The Next Phase

[Anora Vahn]

Being in this place was most definitely muddling Anora's senses in a plethora of ways. Her head was by no means clear enough to let her focus on the area that way - something she noted that she most definitely needed to work on whether she liked it or not - so instead she kept her attention and eye sharp. There was movement that made her stiffen, but it had only been some drunk in search of more booze from a passing server.

She sighed through her nose and shift her gaze to Tyran once he spoke up, and she shifted to put her arms on the table and lean against them. "Sounds good," well, it didn't particularly sound good, but it was a plan either way. "When do we start setting things on fire?" she actually managed to grin with that question.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"Again, I'm starting to think I'm a bad influence on you." Tyran grinned back at her. "Soon, once we figure out which smuggling cartel is the smallest and weakest we'll use them to get information on the bigger ones and start dismantling their operations until Nogara gets pissed enough to come after us."

Tyran and Anora may have just been two people, but Tyran was a man with a destructive set of skills and Anora...well she had split his freighter into two pieces while fighting her sister, to say he was confident that they could wreck a cartel operation was an understatement.

 

[Anora Vahn]

"Well, I didn't disagree with you the first time, so..." Really though, it wasn't so much that he was a bad influence on her, it was simply the fact that there were much less restrictions on Anora just being who she was. It made things complicated for her in some cases; the inner struggle with what she believed versus what she was being taught. Yet here she was, without a wit of complaint about it.

So, she nodded. "Alright, I suppose I can put all things pyro-related aside for the time being." Not that she had anything personally on hand at the moment anyhow, but she did know how to throw things together that would combust. "So where do we start then?" she questioned. "I know what we're looking for, but shaking up every druggie we come across is going to get more frustrating than it will yield results."

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"That's why we don't shake down every druggie we come across." Tyran said simply. "You think I just walked into a nightclub for no reason? Do either of us look like we belong in here? No." He said shaking his head. "The ladies working in here will have the information we need, and if they don't their boss certainly will."

Tyran had dealt with enough crime bosses in his career to know that no matter how much they wanted to stay offgrid that they'd still want to use their illicit credits to sate their baser needs. "If none of the Twi'leks want to help us then I'll just cause a scene and force the manager out of his office and have some words with him and ask him to politely hand over the information we need. After that we go to work on the Cartel and rinse and repeat until we flush out Nogara."

 

[Anora Vahn]

His response caused Anora to give a (very) brief look around the room. "I could think of a few reasons." she answered once her gaze was set back on him. Yes, they had a job to do and she was more than aware of the fact. However, she was also very aware just what sort of appeal this place had to quite a lot of people.

But, she continued to listen rather than carry on about it. So her brow creased a tad and she leaned forward just a little more. "Cause a scene?" she repeated. "What sort of scene? I'd like to be well informed so that I don't end up shot or stabbed, please."

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"Don't you Jedi have a danger sense or something like that to tell you when you're in danger?" He asked her. "That should be all you need if I have to cause a scene." But to placate her and ward off a prolonged discussion about it. "I have no idea right now, but I'll let you know once I know what kind of scene I'm going to cause if I have to cause one."

He removed his helmet and rolled his neck a couple of times and looked around the room. It stank of cigarra smoke and other vices people liked to partake of in these kind of places. He beckoned the nearest Twi'lek server to come over to their table with his finger and then looked back at Anora as the server started to cross the room towards them. "Just sit there and try to look non-threatening."

 

[Anora Vahn]

"Usually, yes." the answer came almost before Tyran could finish asking the question. Normally Anora was pretty good at keeping herself out of danger, or at least knowing when it was coming at her. But right now, in this place? Hell, she couldn't even focus on the individual people in the immediate area around them.

