the_last_resort

Entry tags:

Pugsy's

Who: Niles Pottinger and OPEN
What: Niles is looking for a dealer
When: After the swamp exploration is over
Where: Pugsy's
Notes & Warnings: Reference to drug use/addiction.

He had only one week's supply of Adreno with him, a fact that he was keenly aware of. If he cut it, he might be able to stretch it to a week and a half, maybe two, but inevitably if he didn't find a supplier he'd be facing a deeply unpleasant withdrawal. He wasn't about to stay in the Dakota Reaches just because it had a steady Adreno trade, but this was an obstacle to leaving that he knew he was going to face.

So once he was unpacked, settled into his room, and spent some time surveying a few maps of the town, finding a local dealer was one of his high priorities. A few basic questions to one of the robots bustling about the resort gave him a sense of the right part of town to start looking, and so a few hours later he found himself strolling into Pugsy's.

He ordered a drink at the bar and turned to strike up a conversation with the person next to him.

"So, how long have you lived in this town?"

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Niko had a heavy head again- he needed to tell Boone about his "other" job, but he didn't want to lose his friend. He didn't think he could take losing another friend, not after what happened with Belloq. He had the worst feeling that he would, though, and it filled him with dread.

But Boone needed to know.

He didn't realize it, but he'd actually gotten to the point that he was resting his head in his hands and his elbows were on the bar, with his body tilted forward so he could stare accusingly at his drink.

"Several months. About eight or so." Niko said, before drawing himself up to a rightful position. "And you are new." Not a question, just an observation in his Serbian drawl.

"I am." He had the rounded accent of a Englishman who went to the better sort of schools. "I was brought here just recently by a very elegant and formidable woman. I'm still learning my way around."

He held out his hand, which was covered with a brown leather strap, the only part of his outfit that wasn't black, from boots to jacket.

"Niles Pottinger. You're from the slavic region, right? I was stationed in Prague for a little while during the Pale Wars."

"Ah. More war. Why am I not surprised. Sorry, friend." He lifted his drink to him in a sort of apology.

"You mean Una? Yeah, well. I think she has had her fill of smart sounding men. Or she should have. Maybe she is the type of lady that likes the risk." He downed the glass and put it down, closing his eyes as he remembered Belloq.

That piece of shit.

Feeling stupid all over again, he rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand. "Weird shit keeps happening but nothing too terrible yet."

"Miss Persson, yes. And it sounds like I missed some interesting drama there. But don't worry, I didn't mean it like that. Elegant and formidable she may be, but I'm not looking for anyone right now."

He took a sip of his drink.

"Besides, if well-educated is her thing, I wouldn't qualify. I left school when I was fifteen, joined up shortly after."

"You sound like you went to the better schools." Looked it, too. But as burned as he was, he was doing his best not to judge.

"It is rough, getting started that early. I was thirteen when I started to fight. What have you been until now, career military?" He did not some sort of authoritative air. But it was just as likely that he had become a salesman at a nice clothing store.

"I was an only child. My parents weren't amazingly rich--my Da was one of those middle management types and Mum was a secretary for a solicitor--but they had just enough money to send me to public schools."

He traced the lip of his glass with one finger and stared at the whiskey within.

"I stayed with the Earth Military Coalition as it became the Earth Republic. Made my way up the ranks. There aren't a whole lot of career options anymore. Military. Trader. Tracker. Frontiersman. Miner. Raider. Prostitute." He shrugged. "Military seemed the best option. So you were thirteen when you first joined up?" He winced. "Damn."

And then it occurred to him that he didn't know which war the other man was talking about. He was so used to taking it for granted that when people talked about "the war" there was only one war it could be. But from what Una had said, and the brochure, different times and different universes...his drinking companion might have fought in the Russian Revolution for all he knew.

"What year are you from?"

"Yes, well... we were poor. No electricity until I was twelve- oh. Ah. 2008. AD. Earth." He said with the resigned explanation of a man that had become used to this kind of thing.

It was that war, another one with war crimes, but ones committed by humans upon humans. Before, theoretically, they had better things to worry about. "Trader isn't a bad job. I worked in the merchant navy. I liked it. Here, I am somewhere between frontiersman and tracker." And still, he was a smuggler.

