I Know She Cheats at Cards

To one side of the room there are a few tables set aside for playing sabacc while a Dejarik table is set up near the bar for those interested in Holochess. There are only two waitresses in this tiny cantina and they rush from one patron to the next, trying to take orders and deliver drinks while being pinched and prodded and hooted at by all sorts of scum.

Two days have passed since the Wayside was nearly obliterated courtesy one clever smuggler and his thermal detonator. As if nothing at all had been amiss, life continues as it always has here: discreetly.

Well... almost discreetly. It's a little difficult to overlook the sabacc table in the back. The one with Haihai (mercifully the Whiphid seems to have a new and /willing/ object of affection, its tentacles draped gracefully over his shoulder, so there shouldn't be much danger of anyone else being grabbed, groped or otherwise inconvenienced), Leo, Johanna, and an irritable Quarren seated 'round. It calls attention to itself mostly because the Quarren is yelling loudly.

"That's statistically IMPOSSIBLE," he shouts, an angry fist causing the table to jump slightly, startling Haihai and his paramour out of their lovey-dovey stupor, "Someone's cheating! Nobody cheats B'ric Toppe and gets away with it!" This draws a soft rumble from Haihai, a sliver of drool sliding down one of his tusks (he can't help it, his new mate just makes him drool, much like that human male had a couple of days ago). "Haihai not like yelling," he harumphs, "Quarren should play. Should be glad he is not prey."

Is someone cheating? Surely it can't be Leo. He's too honest for such shenanigans, though given that he's been spending time with the crew of the 'Deeps, his morals may be fraying a touch. Is it Johanna, sporting a top that's cut low enough to just barely be on the right side of decent? "Nothing's statistically impossible," she offers helpfully with a winning smile, "Just improbable." This seems to rub B'ric the wrong way. "I didn't ASK YOU," he hollers, hitting the table again, "Perhaps YOU are the one who's cheating!"

Chana emerges from the 'bipedal beings who require sitting facilities' room and picks up the ruckass. It comes naturally to duck back into cover. The blaster is naturally in her hand, so naturally that it almost makes her wonder when, exactly, she grabbed it. She keeps it against her thigh and leans casually onto that shoulder against the wall. It'd take extraordinary hearing to hear the thing click into its stun setting.

Ecks is not even IN the cantina at the present moment. After having excused himself to use the refresher - and escape the amorous advances of a geriactric whiphid with too many performance-enhancers - Ecks'd found a rear exit to the Wayside Cantina, and he now stands with his back to the wall, in a secluded alley. Reaching into his mouth, he winces briefly as he pulls out a tiny transmitter hidden inside a false rear-molar. A second tooth is pulled, and he reveals a tiny power-cell. Ecks puts them together, and activates the comlink. "This is a priority message for the Chief Operation Officer - Authorization code: Alpha-Ecks-Zero-Epsilon. Do NOT reply. I repeat: do NOT reply. I have reason to believe the mission has been compromised. I repeat: Compromised. My cover is barely intact, and there is an assassin after me, and my mark."

Ecks pauses when he spots a shadow at the end of the alley - but it is gone in an instant. A group of pilots walk past the alley in the direction of the entrance to the Wayside Cantina, and the shadow joins them. Ecks curses under his breath. "This will be my last transmission until the situation is resolved." Then he drops the comlink, crushes it under his boot and ducks back into the cantina's refresher station. When he emerges moments later in the gambling den, he looks fearful, nervous and fidgety. He walks toward Joh's table and murmurs: "Is it safe to come out yet?"

The sapphire eyes of the pilot flit from one member of the table to the next as the Quarren loses his temper over the game. Giving a quick glance to Johanna and a small smile curving his lips, Leo soon turns his sights towards Ecks and Chana who both reappear from their respective refreshers. An eye brow is slightly raised as the man notices the anxiousness of the former Haihai lover. Turning back to the table, he whispers, "That Ecks is sure a twitchy fellow."

Poor Haihai. It's not as if he's incon-fucking-spicuous, now is it? He can hardly be blamed for dominating the physical space around the table the way he does. Were he aware of the discomfort his presence causes Ecks, he'd send the man a drink. Ecks did so seem to like whiskey the other day, after all, and Haihai is not the sort to hold a grudge against a match that didn't work out as planned. He had sent the pink-clad clone on his way, free to choose whether or not he wished to establish a family with the Whiphid.

B'ric, meanwhile, rages on. "I call that getting SWINDLED!" he shouts, only to draw a sharp look from Johanna. "Don't be such a mincer. If you don't settle down, the owner's 'help' will be all over your ass in a hot second. They don't take too kindly to sore losers turning this place into a free-for-all." The Wayside may be rough around the edges, but the owner takes a dim view of anyone trying to chase away clientele.

"Well, they say you haven't been molested until you've been molested by a libidinous whiphid," Ecks glibly replies, when he pauses at the table's side. He doesn't sit down, but grimaces faintly whilst adjusting his clothes. "Their fur chafes..." He mutters under his breath - just that tiny bit too loudly. To cover the slip of the tongue, he peers at the game in progress, quietly memorizing everything he sees. From the frown on his brow, and pursing of his lips - one might deduce that he has no idea how to play sabacc, and may never have seen a game before. He glances at B'ric. "It would appear that is called getting 'beaten' - but I'm only new at this game."

Chana scans the crowd slowly, looking for the bouncers, gauging her target carefully. Who's likely to get in the way, especially. She sighs and reholsters the blaster as subtly as she drew it, signals the bartender for another of what she was having, and makes her way back toward the table, warily, while the fellow gets around to making it.

