Open Nar Shaddaa Returning to the Rubble

Roland Rook

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Nar Shaddaa, mid-day local time
THEME

Just as he predicted, he was back on Nar Shaddaa. When he had mentioned he wanted to go back to the outer rim he had optimistically hoped to follow a lead to somewhere less populated. But the only respite he had received was the short transition from the Core to the Outer Rim. As he expected of the Smuggler's Moon not many seemed to be slowed in their daily routine from the destruction of the fight pits that had happened not long ago.

The Mandalorian looked at one of his older cloaks among his garb. A tabard that could cover some of his shinier plates as well that matched would hide the blue hued armor of his chest and back. His badge was not with him this time. The Sector Rangers of the Free World Alliance did not have jurisdiction here. It was the main reason he had not intervened further when he had first come to The Pit.

Roland had been getting information on Gurrba the Hutt when things had taken a sharp turn and led to numerous unpredictable events. Now the fighting pit of the Gurrba the Hutt was an actual pit in the ground thanks to the booby trapped explosives that had been triggered by the Bounty Huntress. That would make getting more evidence a bit difficult.

The Mandalorian ranger was not alone. Along for the job was his fellow Sector Ranger Leon Terrick. The two had cross paths and the man was not an unfamiliar face. "you ever masquerade as a bounty hunter before?" He asked as he slung a scatterblaster over his drab cloak. Two more reloads were fitted into simple webbing, adding to his bounty hunter appearance along with an fragmentation grenade and ten kilograms worth of welding putty in a side pack.

His seeker drone remained locked into a socket at the back of his armor for the time being while a surveillance droid hovered over his shoulder. Nobody had seen Roland when he had previously been there but when people saw a Mandalorian they tended to remember.


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Leon Terrick

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Nar Shadda. Not a place Leon exactly enjoyed being. Sector Ranger's had no jurisdiction here and more likely to be shot than not. But this is where the investigation took him. Posing as Bounty Hunter's, he was joined by the Mandalorian Ranger, Roland. He had dressed the part, leaving his normal clothing and badge behind and now wore a hodge podge of mismatched armor, though the only thing of real protective value was the blast vest. He had a newer gun to him, a A180 blaster pistol holstered on his right thigh with a small pack slung across his back holding the attachments for both the rifle mod and the Sniper mod and a long vibro knife on his left. His surveillance Droid Voxx hung in a pouch at his side. He felt odd, not having his badge or Jacket. Shifting under his odd assortment of gear he turns to Roland who just spoke to him.

"To be fair Roland. Bein a Ranger on the Rim is basically being a Bounty Hunter with a Badge. Trust me, my friend. There won't be any issue." Tipping the front of his hat, he looks around the crime ridden smuggler moon. Roland had been here before, apparently at the same time as those whom they were to be investigating were. So it only seemed right to let the Mandalorian take the lead on this. "Alright, You know this place better than me. Pitter Patter, so we can get off this dump."

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Roland Rook

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Roland was not sure how he felt about Leon's answer. Personally he would not have made the comparison. The integrated commlink in the survelance droid came into Roland's helmet. His head turned to look back at his partner. "Alright. Follow me." The Mandalorian moved into the rubble strewn area using the directions the scouting droid provided.

"What's your idea about all this?" He asked while making his way over debris. He would make little hops with the assistance of his jump boots to get to where he was trying to go. But mostly he kept to the part that didn't need them since Leon did not seem to have the same mobility as he did.

There were portions of reinforced structure, meant to withstand damage which is why the explosives had not completely reduced everything to rubble. Explosives were imprecise tools by design. With labour droids moving debris there were still areas they would be able to search through later hopefully. As they got to a darker section of a hall that lead underground Roland activated his infrared vision and cycled to another view to see if he caught anything.

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Leon Terrick

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Leon followed after Roland, exerting the effort to keep pace with the Mandalorian and his jump boots but he kept pace nevertheless. As they moved through the rubble, Roland asked what he thought about all this. Leon was quiet for sometime, thinking about the question. When he answered, it was after a small sigh.


"I would like to believe these Jedi are what they say they are, Forces of good like us, like all the old stories ya know? I have met a few of them and their goals at the time were the same as mine. But like with us, you can't judge all by the actions of the few." He pauses as they entered a darker area. He stopped, to let his eyes adjust as well as they could and then retrieved his Surveillance Droid from its pouch. It drifted above him and a small spot light flared to life to give him a better view of the area. "But, with these 'Darksiders' or whatever they are we can't really be sure they aren't part of the Jedi somehow. They share similar powers and fondness for those Lightsabers. So until there's hard evidence of them being separate, who really knows?"


A labor droid walks past the pair and down into the underground hall that they stood at the top of. He read a little of the report of what happened here. Explosions tore through a fighting Pit, with reports of Red Lightsaber wielding individuals. Though what they were doing here he was still unsure of. Guess that's why we're here investigating. He thought to himself with another soft sigh.

