar."

Sabetha squinted at her.

"You are telling me, that the guy I'm looking for, is probably, right now." She paused for a moment. "At a bar. Called. 'The Butt.'"

The Toydarian nodded so hard she lost altitude and had to flap twice as hard to regain it. Sabetha rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Alright, alright, don't give yourself a heart attack, I believe you, stop nodding and focus on flapping. Here." She tossed her a credit chit, which was immediately snapped out of the air and secreted away somewhere Sabetha suspected was unagreeable.

Sabetha walked off, shaking her head.

It hadn't been hard. With a few credits and a persuasive personality (read, all too prepared to threaten someone with bodily harm), Sabetha had gotten a list of people and general locations of where she might be able to find them. This Frank and this station was the first in what she suspected would be a long line of very annoying encounters.

Why was she doing this? It would take way less time and would be far cheaper probably too to just purchase new versions of the stuff she liked. But that wasn't the point now, was it? Sabetha'd never had much in her life. A lot of it didn't matter when push came to shove. But some stuff? Some stuff was hers. It mattered. And it bugged her to think of someone else's grubby paws all over it.

She paused for a moment, then sighed loudly.

The Bonny Hutt.

The Butt.

She hated this place so much and she'd only been here for half an hour.

Pushing through the front doors, she wasted no time. First person to meet her gaze got a "Just here for Frank, can you point me in his direction?"

Sounded less threatening. Or something.

[member="Hard Luck Frank"]

 

[Hard Luck Frank]

So, I went across the street, narrowly avoiding some strumpet as she went to The Bonny Hutt. She wasn't awful to look at, really, but then that usually meant they weren't my type. But then, I had never really bothered to try. Something about a six hundred pound guy with a 150 pound girl made me feel like a pretty scummy dude if you know what I mean.

The Sandwhich Shop was easily my favorite place on station. Big glassteel window, the people knew my order and they were always happy to see me. But then, I could drop 100 credits on food in a day and still eat. It wasn't that I was a fatty. It was my mutation's fault. Thanks to the weird netherworld, crap I had gone through some changes and I don't mean the hair in funny places kind. My body was dense. So dense that if I got hurt bad most outer rim doctors couldn't do much more than give me a feeding tube and wait for my body to heal itself. And it would. When they were examining me after the mutation kicked in they cut off my pinky and the thing grew back after a few weeks. I always wondered what they had planned to do if it didn't grow back bit they said it didn't matter. Jerks.

I walked into the shop and ordered three deluxes with everything, I was trying to watch my weight. That was another issue. If I got hurt. My body would heal a little more dense than it was before. Doctors said if I wasn't careful I would get so heavy and dense that I would barely be able to move. Luckly for me, they said my heart would probably give out before that. Again, Jerks.

"There you go, Frank." The girl, Jolene, said, "That's 30 credits."

"Yeah, sure." I said as I fished the cash creds from my pocket.

She smiled and did some weird blinking as she handed me the sack of food. She was an odd one. She smiled a lot at me, turned pinkish in the cheeks and blinked fast before looking at me weird. She probably had some kind of condition. Social anxiety or allergies or something. Maybe she was a drinker. I didn't know.

"Thanks, Jo-Jo." I said as in opened the sack and pulled out the first 9 inch sandwhich. There were other shops, but this one was the only one on the whole station that had non-synth ingredients. If I resorted to synth food you knew it was life or death hunger.

She pointed at my big weird gun with a quick motion.

"You ever figure out how that thing works?" She asked.

"No, I just wave it at people and they usually don't bother trying to see what happens if I shoot." I replied around a mouth full of sandwhich that left mayo and mustard on the corner of my mouth.

"Maybe you can tell me about it at The Butt later." She said in a tone I didn't recognize as the ones I usually hear, "I'm off at 1700."

"Uh, yeah, sure." I replied. I would probably be there anyway. "Thanks for the grub, Jo. See ya later."

"Later, Frank." She said with a smile, "1700 don't forget."

Weird girl. Why would I forget to go drink after I ate my food? Some people, man.

I headed outside and dug the chrono in my pocket for the time amd decided to take another bite of sandwhich.

[member="Sabetha Tag"]

 

[Sabetha Tag]

It took a minute to sort out a) someone who would talk to her and b ) wake his silly arse up. Between him and another patron, she got two wildly differing descriptions of the fellow. One of which was laden with profanity. Enough that even Sabetha had to blink a bit. It wasn't until the pilot went stomping off that the bartender offered that Frank had probably gone to get food across the street- apparently telling the other fellow that might had ended in bloodshed and for some reason Sabetha came across as perfectly reasonable.

Which was accurate.

As long as the guy gave her back what she wanted, everything would be gravy.

With a sigh (Sabetha hated this sort of chit), she headed out again. Crossing paths with a big guy coming out of the shop. She hadn't noticed him the first pass, and only just the second one- he didn't actually match up with either description she'd been given (she didn't trust the pilot's invective laden version at all, and the other had been way to vague to be helpful).

The girl behind the counter however?

She was very happy to talk about Frank.

Sabetha grimaced as the girl sighed a third time, going into great detail about Frank's eyes.

"He always looks so pensive," she said, tilting her head to the side and smiling like someone had disconnected some important part of her brain. "Like, deep deep thoughts, ya know? You can see it in his eyes-"

"Look just the colour okay?"

Another sigh, was this woman okay? Suffering from mercury poisoning or something?

"Grey. Like the sea before a storm, the waves starting to-"

"Grey. Sea. Storm. Got it. Okay thanks for your help!"

Sabetha had never bolted so quickly out of a place before in her life.

She didn't think a man as handsome as this existed. If he did a black hole of admirers would probably have devoured the planet by now. Why were people such unreliable reporters? The one thing she HAD gotten that was useful was that Frank was apparently going to be meeting this woman at the bar in a little while. So back to the bar she went, looking for some middle ground between these descriptions.

[member="Hard Luck Frank"]

 

[Hard Luck Frank]

I plodded down the street as I finished the first of three sandwiches. It was good. Jo was a weird girl but boy could she make a sandwhich. I considered trying to date her but something told me dating someone to get closer to their sandwiches wasn't the right thing to do, besides, she probably wouldn't like me anyway, and she was weird. Can't forget that.

I stopped at another shop to grab a can of synth caff then headed slowly back to The Butt, which was funny in its own way. Because if anyone asked my plans the thought of saying 'I'm gonna go sit in The Butt and have some beers' made me laugh. And then it happened and it was too good to be true.

"Hey Frank," a fellow thug asked as he stood watching the door of Vonnie Mo's gentleman's club. "Where you going off to today?"

"The Butt." I replied around a mouthful of food that made my cheeks puff out.

"You're always in The Butt." He said back, which made me spit food before I could clamp my mouth closed.

"What can I say?" I said as I tried and failed to keep a straight face, "The Butt is my favourite place. It's well rounded and worth hanging onto."

"You're ridiculous." The guy replied shaking his head.

I swallowed and nearly choked.

"I need a drink from The Butt before I die." I told him as I walked by coughing.

"You're disgusting, Frank." He replied.

"You're just jealous." I weazed as the sandwich showed that it hated me for the bad jokes by trying to choke me to death.

With that I rushed the rest of the way to The Bonny Hutt and rushed to the bar for a drink.

No sense dying before I finished my sandwiches.




[member="Sabetha Tag"]