Baroth trudged along the sand filled streets of the slums, accurately following his memory of the city's layout as he and Oracle discussed what she had uncovered in the records for Eregin's Black Market Trade History within the past three months. Whatever she had found, it had made her anxious, jumpy; she, for the first time in a long while, was afraid. And not just for herself.
"So basically, Whatever group Kaylin hired,-"
"The Iron Hands."
"Yea yea, whatever. The Iron Hands, have not only done their dirty work for Ataro, but managed to f*** off every small-time dealer and past-glory druglord on their way up the ladder after dealing with them and successfully transferring the product?"
"Exactly. And they don't just f*** them off, they kill them, their associates, clean out their warehouses and labs, and burn it down in under a day, salvaging what they can. I did some research on them, ju-"
"How much?"
"Not that much. Why?"
"Packel told me a little about them after Jorgel....whatever. But from what i was told, they don't fancy playing around. What you said about their dealings, based on what i hear, it's absolutely accurate. We'd do well to stay out of their way."
"Well, yea, but if we have to- Wait. What did you say?"
"I said: We'd do well to stay out of their way. Why did- Oh haha, very f***ing amusing."
"Yea, yea. But moving on, we may have to deal with them one day, Baroth. I mean they're f***ed up and all, but we've faced worse."
In saying that, Oracle thought back to Kraguul and how he had first appeared to them. Savages she had dealt with before, criminals and lunatics were nothing new, But Kraguul always managed to surprise, outsmart, and, on several occasions, nearly kill them. Baroth had never really explained where he came from, let alone what their history together was. In fact, he didn't even really explain where he himself came from. But Oracle had followed enough of his conversations to form a weak hypothesis, which she highly doubted was true. Either way, they found themselves in the middle of another s***storm and would have to hustle once again to get out of it alive.
And more importantly: Together.
Though, neither admitted to that fact as of yet.
Baroth just nodded as he rounded a corner, which revealed another long street through the slums. The roar of a speeder caught his attention and he quickly jumped to the side of the road, narrowly avoiding the reckless driver, who continued to round the next corner ahead. The dust caught his eye and led him to see a fair sized group of cloth-armored men, with what looked like laser weapons, huddled around an entrance to an alley. The were originally studying Baroth but took their eyes off him for a moment at their own alarm to the speeder.
This confirmed his suspicions.
Shaking his head as if to shake off the dust from the winds, he continued his trot towards the group as they stood up straight and nodded to each other. Baroth knew the drill.
"Up ahead. You see this?"
"Saw it and analysed it. Stay quiet and i'll handle it, alright. Run some I.D. scans on their faces, will ya'?"
Oracle simply nodded and fizzed off his visor, going into her full-control mode, which allowed her to see from Baroth's visor. She ran, encoded, and matched up each of the men's faces with the Residential Records of Blacklight's Database. The search loaded as Baroth came to a halt before the men, who seemed to study him further before one of them, second to the back, nodded to the last one closest to the gate which led into the alley. The man, with light black stubble on his chin and one blind eye, opened the gate latch and pulled it fully open, the bottom of it skidding in the sand as it fully came to a stop.
Baroth never took his gaze from the gathered men.
Who sent them?
Who paid them?
Who found them?
It didn't matter as of now. He'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it. For now, he started naming. The group varied and he'd prefer to know the man he was killing, at least what he looked like.
The first man to his right, within a few feet of himself, had his onyx hair in a tight knotted ponytail, like that of an Orc. He was a Redguard. Baroth named him Braid.
The next, to his left and a few more feet from the other, had a scar that curved from the top of his right eye and ended at the bridge of his nose. He was a Redguard. Baroth named him Scar.
The third man, this one a little closer to the entrance of the alley, had a tattoo of what looked like some sort of serpentine dragon on his right cheek. He was an Orc. Baroth named him Tagface.
The fourth man, the one that had opened the gate, Baroth had already named. Peachfuzz.