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Hannibal Grayza

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Rangers in disguise weren't the only folks investigating the Arcanist. Hannibal was also looking into the sightings of him, finally getting himself to what was arguably the most important. The Pit, a most aptly named location considered it was literally a hole in the ground at this point. Previously housing a number of horrendous things, including the deceased Gurrba the Hutt, it had been demolished during the mad antics of a red saber wielding maniac. Or so the story went.

Having parked his bronzium-plated speeder some distance away, the rather casually dressed young man was joined by his ID-1 Seeker droid, Ego, who buzzed worriedly at his side at the sight of the mess. Hannibal waved off the droid's concerns wordlessly, pulling a pair of leather gloves over his hands and neatly rolling his sleeves up to the elbow. He doubled checked his gear, including the DE-10 blaster pistol clipped to the right side of his waist and the lightsaber concealed on a mag plate inside his coat, and got to moving right along.

Unlike the other two, who he couldn't see yet, Hannibal didn't have fancy jets to move around. Instead, he had Jedi reflexes that allowed him to nimbly hop from stone to stone, guided half by his intuition and half by his droid. Ego spotted the other two and their own droid first, privately warbling a warning to Hannibal over his commlink, followed shortly by a staccato beeped greeting at the distant group to indicate a lack of hostile intent. After a few more seconds, Hannibal crested the stones and saw them.

Two leather-on-leather-on-leather individuals who looked generally well equipped. One of them had a nice hat, with goggles on it for good measure. How fun. The young man waved lazily, flashing a grin and, assuming he wasn't immediately fired upon, moved a little closer.
"Hey, fellas. Is it fair to assume you're here about the massive explosion and not some Syndicate retrieval crew trying to dig out any of a late Hutt's shiny baubles?" His tone was joking and conversational, but he was absolutely ready to start dodging if they were the hostile sort.


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Roland Rook

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"Sounds to me like you have a lot faith in other people of faith. Can't say I share the feeling. I don't care if they're as good as their legends or just disappointingly ordinary. I just want to make sure they're not criminals." The Mandalorian stated his priorities as he moved further.

Reaching into a pouch, the armored ranger pulled out a flashlight since the opening in the mound of rubble lead downward into darkness. But it was quickly and literally outshined by the droid Leon conjured up. Still, he kept his out since behind them and up the the way they had just come Roland saw a well dressed man speaking with a gallant tone that made the Mandalorian cock an eyebrow underneath his helm.

"Who want's to know?" He responded. This stranger had approached out of nowhere and with a very peculiar line of questioning definitely warranted suspicion. His hand rested on his blaster's handle. While normally he wouldn't go so far, at least this early in meeting someone new, Roland felt it sealed in the bounty hunter vibe he was going for. Actually on Nar Shaddaa...it's probably par for the course.

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Hannibal Grayza

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Hannibal tilted his head in response to the man's return question, a raised eyebrow joining the cocky grin in an expression of petulant bemusement, hand near his own blaster beneath his shoulder-draped jacket. "I do. That's why I'm asking." he replied, sounding distinctly like he'd tried not to laugh at some point near the beginning.

The leather-clad man was jumpy. Understandable, considering where they both were. Plus he was clearly a Mandalorian, a culture not known for their lack of a trigger finger.
"Though judging by the response, you're not working for the Hutts or you'd probably be asking me to leave. Mind if I join you, or are you gonna use that blaster instead? I need to get to looking at this pile of burnt rubble sooner rather than later."he asked in a friendly tone, keeping his eyes on the armored man. He was here to investigate the killings, and though he didn't necessarily think the two were his enemies, he wasn't prepared to let someone else getting here first keep him from his objective.


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Roland Rook

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As far as Roland knew the man was just some other hunter. He did not want to cause needless conflict. The disguised Ranger noticably relaxed reluctantly. "Suppose it's not asking too much." But he did not want to seem friendly either.

The man would let Hannibal take the lead. A gentlemanly arm extended for him to move ahead and also hinting at his own semi-feigned distrust. "Why are you creepin' through these parts?" The droids ahead would scout out, using their lights and built in commlinks to alert him of any findings. A chirp came back as one of the droids came back informing him of finding something. "I'll be right over." He headed through the tunnel, squeezing past a narrow point and then moving beyond towards an open area.

A warble from one side indicated the droid's location. The mandalorian moved towards the scout to see what it had discovered. An access panel open, somewhat dented and wrent from the rocks that had struck it the panel still had some active lights. "Gather any logs about who or what accessed the panel. What happened on the security system prior?" The droid only chirped slightly in response and began its work. "Yeah...I'll wait." He said after a moment, having pieced together what the automaton had said in droidspeak. The man was still not used to working with droids frequently.

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Hannibal Grayza

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Hannibal flashed a friendly smile and made his way down, his seeker droid floating along behind, moving on a little ahead as indicated. He trusted his danger sense and enhanced reflexes enough to respond to a potential threat, and this guy wasn't giving him a feeling of impending doom.

