Salt

[Batman]

Ray landed his ship and walked to the center of the city, wading his way through large crowds of tourists, Ray found a cantina named, Salt, and walked inside to buy a drink. He found himself a table in the corner of the lounge, a spot where he could see the entrance and the bathrooms. The waiter brought his drink, Ray sipped it, the waiter left. Ray pulled out his pistol and laid it on the table, he examined it and put it back in its holster. He began bouncing his leg and pulled out a datapad, while sipping on his drink, and began researching. The company's bank account, Public Safety Consulting of Corellia, was emptied one hour before the fateful meeting on Drall. The account's contents were transferred to an account located on Bespin. His next destination was still unclear, although it seemed Bespin would be his main objective, Ray still had other things to do before finding who was responsible for him losing his entire fortune. The men he had trusted, the men he had survived with, were the same men who had tried to kill him. The puzzle was given to him, the pieces were hidden, only time would reveal the pieces of the puzzle; and only time would tell what happened and why.

Salt-OOC

 

[Batman]

Ray decided that it was time to go, he walked out of the cantina and left a tip for the waiter before turning left to the docking bays. It was here that Ray made a decision to find anything he could use to create a credit base. Ray knew that Calius saj Leeloo was a source of salt crystals and also knew that large amount of credits were being paid for those crystals. Ray found a nearby mining store, hopefully he would be able to rent a pickaxe to mine the crystals. Ray walked up to the stand and began talking to the attendant.

"1 Pick please and one hour of time."
"750 credits please."
"Here you go," Ray handed over a few credits, "thanks."

Ray made his way to the mineshaft and began his hunt for crystals.

 

[Djak Mikos]

An old miner, his hands knarled and scarred, his features blunt and resigned, hefted his pickaxe and slammed it into a crack in the cave wall. He pried, and shook loose a slab of rock. Behind, a nice clump of salt crystals twinkled in the light from his helmet. With a pleased chuckle, he knocked them free and pitched them into the cart behind him. He continued working, humming tunelessly under his breath.

At first glance, he was unremarkable. Under close scrutiny, he still didn't look like anything but a career miner. However, a veteran of the mines would have instantly identified him as an outsider, from the way he swung his pick. And anyone who bothered to check the computer would have seen that the little man had been hard at work for nearly six hours now, and still had a spring in his stooped step. Light danced in blue eyes, and he hummed a tune that had never been played on Calius saj Leeloo.

However, the man didn't display any unnatural tenancies, until a group of miners passed him on their way up from the lower levels. Then he crouched to rebuckle his boot, while appearing to mouth words to a song. In point of fact, he was subvocalizing through a transmitter, a relay he'd planted on his way down, and up to the surface.

"I have eyes on Morga Thewt," he told the local authorities. "The Hutts will pay me twenty thousand to bring him back dead. How much are you bidding?"

"Fifteen thousand, and you won't find the head of the shaft surrounded with officers," the liaison snapped.

"Have to do better than that," the old man said cheerfully. "At least match the Hutts, now."

"If you open fire on one of our civilians," the liaison said sternly, "you will be prosecuted as a criminal."

"If you can find me," the old man replied. "I got in here, didn't I? I'm staring right at him, aren't I? Look, I can collect proof of his death and sing rude songs all the way to my ship. You can't search a thousand miners for something that looks exactly like a credit chit. Either take my offer of twenty thousand, or I'm taking him down now."

A silence. A sigh. "All right, tag him. We'll pick him up outside."

"Cool," the old man said, then dropped a rock on his foot. He let out a viral string of curses and yanked free, and began hobbling towards the line of workers. He came in right behind a Zabrak male, leaning on the wall for support. Abruptly he slipped, and bumped into the Zabrak who lurched forward before whirling with an explicitive.

"Sorry," the old man babbled. "I'm so sorry, please, I just hurt my foot..."

With a growl, the Zabrak grabbed the old man and shoved him roughly back towards his cart. "Not behind me, clumsy fool. Wait for the next lift."

Whining a little about the injustices of the galaxy, the old man turned back to his work. The Zabrak brushed off the incident without further thought, and the blue eyes of Chace Skirata danced from beneath their bushy eyebrows.

 

[Batman]

Ray rode the elevator shaft down to the mines, he expected a lot of tourists, but not this many. He knew that the galaxy was getting fat and lazy, more people would pay for crystals. He watched as numerous people exited the turbolift and was amazed by how quickly the lift was refilled by outgoing miners. He walked a little while until he found a spot that hadn't been hacked and swung his axe. It took him a while before he had received any crystals, but he had found three bright glowing green crystals and two bright glowing blue crystals. He put them in his pocket and took a break.

 

[Djak Mikos]

Continuing to play the whiny old miner, Chace puttered about his section till his datapad chirped. He tossed the pickaxe into the bin along with his day's work and flagged it for transport to the surface. Then he headed for the break area.

His datapad confirmed the deposit of his reward, and of his day's wages. Chace grinned, pleased. It was always nice when a persona paid off aside from the actual job. He was disappointed that he hadn't found any lightsaber crystals in his digging, but in his hands they would have been merely novelties.

Eventually he hit the refreshers to change his appearance. He didn't trust local authorities not to pump the Zabrak for a description and be waiting to arrest him when he emerged from the shaft head. The heavy wig and beard were stripped away to reveal the aggressive inverse Mohawk and sideburns of a much younger man. Let the authorities search all they like--he was a ghost.

He emerged and settled back down at a table, across from a hard-looking man with longish hair. Tucking the datapad away, he signalled for a water jug from a serving droid.

"Pretty nice, for a mine," he drawled. "Some are hideously mismanaged. From your relative cleanliness, I'm assuming you got lucky early?"

 

[Batman]

Ray looked at the youngster, he estimated his age to be in the late teens, he took a sip from his own canteen and walked towards the boy. His clothes were indeed "clean", his operations as a SpecForce Pathfinder left his in much dirtier situations. Yes, his haul from the mine was substantial and he would fetch many credits from the crystals, but not enough to find what he was looking for. He reached the table and pulled out a seat and sat down, he ordered a drink from the waitress.

"Yes fortunately I did get luck early. How about you? Surely you didn't come here for the view."