Do You Feel in Charge?

It was unnerving, the sound of the droids going about their work. It was a soulless sound. When sentient beings worked, there was a rhythm to it. Breath and sweat and kinetic motion. Droids just couldn't replicate it. They just had a tempo.

On, or off.

Even so, Virti couldn't deny that it was efficient. Droids didn't need breaks for lunch or water. They just continued on and on until their program told them to stop or the servos went bad.

They had their purpose, as was the case with all things. Virti was included in that demographic as well.

As a young man of 19, he'd been assigned to this little gathering as transportation specialist and extra muscle. The muscle part was mostly for show because they weren't allowed to carry weapons of course. But someone, somewhere in their little ragtag gang had found out that V had been a student of Teras Kasi for several years now. Maybe they thought he himself was a weapon, as some TK artists tended to be.

The young Twi'lek didn't see himself much as a weapon, or dangerous in any sense unless he was in a cockpit. He wasn't such a spirited young man that he felt overly indestructible, especially given his background. But there was something that always shifted in his core when he got into the pilot seat of a ship, large or small. It took away the feeling of being under-protected and naked in conflict. Things were just simpler in a ship. If you didn't like talking to someone, you switched off the com. If they blasted you, you blasted back. The part that always amused him, was that he himself wasn't all that graceful when he wasn't practicing his art. But when you put him in the pilot seat of a fighter, he could make that ship dance.

Atmo or vacuum didn't matter. When Virti strapped in, his ship became his armor, and he was as flexible and dexterous in that armor as a disjointed slave girl.

Today though, he was mostly there to make sure the goods that Lasedri was angling for, got from point 'A' to point 'we win'.  

He reached into his pocket behind Genevieve and took out a pack of cigarillo's and his custom lighter. He was getting bored and his tells were starting to show themselves. But he just looked at them and with a wistful sigh, put them back into his pocket. Now wasn't the time to smoke. He was trying to quit that habit anyway. It was a comfort to him, an oral fixation that he needed to not fidget. Virti had never been a slave to the smokes, he had always just really liked the smell and taste. 

As he put the small pack back in his coat pocket, he fingered another little box that he'd brought with him. Something he'd been working on for a while now, a little pet project to help pass time between assignments. He removed the small clear box and removed a little toothpick about two inches long. Both ends were dull and so it really couldn't pick a tooth exactly, but the shape held true to the common dental instrument and so that's what it became in his mind. And though both ends were blunted, only one of those ends had a notch in it that ran around the diameter of the little pick. For some reason, he hesitated when he held it to his lips, and double checked the little sliver of wood. Then popped it between his lips with the notched side sticking out.

"Any idea," he said idly with his teeth closed around the pick and hands stuffed back into pockets, "if this contact of yours has a history of being late?" It really wasn't his place to bring it up if he'd been honest with himself. He was a junior member of Spaete Suki and only here to move things. But while he didn't have what most late teenagers in a war seemed to have in that sense of invincibility, he certainly made up for it with a lack of vocal control. 


@gen

Geneviève glanced towards the blonde, irritated that she was being so forward about her feelings even though she was simply echoing all their own thoughts. This was not sitting well, indeed. The Chandrilan dug her hand inside her coat a little deeper, acquiring a full grip on one of the vibroblades as she cast her inquisitive eyes in the direction of the droids slaving away on the far end of the expanse. "The hell could be keeping her so long if she's got a damn luxury taxi business?"

Her stance immediately shifted as her ears caught the distinct clop clop clop of a woman's heels, and their small cohort all turned about to acknowledge the arrival of the redhaired businesswoman. She casually strutted down the stairway leading from the flight control room overlooking the docking bay with an exaggerated, serpentine waggle, enormous bosom jutting out of her cream dress and trembling with each step. The young Rebel caught her eyes fixating on that feature and rolled them to the side, her lips curled in a sneer betraying both disdain and jealousy. She readjusted her posture once more, removing her hand from inside her coat and folding her arms to signal impatience.

A couple of the working droids interrupted their task upon sighting the corporate diva and took step behind her, next to the lightly armed guards who made up her greeting posse - a human, a nautolan, and a pair of Trandoshans. It was obvious that she was prepared for some sort of betrayal, though Lasedri wondered what exactly she was afraid of. The woman approached in rhythmic stride, hips swaying ridiculously. Geneviève bit her lip and lifted her eyes to the ceiling for a moment after alighting upon the quite purposefully displayed frontal engorgement of cleavage. "Really?" she muttered.

Taking one last deep breath, the young woman in black focused her gaze on one of the guards as she spoke to the endowed redhead. Her voice was saturated with feigned confidence but underlined with nervous suspicion. "I didn't come here for the view, lady. You're raising a lot of questions arriving so late."

The businesswoman chuckled with equally feigned playfulness, her crisp footsteps coming to a halt as she took her place about five meters from the Rebel ambassador. "Of course not," she replied facetiously, giving Geneviève's party a mocking once-over, briefly cocking an eyebrow at the twi'lek. "But I do know my clientele... and how fond they are of such things. I was certain you wouldn't mind giving a lady a little grace for her charm."

Virti Le'shahn ,Cora Passek

Virti's face contorted with rage as he realized the double cross that was going down before his eyes. He sprang forward, forgetting his place completely and shouted, "Hey, now you wait just a kriffin' second! Our people need that bacta! We are out there dying-" He stopped mid sentence and turned his shoulder to halt his forward motion, snapping his fingers like a professional con artist and torquing his elbow toward his body as soon as the goons stepped forward, "-and of course we will be happy to find another supplier and thank you for your business!!"

He wasn't dumb. He could take one, maybe two of them. But they were outnumbered and as his eyes revealed the truth about the "no weapons" clause, they were outgunned as well. Between the betrayers cadre, he counted at least two E-11 blasters. There was no use fighting a battle they'd just get gunned down in. 

So he turned in mid-step and mid-sentence and walked right back to his companions with mock confidence, muttering so only they would hear, "....I vote for let's get the hell out of here while we can still walk, show of hands...?"

Internally, he was livid. All over the known galaxy, freedom fighters were dying in less than spectacular fashion because they didn't have proper medical supplies and not enough doctors to administer meds when they did have them. Virti was a damn fine pilot, and a decent mechanic. But while he could patch holes in anything that could fly, patching holes in people was a different story entirely.  One thing was certain. When it came to fighting the Empire, the resistance was losing. Hard. Black market suppliers like this one knew it, what's more. They could charge whatever they wanted for as long as they wanted as long as they had a demand. 

And there was always a high demand for medicine. 


@gen,Cora Passek