Open Coruscant The Dreaming Cloud

[Zad Ruzed]

OOC Thread

The Dreaming Cloud

Main Bar

Spoiler: Music IC

There he was, another day, another dollar, another damn bartender serving drinks across the counter. “Another one,” Zad Ruzed might have said but settled for tapping a finger. The bartender understood it, refreshing an empty glass with fresh whiskey like water into a well. It was just another credit chip atop a stack on a tab.

Whatever, Zad wasn’t counting anymore. He took a sip, leaned in, looking at no one and listening to nothing. The patrons of The Dreaming Cloud were about as interesting as the clouds, and those he had lost count of long ago. He could sleep on one, that was for sure, if one was heavy enough to cradle his old bones.

Sitting at the main bar beside the main restaurant, Zad had little else to do. On duty, off duty, it never really mattered when it came to drinking. All the same, he sat on the stool in his black leather duster, gaze drifting between the overhead TVs and HVs.

There was a news anchor reporting a violent theft, a sports announcer highlighting a field goal, a debate group over Mandalorian ‘jingoism’, and none of it was particularly interesting. All it did was make an old man sigh as he spotted a female Zabrak sitting at an adjacent counter.

He sought her gaze but she had hers held by the male beside her. It wasn’t her, she wasn’t his. Long gone, Zad Ruzed. About as dead as all those criminals you made sure didn’t see the inside of a jail cell.

The Ranger took a sip to that, little else to do, and traded his gaze from the Zabrak and the viewscreens to the bottom of his glass.

He didn't know why, but it reminded him of that bar back in a skyport on this very world, where Rangers Corran Velt and Trys Aran had joined him for more than a drink. From there to here, then to now...is it all just a bottomless glass in the end?

 

[Zaia Krodas]

Coruscant, a planet filled with as many opportunities as it was filled with beings. One such opportunity was the prospect of getting a quick bite and a nice view after a long day, and the restaurant in the Dreaming Cloud was where Zaia found herself today, wearing her usual armor minus the helmet, but this time keeping most of it covered underneath her white cloak. It drew less attention that way, while still keeping with the tradition of her clan.

Enjoying her last warm slice of chocolate bread as the server took her credits, Zaia looked out the window at the buildings and speeders zooming by outside. It was interesting to think about how wherever she went on the planet, the skyline was different. Even as she considered herself a regular on the planet, there was still so much she hadn’t explored. There was more here than she would ever have time to discover. Heck, she’d only just found out about this place, and she’d already made the decision that she would come back someday.

Finishing up the rest of her bread, Zaia got up to leave before someone at the bar caught her eye. She could only see the back of his head, but she had a hunch that she knew him. Could it be…?

She made her way over, catching a glimpse of his face as he took a sip from his glass. Who would’ve thought? She smiled when she saw who it was, and placed a hand on his shoulder as she approached from behind.

“Well, I’ll be darned. Look who it is,” she said with a grin, plopping herself down on the seat next to him. “Nice to see you again, partner.”

@Die Shize

 

[Zad Ruzed]

Main Bar

Spoiler: Music IC

A hand on his shoulder, a simple gesture for a person in greeting, but at any other time the recipient might just have snatched that hand and twisted the arm, broken the shoulder and the person’s nose. That voice.

Were it not for a familiar voice, were it not for the setting at a bar with a drink, Zad might not have sat so still. That voice. He recognized the woman a moment after she spoke, a moment after she touched him; a hand feminine but firm. A warrior’s grip.

‘Look who it is’, she said with a grin, and maybe the Ranger would have to look in a mirror to see who was looking back at him. For now, he settled for the reflection in his glass. Zaia Krodas. His lips spread in unison with hers.

“Small world,” Zad replied as Zaia sat beside. “Small galaxy at that, and probably the universe.” He took another sip, gestured between his glass and the bartender. “Whatever she has, put it on my tab.”

Bartender was too busy to wait for rebuttal as he moved along with request or without one. “You look the same,” Zad affirmed as he looked the armored Mandalorian up and down. She wasn’t wielding blasters so it was otherwise not that unusual to see a Mandalorian at a bar—or a dreaming one.

