Life and Death in DZ [Heros and Villans Welcome]

[Aerion Istari]

[OOC: Ground rules.  Anyone can join.  Just be courteous and follow normal RP rules.  Any PC can interact any way they want with any NPC I create - even kill them if they want. Jawa is my PC.  Derg is an NPC.] 

Jawa sat on a small stool in the corner of the back room of the shop.  The sign in the front of shop read Juma's Pawn Shop.  It was safe to say it wasn't Juma's shop anymore.  Jawa was a human boy of about 6 years.  He had light skin and ginger colored hair and deep green eyes.  He was small for his age and wore tattered clothing and a small dark gray hooded cloak though the hood was thrown back at the moment.

The remnants of tears still stained his face.  He wasn't sure why.  Juma wasn't his mother though she had sort of looked after him.  Sort of.  She let him sleep on her floor at night most nights and gave him food.  She made him help out in her shop by sweeping the floor or cleaning the merchandise or running errands.  But otherwise, she didn't pay him much attention. 

In the large front room of the shop was a chaotic and eclectic collection all kinds of new but mostly used items such as musical instruments, food machines, used clothing, data pads.  There were even a few old droids.  Juma never sold much of that stuff though she sold just enough to divert attention from her real merchandise.  To his right, in the back of a small closet was a hidden door.  Behind that door was a collection of new and used blasters, grenades, stims, death sticks and other contraband.  Jawa had never gotten a good look in there as Jawa wasn't allowed near it.  Once he had gone in there and tried to open the hidden door.  Juma had back-handed him hard and he fell to the floor with little lights popping before his eyes.  She told him if he ever went in the closet again or told anyone about the stash, she'd cut him to pieces.  Jawa had believed her.  But he had gotten glimpses when he peaked over Juma's shoulder when she occasionally went in there for something so he'd had an idea what was in there. 

Obviously, Juma would never open that hidden door again.  Nor would she ever slap him again.  Juma lay on the floor a few feet away from him.  Her hoverchair was hovering just above her left foot.  Her body was laying in a really awkward angle and position.  Her long, frizzy dark hair was fanned out on the floor around her.  Her skin was ashen gray and her eyes were open, black and still.  She was very, very dead.  The hidden door was wide open right now and the stash was gone.

He really couldn't tell how Juma had died.  She wasn't bloody and there weren't any holes in her body that he could see.  There seemed to be a little blood in her hair but that could have been from when her head hit the floor.  He might have believed she had just fallen down and died except for the hidden cache having been emptied out.  Jawa supposed someone had killed her and took the stash.   

In spite of his young age, Jawa knew death.  Hardly a week went buy without him seeing a dead body or two or three somewhere or another as he roamed the dark streets of the Dendarian Zone of Coruscant (or Den Zone or DZ as the locals called it).   Sometimes if the dead person hadn't been dead for very long, they would almost look like they were asleep.  Other times, the bodies were cut up, had holes blasted through them or were beaten black and blue (or black and green if the dead person was a trandoshan or gormak).

Lately, he's seen a zabrak man coming to the shop pretty often.  Jawa hadn't paid much attention to him.  He thought he had heard Juma call him "Darg" or maybe "Derg".  He wasn't really sure.  Whenever Jawa came into the shop while "Darg/Derg" was there, Darg/Derg and Juma would stop talking and usually Juma would shoo him away.  Maybe Darg/Derg killed her.  Possible but Jawa didn't know.

Juma wasn't a kind woman.  The only time she paid any attention to him at all was when would tell him stories of when she was a smuggler.  She liked talking about her self and her previous life before the spaceship crash that took her left arm and right leg.

She even sometimes taught to him about how to steal.  She showed him how to palm something.  Then she showed him how to direct attention from the palming by picking up something large in one hand while the other hand causally grabbed something else.   She made him practice for weeks.  Then one day she sent him away and told him not to come back until he had stolen a particular commlink from a shop 15 blocks away.  When he returned with it, she took it from him and gave him a hot fruit cake.  He never found out what she did with it.

She had told him once that his real name wasn't Jawa and that she had no idea where he had come from or what his real name was.  She had called him Jawa because when he had his cloak hood up over his head he reminded her of a Jawa.  She never told him what a jawa was other than to say they were from her home planet.  She had said once that he had been wandering the streets a few years ago and she had taken pity on him and given him some food.  Jawa didn't remember anything before Juma.  Most days, after he woke up, Juma would make him clean up or run and errand then give him some food.  Then he'd wander the streets the rest of the day.  A couple of local people would give him food or talk to him but otherwise most grown up folk just ignored him.  When it got dark, most nights he'd had to Juma's shop and curl up to sleep on her floor.

Now, with Juma dead, he wasn't sure what would happen to him.

As he sat pondering his next course of action he heard a noise in front of the shop.  He quickly dashed across the room and slid under Juma's low bed to hide.  He pulled his hood over his head and peered out from beneath the bed.  He heard the door to the shop open and heard two or three sets of footsteps enter the shop.

"You two search this room," a vaguely familiar voice said.
"Ok, Derg", a voice answered.

[Aerion Istari]

As Jawa lay under the bed, listening, he though he could detect three people in the front room.  One of them was probably female but he wasn't positive.  There could be one more.  Jawa concentrated on being as still and quiet as he could and was hoping he would not be found.

[OOC: Here is an opening for a PC or two to be searching the room with Derg.  They could be heroes or villains.  They could be heroes pretending to be villains!  Jawa is a PC.  Derg is an NPC and fair game.  Have fun!]