But his following comment caused her to scoff. "Me? What's so threatening about me?" she groused as she gestured to him. Really she wasn't sure if that comment made her feel any better or worse about herself, all things considered.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"You look nervous and when the people who visit these kind of places see someone who looks nervous it makes them nervous. They don't know if you're undercover with the local security forces or something like that and most of the people in here wouldn't want what they are doing getting out into the public." Tyran said. "Grab a drink and loosen up a bit." He grinned at her as the server walked up to the table and gave a toothy smile at Tyran.

"Qaon toyid Do fa'kan dan?" She said with a sultry tone in her voice. What can I help you with?


She was speaking Ryl, the native Twi'lek tongue and Tyran wasn't as fluent in that as he was other languages, only knowing a couple phrases. "Nie dan tilor Libil?" Do you speak Basic? She nodded her head and smiled wider. "I'm looking for someone who knows how to move things from place to place without asking too much questions." He said putting on the fake swagger and charm. In another life Tyran was pretty sure he'd been a good actor in a holo-drama series.


She looked at Anora and then back at Tyran, losing a bit of that sickly sweet smile she put on for show. "I might know someone who can help you. They don't usually take house calls but things can always be negotiated." She smiled back at Tyran and ran a finger along the bottom of his jaw.


"Alright," Tyran said. "What's it going to cost me?"

"I'll put you in touch with my contact but you got to do something for me first," She said looking over her shoulder at a crowded table in the back of the club. "There's a Dug over there and he and his group aren't paying for the services me and the others are providing. Boss ain't doing anything about it either."

"Let me guess, the Dug is connected to some powerful people." Tyran said and the Twi'lek nodded. He sighed and grabbed his helmet. "Fine I'll go talk with the Dug, Anora this might be a good time to look out for getting shot, stabbed and or maimed." He said as he pulled on his helmet. "You stay here for the moment, my armor can take stronger hits than yours so I don't want you out in the open just yet. When things inevitably go south work around the flank through the crowd, they won't notice you. Once you have a good line of sight on a target, hit them with a stun round and don't stop shooting until they're all down. Okay?"

 

[Anora Vahn]

"I am not nervous, I am uncomfortable." Nora pointed out, though she was no longer looking at Tyran now that he had called one of the servers to their table. "There is a huge difference." And she didn't get any more comfortable when their table was approached and she heard that feminine voice. Anora made a grousing noise, rolled her eyes, and slouched back into her chair hard enough that it rocked and threatened to give way. Of course it didn't do as such, she was alert enough to not let herself fall over, but still.

Despite her current state of discomfort, the interaction across from her made Anora's brow crease and her lips to press into a thin, nearly invisible line. Her gaze shifted from Tyran to the Twi'lek, and for the first time she really studied one of these women up close - well, not personally close, but close enough. While the pair conversed, Nora's attention then went from the Twi'lek to herself and her brow pulled down even further than it had already been. A renewed hue of pink then colored her cheeks and she folded her arms very tightly against herself before averting her gaze once more to look anywhere but at the overly feminine bodies prancing around.

Thankfully, she was at least in tune enough with Tyran to realize when she was being spoken to, and therefore heard his plan as it was laid out. "Sounds simple enough." Well, simple enough for her at least. She wasn't the one who was going to be getting shot at. At least not right off the bat.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

Tyran started making his way across the nightclub floor to the booth where the Dug and his company were seated. It was a varied mix of species, a couple humans and Grans as was expected. It was the three Weequays that Tyran was surprised to see, this establishment was a little highbrow for them. The Dug looked up at him with a disgusted expression. "Hi chuba da naga murishani?" What do you want bounty hunter?

"Been told you aren't paying for the service here. That's going to change." Tyran said casually, his hand resting near his hip. "Doesn't look like you all are having any problem with credits so make this easy and cough of the money or I'll force it out of you."

The group all began laughing. Not an uncommon response when a group thought that they had an advantage because there was only one of him. "Tee meeto toe
apoya." Not gonna Happen. The Dug laughed back at him.

