Junebug wandered through Teosinte, making her way to what a shocking number of gang tags identified as the Spiders end of town before the groups of blustering thugs flooded the streets. Even though the field guards weren't in town yet, there were plenty of unfriendly glares from partisans of both gangs, and from locals who assumed that anyone going around armed must be affiliated with one or the other. Realistically, Junebug had to admit she had been in more unpleasant places, there had been gangs of cannibals in the ruined cities on Segovia and children routinely went missing in the night. In her mind those situations were temporary, the results of wars that Andor's Armored was in the business of brining to an end as swiftly as possible. Andor was no humanitarian, but his interest in warfare was economic, and finishing a contract quickly was always to be preferred. That being said, any local thugs who bothered the mercenaries and the locals the recruited as camp followers and to help with their logistics train, could expect to learn what a couple of LAVs and a company of infantry could do to pissant indiges who got above themselves. In Teosinte there was no such force, and this wasn't a war, this was everyday life for these people, and it would go on till everyone on the planet was in one gang or the other. Or dead of course. That was the more likely outcome for most people. Sayeeda wasn't a humanitarian either, but she was here and she could do something, and so she would.

The bar she selected was called the Aracnophilla, or at least, Sayeeda presumed that was what the artists semi literate scrawl was supposed to say. It did have a fairly artistic rendition of a spider buggering a chained scorpion above the door. The interior was as promising as the outside, a single large room with a dozen tables infront of a dingy bar. At the back of the room was a stage on which a tired looking woman gyrated, shaking nude and unlovely flesh at a few patrons gathered around. The men seemed to be whipping at her with what looked like piano wire attached to wooden handles. She flinched from each blow but the vacant look in her eyes made it clear she was too stoned on something to much care. An interlace of old scar tissue suggested this wasn't her first, and perhaps not her hundredth time at the particular stage show. 

Junebug slid up the bar and ordered a whiskey, motioning for the bartender to leave the half empty bottle. She sniffed at the neck of it, making sure it was of a high enough proof to kill bacteria before taking a sip. It was raw and oily, with very little to recommend it except for the bite of what might have been pure ethanol mixed with water and food coloring. She grinned, she was just going to have to get Neil to take her someplace nice next time. She didn't realise the thought had made her laugh till someone grabbed her wrist.

"Something funny to you bitch?" a slightly overweight looking gangster demanded. He was clearly compensating for his balding patte by growing a full beard, which was none to clean and none too good.

"None of your bussiness yokel, why dont you fuck off while you still have your legs to carry you hey?" she suggested. Predictably his eyes narrowed with anger and he yanked her towards him. Junebug spun into the motion, using it to add momentum to the elbow which she drove into the suddenly shocked thugs stomach just below the sternum. Air whooshed from his lung and he began to choke as he simultaneously tried to gasp for air and vomit. He fell to his knees and sprayed out a mouthful of his stomach contents before collapsing into a wracking cough. Junebug kicked him hard in the kidneys and then again in the stomach as he rolled over. He coiled up, desperately trying to cover his vitals, he was crying now, but Junebug had learned in a hard school that it always paid to put the boot in while the other fellow was down. She raised her boot to kick him in the teeth.

"I think he learned his lesson," a deep basso voice said, punctuated by the click of a hammer drawing back. Junebug paused in mid kick and looked up to see a man with crossed bandoliers and spider tatoos on the top of both is hands looking at her in what might have been amusement. She grinned back, her smile as hard and terrible as a glacier.

"Oh I don't know, never hurts to drive home a lesson for the slower ones," she responded, though she was already stepping away, reaching back to the bar to retrieve her bottle. 

"Never the less, maybe we leave poor Jorge alone right?" the man persisted. Junebug took a sip directly from the bottle and shook herself like a wet dog, trying to speed the adrenaline from her system.

"Whatever you say," she responded indifferently. The man watched her for a minute and then eased back the hammer on the handgun and slipped it into a cross draw holster above his hip.

"Your that offworld mercenary, working with the Scorpions right?" he asked. 

"I'm from offworld, you can tell by the fact I still have all my teeth and a full set of chromosomes," she rejoined with a cocky grin. The newcomer didn't rise to the bait, merely watching her.

"As for working with the Scorpions, no, right now I'm not working with anyone, just looking to get a drink and..." she nodded her chin in the direction of the fallen Jorge who was crawling away towards the back of bar, if the man had friends, they weren't in a hurry to assist him, "enjoying the night life." The man nodded agreeably.

"Well my name is Talin, and if you aren't working with the Scorpions, then I have someone who I know is dying to meet you," Talin said with an oily smirk. Gunfire sounded off in the distance.

"Not really looking for company friend," she said, nodding again at Jorge as a couple of thugs scopped him up by the arms, shooting baleful looks at Junebug.

"I am afraid that I must insist, and if you refuse, I will have to get as many men as I need to make you comply, and that would really start our relationship off on the wrong foot don't you think?" Junebug took another pull from the bottle and slapped it down on the bar.

"Well, if you insist..."