Just another brouhaha (Open)

[Sporky]

Mos Zebes. A seedy town even by Tatooine standards. As if they had known the town's future, the architects of the town had arranged damn near every building in such a way that there were more narrow alleyways than you could shake a lightpike at. People lived and died in these alleyways, their deaths garnering no more attention than a complaint of the smell.

Yet the town flourished in her own way. It certainly wasn't an impoverished slum. The buildings were comparatively well-kept, aside from the ever-present graffiti spray-painted on the walls by an unending legion of hoodlums and delinquents. Arms dealers peddled their goods here and there, either unafraid of, or selling to the city guard.

One of these peddlers had recently sold a rather uncommon weapon: A heavy machinegun.A Republic Army model to boot. The peddler's story of how he'd acquired the weapon changed every time he was asked, and ranged from tales of cold-bloodedness and murder to cowardice and thievery, and most suspected he was a sting dealer, a rare and pointless attempt by the few city guards that actually cared to arrest criminals.

Nonetheless, the gun had been sold. Sold to a large dull green droid that had curiously decided to wrap himself in a very thick brown travelling cloak. It was now gripped tightly in his hands as he examined its condition more closely than he had when he'd purchased itself. Detecting no abnormalities apart from wear and tear, he gave himself a small nod and continued off down the street, all the while being eyed shiftily by the others that were out and about.

[Karl the Unfettered]

On the outskirts of Mos Zebes, a dreary shuttle with an unusually large cargo entrance landed at the starport. After landing things were silent, then large-sounding and rather ominous thuds could be heard from the interior; this preceded the ramp dropping down, and the thudding became markedly louder.

"Statement: Your ship is a trash heap and I will not be paying for my passage," a large and staticky voice declared. "Consider yourself lucky I am offloading myself here, in this hole of a town at the edge of the galaxy." The owner of said large voice was as large as his voice indicated, as he thudded down the ramp (which bowed noticeably beneath his weight); in the shadows of the ship a haggard-looking Rodian pilot watched in immense relief as the huge droid lumbered away into the dinky desert town.

The droid didn't say much as he crashed along the narrow streets, blithely taking corners off the buildings if they couldn't handle his width. At one point he might have gleamed in the blaring twin suns, but now it was mostly dull primer and vaguely dented, inches-thick alloy plating that resembled ultrachrome and durasteel melded together. Which, in fact, was exactly what it was.

"Declaration: This place sucks," Excon declared loudly. "Again I question what unlikely series of obstacles and events conspired to bring me here." Everyone glared at the loud droid who stood out like a sore thumb and made droids as a whole look bad, but no one dared speak out against him.

Then he caught sight of TS-13x, scuttling along with his fancy hardware. "Exclamation: Hey you! With the machine gun!" he shouted, moving a little faster in TS's direction. "I'm bored and I despise this place! Entertain me!" He certainly must have been bored, threatening another droid like that; usually the machines had to stick together, but in places like Mos Zebes none of the usual rules seemed to apply.

[Sporky]

The thundering footfalls and sound of rubble crashing to the ground brought the cloaked droid out of his calculations. He looked from side to side, then behind himself to find the source. Had it been a groundquake? Then he looked in front of himself, and up. Way up. He looked back and forth between the titanic droid standing before him and his machinegun. He...he was going to need a bigger gun.

Of course, that was only if this monster attacked him, an outcome he really hoped to avoid. Play it cool, don't draw attention, don't make any sudden antagonistic movements.. He walked closer to the larger droid, looking up at him. "I might be able to provide you some temporary entertainment, if you would help me find work!"

[Karl the Unfettered]

"Query: Work?" the huge droid asked, as the two machines were surrounded by locals. Many of them were simply curious, but a few were muttering nervously and belligerently amongst themselves; they didn't need a pair of overarmed robots rampaging through the city. Or, whatever they would eventually decide on doing. Whatever it was it wouldn't be good for anyone's business, and that was the important part.

"What do you mean by work?" he went on. "Judging from the machine gun you carry, you must be some sort of mercenary. As it happens I am also a mercenary, of sorts, though I am not actively in search of occupation." His sensors scanned the area, picking up on the denizens that may or may not have been planning violence upon him and his new cohort. If he could be called a cohort. What the hell was a cohort in the first place?

These musings served to distract the droid from his annoyance at the place and its denizens, until he remembered he had no idea who this droid was; likewise, he had no idea who he was either. "Introduction: I am Excon Ackdem, formerly a construction droid for unsavory people with a lot of money," Excon said, bending over slightly at the waist in imitation of a bow. "Now I am a machine of war and destruction: death follows me wherever I go, and if it doesn't I cause some. I am quite the serial murderer, if you follow me."

For the onlookers, that decided it: they didn't need a serial killing droid like Excon wandering loose in Mos Zebes, who knew what he would do. "Gonna have ter ask ye ter leave, fella," one of them drawled, stepping forward. He had the livery of what passed for the constabulary in these parts, and at his back was a fair-sized repeating rifle; at his side was a smaller blaster and a vibrosword, though none of his armaments seemed particularly suited to combating droids.

"Query: And what authority do you have to expel us, puny gizka?" Excon asked, his voice going lower and thicker with static to produce a more threatening sound. "I could crush you like an ant, you know." He reached out a hand, activating the electromagnets therein: the man who had spoken was yanked forward by his weapons, and Excon closed his hand about the man. He screamed and struggled, but to no avail; the remorseless droid crushed him whole, until he was just a speck of blood and a few gobbets of what used to be flesh. The rest of him, that hadn't been within the hand's grasp, lay about on the ground in a horrifying display of guts and dismemberment.

"Musing: So much for a peaceful resolution," Excon said to himself, as the rest of the crowd either retreated in horror and disgust or braced themselves to fight off the menace. "Not that I had been looking for one anyway, mind you," he added to TS-13x.

[Sporky]

The gathering crowd made him grip his new gun tighter, just in case. He looked about shiftily, distrusting crowds. Heavily-armed or not, crowds mean swarms. Swarms aren't good. Still, this behemoth of metal and circuitry standing before him seemed to be the main focus of the crowd.

Then the crowd fled when the city guard met his untimely fate. If he could have snorted or smirked, he would have. They were all fleeing to arm themselves and fortify whatever they owned against the giant droid they no doubt thought was going to smash them to bits.

After watching the villagers flee, he turned around to face...Excon, did he say his name was? "You don't suppose the fleshies would miss one more inkblot town on this planet, do you?"