He had been a little withdrawn, his trust wary and while normally he had no problem talking to new people, this one still had him dancing around the edge of the conversation. Mostly because, even if he claimed to go to public school, any school at all made him sound considerably more intelligent than Niko. Even if he were to open his mouth and speak in his native tongue, the Serbian was swollen with rural accent and slang. He didn't sound any more intelligent there than in English.

(It was a pity that he couldn't seem to realize that speaking three languages was its own accomplishment.)

"I ah..." He rubbed his thumbs together in grumpy shyness, fingers laced around his glass as he tried for the life of him not to sound like an idiot. "The military, it does things to you. It teaches you to hate, and it teaches you that it is okay not to feel sometimes. Then later it creeps up on you when you are not expecting. It is not a good life for a teenager. You have my sympathies and hopes you at least did not have to leave a battlefield to come here."

Though he didn't look like he was fresh off a battlefield. Just a little sick.

"2008? Christ, that's the year I was born." He laughed, shocked and nervous, and covered his mouth with his hand. This time and universe travel will take a little getting used to.

His modern history was spotty(his history classes never seemed to be able to make it beyond the Second World War, always ran out of time at the end of the semester) but he tried to think back to what he knew of 2008, what wars were going on in the world around that decade and the decade earlier. The Middle East, perhaps? There were a couple of wars there, he remembers, but he didn't think any slavic nations were very much involved with those, not sending in child soldiers. Slavic. That was it. Yugoslavia. A few pieces slotted into place.

"Officially, the war ended a long time ago. Unofficially, the world's a mess. You're right. Seeing that kind of brutality as a kid..." He flashed a quick, bitter smile. "...it messes you up a little. But the whole world was a war zone. You either fought--with the military or alone--or you became another casualty. Bit like what happened in your homeland, I reckon, where everybody ends up with horror stories to tell."

He tossed back the rest of his whiskey in a few deep gulps.

"Well, this got grim. I was just going to ask you if you knew where a bloke could get some chemical aid."

"Hey, you could ask me your name before you ask me where to fix a withdrawal buddy." He said as if he didn't share his life story with the guy. But there was a bit of a joke behind it.

The thing was, he sounded posh enough to be from upper echelons but he was looking sort of ill. He smeared his hand down his face.

"Ah... You're going to want to go to the brothel. The lady of the house, she is good at what she does. She has connections. She has things that can make it easier on you." She knew Hannibal Chau, and Hannibal Chau was the man people needed to go to if they needed a fix. But his language was veiled enough that, if he did rat anyone out, the lady of the establishment couldn't be truly implicated in anything.

The look on his face, though, said that he was referring to more than the sex. Even if that was really good, too.

"Brothel, got it. Thanks." The idea of the brothel being a social hub where a variety of goods an information were exchanged wasn't a strange notion to Niles at all. The Need/Want back in Defiance wasn't just about sex either.

Niles grinned. "So, friend, friend who helps a desperate guy get a fix which is a good friend indeed, what's your name?"

"Niko. Niko Bellic. And it would be better advised to consider such men as associates than friends. A friend would advise you not to let a substance control you. If it is something that you cannot do without without getting sick, then maybe this habit is something you should avoid."

That was his two-cents anyway. Not that anyone ever asked for it, but he tended to give it anyway.

"I know. It was stupid of me to let myself get hooked. It's not like I don't know what it does to you. But now that I am hooked..." He shrugged at his predicament. "...I can't go without it, you know? Not if I want to stay upright."

"They have a clinic here that could help you out, man. Since you are starting over." But who is he to give advice. He slid his now empty glass to the bartender.

"Anyway, that is the lady I would go to for help. I don't know nobody with a direct line." His loyalties rested elsewhere.

"The people at the clinic are discreet? I might have a look. Adreno is good, but having control over my life is better. I thought it'd be easier to kick the habit."

Just because other people got addicted, he'd arrogantly thought that it wouldn't happen to him. In retrospect, it was a foolish risk to take.

"Look, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem. I don't know you too good, but if you wanted someone to go in with you to talk to someone? Sure. I could do that."

And there it was, held back previously because of his reservations and then suddenly exposed as Niko tried too damn hard to be benevolent sometimes. And often failed at it, more often than not. His intentions were pretty good at least, he was none too fond of junkies and this guy really didn't seem as though he wanted to be one.

His pride made him want to do it himself. But...his pride was partially responsible for getting him into this mess, and it couldn't hurt to have someone there to keep him honest, to make sure he went through with it and didn't get cold feet before he'd talked to one of the doctors.

