Noventa - A Star Wars Story

Hin get's an incredilous look on his face as he continues to stare at the ceiling. "What?! No, of course not! How the.....how could I even do something like that? First, I have no money. Second, I can't think of anyone stupid enough to try and kill an Imperial arms merchant. Three....have your logic processors completely fried?! It would never work and then I'd be sure to have him kill me."

Still, the thought was sort of a nice one. To know that he was gone forever. Hin sighed, knowing his former masters it wouldn't matter. They'd probably have set up a legion of bounty hunters for life just to carry on their vendettas forever.

“I don’t know if I have really known anyone who is happy and free at alive all at the same time,” says Clementine. He undercuts the potential solemness of this statement by almost immediately following up with “Have you considered having him,” and here he extended his manipulator arms vertically, the grasping claws at the top going horizontal and the top two claws of each twitching in air quotes with each syllable “‘tak-en care of’?”

Hin grows sullen at the prospect. "Big scores don't happen for people like me. Even if it did I don't know what the heck I'd do with it anyway. I'd still have to run, I'd never just be able to be happy....and free....and alive at the same time."

"Chase after the big score and you're likely to wind up dead. They are one in a billion, and I don't like those odds."

Clementine seems taken aback, in that he literally shifts his weight backwards, his leg servos whirring to balance and carry the weight. "Every-one owes favor. You abrade my back, I abrade yours." He shifts back to a neutral position. "Or, you could find a big score." A small light (part of an array on the side of the housing of his photoreceptor, maybe part of how he judges distance with a monocular photoreceptor?) starts blinking, as if in excitement at this plan.

"Thanks," Hin offered a conciliatory tone, though one that didn't seem to be fully believe what Clem was saying. In all honesty, he was hoping that the droid couldn't parse such vocal nuance.

"Maybe I will....," his face grew a bit more firm. "But I don't take charity! Life doesn't give anything for free, and I don't owe favors!"

Clementine bobbed, conceding the point. There weren't many things that Clementine thought he knew more about than someone else.

"You should ask Kaneesa," he says instead. "Kaneesa knows lots of people. If anyone can find you a way off of Noventa, it is Kaneesa. And you can be safe here until he finds a smug-ahl-er to get you out." He tries a comforting pat with his manipulator, landing somewhere on the blanket but missing Hin'biki's actual body. "Kaneesa will help you."

"I can't risk my life in hope for bad memory."

He heaved a deep sigh, "It's how I've stayed alive this far."

Eyes closed, embraced by the blackness, Hin tried to steady his heart, "I need to get the hell of this planet."

Clementine expands slightly. "Oh. Well, if he is not the Emperor, it cannot be that bad," he says.

"There are lots of bucketheads. And lots of Twi'leks. And bucketheads aren't like droids -- you cannot tell them all one thing very easily. And then they might forget." Clementine pauses. "And even droids forget things. I forget lots of things."

Hin didn't much feel like eating. As much as his body could use the food, the stress just made him nauseous at the current circumstance. "No....but it was one of his arms dealers."

"And when it's just one of you versus one rich, crazy organic, it can feel like they're everywhere. And I'm sure he's let the bucketheads know to keep an eye out for a fugitive slave." He stared up at the ceiling as he reclines way back. "I knew I should have just stowed away on a junker when I had the chance. I shouldn't have waited till I had enough money."

Clementine leaned and reached forward and nudged the can with one fist-sized manipulator. "Organics do not absorb nutrients through their eyeballs."

He leaned back. "The Galaxy is full of crazy rich organics. Only one of them was everywhere at once, and that was the Emperor." Clementine hunched suddenly, somehow conveying fear despite his huge size. "You did not run away from the Emperor, did you?"

"He doesn't like losing his property," Hin said continuing to stare down, deep into the can, like it somehow held his future.

"He's powerful, he's crazy, and he's rich....and the people with the blasters all work for him....somehow."

Clementine nod-bobs. "Masters do not like that, no they don't." A much shorter pause. "But you seem to think he is very mad. Hunt you for ever and ever mad. Did you take something he liked?"

"Wh-What guy?" Hin perked up both surprised and confused. The totality of what he'd said last night was still only coming back to him in fits and starts. But finally his brain caught up.

"O-Oh....him." Hin grew very quiet and almost seemed to sink into the couch. There was a moment when it seemed that the twi'lek was about to speak, but only slipped further into a sullen silence. Just the thought of the life he'd fled made his heart beat quickly and his breath to quicken.

"I....ran away."

"Oh, sure." Clementine bobbed slightly by tilting at the hips, and then waited another solid minute before speaking, leaving Hin'biki to eat, think, or stare until then.

"So did you do something to make this guy very mad?" he says at last, his voice its usual overly loud conversational volume.

Hin was more focused on the can, and trying to collect his own thoughts. He hadn't even touched the spoon, just staring blankly at it as he pondered what he could possibly do to get off-world. He didn't have enough money to go far. Not unless there was some particularly charitable pilot out there, and he wasn't likely to find one of those at the Noventa spaceport.