“How long’s it been?” How long had it been at that? He couldn’t remember, didn’t care to think. “A long minute, huh? Long enough.” Last time they had parted ways, well, they had parted some di’kuts from the lives they once claimed. This is the way. “How ya been?”


@Sicadorito

 

[Vayla Mirana]

Main Balcony

Spoiler: Music IC

In the open air of Coruscant, it might have been hard to breathe, what with the pollution that made the sky so hazy. Yet, the Dreaming Cloud boasted itself for the filtration systems within as much as without, clearing the air around so that the sights of its patrons were much like peering into a cloud.

Vayla could see it, sense it, feel it, taste it. On the balcony outside the main restaurant, she sat alone but not lonely, occupying a small table right beside the railing. She heard the rhythm of waves, wondered whether they were just in her head or from the pool on the roof above, or even the wind betraying itself for an ocean.

Of course, it was just as much the music tickling the woman’s ears as much as her hair breezed against her face. At a corner of the balcony was a live band, guitarists and singer, the latter a woman, singing for all to hear.

Separated by doors and walls, the balcony outside the restaurant served the same food, the same drink, but offered a more intimate atmosphere for those who sought it; like those two lovebirds over there, over here. It just as much offered the atmosphere for those who sought it, like Vayla Mirana, with no need of a lover.

The Jedi Knight, Jedi Shadow, call herself what she would, sat facing the clouded skyline of Coruscant in an aquamarine green dress cut to calves. She had a plate of salmon and asparagus before her, a glass of Chardonnay white, and ignored the former to sip from the latter.

Crisp, refreshing, like the music and the sky, and just that simple feeling ever so fleeting of being a Jedi, a daughter of the Force, left as free as a bird on perch without fear of being overheard.

 

[Zaia Krodas]

Main Bar
​

A small galaxy it was. What were the chances that they’d run into each other today? Of all the places they could be… it was the Dreaming Cloud. She wouldn’t even be surprised if she was dreaming right now, soon to wake up to find herself in the pilot’s seat of her ship.

But she knew she wasn’t. Sometimes life was even crazier than anything she could come up with in her head.

“So do you,” Zaia said as the bartender busied himself with her order. Zad looked her up and down, she searched his face. A lot had changed since she’d last seen the Ranger. Had they been two of them?

Soon enough, the glass found its way into her hand and she took a sip.

“Too long,” she said with a smile as she lowered her drink. “You could say I’ve learned a couple things since we last met.” And a lesson learned is a lesson earned. “I’ve been well, though. What have you been up to? Has the cough gotten better?” Unfortunately, she didn’t have the cough drops with her this time.

@Die Shize

 

[Zad Ruzed]

Main Bar

Spoiler: Music IC [Recurring]

Zad offered a minor chuckle at Zaia’s question, only because he had a drink in his mouth and didn’t want to spit it out. He swallowed with success. More than drink. More than memories. She asked as harmlessly as a singing bird but it was all so amusing no less.

“Believe it or not, whiskey helps.” He turned the glass on the counter, watched it turn, reckoned that this planet and the next one turned even more slowly as much as quickly depending on how you looked at it. “So don’t panic if you didn’t bring those cough drops.” He winked.

“I’ve been…here and there…drifting like I always do…” He thought of this planet and the next one, Coruscant and Tatooine, Arvala-7 and Estaria, and everyone and everything in between. “Stopping slavers, cracking the case of a murdered politician, liberating a world from murderers infected by AMS…you name it.”

On that note, what a Ranger went through day after night might just be rivaled by what a Mandalorian went through night after day. “What about you?” Zad looked into Zaia’s eyes, wondering.


@Sicadorito

 

[Casany Praxor]

Main Restaurant

Spoiler: Music IC

The first stop on The Dreaming Cloud that Cas had considered was no doubt the main bar, and she did, sipping on a drink while her table was prepared. The place was packed, rightfully so, but as many people were heading to so too were they heading fro.

Where Casany Praxor was going, she might never know, but there she sat upon a cloud that dreamed. Maybe I’ll dream the same dream, she mused beneath the music of the main restaurant.

