Bitch Better Have My Money

Posted on Mon Jan 3rd, 2022 @ 6:16am by Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Evahnae Kohl

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
Location: Holoworld, Casino
2847 words - 5.7 OF Standard Post Measure

"....Somewhere in here." Kali looked over Eva and shoved the door to casino area--or at least the one she'd been in during the crash, the ship had had a few--the rest of the way open from the half-open frozen position it had been in since she'd first pulled it open to escape after the crash. It was in significantly more disarray and damage than areas further in like the kitchen, but still at least in the area that had residual power and atmosphere. "I was winning a big round when we crashed; and if nothing else I want my damn entry fee and initial bets back. That was my money to begin with." She grinned at the other woman. "Don't suppose you have any experience cracking a safe?"

If pressed to answer how she'd got herself roped into this, Eva would have been stuck for a suitable answer. As far as recollection actually allowed, she was pretty sure the older woman had just marched into the bar and told her she was ready to go. Commonsense suggested that there had probably also been an initial request that had disappeared under the music that regularly pumped into the lounge at alarming decibels whenever the bar manager was left to her own devices, but if Eva had agreed, she'd done so without knowing what she was agreeing to and now, apparently, she was about to rob a casino.

Another thing off her bucket list.

As it happened, Kali's question didn't catch the brunette quite as off-guard as it might most people. "Technically no, though I've scrambled more door mechanisms in my life than would look good on my employment history." Cheerfully slipping into the space and ducking under a slightly-rearranged support beam to get a better look at the room, Eva paused. Very quickly, though it was difficult to be accurate with everything strewn about, Eva counted tables and let out huffed breath. "They must have raked it in."

"Probably. This one actually one of a few--the fanciest one they just had a holo-setup for, this was the smaller one." Kali kicked something out of the way. She'd chosen the bartender to pair with on this task after overhearing a reference to that status; since she figured that short of getting Burnie to blow a hole in the side, someone in such a line of work was probably most likely to have at least some experience with handling this sort of thing...even if not with mishandling it like she was proposing. "Especially since they don't appear to have spent much of it on proper emergency supplies." She approached a side room and in lieu of clearing the cipher lock on it, reached into a pocket, pulling out a tiny device and slapping it on the door--it blinked in a sequence, then slowly the door made a sort of hissing sound as the lock disengaged, letting Kali muscle it open despite the lack of power.

It had been a while since Eva had set foot inside the Pit, or any other part of a casino for that matter. As far as vices went, gambling was lower down the list since it became hard to get caught up in an environment where you understood every underhanded move the House was making to ensure it stayed profitable. It still felt familiar, and even the disarray and subsequent demolition of part of the infrastructure hadn't eradicated the mix of leather polish and hard booze from the carpet. Eva screwed up her nose, nudged a fallen stool to the side with her boot and followed Kali. "Employees are expendable," she retorted cynically. "And since the most common problems on any gambling floor come from the patrons themselves, managers are more likely to invest in security personnel than the Beginner's Guide to Surviving Complete Systems Failure." Bending, the brunette picked up a half-melted chip and flipped it over in her hand. "What were you playing anyway?"

"A mix of stuff. Blackjack, when we crashed." She grinned for a moment - the human game had become relatively popular throughout parts of the galaxy, just like a variety of alien games had on Earth; and was one of the ones she had a rather impressive track record with. "Though I moved around the different tables and games a fair amount. And they sponsored a poker game a couple of nights that was pretty good. I'm sure they cleaned up on that with the entry fees alone, even."

"Eden wants to start a poker table on Rosie," Eva offered conversationally, as if the topic would even interest the woman. "It'll save on replica credits if I can find some dealer-grade decks and a supply of chips." It spoke to the partial-telepath's sensibilities that, on the cusp of great wealth, her current fixations were more tools of the trade than trinkets and baubles. The latter would eventually distract her but Eva liked to keep things interesting by occasionally being practical.

"Probably over there in one of those boxes. They had pretty nice ones." Kali indicated what had once been a stack of gaming supplies on shelves to one side, but were now, well, strewn all over the floor, a few busted open but most still sealed. She spotted a safe built into one wall and made a beeline for it herself, pulling out the little tool she'd used to bypass the door lock again.