"Fine." Tyran said and drew his blaster. It was only after he'd done that, that he'd noticed the dark shadow that had fallen over them and he turned around to see a huge Togorian standing behind him. Tyran was not a short man but his head only came up to chest height on the giant feline-humanoid. The only thing Tyran could say as he tried to figure out how much this was going to hurt was. "Wow...you're a big one."

After that he felt sharp claws sink into the gaps around his shoulder plates and then he was flying through the air.

 

[Anora Vahn]

It had taken little effort for Anora to move through the club, if only because some of these people were easy to influence out of her way. However, it became hard to focus when she realized just what was going on ahead of her. A curse slipped past her teeth and she started to push and shove her way through just in time to see Tyran get tossed.

She brought a hand up and caught him with minimal effort and set him down before her blaster was brought up. She didn't bother attempting to stun the big guy, she worked on getting the others out of the way to keep them from causing any more trouble than they already had. The fact that another body had gotten involved seemed to alert a few other people close by, and soon enough there were shots fired from other places.

A table was flipped up with more force than Anora had meant, but it took the brunt of the damage and kept her from getting shot, at least from that direction. "This was not part of the plan!" she yelled out more than aware that he knew this, but feeling the need to state as such anyway.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

Tyran braced for impact with the far wall but nothing came instead he was floating off the ground. He knew right away what had happened but this time instead of complaining about Anora using her Force powers on him he yelled at her. "Throw me back at the Togorian!"

 

[Anora Vahn]

"I'm busy!" Anora had yelled back at him. The table she was using for cover was riddled with holes now, and it wasn't going to do her much good for very much longer. So with a frustrated noise, she hurled the heavy wooden table at the shooters, then shift her focus to Tyran. Picking him up was easy enough, but a shot that was fired connected with her shoulder, causing her to both cry out in startled pain, and drop Tyran again. It was times like this she really regretted giving up Eenia's lightsaber.

There really wasn't much else for her to throw in her immediate area, which caused her to quickly find a place to duck down so that she could attempt to focus again. Armored or not, her shoulder and part the upper portion of her arm were throbbing in pain, and it was hard to focus properly. She managed to get Tyran off his feet again however - wobbly at first - but rather than risk dropping him again, she did as she was asked and threw him towards the large beast before ducking back down into her hiding spot while she tried to figure out her own next move.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

One minute Tyran was floating in the air and the next he was dropped down onto his face and then being picked back up again and hurled through the air. Even though she had done as he had asked, being dropped and picked up so many times had dazed him a bit. It was only at the last instant that he remembered what he was going to do and ejected the beskar blade housed on his forearm gauntlet and sunk it fully into the chest of the Togorian.

Tyran continued forward with the momentum of the impact and rolled upwards, drawing a blaster in a smooth, well practiced motion and placed a trio of neat and precise shots into two nearby targets. The Dug he'd come to intimidated began to try and slink away but Tyran caught him by his scrawny neck and slammed him hard onto the table.

"Now you're going to pay for the damages, and pay up for pissing me off." He barked at the Dug.

Tyran heard footsteps rushing up behind him and timed his strike the the volume of the footsteps, driving an armored elbow into a poor soul's face the moment he came within striking distance of Tyran. Now that he had the Dug in his iron grip, the club had settled down as Tyran went through its pockets and found a nice hefty bag of credits. "That'll do nicely." Tyran said as he tossed the Dug into the booth where the confrontation had started. He pilfered a small chunk for himself and then tossed the rest to the Twi'lek who'd given him the task. "I'll expect to hear from your contact soon."

After that he went over to where Anora was and examined the blaster burn on her shoulder. "We really need to get you some beskar armor." He said to her. "Let's go get that tended to on the ship."

 

[Anora Vahn]

With the big guy down for the count, the rest of the troublemakers in the place seemed to think twice about what they were doing and backed off. Things settled down, and while Tyran dealt with the primary problem of the task at hand, Anora sat heavily in a chair and shifted her arm as much as she could so that she could look at her arm. Damn she should have put some focus into learning to heal...With this job, it really would have come in handy.