And finally, the fifth man, the one who seemed to be in the center of the gathered men, nodded to the others and motioned for them to enter the alley. Boss it is, then.
Baroth followed with closed contempt, falling in behind Boss and into the dusky alley. As he walked, the men casually stripped him of his weapons and grenades, leaving him with nothing. That made no difference. The gate was covered with a plastic green sheet, likely to cover up the mugging, but it mattered little. They would all be dead soon. Besides that, Baroth highly doubted the fence would stop the sounds of live gunfire from laser weapons. Either way, Baroth wasn't here just to kill these men, but at least find out who sent them.
There were a few drainpipes and sandstone walls of other buildings on either side of the alley, likely other houses. At the end of the alley, there was a green metal dumpster against a short brick wall; an easy escape if things went sour. Which they were. Boss held up a hand and the rest of the men stopped, clutching their weapons close to themselves and some aiming. Baroth glanced back and saw Braid to his right, Scar to the left with his gun raised slightly, Tagface in the not-so-middle blew him a cold glare, and Peachfuzz at the back, his eyes darting from person to person, his weapon, a semi-automatic machine gun, held close to himself.
Boss reached on the side of the dumpster and pulled out something gray and shiny. Getting a closer look, Baroth saw that it was a bat.
A metal bat.
Steel, by the looks of it.Boss pointed the bat at Baroth's chest, the distance between them leaving the bat awfully well within reach. Boss cracked a smile. Under his helmet, Baroth smirked.
Boss arched his eyebrows, as if he were angry, but the smile threw it off.
"You talk too much."
"And, what exactly am i talking about?"
"You know what i'm talking about."
"No, i don't. S***, i don't even know what you're talking about me talking about. How am i supposed to know what you're even talking about?"
Boss's expression faded slowly. He must have grown tired of the meddling. He reached for a two-handed grip on the bat.
"You dig too much."
Baroth raised his hands, as if to reveal his innocence.
"Hey, who said i wasn't digging your graves?"
A few moments of laughter go by between Baroth and Boss. The men behind them grunt and snicker quietly.
Suddenly, Boss swung the bat with two hands in an arc at Baroth's temple. Baroth caught the motion as it happened and raised his arm over it and wrapped his left hand around the lower-half of the bat, near the handle. After absorbing the impact to his armored left side, he yanked the bat to towards himself and smashed his fist into the bridge of Boss's nose, breaking it and quite horribly, ruining it. No sooner than he did that, he rammed his armored foot into Boss's chest which threw him back against the dumpster. Almost instantly, he unsheathed a metal pistol strapped to his thigh and pointed it towards Baroth's lower stomach.
He never fired a shot.
Baroth swung the bat in a reverse grip and, in midswing, he spun the bat and grabbed it in a two-handed grip as it connected with Boss's cheek. Baroth thought he heard something crack.
As Boss knelt by the dumpster in excruciating pain, Baroth fell into a crouch and threw the bat into Scar's chest, knocking him to the ground with a hard thud. Then quickly turning and standing, he kicked Boss's head into the front of the dumpster with full force, leaving a bloodied dent behind. He quickly reached down and grabbed Boss by the back of the collar and pulled him to his feet and positioned him between Baroth and the first round fired.
As if on cue, the rest of the men, out of panic or alarm, opened fire on Boss in hopes of hitting Baroth behind him. Yea, they panicked. He began walking with his human shield and advancing in the alley, the shooters unrelenting in their volley. Baroth had already taken the Boss's pistol and leveled it with Braid's chest, firing a few shots and eventually hitting him in the face. Without a moment to think, Baroth pushed Boss's corpse forward and dove out from behind it. He came up in a roll and was met with Tagface running up on him firing like a madman. He felt a sting in his right shoulder as he reached up, grabbed the Orc's wrist, and smashed his right fist into Tagface's jaw. Then, in one quick second, he took Tagface's pistol, grabbed him by the back of the head, and threw him to the right, into a wall.