It took a moment, the temptation of exploring for her own purposes distracted Eva enough to begin rummaging in one of the boxes, but devices were interesting and so too, when you got right down to it, were safes. Crossing the room, she crouched opposite the other woman and dropped her voice to an unnecessary sotto. "Why do I get the feeling you've done this before?" Her entire being radiated approval.

"I...may...have taken back some stuff this Ferengi stole from me, a couple years ago. And, err, possibly also taken the stuff he stole from other patrons and given it back to them." Kali admitted sheepishly. "Really just the one time, though. Usually I just arrange to clean them out after I notice them cheating people." The lights on the little device were cycling through as an edged grin spread over Kali's face. "Which serves them right for cheating everyone in the first place. Wasn't exactly the reason this sucker was meant for though--" She jerked a thumb at the blinking lights, "--my aunt insisted I have this mostly in case anyone ever, like, kidnapped me and tried to hold me somewhere." The thing wasn’t exactly strictly legal in the Federation; and certainly wouldn’t hold up against the most sophisticated systems and locks; but saying ‘no’ to her aunt would have been far beyond awkward into ‘simply not done’; and a good deal of her time these days was spent in disputed or independent areas of space, anyways. She had to admit it had come in handy the one time anyone had tried to grab her.

The blinking lights finally stopped with a 'beep!' and the door to the safe unsealed, letting Kali pull it open to the stacks of various currency--mostly gold-pressed latinum; you had to hand it to the Ferengi: The greedy sets of overgrown ears had succeeded in becoming a widely-accepted galactic exchange currency. One slender hand reached into the safe, drawing out nine and exactly nine bars before closing and sealing the safe again, stuffing the device back into her pocket and the nine bars of gold-pressed latinum in the backpack she was carrying.

"Well. That's my bet stakes back." Kali grinned at Eva and waved a hand at the room, and then the still mostly-empty backpack and duffel she was carrying. "See anything else you want?"

"Only nine?" Eva was confused. The minute the word Ferengi had been uttered, this had become an entirely different ball game. During her experience working tables, the brunette had been mostly subjected to the management style of arguably less self-absorbed personnel. On her last assignment, the flagship had even gone as far as to limit the amount of Ferengi operating any of the retail or entertainment sector because they were simply too good at fleecing profits directly into their own pockets. An entire casino run by one beggared belief. Recent years had forced her to play more in their backyard, and she'd become quite good at it except it wasn't really the kind of skill you felt like bragging about. "Is that all there was or are you just leaving the dust-mites their cut?"

“Ferengi are who I usually find cheating people most often and like to clean out in retaliation, and who was running the show the only other time I’ve ever…accessed…a safe that wasn’t mine. They weren’t who was running this place or these games though, and the ship had a lot of touristy types versus the most serious gamblers, so the stakes tended to be a lot lower.” Kali clarified. “I think the gaming operations aboard were actually headed up by this Bolian guy. Only saw him once or twice though.” She shrugged. “They weren’t cheating anyone on board near as I can tell. At least not with the gaming operations that is…The mark-up on the room service rates though, definitely.” Kali rolled her eyes, the human gesture perfectly executed despite the upswept brows and pointed ears.

"I'm still trying to figure out how it's all still just sitting here," Eva admitted, casting her eye around the disarray and screwing up her face in distaste. It was, as it so happened, a repeating theme of her objections thus far, such as they'd been. There'd been plenty of distractions too, and plenty of opportunities to prosper. Rising slowly, the brunette dusted off her hands and leaned sideways against the safe to consider the room in better detail. "I mean, I'm just the bar manager, I don't get told the interesting details. Like how you crashed to begin with. Or where the hell everyone else is." It wasn't prying, it was...taking an interest. She was in customer service, after all. "But even I can tell you that something this valuable should have attracted a company salvage crew by now."

"You would think, yeah." Kali started picking up various pieces of gaming equipment and stuffing them into a duffel, starting with the poker sets. "Literally have zero idea what happened or how the hell I got left behind for that matter if there were other survivors who evacuated, since I--" Here, Kali practically glowered in an intensity that promised death and destruction on the missing parties, or at the very least, a couple of broken noses. "--still had a pulse and all..."

"As far as I can tell, our scans didn't exactly find you either." Picking her way carefully across the room Eva, plucked a couple of the less damaged decks of cards and stacks of chips from the turned-over crate. "You didn't see anything weird?"