Even if he did, he'd have little money to set up any kind of life for himself on a new planet. He sighed. Back to being homeless.

When the droid spoke, he perked up only slightly, "Wha-? Oh..."

He looked around suddenly spying all the different cups of liquid. "Th-Thanks."

He then went back to contemplating his fairly crappy life.

Clementine watches Hin'biki's rise and fall without exterior reaction, perhaps because by the time he might react Hin'biki has become stationary again.

He reached out to take the can only to almost scald himself on its bottom. "Ow!"

"Be careful, it is hot," says Clementine, redundantly, and releases it only after asking "Do you have it?" and getting an affirmative.

He lowers himself down on his leg-pistons and watches Hin'biki. If the Twi'lek doesn't seem to notice after a minute, he says "There is water and other stuff if you are thirsty." He continues hovering, either in droidly awkwardness or anxious mother-henning, it's hard to say.

Hin starts at the sound, his mind and body trying to gauge what mode to be in. A half remembered panic had brought him up, but the growing familiarity with his surroundings seemed to abate it. Then, only to remember why he had been panicked in the first place. Clem's approach managed to distract him momentarily from his looming dread, as Hin's eyes descended from the droid's sensory array to the can in its manipulator.

His mouth hung agape for a second, just staring at the can, then the spoon, then the can again. Finally he shook his head, as though trying to clear it of its fog. "No! I have to go! I don't have time!"

He threw off his small mountain of blankets and attempted to stand up, but immediately his head began to swim and his eyes lost their focus. With an unceremonious plop he staggered back down to the couch limply. "I.....have..."

His chest heaved with a deep breath, "O....Okay, fine. Maybe some breakfast first."

He reached out to take the can only to almost scald himself on its bottom. "Ow!"

Lightning fast he drew his hand back from the heat with a vexed look. Turning to the blankets next to him, he grabbed up the corner of one and made a second attempt. He gripped the can and made to pull it from Clem's iron (almost literally) grasp.

Clementine rounded with the groats. "Oh yes!" he boomed, and walked over towards the couch, holding out the can, spoon still in, in one manipulator. He held it out towards Hin'biki, a little closer than normal social mores about personal space would dictate. "Be careful, it is hot." The groats were actually a very edible temperature, although perhaps in need of a layer of blanket to hold the can. Either the earlier failures had given Clementine a sense of it, or Hin'biki's awakening had interrupted at a good time.

In the basement of the bar, Hin finally began to stir. After all the work, and the stress, and the sorrow, his body could simply not handle it any more and so it slept...and slept, and slept, and slept. Even for as "early" as he had "gone to bed" he just continued to sleep. One couldn't get back a healthy body with just one solid night's sleep, but it was a start.

And so, he finally opened his eyes, peering at the shelves. He'd woken up in some strange places in his few years, so not knowing exactly where he was, was about par for the course. But as he roused, and his mind started to vaguely piece itself back together, the quiet peace of sleep was beginning to give way to dawning reality.

With little warning, he sat stark upright with a gasp, "Oh no!"

He was half-stopped by the mound of blankets, but otherwise unperturbed. Hin just stared blankly forward trying to come to grips with the situation.

[Open to Codpiecers]

Hin'biki had been laid down to rest on the basement's couch, which was kept considerably cleaner than any of the public-facing upholstery. Clear care had been taken to make the over-exhausted Twi'lek comfortable, although not always with the best awareness of what exactly that meant for organics in general. Organics radiated heat, and got upset if it wasn't contained, so there were blankets (lots of blankets; Kaneesa had intervened to make sure Hin'biki wasn't smothered).

Organics needed hydration. Clementine had put a metal canteen of water nearby. As the evening went on, half-forgetting he had alread addressed this need, and half-wondering if Hib'biki might want something else, he had made additions. There was a sealed can of cheap lum. There was a glass of the one cocktail Clementine could reliably make, the one where you dropped a shot of high-proof distilled alcohol into a glass of low-proof fermented alcohol (it had gone quite flat). There was a small neon bottle of a vile, supposedly spice-infused energy drink marketed as "StimPACC," that was normally served at a steep markup to flagging customers.

Organics needed sustenance. As the sun rises, Clementine is pushing a spoon around in a can of ready-to-eat breakfast groats. One manipulator holds the spoon, and the other holds the can firmly on the small heating plate. The remains of the first can, spilled by a less delicate arrangement, have been clumsily mopped from the floor. Smoke rises from the room's trash compactor, where lie the carbonized remains of the second. Clementine had focused solely on keeping it steady and lost track of cooking times. He hadn't noticed the fate of the zeroeth can, which he dropped while trying to scrounge in the Codpiece's storage space for anything palatable, and then stepped on. Several hundred kilos of droid had all but fused the puny can to his foot, an increasingly faint trail of groats marks his progress around the room.

His vocoder produces a staticky-off key tune. It's something Kaneesa plays, but not even a song -- it's just his slitherhorn warm-up scales.