[Novgorod] Grognar's Last Chance Shop & Gulp

[Ledo G. Prent]

Gesturing for the barkeep, he held two fingers aloft, gesturing to his rancid drink and then to each of his newfound friends, indicating he'd pay for a round.

"No offense meant, mate. Deepest respek. Me linna' work. I trus' opera'ors who ge' th' fuckin' job done. Solid lads, them. Neva' groused o'er th' pay neitha. Which was shit. Tha' ship we jacked was a beaut. Republic model, back whennat meant sumfin'. Woulda took ten? twen'y otha' bli'ers t' ge' tha' job did th' way we di' it."

He glanced at each of his drinking buddies.

"So wha' abou' you? Wha's your story?"

[Tevit Ramastan]

Thieves and underpaid. Yep, that fit the stereotype perfectly, Tevit thought. This was precisely the sort of thing he'd been trying to get away from, but it seemed no matter where he went, he just couldn't escape it.

Stuck in his sour mood, Tevit grumbled, "I'm supposed to be the new fleet mechanic for a large operation, but so far none of that fleet's shown up, yet. Two fuckin' days late." He nearly said it was for the Alliance, but then remembered to keep his big mouth shut about things like that. "But, let me guess, you're just passing through, right? Refuel and go?"

Oh, please let that be the case, he wished, that way he wouldn't have to suffer this for too much longer.

[Bette Davis]

"Ship broke down," Bette said. "Getting it looked at." She looked sideways at the Nehantite. Fleet mechanic? Not likely with the Empire. Their views on non-humans was decidedly narrow.

She accepted the new drink, and choked it down. "What th' hell is this? What happened to the beer I had before?!"

[Tevit Ramastan]

The Nehantite's ears immediately perked and he turned to face Bette, appearing for all the world as an entirely different man than the bitter one who had just been in his seat.

"Ship's broken, huh? Might I ask what's wrong with it?" his question was instinctive, and he even pulled a bit of a smirk as he said, "Whatever it is, you hand that job over to me, I'll have it fixed for you faster than whoever's got now, at a competitive rate."

[Bette Davis]

"Hyperdrive crapped out," she said. "Thankfully I could limp here. But it's sort of a specialized case and the mechanic is already neck deep in it. Wouldn't want to upset him."

Didn't really want to draw attention to the Imperial TIE Defnder sitting in the repair bay, either. She picked up her glass, grimaced at it, and then chugged it down. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, gasping for air.

[Mara Tallen]

The half-breed was just a little too pleased with herself at the blonde's reaction to her presence. She took her sweet time answering, too, watching poor Miriya struggle as if she were a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar again. It wasn't at all nice of her.

John certainly wouldn't approve.

Mara sighed inwardly and took a long sip from her drink upon its arrival. "As far as I know," she began, purring for a brief moment as the drink bit back the way it was supposed to. "Glayde is still aboard the ship."

Another sip, and she wondered absently where Morgan had gotten off to.

Tilting her head, the redhead regarded the blonde with a smile. "Why? Doing something he'd disapprove of?"

[Serasai Onashi]

"Then the target of your sexual congress is a consentual liason? This was not anticipated. I will adjust my parameters accordingly."

"You do that," Onashi laughed. If the thing wasn't a droid, Onashi was sure it would be making fun of him. Even then, it was still a good joke.

"Is this your intended target? I can assign subroutines to assist you in establishing rapport."

"It isn't my intended target," Onashi said, grinning. "First of all, she's a hologram. Secondly, it's her body type that caught my attention. I know a woman with a very similar one. And, finally, what that hologram is selling. Racy undergarments. Women put them on for the express purpose of men taking them off."

[Ledo G. Prent]

He had a laugh at the fortunes of his drinking partners. Either states of disrepair or waiting for them to happen. On a heap like this? Yeah that was par for course. He nodded to Tevit.

