OOC: I expect to play this out entirely myself, but if you feel like you have a decent reason for being in it -- and you won't @#%$ it up by writing badly -- then, be my guest.

IC:
"Vir, I can't live like this," she said. "I told you that. I love you, but I don't love that damn writing and those damn politicians. I can't get death threats at all hours anymore! I can't go to the grocery store with a bodyguard!"

Viryn stared at the floor, then met her eyes, steadily locking her glare behind his vision adjustment spectacles. "It's who I am, Sarah. This is what I chose to do because of who I am... you can just bleeding seperate me from my calling like two totally different things."

Sarah sighed, stuffing a bundle of clothes into her bag, and snorting. "You haven't changed. I thought you'd change... I thought maybe..." She snorted again, and stomped off towards the door. "I knew you would say that, I just knew you would."

"Yeah." Viryn said nonchalantly, looking out the viewport of their Coruscant appartment. He stood up, taking a deep sigh, and smiling with absolutely no humor. "So did I." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a credvoucher. "Ten thousand," He said, handing it to her.

She took it as if he were handing her a tube of urine.

"I still love you, you know," Viryn said again. "I always have."

Sarah didn't smile back. "Of course. I just hoped... that maybe you'd come to love me more than your damned writing. I should've known better."

The door slammed, and Viryn was alone.

The appartment was on the lower top levels of Coruscant, near the very surface, but not quite. Viryn's writing sold and was viewed enough on the holonet to earn a sizable amount from his publisher, but not enough to make Viryn rich; he prefered it that way.

Though he was a former Imperial medic, and even trained to be an officer, he lacked the snobbish accent of most Imperials, speaking plainly. That had earned him the distain of his commanders in the Empire, to be sure; he'd sat by for a year while less-qualified but more "Imperial" guys had been passed onto the Officer Candidate Training program.

So, he'd always felt like a tad of an outcast in the Empire. Oh, to be sure, he was intelligent, and he'd always found acceptance one way or another, but early on, one thing had become fairly obvious to him; if life wasn't fair, the Empire was the capital of nation of life.

Viryn threw on his denim jacket -- a relic, they told him, from a forgotten era on the human homeworld, wherever it was -- and buttoned it up, stepping out of his appartment sadly. He didn't, of course, display this sadness openly; he did well to cut a striking and poised figure at all occasions, as cameras were forever on him. As he stepped along the Coruscant walkway skirting his appartment, one young female reporter rushed up to him uncerimoniously, shoving a sound amplifier in his face and beginning to routinely badger him with questions.

"There's been a lot of speculation that you've upped your personal security," She said, moving to keep pace with him in the crowded walkway. "Since the threat on your life by Supreme Commander Dxun Isstal! Any truth to these rumors, any comment you'd like to make --"

With a cold, hard smile, Viryn took the sound amplifier, turning to face the cameraman that had been following them. "No, actually, Miss, there is not. I have, however, upped my security in light of the recent insurgence of brown-nosing, impolite reporters who insist on pestering me at all hours with stupid questions. So, no, is the answer to your question, Miss; and may I just comment on what a fine fucking job you're doing of creating stories of absolutely no substance or basis."

The reporter just stared at him.

She reached up and hit the off button on the holocam that her rodian assisstant was holding, and snatched the sound amplifier from his hand. "Who do you think you are, asshole!?" She screeched. "That was being broadcast live! They'll play that clip over, and over, and over!"

"Oh, I know." Viryn replied, glancing up at the massive screen draping down the side of one of Coruscant's massive buildings. "I very much know."

And as she turned, to her horror, there was the clip of film she'd just taken.

Viryn set off in the other direction, towards the Vermillion Equinox offices. It would be a busy day, making retorts to that...

"Mister Quell," Pouncing on Viryn as soon as he came through the door, one of the office secratery's pushed ahead of several others bent on the same purpose. "There are several matters needing your attention." Pulling out a data pad, the young man eagerly launched into his speel. "There's quite a few people waiting for you to join them on one of the holonet feeds, one marked as personal, the rest are reporters, and the editor wishes to speak with you about yesterday's fiascao... I mean.. sorry, interview. Yesterday's interview."