Her focus shifted when Ty approached her, and she made a face at him for his comment. "Pretty sure it was you who told me that no one would ever commission beskar armor for me." she pointed out. She got to her feet and hissed softly with the way her shoulder had shifted with the movement. There was no arguing from her about going to the ship and getting patched up, which could only mean that she was hurting pretty good at the moment.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"There are ways around that." Tyran said ignoring her attitude for the moment. "It just won't be cheap."

He didn't have to be a Force user to tell she was in some serious pain so when they got back to the Tal'galaar he activated the med droid he always kept on board. "I know it's not as efficient as your space magic healing, but it's quicker." He said to her. "Plus a few scars here and there aren't the worst thing in the world."

 

[Anora Vahn]

There was a noise made in the back of Anora's throat at that one. "Nothing we ever do is cheap." she pointed out with a shake of the head, but that was the last of her fussing over the matter.

Returning to the ship was much less eventful than their trip to the club had been, and once able to do so Nora sat herself heavily into the first available seat. "Well, I have no healing space magic, so at the moment I really can't fuss about the droid..." Well she could, but she wasn't going to. There was a lack of options and honestly she just wanted the relief.

 

[Tyran Numeck]

Tyran leaned against one of the bulkheads while the med droid tended to her with a healthy dose of bacta spray. "So no fancy laser sword, no space magic healing either. Just how far along in your training are you?" He asked as he crossed his arms.

"This is no knock against you but your trainer must not be doing a very good job." He'd seen first hand the raw power she could harness when she snapped his previous ship in half and almost caved in his house on Mandalore when she had night terrors. "You aren't a bad student, you soaked up all the information when I was training you on Mandalore like a sponge, yet your control over the Force doesn't seem as far along as it should. I mean you're not that much younger than me but they don't even trust you with a lightsaber but give small children training ones. That seems...off."

"Have they even started training you in basic swordplay yet?" He asked her.

 

[Anora Vahn]

Admittedly, attempting to watch the droid work on her shoulder was both difficult and uncomfortable, but her curiosity on the process was evident and wouldn't let her stop doing as such. Even when he spoke up about her training, or lack there of really, she hadn't shot him with any sort of heated look or anything of the sort. Mostly because he wasn't entirely wrong.

"I didn't even show a prowess for Force capabilities until I was eighteen or so." she informed him. "It was a very, very late start for Eenia and I both. My training started very heavily, but my command of the Force has always been lacking, unless it's been something physical or enhancing to my physicality." Eventually her gaze shifted so that she was looking at him instead of her shoulder. "I got hurt on a mission that took me out of everything for quite a while, and when I returned my Master had his own problems and issues he was dealing with. By the time all of that was sorted out, you came along and now here we are."

She sighed through her nose slowly, then shrugged her uninjured shoulder. "My sword technique has always been on par. That's where my confidence is when it comes to all of this Jedi, Force training. Everything seems to fall into place so much easier with a blade than it does when I'm trying to use the Force."

 

[Tyran Numeck]

"I've heard that the Jedi take on more than one apprentice, is that true?" He asked her as the droid finished up with her. "Seems like a counter productive way to train someone. I mean how are you supposed to help your apprentice reach their full potential if your focus is on more than one at a time?"

Sure the military trained more than one person at once, but the Force was different and that wasn't how the Jedi should train their recruits. Even a regular person like Tyran could understand that it took dedication from both master and apprentice for the apprentice to thrive.

"Well, like all things, it comes down to focus and commitment." He said as he walked to the storage area of the ship and returned with a jar of a clear liquid. "I think you remember what this is, you've certainly earned a drink after that scuffle." He grinned as he handed her the jar of potent tihaar homebrew.



Anora Vahn