Ghost of a Smile

Chapter Four

Rishi – The Swansong Home

Agent turned off his holocomm and looked around his house. He had just finished a short call from his grand admiral. Now the exciting part of his mission would begin: ensuring the information he 'leaked' would be accepted as fact and taken back to Rebel Command to structure a mission around its contents. If he were himself just mere years ago, he wouldn't be able to sit tranquil with his excitement. A very poor quality in an Imperial operative.

Still, he couldn't help the urge to rise and move to the second story window, opening the previously closed blinds. He looked out at the street before him, so covered with filth. Rebel filth, pirate filth, alien filth... actual-trash filth.

It was why he had taken this mission, heck, it was why he became an Imperial operative in the first place: the galaxy was descending into chaos and lawlessness, and people like Swansong and his grand admiral were the only ones who could see that the sabacc deck needed to be reorganized to achieve peace and remove the filth from the streets. And only them had the clarity to see that losing a couple cards along the way was a cost they needed to be willing to pay.

Rishi – Jovi's Uptown Cantina

Ezra and Sabine had taken their time to get to the meeting place, moving slowly and in ways that would have allowed them to identify if they had someone following them, if there was such a person. But they spotted no one on their tail, in fact, they hadn't even spotted a stormtrooper since the highly terrifying near-encounter not long after they had landed.

Arriving at the door to the designated cantina, called 'Jovi's Uptown Cantina', the pair realized they could no longer prolong the delay and entered the room. Though they had touched down during lunch time, the cantina they entered now serviced to the evening/dinner crowd.

"I'll go find us a table, you head to bar and get us... something, whatever, you pick." Sabine told him, helmet still on. Ezra inwardly groaned to himself, he hated picking, mostly because no matter what he picked, it always ended up being the wrong thing to order for Sabine.

Ezra nodded and headed over to the bar, leaving Sabine to find a table in the already drunk evening crowd. She pushed, shouldered, and stretched to make her way through the hoard. After dodging a couple drunken fists that weren't meant for her and a guy who tried to hit on her and passed out halfway through his own sentence, a table presented itself to her. She turned and waved to Ezra to let him know where she was, but she had no idea if he saw her.

She sat down, making sure to keep her helmet on, her pretty face would not get her any favors in here, it would probably only hurt her while she sat alone. Still, one moron who seemed either more or less drunk than the rest approached her table and sat down uninvited.

"Heyyy, Little Lady," the moron said, "your legs sure look good in that armor." He grinned drunkenly. That answered that question then: more drunk.

Sabine knew better than to respond to his words, so she sat their silently, really wishing Ezra would show up with food right then and Jedi mind trick him away.

"HEY!" The moron yelled, which given the volume of the cantina probably wasn't even noticed by anyone. "I gave you a complement, and you didn't even respond." He slurred as he talked, trying again to force her into his game.

Finally, the moron had had enough when Sabine didn't respond again and stood up forcefully, throwing the chair back to the ground. Sabine could feel a fight coming and she didn't like it one bit. If she attracted too many more of these drunken morons, someone was going to feel... opportunistic, to say the least, and she couldn't fight them all off, not even with Ezra.