Log Date: 9/6/98, 9/10/98 Log Cast: Aidon Semmes, Shenneret Veery, Morganna Tazecks Log Intro: [Note: although this was RPed a couple of days later, this log actually takes place IC immediately after the scene in 'first-night.txt'.] Shenneret Veery's first night on Caspar has _not_ gone well. For all that she's managed to convince Avy Laarken and her bizarre friend Nelun that she's perfectly all right and that she simply needs some time to herself, she has not been able to shake how the encounter with the strange man called Aidon Semmes rattled her... nor has she been able to throw off the ache of memory being on Caspar again has called up within her mind. She has hoped to distract herself with song and drink at the Sandbar, the bar owned by Avy Laarken, and to some extent she has succeeded -- for the band led by Rekkie Sheldon, who regularly performs at the place, has been quite willing to let her sit in with them. But Shen has found herself prompted into singing one of her 'Paul songs' -- the tune she'd begun to pen not long after he'd originally left her on Tatooine, finished on Palanhi, and now for the first time given full growling life with a band's entire complement of instruments behind her: "Corellian's Bane". And for all that she's met up with a friendly Marine and a pair of large, loud, but music-appreciating Barabels, she's _also_ discovered that the hostile ex-Imperial Stalh is on Caspar. Between lingering nervousness over what Semmes might know about her, outright ill will towards Stalh, and her bruised young heart, the musician hasn't been able to stay in the Sandbar. With a bottle of brandy her only companion, she has fled to confront that beach which serves as the locale of her last clear, sweet, romantic memory of Paul Nighman -- entirely oblivious to the fact that Paul Nighman himself had been in the Sandbar, watching and listening as she sang out her pain and frustration with him to the establishment's audience. And Shenner is equally oblivious to the fact that she's not the only one prowling the beach.... ---------- Hideaway Beach - Plaxton City Surging whitecaps paint themselves onto the powderlike, white sands of this sliver of beachfront, tucked between the two massive bluffs that encircle Plaxton City. The waves have eaten into several places on the shore, forming rocky outcroppings and small coves, but one long strip is laden with pristine, whispy sand. A few Pula trees jut out, throwing their branches toward the tides. A few hundred meters from shore, a jagged pebble of an island stands defiantly in the surf, holding up an old, unused lighthouse. The dusk sky above is cloudy obscuring it from sight. -=-=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=-=- => Aidon -=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=- ast leads to West Blake St. - Plaxton City. Whatever purchases Aidon may have made were hours ago, and all lstowed away in some storage locker somewhere. His evening of dinner and a quiet drink is done, too, and all that remains is a walk on a beach on a world he's not been to before. And so he walks, silence his companion. Silence.... mutedly roaring waves... and a voice. A young voice, overly loud and edged and strained, but yet somehow managing to maintain something resembling clarity as it sings without apparent concern for being overheard. He pauses, and then continues his walk. He angles slightly so that his path will intersect with the voice. Perhaps it's to torture himself, perhaps it's to torture her. Hard to say. But nevertheless, he comes up from the side of the singer. There she is, a slim and spraysoaked silhouette in the darkness. The girl who's named herself Shenneret Veery is of all things executing slow pirouettes in the surf, a near-empty bottle dangling from her hands, her hair a mass of russet tangles blowing about her face. Apparently oblivious to and uncaring of the possibility that anyone might be approaching her, she is singing at the top of apparently strong and talented lungs, for all that her voice is roughened by emotion and -- no doubt -- the reduced contents in the bottle she holds: In all this trouble Hold on... To innocence with which you were born, Through so much struggle, Be strong... He stops and watches, the silver in his hair glinting in the few visible lights. Aidon considers the near-empty bottle, and then the slow turns in the spray. He stops on the sand, far enough away from the waves to be easily dry. Then he folds his arms and watches. Just watches. It's dark, so it's hard to see his expression. Find the faith... you need to... carry on... It's a long night, You're not alone, Fall into the light... Fall into the light... Fall into the light.... The girl