"A Hutt's arena blew up. I'm personally invested in figuring out how and why." he wasn't exactly lying, just leaving things out. The people shown on the HoloNet fighting through the place were what he was really after, and he was hoping to find some clue or other, whether it was security data or impressions in the Force. Hannibal was excellent at Force-based tracking, but it worked far better if he knew more precisely what he was looking for. Besides, he did much of his work out of Nar Shaddaa and preferred it if people blowing up criminal hubs didn't information gathering more difficult.

He turned his head at the sound of the droid saying something and went in the same direction as the mandalorian when he moved off. An intact security station? This was precisely what he needed. Moving up the panel, making sure not to interfere with the droid's work, he pressed his gloved fingers against the damaged panel and leaning in as if examining the damage. Vague impressions tingled through his fingers, echoes of the recent past surrounding it. After several seconds he let it go, finding it interesting but not terribly helpful.
"Ego, scout ahead." he said to his droid, which immediately buzzed an affirmative and hovered ahead.

Hannibal had been working with Ego since he was a padawan, refusing to wipe his memory. It worked hard and had developed a personality to match, though it had also managed to pick up some of its master's sarcasm.


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Roland Rook

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Roland watched the man reach out and touch the access panel. It was the way that he did it that just seemed weird. Like there was no point in just touching it to touch it. What ever maybe he's stoned or just a few fries short of a chipper meal

He was about to ask the stranger about who might have hired him. As he cleared his throat the droid slicing into the panel made some more beeps and warbles. A pause followed as Roland thought the answer was obvious. "Alright well load it onto your storage."

+kzzt Beep bRrt Zzp+

"Then delete what's in there. I've got a backup of all the important stuff anyways."

+bZzt ZHU+

"Maybe that'll happen sooner rather than later" He said with barely enough effort to sound mildly threatening. His droid, Gazer, his surveillence droid. The machine was starting to show the same signs of attitude as it always did when it neared time to start wiping his memory. Lately Roland had been letting it go on longer and he wondered about just letting it go entirely. It would take some time for it to load the data apparently.

"What's personal about this?" He asked the man.

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Hannibal Grayza

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The young Knight in disguise turned to the other man in response to his question, grinning over at him."I'm hunting one of the guys who did this, of course. All of them, actually, but one in particular drew my attention. I'm trying to find out more about him, natch." He turned away from the panel and took at look at some of other ruins of the room, eyes sweeping over the destruction, senses spreading out to try and pick up any impressions.

Most of what he got was of the detonation itself, but some of it related to the darksiders involved. Any hint of familiarity with their presence would help find them, and one of them did seem familiar. That was a start.
"What about you? What're you doin' out here? Y'don't generally see Mandalorians as the investigative type."


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Roland Rook

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"Wow...profound..." He said sarcastically after the man answered. He basically just said what Roland already knew. But he did not push since he had better things to do.

"Security analysis." He said simply. "Some people like to see how things can be prevented from happening again and are willing to pay for it." Of course the truth was that it was the Sector Rangers that wanted to keep destruction and death from continuing and not some wealthy gangster just trying to keep his slaves and profit margins in order. But the more that he made himself just sound like an armored mercenary the easier it might be on him. Also Roland did not want to seem like he was just a bounty hunter competing with the man.

The droid beeped to indicate it was finished. The undercover ranger looked over the data for a moment and knew with enough time he would be able to identify the unique code used to slice into the system. Maybe that would help the Sector Rangers identify where Suspect One and his associate might be in the future. It was not a lot but there was only so much he could gather with a fighting pit reduced to rubble. "For now, don't connect to the ship or any other terminals Gazer. Activate standalone protocols until further notice." The droid made a singular beep in understanding.

Looking around there was not much else for him to gather. Unless anything else turned up he would start heading back out to his ship. He would need to probably buy a separate data pad with his own pocket money to analyze the information. He stopped a moment and looked at Hannibal. "If you find anything worth knowing I'd appreciate being kept in the loop." He pulled out contact information for him, at least for his alias. "I might make it worth your while." He could not promise the Free World Alliance would sign off on dealing out credits but if the intel was good maybe Roland could pass a request up the chain of command. It was not like he could leave a Sector Ranger business card and call back number.

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Hannibal Grayza

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Hannibal wordlessly moved over to a different wall, staring at it for a moment before slipping the glove off of his left hand. Again he pressed his fingertips into the stone and was immediately assaulted with a variety of images, sensations, and impressions of the fairly recent past. First were the explosions, which he mostly ignored since he was used to them, but then there was other stuff.

Blurry images of lightsabers, a strangely shaped object, a datapad, corpses, corpses, corp- He jerked his hand away from the wall and slipped the glove back on. He'd got what he needed, impressions of the individual darksiders. Good enough. He turned back to the Ranger, who'd offered payment for information. He winked in response, taking the contact card in his right hand and slipping it into his coat and handing over his own for a burner comm address
. "You bet. I'll be in touch." he promised, calling back his seeker droid and beginning to head out.

"See you, space cowboy."


//END

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