Log:Purple Haze
Purple Haze
OOC Date: October 23, 2017
Location: Ko Henota
Participants: Rato Darsi, Ambrosia Greystorm
Some months after the rogue TIE Defender was tracked down and pursued to the point of self-destruction by the Resistance pilots Triz Dermout and Jax Greystorm and assisting Kael Greystorm (with LtC Greystorm as backseat driver), a first attempt is made to decode the mystery cylinder the old Imperial craft ejected prior to its suicide.
Consequently....it is the ONLY attempt.
It is an abandoned, burnt out, blaster-hole riddled building, tucked into a nook and cranny of the Ko Hentota district. It's smoggy, it's full of crime, it's grimy, and it's perfect for Rato Darsi. The Togruta paces the main room now, bare feet crunching quietly over the refuse of some residents past. There is a small, whirring terminal that she has inexplicably transported and gotten running in this desolate place. Pace, pace, pace, pace - she seems to be waiting for someone.
It smells worse, down here, just when the old LC imagined it couldn't. Thirty-five years in service? She should have known better. The only consolation to be found is the knowing that no matter what gas is spewing out the vents and shattered pipes down here, it only smells /half/ as bad as what she made those sorry kids wear to retrieve that professor from the forests of Endor. Bahahaha. Grumpy Greystorm adjusts the swatch of fabric slung across her nose and mouth while a half smile forms. Okay. Now she's less disgruntled.
Another note of annoyance is all this shit that Ambrosia tows behind. it's a literal hovercart of junk. Possibly stolen from a vagrant somewhere. Er...purchased. Only one busy-body bothered with harassing this older gal along her journey, and it's highly probable that the resident vermin are feasting on what's spilled out his belly like a pinata. She doesn't look very remorseful. Only purposeful. Deadset on finding her way...into this one. This old warehouse. What's /that/ smell? She gives a nudge at what's left of the bay door with her foot and the rattle made positively echoes to whomever may be inside.
A familiar thrum reverberates through the Togruta's senses and it slows her pacing with a satisfied hum. Predatory, yellow eyes snap to the door before Ambrosia's actual entrance, and her gaze remains there, creepily staring for Greystorm's arrival. "You brought?" Is all Rato demands when her old boss does arrive, and a hesitant, stalking steps slithers the slicer forward - she never managed to convince herself that this was not an elaborate plot to tie up a 'loose end' of the Resistance.
Belatedly, she remembers something that resembles manners. "Yehsa'ke yeh och, Greystorm." She purrs, dipping her montrals respectfully - it sounds like a greeting, it's probably a greeting.
"Yeh'yeah whatever back at ya," Ambrosia grunts once she's steered the sled around all the obstacles to the inner sanctum where sneaky Rato sneaks. This also resembles manners, for 'Ice Queen Aderanne'. Aw, they're playing nice. "I brought, yeah. But you no touch..." she holds out a hand in warning while the other hand fishes something out from between her tits. An athletic, 57 yr old boob, and a 1 yr old, too perky to match boob, to be precise. Whoever said Amber didn't have a sense of humor was SO wrong! Which makes basically the entire base a heap of losers, har. "...until you touch /this/ the right way." And there she stands, an obstacle between junk monger and her junk, with coded cylinder outheld. "Work your magic, Darsi."
The code cylinder is larger than typical, and the connectors don't match anything that would be standard, likely proprietary to that device. It's going to take a bit of tinkering to get to connect to any computer or datapad.
Sneaky Rato subtly sways side to side like a snake readying a strike, gaze flicking between the trash heap, Ambrosia, and - let's be real, she's only human - the bodacious pair of non-fraternal twins that harbor her adversary. Like some twisted, demented halfling from another fandom, Rat scurries forward and snatches the precious as it is held out and immediately - chews on it a little.
There's a method to her madness, don't worry.
She nibbles a corner, feeling the steady chink-chink-chink of tooth on metal, twists it in her hands (more cybernetic than flesh these days), and works her fingers through the ports and connectors that a more agreeable device would allow for terminal linkage. With a huff of frustration, Rato stalks toward what was once-upon-a-time a bar, and sets the thing on it. Her tools are simple - one of them just looks like a metal spike - and she labors over the thing for a long moment. She traces it's curves and crannies, prods and searches for any weakness or way in and - aha! "No panic, is not breaking." She warns and, without fanfare, a small square of the cylinder's skin is peeled away to reveal a delicate and intricate set of guts. Rato loves guts. "Is tricksy." She grumbles, to herself or Ambrosia - it's hard to tell. That little pick skates over the spine of the cylinder's inner mechanisms to nibble at the most likely candidate for input. "Can you hold?" She nods between Ambrosia and the cylinder, where she's the tip of the pick pinned against a small, seemingly incongruous component of the cylinder.
Assuming Amber is cooperative, Rat (less delicately) yanks the covering off the side of the terminal and wrenches several wires loose. Which is best? Green, it's always green. Another quiet moment is passed picking and fraying at the terminal piece (mostly using nails and teeth like some weird tech savage at the very real risk of electrocution). "Okay, we try this..." Gently, the frayed intestines of her terminal wire are poked, one at a miniscule time, into the cylinder.
