Errant Knight on an Errand (Dire)

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Ervisa Therani hadn't even known about Gargon until last week. Well, sort of. She'd heard the name before, but dismissed it as something from a badly written holonet program, because who the hell would name their planet Gargon?

Dumb name or not, it was a lot like Oatara. Thick jungle everywhere, only a few mountains, and that delightful humidity that made your shirt stick to your skin. Probably the only difference was the Gargon wasn't bioluminescent, and she didn't live on it.

Why exactly she'd been chosen for this little errand hadn't been made exactly clear to her. She only knew that Ethan and the others who ran Spearpoint had needed someone to fly out to Gargon (stupid name) and pick up a ton of power cells and haul them back to the base in courier ship she could only assumed they'd rented from the nearest U-Haul station.

A bunch of guys from the company were loading the pallets onto the ship, which left Ervisa with about an hour of personal time before she lifted off, which she was spending in a crappy cantina in the spaceport, trying very hard not to give into her flaws and her alcoholism. While one drink wouldn't hurt much, one would easily turn into two, and then three, and the next thing she knew she'd wake up in a fast food restaurant wearing her panties on her head surrounded by stale french fries.

Or something like that.

It was hard to believe that a decade ago she'd been a Jedi Knight, and a pretty good, if a bit simplistic in her ideas of good and evil. Everything had changed though, and her downward spiral had been amazingly catastrophic, ultimately turning her into a junkie prostitute before she managed to level off and end up a pilot. In an awkward relationship with a guy, fighting the Sith in a private military.

Yeah, she thought as she stared at the pile of fried vegetables before her, life was weird. And a b*tch. In fact, life was a weird b*tch.

[Dire Wolf]

(Sorry, lmr. Its been a good minute since I've been able to easily post. I kinda forced this one out.)

Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.

It was as much of a Jedi's job to reflect on the five lines of the Jedi Code as it was to fight Sith or arbitrate disputes. Most Jedi didn't, and if they did they didn't do it very well. Things were allowed so long as they didn't interfere with your inner peace, knowledge, serenity, or harmony. So, really, Jedi were allowed to go out, get obliterated, and have one night stands. Tali wasn't so into doing that last one, but she certainly saw nothing wrong with getting drunk out of her mind.After her time on Vendaxa, she'd need it. The horrors she witnessed there still clung to the inside of her eyelids and haunted her dreams. After the official council debrief of her time there, the woman decided to take a mostly unannounced vacation to tour the galaxy at large. Zeltros was, naturally, her first stop.

Lets just say that Tali let off a lot of steam there, but her holiday was far from over by the time she decided to leave. A few planets later, she found herself on Gargon with a ship that needed repairs. Gargon was pretty much Vendaxa two, but she did her best to put that devilish little thought into the back of her mind.

Tali let out a heavy sigh as she stepped into the shoddy little cantina and walked up to the dingy bar. The flowing blue tattoos that dominated her right side were visible thanks to her short sleeves and her hot pants. A few minutes later a square bottle of whiskey was placed before her, and she was enjoying the burning liquid as it sloshed its way down to her stomach.

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Ervisa bit into a vegetable she find rather unappetizing. The danger of ordering something local was that different cultures ate different things, and sometimes it wasn't all tasty. Once she'd eaten a rotten egg that was supposed to bring good luck, and while this case wasn't nearly so... vile, it was still a slimy and disgusting taste in her mouth.

Needless to say, she spat it out onto the plate and took a very long gulp of her soft drink. It was, mercifully, not flavored like that vegetable.

"Not a fan eh?" The server asked as he came over.

"Understatement of the month," Ervisa said, "Possibly the year."

Wordlessly the man picked up the plate and took it away, leaving Ervisa with the conflicting ideas that maybe she'd made him angry by spurning some beloved local tradition, or that he was going to come back with something better.

He was gone before she could get a better read on him, and trying to pick him out of the crowd was such a hassle. However, it would take her mind off of the nasty aftertaste still residing on her tongue.