keeps singing, her voice occasionally cracking, her steps more than once faltering, but she is apparently bound and determined to hurl her song skyward and never mind the condition of the singer. She turns her face into the moonlight, and her cheeks are wet, but it's anyone's guess whether the dampness is from tears or the spray of the waves. Still, her features are twisted and pained, and each syllable she sings escaping her in an ill-controlled flow, like blood from an open wound. "Into the light?" Aidon echoes. "Isn't that a little trite?" he asks. He shakes his head slowly. "Why're you singing in the ocean, child? The least you could do is find someone to dance with while you're getting wet." Shenneret Veery's entire body jerks as if she's just been shot. She stumbles around in a circle, eyes enormous in her soaked and colorless face, and she utters a wordless, choked off cry of alarm. Then a surge of pain and fury floods across her features, and she snarls out raggedly, "Min' your own karkin' business, ol' man!" He shakes his head. "I offer you sweets, and you throw them on the ground. A bit of advice and you fly into a rage. Tsk. You're certainly a fiesty little thing, aren't you." He takes a couple of steps away, and then turns and steps back. "Besides, you're going to drown in there, you know. Unless that's what you wanted to do?" "Maybe I do," the girl retorts, swaying slightly where she stands, her face full of challenge and defiance and... contempt. Her consonants slurring together and her green eyes overhot, she lashes out to append, "... an' maybe I don', an' it's none o' your karkin' business, so go the hells away!" He smiles, though perhaps no one can see it. "No." Now what's she going to do about that? Should be interesting to find out. "I bet you're going to try to stomp off and leave now, just like a child having another tantrum." "Fuck you and the bantha you rode in on!" is the drunken girl's immediate and thickly growled reply, and with her free hand, she thrusts an obscene gesture in her unwanted intruder's direction. Aidon bursts out laughing. It's a deep, heart-felt, truly amused laugh. There is nothing cynical or harsh about it, it invites the hearer to join in the merriment. He says, through chuckles, "What a spark you have, granddaughter. I'm glad I met you. Is there anything left in that bottle, or did you drink all of it?" Laughter, apparently, was _not_ what this redheaded lass was expecting. Shen stumbles back a few steps, frowning suspiciously, and then she frowns down at the bottle. "Why?" she demands, the growl still in her voice. "Because I want some," says Aidon. "Why else would I want it? I guess I could be trying to get you to come in out of the waves, but personally I think you look nice with all your clothes sticking to your body like that." The girl sways where she stands, and then stares, aghast, at her uninvited tormentor. Finally, unable to come up with a suitably stinging reply, she barks, waving the bottle clumsily, "You want it, old man, you can have it, if you go the frek _away_!" Aidon laughs again. "No deal, child. You're considerably more fun than what's in that bottle. What're you going to say next?" Her face flushed with fury as well as the liquor, the girl visibly bares her teeth, making another rude gesture at the fellow accosting her. And what she spits out in reply to his query is a wrathful curse, this time in Horansi, her voice scratching roughly over the syllables of the felinoid language. Determined now to ignore her tormentor, she starts stumbling away, and just to add insult to injury, gulps down another swallow of what's left in the bottle. He strolls along with the girl, making it appear that the two are together in some cheerful way. "Tsk. Don't switch languages on me," Aidon says. "Then I can't appreciate the creativity of your curses." Morganna arrives from the street. Morganna has arrived. Shen stops. She whirls around. And she plants a fiery green drunken glare on the man who's trying to follow her. "I. Said. Leave... me.... _alone_!" she howls. He shakes his head sadly. "Not at all creative," Aidon says. "You can switch back to cat-spitting. That at least sounds more creative." He glances up and notes the newcomer, and gives the scarred person a noncommital nod. Three shadows step onto the beach from the entertainment district, one of whom has a glowing eye, and all three have imperial Symbols of one form of another on them. At the yelling, Morganna raises her single eyebrow and regards the small woman, tilting her head to one side.. "She looks familiar..." the woman idly comments, 'But I don't know from where..." That's quite enough. Pushed to the breaking point by a night