The grim reality is that Amber won't necessarily /know/ if she's 'breaking', since she doesn't even know what the hell to expect this thing to look like inside. Her elementary education didn't quite cover techno slice'n'dice 101, nor did much of her more useful of the two, adult careers. They kept her busier with meat slice'n'dice. And the other adult career? Well. That's neither here nor there....
"Yeah, I hold," she does, firmly, and only flinches back a little when the covering gets yanked loose. It's like staring down the inside of a bomb, far as she's concerned, and if it's gonna blow, there's jack she can do about it anyway. "You uh...okay." Okay, Rat doesn't get electrocuted. She shuts up and watches the Togruta work. For four seconds. "So how's the new gig workin, between you two?"
With the code-cylinder connected, the computer's screen flashes brightly for a few moments as the encrypted device starts communicating with a computer that was not designed to decrypt it. Soon, there's a screen of Aurebesh writing that scrolls for what looks like hundreds of pages before it blanks out, leaving a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the middle. Likely, it was asking for the crypto-key. Appearance-wise, it seems whatever device this is has hijacked the computer it is hooked to, overwriting the computer's operating system and is awaiting input.
"Am not made for flying in space and making nice with locals." The Togruta grumbles without looking up. She's still fussing and fumbling and growling at the wires as she surgically implants them into the cylinder. "Am not made for stupid, sexy Rodian. Am not made for - e'berrg!" Her head whips toward the terminal and Rato carefully - carefully - removes her fingers from the cylinder to lord over the terminal. "Is smart, bossy demon." She purrs, more and more excited by the challenge as they go. Unfortunately, her cryptography skills fall short - she knows to enter a crypto key, duh, but it's too deeply encoded to figure out what it is the thing /wants/ from her. Rather than becoming sour in the looming face of defeat, the Togruta is thrilled for a worthy foe. She snarls and types in the key - it's wrong. The beast yells at her before it's heart slows down and lets her try again.... Again, the thing spits and screeches at her. Two blinks this time. "Sired by your uncle, baka..." She snarls at it, she tries again. And again. And again.
As the third attempt at breaking the cypher is put in, there's a bit of a whirring sound that starts emanating from the odd device. The cursor on the screen had blinked red three times after the first attempt, twice after the second, and once after the third. Then the cursor changed to Aurebesh numerals. 10... 9... counting down every 2 seconds. Another cursor pops up underneath the countdown, waiting for a final attempt to break the cypher, possibly the only way to stop the countdown timer and whatever might happen afterwards.
"Well, that's interesting." Which is code for 'bloodyfrickindammitwhattheshit', or so Ambrosia's tone implies. "Didn't know 'puters were capable of incestuous relations." She'd grin at Rato's insults cast upon the machine and even moreso at Rato's displeasure, if it weren't for the tiny flicker of her own disappointment igniting inside. This seemed important. She wants to know what's inside. She can't gut it the conventional way to find out, so she must turn to savvier kids and it isn't panning out the way she'd hoped.
And then the blinking becomes a different sort of blinking - one with numbers.
"Oh, sonofawhore," she snarls and thumps a fist down alongside before leaning in to glower at the screen alongside Rato's face. "I'll give you four more seconds, then I'm running like hell."
As the fourth and final attempt to input the code results in the countdown stopping. The cursor blinks green as if it worked. Then, there's a loud pop as the device splits open. The interior of the little hideaway is suddenly filled with a blast of extremely foul smelling purple dust. Clothes, hair, skin, even under the clothes near the neckline an sleeves are all covered in this thirty year old tracking dust, designed so that whoever was exposed would leave easy to find markings wherever they went, providing they could get past the smell. The code cylinder ionizes itself, destroying all evidence of what may have been encoded upon it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid - Rato's mirth turns to anger and this turns to snarly, spitty, hissy rage. She doesn't entertain the notion of abandoning ship (or terminal) as it is, but growls out a quick 'go!' to Amber as her final attempt at the cypher is thrown back in her face. "Ech'a ta!" She swears, slamming a fist against the terminal's side. "Why no work! I give and give! Where this from anyway, you dig out of Sith ass personally?" She slaps her terminal again - maybe that will do the trick, you never know. She's baring her teeth at the screen, pigments bold and bright and threatening - and then green! And then... "Nah!" she seems to realize what the device is planning a second before it happens, and she throws herself at it with a strangled 'nah, nah, nah!', fingers going to pry it open in a vain attempt to stop it. But she's too slow... And then she's purple. Ashamed and defeated, the 'gruta grunts out something that may be an apology to Amber as she claws at her face and the foul-smelling substance caked over it. It's like she's been doused in gasoline for all the havoc it wrecks on her sensitive senses, flailing and squirming and spitting as she tumbles to the side in sensory overload.
It's like raw sewage and fish guts and... Well, actually, it's not all that bad.
"..." That mouth - bellower of raging roars and crippling chastisements - closes. Just shuts, silent. Silently gagging. Purple lashes blink apart to reveal two /very/ unhappy eyes, the pupils of which are fixed on Rato with a withering stare. NOW she smells as bad as she'd dressed her troops for that op. Dragon piss. Her tongue rolls around the inside of her clenched lips, but it's probably just in vain.
"Darsi." It's the best she can do, right now.