The Mirialan woman closed her grey eyes and focused in on everyone's unique presences in the Force, and two things were instantly apparent. In the first place, the waiter wasn't mad. That was actually quite nice really, as she hadn't wanted to offend him. However the other was much more interesting.

There was another forcie in the room. Lightside, young, or youngish. Probably a Knight. Definitely trained. He or she was sitting at the bar, and Ervisa looked with curiosity.

Short sleeves and short shorts, revealing what looked like human skin with a big blue swirly tattoo all over her right side. She was definitely a looker all right, and Ervisa raised an eyebrow. What was someone like her doing in a place like this?

Only one way to find out...

The Mirialan pilot lit up a cigarette and crossed over to the bar still holding the fruity soft drink, and sat on a decrepit stool to the left of the woman. Then she spoke.

"Hey there, don't see too many folks like you in places like this. You with the JO, or on your own?"

The vague terms would be clear enough to her, and would sound innocent enough if she had some cover she needed to keep.

[Dire Wolf]

As dingy and downtrodden as the cantina may have been, it had one incredibly important aspect: good whiskey. Ever since the taste of alcohol first touched her lips she found herself searching for something that burned just a little bit more. Until she found whiskey. Tali always found herself with a square bottle of the amber liquid in her hands when not on the job. Sometimes during a job, but it was difficult to fall in with criminals if you pass on the liquor.

Then some Mirialian walked up to her asking about her affiliation with the Jedi Order. Perfect. This woman had the presence of one who was trained in the ways of the Force, perhaps even the Jedi, but thankfully she wasn't terribly corrupted by the Dark Side's stench. One stench did fill her nostrils, though, and it was the horrid smell of burning tobacco and nicotine.

Thanks to her Aphtihiri origins Tali had a powerful nose, and thanks to this woman an overpowering stench caused her to cough once or twice. "Folks like me," Tali asked in a questioning tone. She decided to be civil, if nothing else. Tali decided that, while she was on this outing, she had never even heard of the Jedi Order. "Do you mean heavily tattooed hot chicks? If that's the case," the woman made it a point to scan the room, "you'd be right. What's the J.O, though?" Tali assumed that this woman meant the Jedi Order, but Tali hadn't heard of those crazy monks before. Remember?

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Ervisa stared down at the backs of her hands, and her biceps. Her grey eyes focused on the large and ornate tattoos she wore as part of her Mirialan heritage. Geometric, and navy blue. They were a series of triangles that climbed up her arms and crossed her shoulders, to rise up onto her cheeks.

So it appeared that heavily tattooed hot chicks were somewhat more common in this bar than she thought. Ervisa resisted the urge to make some crack, and was successful largely because the woman's answer smelled a little fishy, like a Mon Calamari family reunion, or a Nautolan's panty drawer.

Trained forcies didn't just NOT piece together those two letters. Ervisa had the distinct impression she was lying or playing dumb. That meant there were several possibilities behind this scenario, ranging from wildly improbably to definitely possible.

In the improbable department was that this was a Sith Lord in disguise who wanted to recruit her to the Dark Side. Similarly, she doubted this was the Jedi Grandmaster, or a Republic secret agent named Svetlana Starchaser who was going to try to kidnap her for some reason.

The probable options could be narrowed down to two. Either she was a Jedi sent to catch her and take her back to Rodia, or she was a Jedi who coincidentally met Ervisa in the bar and was trying to keep her cover on the down low.

Somehow if it was a Jedi here to bust her, she doubted they'd be so indirect. That was really only because she could see herself doing just that. Bust the bad guy hard and fast. Don't tiptoe through the tulips. Or dance through daisies, or prance through petunias, or gargle with gardenias, or anything flower-related.

Still, Ervisa kept her hand close to the lightsaber on her belt.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

There was no point forcing a confrontation. Ervisa would just take it in a different direction and try to sound out the woman, to get a feel for whether or not she would be trouble.

"So what brings you to Gargon?"

Before the woman could answer, Ervisa grinned and stubbed out her cigarette into the ash tray before her, speaking her piece.

"I can't take the name Gargon seriously, I mean it sounds like some kind of giant monster in a Neimoidian movie."