Ask Vendetta

[Song Wren]

Kanan was laughing.

A smile split in his face in two, and in his hand was a glass full of spotchka. He was telling her a story, but she didn’t know what. His words came out jumbled and unintelligible, and yet, it didn’t matter. She could still hear his voice, see his face, taste the drink in her own hand. Everything was surreal but perfect, and she didn’t question its reality.

Not until a shot rang out. Not until Kanan gasped, a hole in his chest, and collapsed onto the floor in a bloodied heap.

Song screamed. No words came, and as she whirled around to find the shooter, there was nothing. Just her and Kanan flat on his chest in a pool of his own blood. She bent down over him and seized his shoulder. When she rolled him over, she recoiled. Terror swept through her, a fear she hadn’t felt in years.

She was looking at her brother’s face, ghostly white.

Song woke with a start. Sweat dripped from her head, and she drew ragged breaths, like she had been underwater for too long. Her heart slammed in her chest. She slid out from the sheets and staggered barefoot to the bathroom, prepared to vomit. When she leaned over the sink and waited, nothing came.

She looked into the mirror, into her hard features. Black hair clammy against her skin. Scars on her shoulders. Pale, like her brother. She let out a deep sigh.

Before she left the apartment, Song took a cold shower. It washed the sleep from her face, but not the thoughts. The images, the dream. It had felt too real not to be one, and she couldn’t shake it away no matter how cold the water. She thought the fresh air might help, but she wouldn’t find that in the Taris underworld.

The streets were packed with unfamiliar faces. People shot her the worried looks, balking at the sight of a Mandalorian, but she didn’t care. Song had come to find River’s killer.

Those who had last seen him said he’d taken a job hunting down a group of rogue smugglers. It had been a headache, jumping from one world to another, tracking them down—but she found them. Discovered they were in hiding in the underbelly of Taris, holed up in a lavish casino. Why? She had no idea, but it wouldn’t matter.

Revenge was so close, she could taste it.

@llamallove

 

[Kanan Marek]

Taris was a planet of stark contrast. Its surface hosted both wastelands and urban sprawl. The wealthy lived in towers, wholly separated from the poor and the squalor of the city by the middle class inhabitants that lived in between. From space, Taris did give off a good impression. Yellow smog permeated the atmosphere, and wrecked starships and shipping containers covered sections of the planet’s surface. But there was a life to Taris that could not be denied.

The quality of that life depended on which part of the city you happened to be in, and Kanan had little good to say about the lower levels of Taris where he found himself at that moment. His destination was a lavish but seedy casino.

The establishment was large. Where pazaak and sabaac tables weren’t set up, tables and chairs scattered the seedy casino. Booths set into the wall provided a more private setting for those who wished to conduct their... business in private, and the smoke filled air and dim lighting made privacy all the more attainable. Illicit activity thrived in such settings, and Kanan couldn’t have had more disdain for this establishment. It was lavish
but disreputable beyond words.

Uintelligible chatter and live, upbeat jizz music originating from the Bith musicians on stage set the tone of the room. Monitors at the bar played reruns of the latest swoop race, one of Taris’ more popular pass times.

Indirectly, Taris’ swoop racing was why Kanan was here in the first place. Adas Tahl, a rising star amongst the local swoop racers, had agreed to meet Kanan here. Of all places.

Rumor was that some of the racers had begun to use glitterstim, a variety of spice that gave its user a brief heightened mental state and telepathic boost. Adas Tahl claimed he knew which racers had been using the drug and who was providing it for them. Since he didn’t like losing races, he was willing to share this information if given enough incentive.

Kanan was less interested in ensuring that the rules of play were followed in swoop racing and more interested in learning the name of the spice dealer distributing glitterstim to the racers. It was unlikely that the information Adas Tahl was selling would lead directly to the spice dealer or his identity, but it would be one more piece to the puzzle. It would lead the ranger one step closer. If Adas Tahl even showed, that was.

@Feng Mian

 

[Song Wren]

The Emerald Palace was everything she expected out of a gambling house in the heart of Taris’ criminal underworld. Private rooms and exotic dancers wedged in every corner, with game tables and drinking booths everywhere in between. Smoke, the sour smell of cigarras and tabac, filled the air, and not even her helmet could keep it out.

Song thought all eyes would fall on her the moment she stepped in. A Mandalorian, a bounty hunter, in a crime-infested casino. But nobody gave her a second thought, and the more it made sense. They were too busy on their games, the cards in their decks, to bother with her. It was the bouncers, the shadows lurking about, that she had to watch out for.

Here, the Dregs ruled. The smugglers and outlaws she was after for answers. If her brother had clashed with them, they would know his armor immediately. They’d know the hunter who came after them was back from the dead.

Song was ready for a fight, but still nothing came. She only walked uncomfortably through the casino, searching for the right face. Or one she could have never expected.

Suddenly, she paused. Song swore Kanan was among the crowd, there and gone only for an instant. The same sharp eyes, raised shoulders, bundled hair. Unforgettable. But it couldn’t be him, it was impossible. First time they met was chance, second time was coincidence, but a third?

She blamed the dream. He had been on her mind for days now. Of course she would mistake every strange face for his, because a part of her was always looking for it.

Song continued until she spotted another face among the masses. One she knew best in her hunt for River’s murderer. Rollins, the leader of the Dregs. He wore a nasty grin, and he had the look of a jackal, bony but covered in fur and unimaginable wealth. His eyes were focused on an ongoing game of cards. Didn’t matter what.

She was going to strangle and choke out every answer she could out of him.

Bodyguards posted around him watched the casino carefully, and Song made sure to dodge and weave by the tables so as not to be seen. In Mandalorian armor, it would be impossible to, but she made sure to throw on a robe to hide its shine, and made sure she blended well in with the rabble.

Song just had to figure out how to get to him without having the whole gang descend on her like a pack of starved dogs.

@llamallove

 

[Kanan Marek]

Adas Tahl was a no show. Either that or the swoop racer was easily distracted and had been pulled into a game of cards upon entering the casino. Unsurprising. He didn’t strike Kanan as the type of man who had any backbone, much less the type of man to keep his word.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Tahl was over an hour late, and Kanan was tired of waiting. An hour in this casino was an hour too long, and there was no point in wandering around in search of the racer. The casino was crowded, and Kanan did not have the patience. It would be a simple enough task to track down the racer’s apartment. He did not want to spend another moment in this place.

Abandoning the booth he had occupied for the past hour, Kanan began to navigate his way through the crowd of people. A difficult task in and of itself, considering the sheer number of people. And the fact that a good number of them no longer had their wits about them.

Only halfway across the establishment, the exit not yet in sight, Kanan stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, something caught his attention. A helmet. A Mandalorian helmet. A Mandalorian helmet he thought he recognized but now lost in the crowd.

Or perhaps it had not been lost but merely covered. He caught another brief glance of the helmet, the robed figure weaving in and out of the card tables. Surely it wasn’t who he thought it was? There was only one way to find out.

Following the figure from behind, he eventually caught up. Close enough to reach out and tug at their robe, he did just that. A move Kanan knew he would surely pay for if this was not who he hoped it was. “River?”

@Feng Mian