"All doll'd up bu' no party t' go to, issit? Fortune pisses onnus evenly, giv'n enough time. I hadda rule, er, still 'ave it. Rule a' three. Wait three days an' if shit don't get sorted, y' move th' fuck on. Keeps y' honest wif yasself. Keeps ya from rottin' on a stool an' chasin' a hope."

At mentioning passing through, he nodded, tilting his drink back a bit.

"Yeh. Tha's the rumor. Ain't my say, ain't my boat. Jus' in an' out."

He gave a laugh when Bette grimaced at the drink.

"Tha'?"

He sniffed.

"Me proffession'l opinion is...tha's clear. Bottle's clean, an' prolly won't make y' blind. Tastes like roi' fuckall an' speeder fuel though. I don't recommend savorin', love."

[MARCUS]

The droid examined the dimensions.

"Thirty-four inch bust, twenty-five inch waist, thirty-six inch hips. No exact matches found within Novgorod's crew roster but I note thirty-one similar proportions with logged biometrics."

Reacting to the mercenary's commentary about lingerie, MARCUS was predictably distracted.

"Explain the function of these garments. The relative price is expensive, and the craftsmanship is highly detailed. They serve no discernible function to protect against element exposure, and you yourself stated their supposed primary function is to be disposed of immediately. If this is true Serasai, I do not recommend making a purchase at this establishment. It is an inefficient use of funds."

[Selinica Miriya]

Miriya heaved back another heavy gulp of the nameless beer and thudded the tankard back on the bartop a mite harder than necessary or intended. A grimace was evident on her soft, fair-skinned face and she tapped on the side of the tankard.

“This.” Her grimaced turned faintly toward something more pleasant and fun when she looked again at the half-felacatian woman. “I may or may not have promised not to do it… on account of… well, more his grief over the last time and lesser, but still important, my wounded pride.”

She turned her face back with a degree of love to the vessel of marginally acceptable alcohol and lifted for another sip.

“My darling brother seems to think I can’t hold down drinking without trouble following in my wake, or something similar, anyway.” She grinned with a slight narrowing of the eyes, a marked look of mischief and snorting derisively. “He hasn’t seen me in years and he thinks he knows me from one isolated incident.”

She laughed, sloshing back another healthy glug.

"Drinking problem, hah!" Her voice raised in the slightest. "I drink, I might get drunk... no frakkin' problem!"

[Tevit Ramastan]

As Bette turned down his offer, Tevit tapped out a message on his comm to his new employer.

Second day here, almost into the third. Still no word from you. Need to know if our deal is still on and I should be expecting to be contacted soon, or if I should move on.

-Tevit Ramastan

"Yeah, figured I'd give it another day," the mongoose grumbled. "If nothing else, I can always go back to the racing circuit."

He regarded the drink before him with suspicion, doubly so after watching Bette's reaction to it. Deciding it might not be in his best interest to try it himself, at the moment. As the bar began to fill up quickly, he tapped out another message to the contact he had been given for his supposed employer.

Numerous new arrivals. Suspect there may be some Empire presence. Please contact me via this comm before attempting personal contact. New meeting place may be needed. Please reply.

-Tevit Ramastan

[Serasai Onashi]

"Thirty-four inch bust, twenty-five inch waist, thirty-six inch hips. No exact matches found within Novgorod's crew roster but I note thirty-one similar proportions with logged biometrics."

"My dear lad, that's an amazing gift you have there," Onashi said, pondering the many uses for a walking database of information about the women aboard the Novgorod. The implications were exciting.

"Explain the function of these garments. The relative price is expensive, and the craftsmanship is highly detailed. They serve no discernible function to protect against element exposure, and you yourself stated their supposed primary function is to be disposed of immediately. If this is true Serasai, I do not recommend making a purchase at this establishment. It is an inefficient use of funds."

"The function of these garments is to be taken off, either by a man, or by the woman wearing them for the man's pleasure. It increases sexual arousal and makes for great foreplay before a good round of sexing," Onashi continued his lecturing. "And sex, my good man, is all the reason we need for these."

[MARCUS]

MARCUS spent a much higher portion of processing power teasing out this logical fallacy.