Some kind of noise-cancellation technology in the overhead speakers insisted that entering from bar to restaurant, open floor though either was, was much like opening a door between rooms and, well, technology.

She sat a booth furthest from the bar. At one side was a window, through it was a painted sky, first white then gray. Clouds cut across, bright and dark, and who rides the welkin?

She remembered the words of that poem as though her mother had recited them just that moment. The sun was out, golden rays through cracked marble, as was the daughter of battle. Sometimes Cas fancied herself to embody her, even sitting there in that booth as she was, but maybe not.

Maybe I’m just a chip off that marble. Torn between sighing and smiling, she settled for sipping water and welcoming the waiter. He came with a great plate of steak and toki toki sauce, asparagus and black bread, and a smaller plate of much and more.

“Can I get you anything else?” the young man offered. “This will do superb,” Cas assured. “Though…some extra napkins might be a smart move.”

They exchanged smiles, and the Mandalorian exchanged the grip of a sword for that of a knife, the handle of a blaster for that of a fork, and went to town on that steak.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Gatz really hated Coruscant, but he somehow always found his way back to it. He blamed Benji for that, he supposed. Murderous though the Weequay was, the underground crime boss paid well. Extremely well. In fact, he even had some credits to burn, which is what brought him to this recreational center in the first place.

He was dressed as he usually was, a white dress shirt, black slacks, and black boots. The only thing he was missing was his red leather jacket, which he'd ditched in favor or a grey blazer and a black tie. He preferred the scruffy professional look, but this was Coruscant, and a nice part of Coruscant at that.

Gatz sipped from his glass of chardonnay, eyes scanning the crowd, until he spotted a very familiar figure tucked away in a booth. Of all the places in the galaxy, the young smuggler hadn't expected to run into Anvil here. This place was fancy, and not at all the stomping grounds of a Mandalorian Goddess of War.

Naturally, Gatz plopped himself down in her booth, opposite of her.

"You know Mando, I didn't expect to see you again. Certainly not so soon, and certainly not here."

@Die Shize

 

[Zaia Krodas]

Main Bar
​

“So the usual, then?” Zaia smiled at Zad’s response. She shouldn’t have been surprised at how much he’d been up to. He was a Ranger, after all, and fighting crime was part of the job description. He’d probably saved countless lives with the work he’d done. Then he looked into her eyes as he asked about her, and for some reason she had to look down at her drink. It wasn’t like she had done anything bad… had she? Maybe it was better not to dwell on it for too long.

“Oh. I tracked down a couple Daggers on Endor, dueled my favorite Jedi on Mandallia, did some bounty hunting, and…” the Mandalorian mess that she’d already thought better not to mention, “I got my own ship!” She looked back at Zad and showed him a picture of it on her datapad. “I have a droid now, too. Never thought they could have so much personality,” she added with a grin as she put her datapad back in her pocket.

“And to think we met in a bank. For all we’ve been doing, it was in a place like that,” she said with a laugh. “At least this time, it actually is under better circumstances.” Yet even so, she still found a part of her wishing for simpler times.

@Die Shize

 

[Casany Praxor]

Main Restaurant

Spoiler: Music IC

Cas plopped a morsel of meat into her mouth, chewing to the music almost as surely as it changed when one song ended and another began, and just as surely a man plopped his ass into the seat opposite her own.

She recognized him immediately: that blond hair, those blue eyes; eyes as pale as ice and much like a wolf’s. The Mandalorian could relate to that animal, this one or that one, and here was one who was a beast in the flesh—Casany Praxor, she was called, take it or leave it, though hers was no wolf but the sigil of a sun, bright and burning.

Passion was no foreign element to Gatz Derrevar. He had offered himself to her back on Zygerria; a kind of proposition for some celebratory sex. Truth be told, the young man wasn’t bad-looking, but a bit too boyish for Casany’s tastes. She was far more likely to kill him than accept.

They had parted ways, the aruetii in his vessel, the Mandalorian in her corvette, newly claimed, the one called the Unwavering. Now, here both man and woman were, reunited again, by happenstance.

