At length, the team of beggars returned to the rest of their group with the Cinder Ridge citizens’ handouts in hand. It took long enough that the sign was high in the sky by the time Bandit and the others reached the makeshift shelter set up near the spot where everyone had been dumped, and if the heat had been nasty before, it was downright oppressive now. In the intervening hours, the ragtag band’s numbers had continued to bleed off as former prisoners grew increasingly skeptical of the questing quintet’s return. Bandit didn’t pay the departed any mind; this galaxy was full of people who came and went all the time, and very few faces needed to be committed to long-term memory.

Once the jailbirds helped themselves to the donated clothes and a mouthful or two of frontier food, however, the whole gang could finally get this show on the road. Despite her earlier misgivings, Bandit was excited to finally get her first taste of this planet’s civilization, in a much more metaphorical sense than those who’d sampled the townsfolk’s spare leftovers. Neri suggested that the prisoners ought to seek gainful employment, in order to buy food if nothing else. That earned an amused scoff from Bandit. Maybe these organics had to go about their lives in such a humdrum manner, but not her. The world itself was her marketplace, and as it turned out, every vendor in town offered a three-finger discount. As long as she picked smart targets, timed her moves right, and took full advantage of the walking distractions around her, all the cash and batteries she could want were just one little heist away.

And if that didn’t work…well, Bandit sure didn’t have any other skills. [i]Guess I’ll just die.[/i]

She glanced at Dusk when he suggested various occupations. While she doubted that anyone around here would trust these hooligans enough for security work (and rightfully so, given her stated intentions) what really intrigued her was his curious turn of phrase. “Western?” she asked. “West of what?”

When Kim mentioned not having weapons, Bandit smirked. Or she would have, if she had a mouth. While TABS-EVA androids were by no means built for combat, the handy-dandy energy saws hidden in her multipurpose forearms could deal some real damage to anything that happened to be made of flesh. Of course, she didn’t need to mention that ace up her sleeve just yet. [i]Always keep ‘em guessin’, that’s what mama always said,[/i] Bandit thought, despite the fact that no concrete data on her mother currently existed in her databanks.

Moving at meatbag speed instead of Bandit speed made the trip to Cinder Ridge take forever. Maybe a nice slow amble through the wasteland conserved energy for the others, but for Bandit it was the opposite; her internal life support systems continued to drain her batteries as long as the sun beat down. Still, she was glad to have the company when the prisoner parade reached town. From the moment they first set foot in the dusty, sun-baked backwater, Bandit’s group got nothing but curled lips, narrowed eyes, and surly spits into crusty cuspidors. Clearly, the citizenry here didn’t take kindly to outsiders, and despite their donated duds the castaways definitely fell into that category. “These folks look mighty ornery,” Bandit muttered to the others, a fact made patently obvious by the plethora of sidelong glances and toyed-with sidearms. The android had been right not to come here on her own, but she wasn’t exactly in good hands, either. She had a bad feeling about this, and if shit hit the fan, the most she could expect from her new ‘friends’ would be a half-dozen bodies that might feasibly soak up blaster fire in her stead. Well…it wasn’t like she had any other options. It would have to be enough.

Neri led the group toward a raucous establishment of some kind, replete with strident voices, clinking glasses, and slamming mugs. The saloon didn’t strike Bandit as the sort of place that catered to destitute job seekers, but what did she know? At the moment, Bandit’s processor was in something of a rut when it came to figuring out what course of action she’d take, and in the meantime sticking with the group for the sake of safety in numbers seemed like the most sensible option. The minute the unfortunates crossed the threshold, though, Bandit realized that safety was the last thing she’d find here. An artificial being like her, with few inalienable rights and high scrap value, seldom lasted long in the cosmos without learning how to read the room, and the vibes in here were positively rancid.

Once inside, she let out a cartoonishly loud [i]gulp[/i] and immediately took a hard right to distance herself from the others, her tarpaulin cloak brushing past a few churlish Dhasath as they rose to accost the intruders. A glance at her might prompt them to wonder what they were looking at, but by now they’d already zeroed in on the human intruders as enemies to direct their ire toward, so Bandit herself got off with little more than an ill-tempered shoulder check as she made her way to a discreet shadowy corner. She hadn’t even reached it before projectiles and fists started flying as the situation went south with shocking speed.

After just barely getting clear of the melee, Bandit seated herself at a card table as if she belonged there, and grabbed the drink left behind by the Dhasath who’d gone off with his Kiellar buddy to try and corner Kim. A quick splash of the cold brew down her neck-hole helped cool her overwarm insides down, and she turned her sensor to watch the others fighting. Kim, Dusk, and the others could throw a couple good punches, it seemed, but the moment someone with a blaster showed up (local law enforcement or otherwise) the would-be heroes would be in for a lot more trouble than they bargained for. It was a lose-lose situation.

…For everyone but her, that was. Bandit’s mechanical fingers closed around a wagered coin left on the table. Five seconds later, the entire pot had disappeared into her storage cavity. With all hands balled into fists and all eyes on the slugfest, nobody would be minding the valuables they left behind. It was an opportunity that the greedy android couldn’t pass up. As pandemonium raged in the saloon’s center, she began to skulk around the room’s outskirts, carefully liberating the boozy, bullish patrons of their cash with the help of the veritable swiss army knives built into her arms. The easiest pickings, of course, were the men knocked out in the brawl, their limp bodies laid out on the floor with nothing to guard their pockets. Despite the chaos, though, Bandit tried to keep her head; her biggest problem, she knew, would be getting too greedy: picking the wrong target, and giving the game away.