that has included a known antagonist harassing her while she was trying to sing, more deeply alarmed than she'd like to admit at Semmes' claiming to know someone with her last name, and thoroughly infuriated by his intrusion on her attempted solitude in a place that holds meaning to her battered young soul, Shenner's temper snaps. With an incoherent bellow of rage, she brings the bottle up into a vicious arc, aiming it straight for Aidon's head. He's quick, and basically sober. So Aidon just catches the bottle and drains the last dregs of liquor. "Thanks," he says with a grin. "You could have left me a little more, though." He's aware of some of her concerns, likely, but not all of them. And a drunken young woman in water is not something he's going to leave in a dangerous place. So he says instead, "Y'might try fingernails next. I hate being scratched. That might actually drive me off." The scarred woman frowns and raises her eyebrow, walking towards the disturbance and folding her arms over her chest, she looks like she';s have one of those days, and she's not in the mood for people starting fights on her planet.. well, it isn't hers yet, "Good evening, are we gonna become civilised or do I have to call th' authories?" her predatory gaze passes from Aidon to Shenner, she almost lookes like she wants one of them to take a swipe at her. Thwarted, Shenner snarls again, and bodily hurls herself at her self-appointed pain in the backside. She doesn't bother with fingernails -- indeed, the young woman doesn't seem to have much in the way of fingernails. No, she goes straight to fists, bent on pummeling the man as long as he has deprived her of her one immediate weapon. And as to the arriving Morganna, Shenner spits out another incoherent curse, this time in Corellian, as she swings wildly at any portion of Aidon Semmes' anatomy that she can reach. Aidon avoids most of the fists. He makes a grab at Shenner's wrists and simultaneously gives the scarred woman a grin. "Civilization? Any second now, I'm su -- hey!" A sideswipe connects with his face. He makes another grab for a wrist. The scarred woman motions with a fluid sweep of her hands and her aides approach, Morganna places a hand on Shenner's shoulder, expecting some sort of lash back, her tone is cool, and chilling, and her touch is like that of a reptile, "Come now, young lady.." the aides move near Aidon, just in case.. Morganna's glowing eye flashes, "It isn't nice to antagonize people, ya know?" that comment is aimed at Aidon. Shenner might be drunk, but the young woman is apparently at least somewhat familiar with how to land blows. There's some strength behind her right hook in particular, uncontrolled though her swings are. And because she _is_ drunk, Semmes can easily snare her wrists, which only provokes her into attacking with her feet. The new hand on her shoulder only provokes Shen into trying to whirl around and pummel Morganna. However, Aidon has a hold of her wrists, and the girl had been in the middle of trying to kick him where the suns don't shine. This mostly results in her nearly falling over, so she has to resort to verbal abuse, snarling out to Morganna a suggestion as to what exactly she can do with herself, and with what species of packbeast. Yeah, that right hook caught him good, but Aidon seems only energized by the blow, not angered. He avoids the attempted kick, pulls the girl back to her feet, and finally starts to use his years of training as a soldier. Specifically, as a dril sergeant. "-Stop- that, you damned little fool, or did you -want- to go to jail?" he barks. At the suggestions, Morganna merely laughs, and it's a cruel laugh, the scarred woman reaches out and gently takes the woman's chin, pointing her face towards hers, "Such awful words coming from such a pretty face.." that eye flashes, and she removes her hand, still smiling coldly, "Now, are you going to behave..?" a comlink is pulled from her belt, "Or do I have to call the Caspar Marines?" Now struggling in Aidon's seemingly iron grasp, Shenner's dazed eyes flare with alarm, and she growls out throatily, "He started it! Lemme go, you bastard! Lemme go!" Aidon pauses for a long moment, something thoughtful coming into his eyes. "No," he says. "Not a bastard. Not that, though perhaps other things." But Shen is out of the water and out of danger of drowning, so he's satisfied. He lifts one of her hands to his lips and kisses it in an oddly courtly gesture. "It has been my pleasure to spend a part of the evening with you, my dear. If you'd like an escort back to your quarters, I would be honoured to provide it." The he lets her go, gives Morganna the kind of polite nod that's half a bow, and turns