"That'd be helpful, yeah." He chuckled. "Hook me up with a supplier and rehab in one conversation. You're a versatile guy, Niko."

"Consider a favor." He said to Niles. "Life offers you a shit number of choices. I might as well point out which ones are out there."

He certainly took the shitty options often enough. Then, on a more serious note, he said, "I know more people from both sides than when I was back home."

"Is this a good place, then? It was sold to me a someplace a person could start over, make a new life. Escape their past. Is it?"

It sounded to Niles that Niko had quite a past to escape from as well. So if anyone would know if the place lived up to the adverts, Niko would.

"Yeah, it is. Just ah... don't take any work from little green men. Or get too close to their women." He thumped the guy on his arm.

"But no, this is not a place you can judge on being just like home."

"Little green men? I thought that kind of alien only existed in science fiction stories. Do they abduct people too?"

Niko has been nice to him. Friendly. It really is not much like home, not many people are friendly to him there. He wants to do something for Niko in return, a gesture of thanks.

"Hey, let me buy you a drink."

Edited (typo) 2015-02-26 10:09 (UTC)

"They are actually not so little." He gestured towards the far side of the pub where there was a green man playing some game with a round deck of cards, piercings all along his ears.

But as for the drink. "Sure. Save me some emeralds. I like Vodka."

"You were really born in 2008? A very good friend of mine here? He comes from centuries after a nuclear war." He gushed with approval when he spoke of Boone, though, still grateful for having been saved.

Niles looked in the direction Niko was gesturing, his eyebrows popping up at the sight of the large and heavily muscled green alien. Looked almost like a raider.

"I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of little. I think I'm going to make a point not to go near one of them unless there's security safely nearby. I like having my arms in their sockets."

He waved down the bartender and gestured for a second drink for Niko.

"I was indeed born in 2008. In April. It's a bit weird having all these different times all running together here. I think I'm around the same age as you, but I'm technically an infant back where you're from. And a nuclear war in the future...in my time I don't think anyone has any nuclear weapons anymore. Makes me wonder if we manage to build civilization again, just to destroy it."

"Just ignore them. They're assholes." And then, as if to explain Niko's feelings on the matter, a rough-headed Klingon came up behind him and thumped him heavily on the shoulder.

"NuqDaq 'oH loDnallIj, Bellic?"

"BIjatlh 'e' yImev, baktag!" He said back to the man, with all the tone of a real insult, but only got a friendly laugh and another rough shove and then he headed on to another one of the tables.

Niko, for whatever it was worth, seemed to not be in the least bothered. It just seemed to be how you talked to those people. "Hey, how about that drink you mentioned? If I'm going to talk nuclear war and planet wide destruction I would want to be getting drunk, I think."

"Whoa whoa whoa, what did you just say there? Because it sounded like you two were either hacking up hairballs or saying mean things about each other's mothers."

It wasn't like any language Niles had heard before. Only natural, since these aliens weren't Votans, but it had him fascinated. And everyone seemed to live here peacefully, not even struggling with the sort of cultural clashes that Defiance saw.

He tossed some emeralds at the bartender and decided to just get the whole bottle. Vodka wasn't his drink of choice, but it'd do. And there was something bonding about sharing a bottle, and Niles wanted allies. Without the might of E-Rep behind him, and no Churchill (may he rest in peace), he'd only really feel safe once he had some friends, even in a peaceful place like this.

"Both." He rolled his eyes and leaned his elbow on the bar as he waited for the dog-faced man to present him with the drink.

"I sort of know that guy. Ahhh, like acquaintances with no real ill will. But with Klingons, they are warriors. So they like tough people that can stand up to them but also do not get intimidated."

"It's complicated. For whatever reason I've never had a problem with them."

"I think I'll keep my distance from them as well as the green ones. At least until I know when it is and is not appropriate to insult their mothers. Because it sounds like a fatal cultural misunderstanding just waiting for the unwary."

He watched the alien barkeep pour out the drinks and leave the bottle.

"Cheers. To..." And then a toast came to him. "...to destroyed worlds. May better ones arise from the ashes."

"Yeah, you generally look like you have taken a few less punches to the face than me." He motioned to his own battered brow, and then raised his own glass.

"Yeah, good enough. To destroyed worlds and let us hope we don't fuck up this one." Niko then took a swig, in his heart of hearts believing one day he would.

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Pugsy's

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