His face flushed, the young man stammered to a halt, handing over the data pad. Listed were the reporters wishing to speak with Viryn but placed at the top was the one marked Personal. The name on this was Pesker, Pole, and Tri-kli'mar, an old and very prestigious law firm that Quell very rarely ran across, even in the news.

Viryn spent a minute longer reading the details of that particular item, glancing up only briefly to see that the aide was still standing there. "Go on, get the hell out of here... what are you waiting for, money?" He said waving the young man away. "If you wanted money, you should've been a damn janitor. You'd make more."

The man looked, for a brief instant, like a deer caught in the headlights, before stumbling clumsily away. Great, Viryn thought, that's just the kind of person Vermillion Equinox needs to attract -- clumsy undergrads with matchbook Basic degrees who were turned down by their highschool holopaper and came here instead. He shook his head and proceeded into the office.

Making his way quickly through the musty cubicles seperated by thin pieces of duraplast. Most of cornicopia of interns, editors, and writers looked up and gave him a smile or a nod, which he returned. Viryn stepped into his office, shutting the door behind him and sitting down at the old chair and desk and reading through the message one more time.

Some old cook, who he'd never met, somewhere in a gutter town of Coruscant dies and leaves him... a droid? A droid.

Wonderful.

He tapped the holonet terminal, bringing up the address supplied in the latter portion of the message.

"Pesker, Pole, and Tri-kli'mar, how may we help you?" Came the bored voice of an elderly secretary seconds before her expressionless face appeared on the holo-screen but like most people who had spent their lives truding away in offices and being paid far less than they were worth, the woman was quick on the uptake. "Aw, Mr. Quell, we have been waiting for you to return our call. I'll patch you through to Mr. Pole in a few seconds."

The picture jumped away, a standard scene of some tranquil beach appearing on the screen. Barely on hold a few seconds, Quell didn't have time to decide if he wanted to get annoyed or not before a man appeared, presumably Mr. Pole. That question was easily answered as the man began to speak.

"Mr Quell, I am Dantious Pole and I'm assuming you have already looked over the information we sent you?" An elderly man, Mr Pole was a gentleman whom a person could never imagine being called anything other than Mr Pole. He was stiffed and starched, the type of person who you expected to have his days planned weeks, no, months in advance and never once deviated from the schedule. And in fact, he was exactly that type of man. "I have the particulars of the inheritance here in front of me and as soon as we go over them to your satisfaction, we can move on to the discussion of where you'd like the droid delivered."

"The droid." Viryn repeated, smirking slightly. "It's all well and good for you to go on and act like it's a daily occurance for addled old greasemonkeys to leave androids to pundits, but I'd kind of like to know what possessed someone I've never met to leave me some kind of... durasteel heirloom. If you take my meaning, my profession doesn't exactly make me buddy-buddy with people I know, nevermind annonymous strangers who might have been overall-wearin', serial killers named Bubba."

"The... Bubba in question was Archis Owtel. He was a miner, so yes I suspect he wore overalls at some point in his life, then, having made a few lucky strikes here and there, an investor. He held stock in several corporations and judiciously traded and bought stock to maintain his fortune. He was a very old man when he first read some of your work and was, in his words, bloody well impressed. As for being a serial killer.... Archis worked a rough job in his youth and worked in many dangerous places so I can not on good concious say he was a man who never harmed a soul, but a killer I wouldn't name him, no." Mr Pole told this small story in a deadpan voice, occasionally checking some papers before him, as if he didn't know the story by heart. Archis Owtel had been a client for the law firm from long before Mr Pole had come to work there, which was many years ago, so this story was more than just familiar to him.

"The droid in question has been in his service since he was a young man and, since Archis was a self made man of good means, he keep it's programming up to date, as well as.. tinkering with it himself, I believe. He had children of his own, but none of them expressed a wish to inheriate the droid and not have it's memory and programming wiped. Archis felt you were a man who'd give his droid the special consideration he felt it deserved." Pulling out another sheet of paper, Mr Pole consulted it briefly, before continuing. "Fully capable of working as a domestic servent, the droid is also programmed in protocol measures but I believe it's main functioning capabilities is that of secretarial work, office managment and basic keeping of work and fiance running smooth. Archis made sure his business manners could be handed over to the droid and ran smoothly for some time without him having to interfer, as later in life he was quite ill. The droid is also programmed for long term companion ship, with a strong loyalty base to whomever the programming says."

