The bartender did not make attempts to hide his disappointment when the newcomer refused to drink. "That's going to bite you later, I assure you. Those two are pretty wary around people who seem wary themselves. 's for your own good. But hey, can't force you", the man said with a glint in his eye. Was he being serious or just playing in with the last minute salesman tactics of feeding false information in hopes of coaxing the sale out of the other party? Well whatever it was, it did not appear particularly successful with one of the amphibians arriving much too soon for any potential sale to be made. The man behind the counter clicked his tongue and returned to cleaning things with disinterest. Life was what life was, especially in the Night City. Not all hands dealt were winning ones.

At the table though, the gang leaders were very much holding the better cards. Croaks leaned back in his chair impatiently, his fingers rapping against the hard plastic surface of his gun. It was surprisingly hard to tell from metal spare the sound, and it really made him regret not having cut his fingernails like he had sworn he would do in the morning. The impacts echoed through them uncomfortably, and gave his whole gesture the telltale rattling sound of something going on while he would have preferred it to remain a silent gesture to add a bit of pressure. It just lost something when the partly hollow sound was there, you know? But Ribby appeared to have similar concerns in mind to his partner in crime. They were getting nowhere.

As the younger of the two placed his hand on the table, the three leftmost fingers of his left hand pointed out, Croaks leaned forward and turned his eyes to stare into Nina's. "Thing is, we sort of knew all that. I thought an info broker would pick up on the very visible equipment she has seen carried around here that we have not exactly scrounged it from the gutters. Even this babygirl in my lap, from those stores. So unless you've got something more to add, you might find your paycheck waaaaay more thin than you'd wanted. 'fter all, I don't see no reason to pay for things we already knew for a fact", he laid down the argument, demanding to know more before they discussed terms further. Ribby slowly balled his hand into a fist again and cocked his head to the side.

The question was, what would the woman have for them next. "Of course, if you know anything about the guy in the trench coat that came and told us about this in the first place, that'd be swell too. We are pretty sure he was a corporate guy of some sort and we were damn close to shooting his head off, but he had this air around him. Air that said that you mess with him and the gang goes poof. Possibly literally. You never know when the corps put 'splosives in their emissaries", Ribby would offer one way of earning one's pay, one that they probably had the most to learn about. But that meant it was just as unlikely for her to know. But if she did, well, they would be able to put in the cash for it, he at least hoped.

Croaks cracked his neck, taking a few seconds to rub the sore spot with his hand before saying just a few more words: "But yeah, if you have anything new then we do have what to pay you with. Let's just say we ended up a shipment short, so there's a lot of cash to draw from. Speak, and we answer in eurobucks." Should be convincing enough, he hoped. And if not, well, they had more guns here. She had tech on her. Rippers might pay a pretty penny, if she wouldn't turn out to be useful in any other way.

[@13org]