"Nice talking to you too," Bianca said, then entered the room. It was dark and dingy and smelled like something had died. She couldn't tell if it had been a womp rat or a person, but either way it was enough to make her nearly vomit, and she'd been to some awful places before. The broker sat at a table, a flickering portable light placed precariously on his cluttered desk. He stood up with a smile, showing yellowed teeth. His skin was light, covered in a thick coating of sand and dirt, and his hair greying and matted.
"What've you two got there?" he asked, leaning forward.
"Nabooian bracelet. A genuine one, not a fake." Bianca swallowed hard, trying to spin a lie. "I shot a handmaiden and took it from her."
Calm, he tapped into her free hand as she handed the bracelet over. The man took it gently and examined it under the pale light of the lamp, which looked ready to fall off of the giant mountain of paper it was resting on.
"What you say is true," the man sneered, his strange accent masking the words in a thin layer of slime, "Well worth the 7,500 credits. Would you like your payment in cash, or straight to a b-"
"Cash, for sure," Winston interrupted. If they stayed in this damn place for much longer Bianca would probably end up shooting the guy. She had a history of shooting slimeballs. "Immediately, if at all possible."
"For sure," the broker said, producing a large bag of credit coins. "Do you need me to count out the amount so you know we are not shortballing you?"
"We'll take your word for it," the bounty hunter said, picking up the bag and heading straight for the door.
The stormtroopers didn't even turn around when they walked out, something that surprised and also pleased Winston, for it left the blaster wide open. In a motion he'd done a thousand times, he gently slipped the S-5 from the man's holster.
"You two have a nice day!" Winston said cheerfuly over his shoulder, keeping the gun in front of him.
Thank you, Bianca tapped onto Winston's hand, then slid the gun from him.
"Oh, this'll come in handy," she smiled. Her wrist felt light and bare without her bracelet, but she forced it from her mind. They good as had the ship, and all they'd need was a droid.
"Now, do you want to get the fuel or the droid?" Mos Eisley was divided up into sections of small popped-up stalls that sold just about anything you could ask for. Unfortunately, she was practically illiterate in anything beyond Basic and a smidge of Huttese.
"Hm………" he tapped his chin thoughtfully as he handed her the bag of credits as well. One benefit of the A280 was that it was menacing as hell. The rifle was longer than his arm, coated in an all-black plastic body that was all business. It was powerful enough to punch through wooden and even some stone walls, along with any personal energy shield someone might have. It was the perfect deterrent of any potential robber, so Winston always like to have it at the ready. "Fuel, since that would be more necessary than the droid." He was a decent but not great pilot, but the ship wouldn't get off of the ground if it had no fuel. "Do you have a place that wouldn't rip us off too badly?"
"I heard there was a guy somewhere in Mos Espa, a Gran who sells fuel for pretty cheap. He's got ties to the Hutts, though. Might have some spice too. 'Course if that fails you can always blast him and get out."
Bianca narrowed her eyes, trying to see through the thick clouds of sand that flew up whenever anything moved. And they said Mustafar was galactic hell. She'd rather be burned alive all at once than roast slowly, thank you very much.
"I can try for a droid, or steal one and pick off the restraining bolt if I don't have enough credits," she said, shrugging. "I'm guessing we want an Artoo unit?"
"Uh, duh," he said, waving his hand in front of his face to try and keep the sand from getting in it. It was a fruitless endeavor, so he settled with pulling the collar of his shirt over the bridge of his nose. "God damnnit….Where's my bandanna? Did I end up leaving the bar with it, or did it fly off as I was getting my ass kicked?"
It was actually in his back pocket, the corner of the red cloth sticking out like it was trying to escape. He, of course, had no memory of slipping it in there and had no way of seeing it since it was behind his back.
"Check your pocket," Bianca said, "You're lucky you tucked it there at about ten shots, else that Wookiee'd have tried to strangle you with it." Her own bandanna was stuffed haphazardly into her satchel, so she dug it out and slid it above her mouth. She felt like she'd breathed in half the Dune Sea already, and had no desire to torment her lungs further.
"You get the fuel, I'll get the droid, and we meet up at the docking bay in two or so pieces. Then we get the hell off of this dustball and to wherever we want."
The bandanna was swiftly wrapped around his face, offering at least some protection against the sand. It would have to do, since there was no real way of completely avoiding the damn stuff. It becomes the normal after a while, but the unpleasant feeling of waking up with a mouthful of sand never went away.
"I will see you there," Winston said, his smile obvious even through the cloth on his face as they split up, the Corrilian going right as Bianca headed left.
Finding the fuel broker wasn't that hard. He was a six foot one Zeltron that had recently gotten into a heated argument, so their skin was flared in a violent shade of red. Winston decided to just casually roam the area, keeping an eye on the hue of the salesman. Negotiating with an upset seller was a good way to catch a bolt to the stomach. So after a cool-down period, the mercenary slid over to the man and introduced himself.
Two and a half pieces later, Winston walked into the docking bay with a considerably lighter load in his pocket and a huge smile on his face. Shit was finally starting to go his way.
It was no secret that Bianca Ducain loathed Tatooine. She was from Naboo, a land of ponds and greenery and sun, and the sand there was the soft sand you'd find at the bottom of a lake, not this coarse, irritating mess that clung to your clothes and hair for weeks. The one upside of the sand was that it made leaving a solid footprint near impossible, though of course that didn't matter if you couldn't run without slipping. She considered hailing a droid-led cart to save time, but then saw their price and decided to walk.
She could very well just steal a droid, but it'd be near impossible to carry it to Winston in this terrain. And besides that, it would have some sort of restraining bolt that she wouldn't have time to pry off, if the suns' positions were anything to go by. Instead she scanned the stalls set up down the street, trying to find an astromech unit. She'd rather blast her own brains out than fly across the galaxy with some protocal droid, and astromechs served a use beyond irritation and translation. She had just about given up hope when the sheen of a silver-grey dome caught her eye. She half-ran to the ramshackle booth and knelt beside the droid. It was an R3 unit, slightly battered with green and grey markings and one bronzish leg.
"How much for the astromech?" Bianca asked the booth's owner, an old Rodian man with goggles around his eyes. He leaned forward with a confused expression, as if he'd already forgotten what she'd asked.
"You'll have to excuse old Ari," a light voice said, and a Theelin woman walked over. She was young, no more than a year older than Bianca, with bronze skin speckled with purple splotches and bright teal hair, and three small horns jutting out from either side of her head. Her feet were bare, exposing that she had three toes on each hooflike foot. "His memory isn't what it used to be. Not that it was ever that good. I'm Reeta, by the way. Reeta Kuin."
Reeta held out a gloved hand, and Bianca shook it. "Now, you wanted the droid?"
(Reeta can be a reoccuring character if you'd like)