away. "Good evening to you, ladies." Morganna slides the comlink ack into her pouch and she narrows her organic eye, the robotic one remains permanently wide open and staring, a rather disconcerting image, especially in this low light, teh aides move away, and watch Morganna, now. " Morganna slides the comlink ack into her pouch and she narrows her organic eye, the robotic one remains permanently wide open and staring, a rather disconcerting image, especially in this low light, the aides move away, and watch Morganna, now. "Good evening, sir.." comes an almost upset tone, Morganna really wanted to exert her power, that'll have to wait for another day, she is in a very nasty mood, her mismatched gaze stares at Shenner, "Are you going to be good, girl?" Shen, released, her hand kissed, stumbles backwards and promptly collapses onto the sand. She blinks blearily at the man as he departs, then can be seen to swallow hard. That robotic eye is clearly disconcerting to the girl's inebriated brain, and she scoots unconsciously away from the woman who stares down at her. "If he leaves me 'lone," she mumbles. Morganna Scars.. those are the first things most people see when they observe this 5'10 human woman, particularly the triad of valleys hacking their twisted way through the left side of her face from brow to chin. The eye on that side of her face has been replaced by an unblinking, emotionless, cerulean glowing orb that occasionally flickers and glows with more or less intensity depending on the woman's mood. Almost as emotionless as the robotic eye, the steel grey eye that peers out of the right side of Morganna's face is cold, intelligent and has a violent fire burning within that give her a quite oppressive presence. Strands of reddish brown hair fall over her face, she short cut framing her starkly contrasting face. There are smaller scars visible on her hands and fingers. A plain, navy blue button down shirt with a gold trimmed collar covers Morganna's upper body. The shirt, in turn is covered partially by a lighter blue, soft nerf-suede jacket with a similar trim, both shirt and jacket have a slightly scrumpled appearance to them. Morganna's pants are a straight blue, a similar colour to the jacket, and they are tucked into a pair of well loved, dusty, scruffy black boots, which throws off the 'neat' image completely. Around her waist is a simple belt which houses a blaster, a datapad and a mid sized vibroknife. There is a small, silver, Imperial symbol pinned onto the left collar of her jacket. -=-=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=-=- => Protective Vest A gentle breeze ruffles the scarred Ambassador's hair for a momet, and that eye casts a soft glow on herself and Shenner. The aides, realising that they aren't needed right now, have drifted back to the shadows, "If he comes back, I'll smack him for ya, I really ain't in the mood for watching fights tonight.." she doesn't speak her thoughts, but she seems to be in the mood for starting one, and her diplomatic tone has given way to a more street slang talk. The change in tone seems to disconcert Shenner, too. Warily -- wary of both this scarred stranger and her own balance -- she begins rising to her feet. "He started it," she repeats, the growl drained out of her voice as she has to divert more of her attention to keeping on her feet. "I wasn't doin' nothin'." Morganna snorts and her gaze snaps to the waves as they crash on the shore, "You're lucky I came along, one of you woould have probably ended up dead.." that predatory gaze levels, ocne again, on Shenner, "And judgin' from your state, I think that it may have been you.. watch yerself, Caspar isn't a friendly place." "I been in worse," the intoxicated girl says gruffly in reply, apparently not bothered by the notion. The scarred woman merely shakes her head, and waves a hand idly, not really in the mood for talking with inebriated locals, "I'm sure ya have, but I can bet you that your worst resembles my good days.." there is a pause, before morganna hisses, in a strangely longing tone. "Watch your pretty face before someone smashes it to bits.." With that flourish of her hand, Morganna's aides reappear and follow her as she begins to wander up the beach. Disturbed, muttering, "_Pretty_?" in some bemusement before it foggily occurs to her that compared to her own, Morganna may well find her rough young features pleasing. She stumbles back out of the woman's way, adding grudgingly, "Yeah... whatever..." And she doesn't relax until the woman and her companions have gotten well, well out of sight. Morganna looks at you for a moment. Morganna leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Morganna has left. [End log.]