He looked up and saw Scar in a kneel, gun raised and aimed for Baroth's abdomen. Swiftly, Baroth jumped to the side on the right wall just as Scar opened fire, shimmying along the wall as Scar turned and shot closer to him. Once within range, Baroth grabbed the end of Scar's gun, and raised his own between his eyes, pulling the trigger. Scar's head jerked back, as if he'd been punched, and he fell to the ground. Lifeless.
Flipping the rifle around so that he was wielding both, Baroth aimed at Peachfuzz and squeezed the trigger, but not before Tagface's fist connected with Baroth's helmet. Both bodies clashed, and there was a few minute struggle. Peachfuzz got confused, his aiming was off; he had no target, and if he missed, he'd hit the wrong body.
Exactly what Baroth wanted.
After the struggle, Baroth managed to force Tagface into submission by stomping on his leathered foot and head-butting him. Then he turned him around and placed the pistol against his head and aimed the rifle under his armpit. Peachfuzz was at a stalemate, though he aimed his gun with deadly intent. There was silence for a moment, then Baroth spoke.
"You gonna do it, Peachfuzz? Huh?"
He tilted his head at the nickname and steadied his weapon.
"P-peachfuzz?"
"Yea. That's a nickname I gave you. You know, because of the.. Ah, nevermind. Anyways, you're not gonna shoot this guy, are you?"
"Wha- No, no."
"Positive?"
"Yea."
"You sure?"
"Yes, God damn it!"
"Alright."
He raised his right foot and smashed it into Tagface's shin, snapping it with a sickening crunch. Without a second thought, he raised the pistol and shot Peachfuzz in the knee, momentarily stunning him. Spinning on his heel, dropping the pistol, and raising the rifle, Baroth fired several times and left Peachfuzz with a smoking chest. he stumbled for a second, tried to raise his gun, but shot into the ground instead just before he died.
When he died, Tagface saw his chance and tried to jump up and grab Baroth but met only the butt of his rifle instead. He smashed into the sand with a loud thud and he yelled in both anger and adrenaline. Baroth ignored his cries of anguish and simply walked over to where his weapons were and retrieved them. After gearing up, he walked over to Tagface, placed a foot on his throat, pulled his V8 energy pistol from his thigh, and leveled it between his eyes.
"Now i'm only gonna ask once: Who sent you?"
The Orc spat on his armor.
"F*** YOU-"
BZZAAT!
A few short minutes later, in a storing lot beyond the confined space of the alley, a black armored man walked away from the twisted corpse of a thug hiding behind a stone brick wall. He opened a private link to Derek's comms.
"Hey, Derek? I know you have something better to do other than listen to me, so i'll make this short. The Iron Hands are the one's behind the whole drug transactions. They're in deep with most of the druglords in Blacklight, not sure about Eregin. I recently did some digging and had to burn a lot of my contacts to learn this. I'll meet you where ever it's convienient. Watch your back. Out."
Baroth consciously decided to leave out the details of his recent ambush. It was bad enough he was dealing with the scum in the first place, he didn't need everybody knowing about it. He also decided he would have Oracle encode and send Jessica a private message and have her and Simus meet up with him. He'd update them on the situation and move on to a safehouse he'd stocked up on in the past. There, he'd be able to hang low and monitor the group, leaving the planet when the group did and meeting up with them as if nothing happened.
"Two blocks North and three streets to the right from the safehouse, there's a liquor store. Behind that liquor store, there's an alley with a red dumpster and two black trash cans. Meet me there in fifteen minutes, no later no sooner. Don't tell anyone but each other where you're going. Make sure you aren't followed."
In the Marketplace, a man buys two hooded fur cloaks for himself and his wife in the event of their upcoming trip to Cyris. The man then sets the coats on two stacked crates and turns to buy some dog food for their two Golden Retrievers. After purchasing the dog food, he then turns back to grab the coats.
But they're gone.