Clearing his throat, for the first time, Mr Pole looked mildly uncomfortable. "Unfortunately, if you don't wish to take over the ownership of the droid, we will have the problem of having it de-programmed against Archis' wishes, as he himself programmed it before his death to assume you as the new owner. There is also the small matter of an account set up so that the droid would not be a fiancial drain upon you, Mr Quell. For the first month of your ownership, the control of that account would rest solely in our care, but upon thirty days of ownership, thirty days in which you can decide whether you wish to keep the droid or not, then you will have control of it. So that... repairs and such things can be taken care of without any worry of where the money will come from."

"Is there any more questions, Mr Quell? I have tried to answer anything I could think you'd wish to know."

"Pardon me if I sound like a caf-shop intellectual," Viryn replied, "But isn't it a little bit against reason to paint a big fat 'X' squarely on my face in the droid's mind and then offer it to me like a gift? It sounds like you're handing me a magical pile of bantha shit but warning me you'll start throwing it at my head should I choose not to accept it."

Pole stared briefly at Viryn, unsure of just how to react to the obviously-sarcastic response. Before the off-guard man could concoct a reply, Viryn continued, "But, why not. I don't really have anything better to do than be the guinea pig for someone's post-mortem practical joke, so let's just go ahead with it. Provided the droid doesn't turn out to be a walking bomb, well, I could use a shrewd business... thing, around the office.

"Drop her off at the Vermillion Equinox offices. I have no life other than defaming politicians and fielding death threats, so you can count on my being here at all hours, chained to my desk and chain-smoking governmental affairs." Viryn cut off the transmission, satisfied he'd shocked and frightened at least one upper-class snob for the day.

Later that same day, as Quell was indeed at his desk wrecking political havic, a very tired and harried delivery man was trying to get through the red tape that protected the news service. He'd spent an hour alone just getting passed the front desk and he was in no mood to deal with the twittery secretary who was making vague threats about calling security on him. A look of barely controlled anger on his face, the delivery man, who's name tag proclaimed him Hispath, very tightly explained for what felt like the hundredth time.

"Look lady, I have all the paperwork. I have all the needed signatures. I should know, I've gotten them all in triplicate. No I am not delivering some wild bohemith animal men into your news room to attack you. No I am not trying to kill some Mr Quell with some blow up device." His voice steadily rising, Hispath slapped a palm against the large waist high cargo box that was remotely programmed to go where he led it. With each syllable, flesh smacked into metal as he tried to simply do his job. "I'm just trying to damn well deliver this to Mr Quell, then get out of this damn place."

Viryn pressed 'enter' three times, finally looking up, bleary eyed, from his desk, through the transparisteel windowpane -- a port which most took to be crystaglass or just glass, but which offered far more protection than either of those -- to see the delivery man being hassled by the secretary, whom he'd purposely imployed to do just such a thing. Kept brown-nosed reporters on their toes, and such.

He emerged from his office, casually walking over to where the delivery man stood, his face shining so red you'd think he stuck it in a fire. Viryn just smiled slightly. "Giving him a hard time, Sharron?" He asked.

"Of course, Mr. Quell." She replied, barely unlocking her gaze from the delivery man.

"Good work. Well, then, cart the damn thing in here, and we'll see what we have on our hands here, eh?" Viryn said, turning to the man, motioning him away. He looked cautiously at Viryn, then slowly reached out his hand, palm up. "What? You want a god damn tip?" Viryn snorted. "Wrong place, pal. We don't have any money here at Vermillion Equinox. If I had money, I could graduate to professional ass kisser for some half assed, half wit government on the Outer Rim. Or for Gash Jiren. Same legitimacy level."

The man looked both dismayed and annoyed.

"Your lucky I'm a nice man, tightwad, or I wouldn't tell you the instructions on how to turn the thing on are inside." Hispath growled, shaking his head. "And the bigwig back where I picked the thing up said, "If there's any problems, just ask it.", what ever the hell that's means."

Then Hispath turned and walked out, glad to get out of that crowded place and it's funky smelling air. Give him the stale air of outside Coruscant, with all it's spices of stench, to this strange newspaper room smell of intellectual brains churning in mental yuck any day.