revivalproject | Cobb's Event Catch All

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Cobb's Event Catch All | Open

WHO: Cobb Vanth & All
WHERE: Various locations across Coruscant.
WHAT: Adventures across the planet
WHEN: Event
WARNINGS: Cussing. Angst. Possible violence. Will update as necessary.

This was not how Cobb imagined his first time off Tatooine. Then again, with his history, maybe he should have expected his first trip in space and to a Core world would be against his will. These Agrii fellas needed to learn to ask for permission. He would've said yes if they had asked. Instead, there was a little bubble of resentment brewing towards their alien captors.

But that anger could wait. A lot of people here had no idea how to navigate any planet in the galaxy much less one like Coruscant. Stars, even Cobb was a little out of his element but at least he could read the writing and understand how things worked in general. The first thing he focused on was getting everyone else settled and comfortable to go around by themselves. It was a lot of explaining how credit worked and offering to help if anyone needed it.

It took a few days before Cobb disappeared on his own one morning. The credits provided by the Agrii and the few he had on him when he got taken were burning a hole in his pocket. He went to the market and found himself some pieces of durasteel armor and a padded armor suit to wear underneath. It was, without a doubt, the nicest thing Cobb had ever owned, gleaming a brass-gold color against the black padded suit and soft green cloak he also bought to hide the scars that peeked out from the suit.

Damn if he didn't feel guilty for the two-thousand credits he handed over to buy it.

He just couldn't help but think of all the necessary things he could buy for home or this group of people at that cost. Two thousand credits would never got that far on Tatooine where everything was so damn expensive but it could've done something good. But after putting it all on he looked like he belonged on a Core world instead of an outsider in ragged clothes. Clothes he kept because they were still good enough for home and no one wasted anything on Tatooine. The armor though... wearing it he felt... like someone important and wasn't that a heavy thing?

Not only did the armor protect him and help him blend in, now he could get into better bars and taverns where they played high stakes sabacc. Cobb had learned his numbers playing the card game and was damn good at it. Good enough to win games against rich fools who tossed credits around like they could be dug up from the sand. That real vindictive part of himself really enjoyed it.

And everything he won now went to what they'd need to survive and anyone else who needed a few spare credits.

After all, he could always win more.

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Starling had put some of her credits toward new clothes to blend in, as well, reserving some for ... whatever she felt drawn to need to bring back. She wasn't sure what to do with all this, having arrived just before the ships had departed. But as she stepped into the tavern, she had managed to dress like she belonged there.

She stepped up to the bar and looked at the liquor options as though she didn't, though. Glancing over, she caught Cobb's eye and gave him a charming smile, deciding to play the Pretty Lady card.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, but I can't seem to decide. What's good here?"

"Ma'am, I couldn't tell ya." Cobb turned and leaned against the bar on his elbow. "See, I ain't picky about what I drink. Usually go for spotchka if I got a choice."

There was something vaguely familiar about the woman. Cobb had definitely seen her before. He couldn't quite place it but he figured a little more time and he'd get there.

He raised his glass which had a bright blue glowing drink in it. "Might do better asking the bartender what they recommend."

"Thank you." She smiled graciously, then turned to the bartender. "Something light, please? Not sweet, just light."

While he was fixing her drink, she turned back to Cobb. "I can't say I've ever had spotchka. What's it taste like?"

"Not a problem ma'am." Cobb sipped his drink thinking that might be the end of it which would given him plenty of time to wrack his brain for an answer about why this woman looks familiar to him.

It was the question that helped tip him off. Ah, she was one of the new folks that slipped on the ships just because they left for Coruscant. He must have seen her around the hangars. He had a good eye for faces and everyone in the galaxy had spotchka at least once.

"Salty. A little burn in the back of throat but good." Cobb certainly favored it over other alcohol.

In the following silence, the bartender brought Starling a glass of purple Phattro. She traded her credits for it and raised it to him and Cobb before giving it a tentative sip. It was, as she had hoped for, light, a little tart, but not sweet. Something about the back end reminded her of lemonade, though the flavor profile was far more complex. If she had been on Earth, she would have pinged it as a sort of pear-ish Arnold Palmer with a kick. She gave a soft hum of approval, and settled in on her stool to people-watch.

When Cobb turned back to her, she nodded, looking at him a bit more critically. "You came in on the First Breath, didn't you, sir?"

Yeah, he had seen around the hangars. Cobb was good with a face.

"Yeah, that's where I've been put." He held out a hand to her. "Cobb Vanth. Pleasure to meet ya."