"The act of removing garments to access genitalia serves to intensify desire for sexual congress? This anticipation is irrational. An analogy. Solving an equation may require time and resources, but the solution is a fixed value. To assume your irrationality, the recommended course of action would be to give your intended mate a garment that is heavy, fully-covering, and difficult to remove. This should maximize your effect."

[Mara Tallen]

The half-breed blinked, tilting her head back to her drink, amber eyes searching the tall, glowing glass as if for an answer. There were words balanced on the tip of her tongue, none of which were particularly nice.

Words about John, his insane need to have everything around him in order, his need to fuss and worry over everyone under his charge as if he were a mother hen. Granted, she mused, many of those same reasons were why she'd fallen in love with him all those years ago - they were things she'd needed in her life and she'd gravitated to him like a moth to a flame.

Shit.

Mara blinked and drained the rest of her glass, slightly taken aback at her sudden introspection. She lifted her right hand and motioned for another as she caught the barkeep's eye. The fingertips of that same hand tossed the man a cred-chit and nodded.

"No problem, Miriya? You sure about that?" the woman replied with a wicked wink and smile that was equally so.

[Serasai Onashi]

"There are some guys who do enjoy that. But the point of these silken lovelies is to hint, or promise perhaps is the better term, at what is underneath them."

He led MARCUS into the larger-than-it-seemed store, and pulled a bra from the stand, ignoring the glare he was receiving from the sales clerk, an older twilek woman with massive assets of her own.

"See, this is what's called a push-up bra. It is made to elevate a woman's breasts and make them seem firmer and larger than they actually are," Onashi smirked as he watched the droid's 'eye' focus on the garment. "By the time this is off, one of three things may happen: The man may be happy with the woman's breasts' natural size and heft; he may dislike them but the allure of sexual intercourse is too much and he continues to have sex with the woman; or, he may just leave, though depending on the woman, he may hurt his reputation by doing so."

He tossed the lingerie to MARCUS and rifled through another set of bras and panties, looking at them measuringly before choosing a fiery red set. He grinned and looked at the price, and then at the matron, a glint in his eyes.

[MARCUS]

His photoreceptor blinked a few times, and he examined the undergarments as he was given them, the processor fan at his core spinning up.

"Serasai, there is a surprising amount of deception involved in intercourse. Accentuate. Disguise. Deceive. These techniques suggest an adversarial encounter, not one in which there is an open dissemination of data. The nuances of these interactions appear to have inherent conflicts of interest within."

By now the droid was covered with a small layer of lingerie, and working on untangling a particularly frilly piece from one of his hands.

"You appear to be planning many such deceptions."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi paused, though he was still pondering the set of undergarments in his hands.

"Bitches love games, my friend," Onashi said seriously. He fixed MARCUS with an equally serious expression. "Bitches love games."

[MARCUS]

A grinding sound came from the droid's processing core as he accessed his archives. His photoreceptor dimmed as he beeped.

"Canine. Female. From the course of our previous conversations, Serasai, I feel it would be redundant of me to advise against this. Catastrophic inefficiencies aside, you are preparing to violate major social mores of at least 47,085 species."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi stepped up to another section in the shop, pulling a black bustier off the rack and holding the lacy red ones next to the black garment as if weighing them.

"Never tell me how many rules I'm breaking," Onashi said with a grin. "I'll just want to break more. And a bitch isn't just a female canine, but also can be a term for females of almost any species. It's a good thing to know, since in some places, bitch is the actual term for a woman, and if you use anything else you might find yourself mugged, stripped of everything of value, and a slave."

[MARCUS]

A long pause, and the droid ventured again.

"I understand this concept, Serasai. Language in most cultures is an evolving communications medium. As culture adapts, so to language. This is a subroutine I voluntarily do not access, as references to insular slang, diction, and jargon may be missed by some participants in a conversation. If this is inefficient, I will correct this procedure."

The photoreceptor blinked once.

"Complete. Now, we have spent an inefficient amount of time choosing garments. I suggest you pay this bitch and exit the premises."