As the Quarren continues to rant and rave and Ecks and Chana surround the table, Leo decides it best to take a break for a bit. Gesturing to his seat and looking at Johanna's 'employees,' the man says, "Free seat to anyone who wants it." Making his way toward the less crowded bar, the pilot seems to want a little breathing room.

Speaking of drinks, one suddenly arrives in front of Johanna. At first grateful, she then glances down, momentarily confused by how it looks. "Excuse me? Hello?"

The waitress she'd nearly crashed into a few days before shoots the pilot a withering glare, having already turned on her heel to leave and serve the next customer. "What?" she replies, testy.

A frown purses Johanna's lips. "What's this?" She holds up the drink as if for inspection.

"It's a cocktail," the waitress replies, rolling her eyes, "You asked for a cocktail."

"No," the pilot sighs, gesturing unhappily to the concoction overflowing with strange leafy decorations, "I asked you to get me a refreshing drink. I wasn't expecting half the forests of Kashyyyk. You could fall in love with a Wookiee in there!" But her last line goes unheard, the waitress hustling out of earshot just as Leo vacates his seat to seek refuge at the bar. "Ecks," Johanna begins, pinching lightly at the bridge of her nose, "I've been called a cheater and served a terrible drink in the same night. This is tragic."

Chana finds some wall to lean against, likely behind Joh's big antagonist as not. She's just watching the game, don't mind her. Really. Don't mind her. The waitress does come by with her drink, which she pays for, sniffs at carefully. A woman of simple tastes. Corellian whiskey, vintage last Tuesday, good for degreasing speeder engines and killing braincells. She sips it.

Ecks lifts an eyebrow at Johanna, followed by a shrug of his shoulders as he wanders around the table toward the wall where Chana is standing. He sniffs nonchalantly back at Joh and half-smiles. "The night's still young. Any more of this and we can start our own holodrama. All we need is a child prodigy, a drunken uncle, and a psychotic cousin who visits every Spring and we're on our way. You would be perfect in the role of the domineering matriarch..." Ecks' voice trails off when the Quarren stands to his feet and glare at the interfering clone. "Do you play? No? Then hit the spacelanes, holo-man." Then the alien moves as if to shove the human back into the wall. Ecks reacts at takes a quick step backwards... potentially straight into Chana.

Chana sidesteps out of the way of Ecks' sudden retreat. She casually slides her glass to her off hand (that'd be left.) The words of her old master ring in her ears, something about /not/ getting thrown out of bars if she can avoid it, and /not/ dancing topless on the bars, or if she must, at least not being the first one to do it, and could she please, please try to show a little Jedi restraint? "Easy. Easy. No need to get in a fight here. Let me buy you a drink, eh?

"Haihai love Wookiee once," the Whiphid rumbles as Johanna brings up Kashyyyk, "But Wookiee not love Haihai. Make Haihai sad." He glances to his gelatinous tentacled love interest and drools again in joy. "Slii-mi'i make NEST with Haihai! Old Haihai so happy now. B'ric Toppe should start nest with Prey. Be happy." His large, furred hand gestures to Chana (the prey), who has just made physical contact with the Quarren, thus obviously showing her availability for marriage and mating. Oh, and she's cute, which helps.

"HANDS OFF," the Quarren roars at Chana's interference, livid that this female would get in the way of him shoving that other annoying human into the wall (oh, and that FIRST stupid human TOTALLY CHEATED HIM OUT OF THREE GRAND, the bitch!), "I DON'T WANT A DRINK! I WANT TO DESTROY ALL OF YOU!"

"Someone's feeling sassy," Johanna notes, before looking meaningfully first at Chana and then the blaster holstered at the girl's side, "Hey, Chanera? If it doesn't work you can always hit him with it."

Chana attempts to a. splash her highly alcoholic (and entirely unfit to drink) drink in the aquatic creature's eyes, and b. follow it up with a palm strike to the apex of the big creature's thighs. A great many bipeds keep their genitals there, and these guys always seem to wear skirts or loincloths or pants in every holo she's seen of them. Sensitive cloaqua? Maybe. Who knows?

Groaning from his one-night-stand with the wall, Ecks puts his hands to temples and massages them a little while he has his eyes closed. The moment the whiphid speaks, the clone's eyes snap open and his gaze darts in the direction of the voice just to be /sure/ it's not aimed at him. No. He and his fellow humans have much bigger problems. Fumbling like someone who has only a vague idea of what he is doing (in some contrast to similar events in another cantina), he reaches into his jacket and grasps hold of his blaster. The quarren is very close - almost 'point blank' - and Ecks averts his face, covers his eyes with his left hand, and pulls the trigger--Nothing happens.

It's almost as if Haihai and Johanna had /planned/ to react simultaneously to the perfectly-placed shot to the Quarren's unmentionables -- they literally shout "OHHH!!!" at the exact same moment. It's a mix of horrified sympathy for the Quarren's smarting gonads, and raucous appreciation for Chana's feisty self-defense. "That's GOTTA hurt," the pilot hoots, elbowing her Whiphid neighbor in the ribs and snorting with laughter, "It's just GOTTA!"

Game over, man. Game over. B'ric doubles over in pain, his bitter retort cut off by the indescribable sensation as Chana punches him where no sun will ever shine. Apparently she's done it with enough force to make him kneel on the ground, too.

"Damn, Chanera," Johanna quips, "I'll remember not to piss you off."

Chana recovers to her stance, just in case anyone is coming to B'rik's rescue, and when no-one seems in the offing, she takes a breath, gathers herself back out of the fighting frame of mind. She nods briefly to Joh. "I think..." she says slowly, also noting Ecks' drawn blaster, "That we should probably pay our tabs and leave now. In the interest of being welcome next time."