Tatooine

[Bolt]

Of course we'd celebrate this trifling victory in a gor'ram bar.

 

The look on his face was more sour than the very drinks everyone around him guzzled down in the stupendous glory of their achievement. Taking down some over grown slugs and planting a flag in this litter box was no grand achievement by his standards. There was no conquest. Hell, these people probably wont even notice the difference between the Hutts we took down and the Vigos we replaced them with. This planet's citizens didn't feel conquered, not even liberated. This invasion was just another group of thugs to them, throwing their weight around while everyone else just tried to go about their lives. Oh, so there was a fancy new resort in orbit that would bring the planet income? Yeah right. All profit gets put right in a Vigo's pocket. If anything, these civilians might get a job cleaning the joint or dealing some cards, but that will just get swept up in the rising costs of living with this new, sparkly thing in orbit. This was not how you conquer.

 

Staring off into the distance, Bolt caught himself absently reaching for a glass in his detatched repulsion. When his fingers slipped over nothing and his stare turned bewildered at the empty table the grizzled veteran sneered at the memory of his sobriety, recalling for just a second why he didn't have whiskey in front of him. It was either that or going back to feeling nothing at all in that drenched oblivion he so neatly used to wrap himself.

 

Gods, why am I even in this dive? He wondered to himself as the narrow beam of his lighter sparked a cigarette. He was here because of her, and that precious little taking care of her made him feel. This was her fight, her reason for getting up in the morning, and she was his, so er fight was his fight. He took a draw off his cigarette as he looked across the bar at the warriors she had assembled, partially through contacts in Black Sun and some through her own efforts in searching for the galaxy's best and boldest. They fit the bill for warriors, maybe even Deathwatch material. He chuckled at himself at the thought of that righteous Mandalorian cause he had left behind so many years ago. The true Mandalorian way. That helmet probably stunk to high heaven after covering so many sweaty heads.

 

As his cigarette burned down, Bolt lit another, and another as the celebration carried on, wanting a drink and hating himself for it.

[Bolt]

All around him were people frothing at the mere mention of quick and what they assumed to be easy money. Money that they would inevitably turn around and waste on this same fluid garbage they were currently stupifying themselves in. Sure, he couldn't completely discredit them for falling to the bottle. He himself had spent countless years lost to it before Saint came along. But he obliviated himself to stop feeling that pit of dispair always gnawing at him from the inside, not under a pretense of living a life worth celebrating into the ground. Taking a life was easy once you turned everything off, but if you never had anything turned on in the first place you were a psychopath. If you were willing to kill for simple monetary gain, with no regard to the quality of the life you took, then you were even more frakked up in the head. That's why he always detested the Sith and their absolute disregard for anyone but themselves. The Jedi were righteous pricks, but at least they had a measure of respect for their enemies.

 

"Credits for killing weakness? You speak my language Sunner. How much per head or are we talking price per campaign?"

 

As sober and irritated he was being surrounded by this ilk, the cry of greed and sheer callousness that sang above the chorus of drunken revelry grated him like an entire day without a cigarette. Even under the booze boosted courage Bolt could smell fear. A large part of him wanted to simply ignore them all, but Saint said that this was the only way to build up the old Watch. He would have, too, if the source of his irk hadn't cast her slovenly gaze direct at him.

 

"This Sunner is paying big bucks vod!" Gorramit she's talking to me. "A break at last, come on over here."

 

"Call me brother again and it'll be your jaw that breaks, pup."

 

The words spilled out before he had a chance to catch them, but once they were out he found he didn't care if they did. He had seen warriors of fortune come and go countless times in the past, always first to talk and first to rush forward and catch shrapnel the at the mere mention of credits. None of these cretins new war, or even gave pause to the implications this mission would stir. Black Sun was going to throw the entire galaxy into a bloodbath for the prospect of making a quick buck. Soon they would be aligning themselves with an even worse kind that would kill you for the sport of it. Only two people in this cantina really knew what they were getting into, and the other one was sitting right next to him.

[Bolt]

A bewildered look creased his brow as Bolt watched the young woman completely lose her shit at the bar. Stll holding her booze the girl slammed her fists into the bar, causing a rather dull thud muffled in the sound of the crowd as she sliced open her hand on th shards of broken glass. She must have been drinking the light stuff, because the drink in her open wound didn't appear to burn. Even weirder, she wiped her bloody, booze covered hand across her face to make an X like she was from a Shogunite clan. Portia must have forseen what was about to go down, because she excused herself from the table and headed into the thick of the crowd, no doubt aiming to recruit a keen few to the squad.

 

In spite of the attempts at intimidation with the war paint, the girl took on a coy, seductive tone as she approached, which he would have found sexy in a messed up, crazy chick way if she hadn't started the conversation off doing the exact thing he had warned her against. Now Bolt was a both pissed off and a little turned on, which confused him and pissed him off even more. As if this little schutta knew anything about being a warrior. She bowed, laughing as she did so and he felt a righteous fire burn out from his gut to the tips of his fingers, twitching them refixively as he squeezed a trigger that wasn't there. As she ended with Honorably at your service. and stuck out her hand for a handshake of equals, Bolt could take no more. What did this money grubbing whore know of honor?

 

He reached out and clasped her hand fiercely, shaking it once to let the tension of the situation in her muscles lacken before he pulled with all his might, dragging her across the table. Before she could make a move his other hand was crashing down against the side of her face. With no where to recoil her jaw took the full force of his blow, cracking with ease for the large man. Still clutching Rose's hand Bolt flung her off the table, still seated with his eyes on Portia as she deliver the same speach he had heard her rant a hundred times before. His hand fell below the table and drew out his slugthrower in case Rose remained conscious and wanted to carry on the fight, but for now he was content enough to let the lesson lie now that he had shown that he wasn't a liar.

[Bolt]

For getting her jaw broken, Rose seemed to recover stoutly, all that ire and angst wiped away with a good thump and some bacta with what smelled like Kuatian scotch. His nostrils flared at the memory, but the thought didn't even occur to him to take the offer. The revolver slipped back into the holster at his thigh as he stood up from the table.

 

"I don't drink." He said as he lit another cigarette.

 

He looked Rose over again, now that he was standing and could get a full measure. A tad scrawny, but still worth a tumble even with the jaw brace, and a fair amount of crazy to boot. She wore the newer style of armor, with plates only covering the vital areas, and the color was enough to scream 'shoot me first'. Her weapons were few, but they seemed at a glance well modded and calibrated. Maybe she wasn't the type of Mandalorian he was looking for for Death Watch, but she was the kind Portia would no doubt invite. It was the ones with no fervor of their own that she looked for so that she would have someone else to throw that righteous rhetoric at.

 

"As far as our culture," He paused to consider his words, not wanting to immediately discredit Portia's cause. "That shit starts with the individual. You can't sit around waiting for the return of some bygone golden age. You want better Mandalorians, be a better Mandalorian."