“I saw a lot of stuff that was weird.” Kali replied, stuffing more chips into the duffel. “By the time I woke up after the crash, there was no one around, but Kaleetha said when she woke up, there were still some bodies, but not nearly enough to account for most of the people on board…and she also said the holograms were moving them, which, creepy. Beats me where the rest of the crew and passengers went but if the survivors all evacuated without us there’ll be hell to pay.” She paused, counting a few cards and forming them into a passable deck with her hands before they too went into the duffel, now mostly full. “Or if someone attacked and took them prisoner but left us for dead? I dunno. All the data on the bridge was corrupted, couldn’t recover it. Hoping someone else on your ship has better data recovery skills than Kaleetha and I did. But yeah. Lots of weird shit. But not really any answers on it. Wish your…friend…hadn’t taken most of my weapons.” Kali looked around the room. “Lemme know when you think you have what you want; we should probably get back to the rest of the group.”

Nobody told bar managers anything. Eva did her best not to look too interested, which basically comprised of taking a breath before she launched into a tirade; her best wasn't always deserving of the title. "Wait, the holograms were moving bodies? So people did die! Okay, now I feel kind of like shit." Conscience found odd times to announce its presence. "I knew the holograms creeped the hell out of me but that's kind of given. I don't like things that have eyes but no psionic presence whatsoever." She didn't talk about her telepathy much but Eva wasn't paying attention to anything other than her own indignation. "But we've been partying and stealing things hand over fist whilst some poor rich fucker is stuffed in a torpedo tube somewhere. That's kind of grim."

“Unless you’ve been wandering around looting passenger quarters en masse, I wouldn’t feel too bad about the salvage part.” Kali stuffed a few more things into the duffel and sealed it. “From how it was described; I don’t think even Kaleetha saw that many crash victims, and we never found any more since; so unless you did...Not like you could’ve known. Kaleetha’s first guess is most people evacuated. Mine is most of them were taken captive by some third party; pirates or slavers or such. Kinda figured that’s who you guys all were at first actually.” She hoisted the duffel up further and adjusted the strap over her shoulder. “One of my best friends back when I was in the fleet was a Betazoid too, though; she also thought holograms were creepy as hell on principle for that same reason. Me, I’m more creeped out by the idea that if there was an external party involved in the crash, they might be, you know, coming back eventually.”

Betazoid too. The words sat uncomfortably, like a damn prickle in your sock that avoided detection. "Only half-Betazoid, so only half the irritation," Eva joked as a means of glossing over the colossal mess that was her telepathic identity. Then, because something about the other woman's pragmatic nature was catching, she added, "Yeah, I know, I look like I got dipped the whole way. My eyes are funky." This was meant to explain their colour, which was dark but hardly black and sometimes green. Even her iris' couldn't decide what she was. "And I don't think it's a matter of if they come back but when. Probably more of a reason for us not to hang around."

It occurred to Eva then, and only then, that she was now the thing holding them up.

"I think I'm good here," she finally answered the other woman's earlier query by using her shirt as a hammock for several poker supplies.

“I mean. I kinda got screwed up if you’re measuring by breed standards too, and I don’t even have the hybrid excuse.” Kali waved a hand at herself with a sardonic grin that nevertheless had the barest hint of regret or resentment. “I’m kinda the travel sized version.” At barely more than 1.5 meters, she was significantly smaller than the average Romulan female; and knew when it came down to it that she had other physical weak points vs standard, too. “But yeah.” Kali reached a hand behind her back at the backpack she was wearing too, unsealed a compartment, and gestured at Eva to stuff the items inside. “Let’s get back to the rest of the group.”

Eva filled in every form ever asked of her with a claim that she was 5'3" or the regional metric equivalent thereof, (she probably wasn't.) It was a novelty to be taller than someone who wasn't Jinx, because that somehow seemed to be cheating. She stuffed her haul into the backpack with about the same care for systematic structure as she handled anything outside of her bar and zipped it up with a pat to indicate she was done. "At least," she observed with good spirits, "we can make short work of any shins that try to cart us off."

“For sure.” Kali laughed as they started back out of the satellite casino area…Though the tips of her fingers still practically itched to have a ranged weapon on her…Just in case they ran into some sort of trouble before they could meet up with the others.