She dressed like a local but a lot folks did now and her confidence was pretty good but the little things always gave the off worlders away. If she had just ordered for herself he might not have caught on.

"Don't need formalities around here. Feel free to call me Cobb. Or Vanth. Whatever strikes you." It was one of those things around the ships. He'd respond to either.

"Clarice Starling, likewise." She shook his hand briefly, her grip firm but not overpowering. She had put a lot of practice and thought into her handshake over the years, knowing how much it could speak to her character in certain circles who were not necessarily expecting a woman to be there. "On both the pleasure, and on calling me whichever you prefer."

Deciding she genuinely enjoyed her drink, she took another generous sip, savoring it. "So, since you've already had spotchka before ... that must mean you're one of the folks the Agri mentioned who know this place. Am I right?"

Starling. Cobb found the name amusing. “Alright, Starling.” Sounded more like a nickname for a young kid than a name but other worlds had different naming conventions even here.

He leaned on his elbow on the bar with his glass held in his hand. “I am. Not from this planet though. Not even from this part of the galaxy. I come from the Outer Rim. Little planet called Tatooine.”

His home was lightyears away from Coruscant. The best he’d been able to find out about Tatooine from asking around was that it was still considered a backwater and not worth anyone’s time. Fitting, really. Not much changed in nine hundred years.

"That's incredible to me, if you'll forgive my sayin' so." She took another sip of her drink, smiling. "Where I'm from it takes months for something to get to the next planet over, so it has to be unmanned. We haven't figured out how to make space travel that sophisticated yet."

Tatooine - wasn't that the planet the kid had been from in the movie? She wasn't going to mention it to anyone - her psychology courses alone told her that was a very bad idea - but Kenobi had all but confirmed that this universe was the same as the one in the movie she'd watched as a young teenager. Light swords and epic battles, space travel... it did seem like the sort of place you'd pick if you were looking for people to help save your civilization.

"What you folks call the Outer Rim, it seems a bit like what we call the back of beyond, so to speak. Little podunk towns. That's the kind of place my family's from, too."

"Well, pretty sure it'd be months even with lightspeed travel but I'm not a spacer. Probably a few people around the hangars you can ask." Cobb didn't know galactic distances in any real way. Everything was just a vague idea that the galaxy was really, really big.

He shrugged. "Pretty sure it depends on the planet. There's nothing like this in the Outer Rim but some cities are big." Not on Tatooine, of course. They didn't get any bigger than Mos Eisley and Mos Espa.

And then there were places like Mos Pelgo that just didn't exist.

"We aren't fancy. We're humble and tough."

"Humble and tough are my kind of people," she proclaimed plainly, raising her glass to him in a toast.

"Rather have two of you in a pinch than twenty people from town, as my Daddy used to say. What was it you did, on ..." She pauses to make sure she says it right. "Tatooine? If'n you don't mind my askin'."

"Oh, this and that. Been a Marshal for the last five years." Cobb shrugged a shoulder. He would glaze over his past without hesitation. Nothing he did before being freed was worth mentioning. "Just watchin' over a small town."

And he missed it a little bit. Coruscant had familiar signs and aliens and touches all around but none of it was the relentless heat and dryness of Tatooine.

"You?"

A marshal. Even the word tugged at her heart from within deep pools she'd slowly been plumbing the depths of, growing used to their cold and painful waters over the past couple of years. It was a mark of that growth that she didn't shy away from the word, but met it with fond remembrance.

"My Daddy was a marshal for our town," she volunteered. "He did a lot of fine work, and kept a lot of people safe. I'm sure your town was just as glad to have you there for them. I tried to follow in his footsteps, hold up the law in a bit of a bigger capacity. I'm not sure what you'd call something like the F.B.I - it stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation. We'd tackle crimes that affected more than one town or state's jurisdiction. Say ... if someone were killin' people all across Tattooine, we'd work with all the town marshals to help catch them. But it got way too political, and someone threw me under the bus. Er. Behind the spaceship jets, I guess you might say."

Starling took another drink - a longer one, this time. She'd made her peace with the Bureau, too, but that didn't mean putting it plain didn't still sting her where she held what she cared most about. "I picked myself up, left them behind, and didn't look back. Some things aren't worth sacrificing to politics."

Cobb couldn't imagine an organized law enforce like that across Tatooine. If it did exist he imagined it would be corrupt as any other attempts at law enforcement were. Probably run by a Hutt to take more territory.