“So soon, is it?” Cas cocked a brow. “Or too late?” She chewed on that thought as much as a bite of steak. Swallowing, the woman spread her arms, gesturing toward their environment. “They named this The Dreaming Cloud and here we are, by fate or by Force, two souls born of space to sit in the sky of today, right here and right now.”

Dismissing the rhetoric with a chuckle, she moved on. “Good to see you again, verd, whatever the reason. Mine is rest and relaxation. What’s yours?”


@Vicc125

 

[Zad Ruzed]

Main Bar

Spoiler: Music IC

Zad felt like taking a sip to each one of Zaia’s accomplishments, thought better of it, drank to the fact that she had a ship of her own and spared his glass for a helping hand to tilt the datapad toward his gaze. His eyes didn’t see as well as they used to but he wasn’t about to admit that.

IFST-21 was impressive, namely for the fact that this one was hers and that’s all that mattered. Zad didn’t care as much as others about ships or droids or profound sentiments woven within but he did care about people and this girl deserved her own. And she got it.

“You said it, kid,” he thought back to that bank. “To think, I was there for a notary of all things, innocent and innocuous, but I guess even dirt blows on a paved path…”

Catching that he was trailing off, Zad offered a shrug. “Eh, just something my mentor told me once. Don’t mean a hill of beans in this crazy galaxy. Here we are.” He raised his glass. “Two peas in a pod trying to make sense of it all, right here and right now, so may we both find our way.” He drank.


@Sicadorito

 

[Zaia Krodas]

“Hear, hear.” Zaia raised her glass and took a drink to that. “I don’t think this galaxy will ever make full sense to me, but hey, there’s always hope.” She chuckled at that, then looked back at Zad. She was fairly certain that had dirt not blown on that paved path, it wouldn’t have led theirs to cross. A silver lining, per se.

“We’ll find our way together. We might not always be sitting in bars, but you know that I’m only a transmission away if you need a hand. You saved my life, and I won’t forget that.” With that, she finished up her drink and slid the emptied glass to the bartender.

“I’ve said this a million times and you’ve probably grown tired of me saying it, but… thank you, Zad. For the drink, for putting that Trandoshan to sleep with the seashells, for everything. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

@Die Shize

 

[Zad Ruzed]

Spoiler: Music IC [Recurring]

She had to bring it up. It was only fair. I saved your life. You saved mine. Are we even yet? He had not been keeping score, doubted she was, didn’t matter. She wouldn’t forget and neither would he.

Zad offered a modest chuckle at the mention of that Trandoshan and those seashells. Time ago…feels like yesterday. Such was the way of things. This is the way. Whatever it was, wherever it led, it didn’t take a pair of Jedi to feel a connection, and these two souls didn’t need the Force to have theirs.

“People like us don’t pay each other back. We just keep pushing forward. Side by side.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “You and me, we’re friends, see.” Recalled the clouds of Coruscant and elsewhere, the stars above and beyond, and a dream where he was stranded on a beach with no idea who he was. “Nah, we’re partners, like two Rangers. Vods, brother and sister, like two Mandalorians.”

Zad set the glass down, drinking his last, licked spiced whiskey from lips. “Whatever happens next, whatever we do, you got my back and I got yours. In this universe, well, that’s all that matters…Zaia Krodas.”

Curving a smile like the string of a bow, Zad was glad that the first person he met on The Dreaming Cloud was that person right there, a friend and a comrade, a sister and a daughter, and she might just be the last. Do. Done. Did.

[EXIT ZAD RUZED]

@Sicadorito

 

[Zaia Krodas]

Friends, partners, vods, whichever it was or perhaps all three, Zaia was glad that the two of them had each others’ backs. Loyalty and trust were two things the galaxy lacked, but between the two of them, they had plenty. Zad’s hand on her shoulder, the physical connection between them, showed it all.

“It is… Zad Ruzed.” She smiled back at him. Whenever the next time they would see each other again would be, if ever, she was glad to have met him today here. There were always ups and downs, and it was comforting to know that they would have each other wherever they went past today.

After all, true friends were never apart in spirit.

//Exit character

@Die Shize