"We don't have anything like that," he said with a little nod. "The New Republic might try but... I don't see it workin' outside the Core worlds. We're a little too independent on the Outer rim."

And technically Cobb's title was one the town gave him. It had no standing with any government anywhere. There was a lot of grey area on Tatooine.

"But I'm sorry things didn't work out for you." Cobb could imagine how hard that must be since it sounded like Starling had liked the work, just not the politics.

"Mighty kind of you to say so," she remarks, and means it. "Tell me more about this outer rim of yours ... the more you say, the more it really sounds like my kind of place."

It almost reminds her a little, at first blush, of the Old West. Not the romanticized John Wayne versions her Daddy used to watch on lazy Sunday afternoons with a cold beer, a bowl of shelled peanuts in his lap, and his enthralled daughter snuggled up to his ribs ... but the true Old West, the rugged one that claimed just as many people to drought, famine, and sunstroke as duels and raids. The one that required you to work hard, be honest, and show kindness to your fellows to survive.

"Well," he said with a little bit of a drawl to drag out the word. "We're the last bit of civilized space before wild space and all the unknown out there."

There were probably three or four people on the ships that could explain the galaxy much better than Cobb. He didn't have much of an education outside of hearing stories from others and a little bit of reading he'd done.

"And it ain't all that civilized in some places. In my time the New Republic is just tryin' to get their influence out that far and some folks ain't happy about it. Imperials still out there too. Most of us are just trying to make a living."

And be free. Cobb didn't feel the need to go into the long history of corruption and slavery rampant in the outer rim.

A Republic and an Empire. Things slotted into place for Starling, then. Between what she'd talked about with Kenobi, what she'd heard from a couple of others, and this, it was pretty easy to see that Cobb had just been keeping his head down because There Was A War On and he didn't care about sides so much as he cared about surviving. She didn't mind that point of view in the least.

"Sometimes civilization is less civilized than it thinks it is, too," she said with a little amused wrinkle of her nose. "With all that, Agra 10 must look a little familiar in some ways, bein' so rough around the edges and in need of work."

"All civilization's the same. Some just dress it up fancy." Cobb shrugged. There were traditions he could respect. Mando's Creed for example. But he didn't hold much that Core worlds were everything one should aspire to. There's still the rich stepping on the poor.

He sipped his drink as he considered for a moment. "Well, sure, a little rundown place isn't the end of the world to me. Living rough certainly isn't. But there's a lot of basics missin' in places that I've never had to fix up before. Other folks have done that."

Cobb could hammer a nail or rewire a door control but set up running water? Nope. That was beyond him.

"Maybe this place is a good opportunity to stock up on what we need," she said, glancing around. She had never been one to back down from a challenge, even if this one seemed to be her biggest yet.

"After all, the Agri gave us unlimited credit, right? Why not get some manuals on how to do the harder stuff, and the supplies to do it that'll fit on the ships? I wager 'tween the bunch of us we've got enough brains to figure it out. ... 'Course, that does depend on which of those basics you mentioned are missin'."

"Oh, we have been." Cobb knew he wasn't the only one gathering up supplies. He'd seen others with crates of their own. The First Breath had all he'd bought and all of it was for the community. The armor and some clothes were the only things Cobb had really bought for himself.

He shrugged. "Not a bad idea but I'm pretty new to the place. You'd do better askin' the others what it's like living there long term. I've just been on the ship mostly."

Which would change once he got back to Tembra. He hadn't really settled in before they got taken here. He was comfortable now to do whatever he felt was needed.

She grinned, glad to know that so many of them were having similar thoughts. "Well, I hope there's room on the First Breath, 'cuz I intend on bringin' back as much as I can. Which ship are you on?"

"First Breath, ma'am, same as you." He raised his glass in a little toast. "I haven't taken up that much space."

Everything Cobb had bought so far fit in a nice little corner. Everything neat and orderly just like he'd been taught to do growing up in the commune.

"You should be fine unless you try to bring back a starship."

The thought of being shipmates with someone she'd already clicked a little with gave her a thrill, not unlike when she'd first found out Ardelia Mapp was her roommate, all those years ago at Quantico. It was a silly, girlish feeling, but she still gave it its moment, beaming brightly.

"Well, here's to shipmates." She clinked her glass against his. "I promise you I won't make a spread of it. Who else is on board? I woke up and everyone had already bailed out to explore."

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Cobb's Event Catch All | Open

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shipmaaaaaate <3 I am so happy with this assignment

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