A gambler’s den of the Vertical City’s greatest bettors, Club Vertica is a casino reserved for the wealthiest of Nar Shaddaa. Cardshark droids are used exclusively to deal hands to those willing to risk their credits at the sabacc tables. Cheating is rendered near impossible under the surveillance of the droid's six photoreceptors. That, of course, does not stop the downtrodden from accusing others of being a fraud, which can often happen before someone receives a blaster bolt between the eyes. The few that have been able to use skiffers undetected are counted as some of the best swindlers in the Galaxy.

Cerulean lights illuminate the tables, making concealment during a game difficult. Seated around most of the oval tables are a mix of gamblers from different species, succumbing to their addiction for the ultimate prize—the sabacc pot. Credits are tossed onto the tables forming mountains that draw in fierce competitors with deeper pockets and faster wit than the usual patrons.

Behind the games of sabacc, drinks are being served from the alcove of a small bar. Most of these are a shade of blue in color, expertly mixed to dull the senses of all but the hardiest individuals. Onstage, a local band sets the mood of the venue with an upbeat number that deafens out most conversations. The stakes are always high at Club Vertica.

Qyreia Arronen trained a wandering gaze over the spectacle—or lack thereof—across the gambler’s den. Swirling the contents of a cocktail glass in her left hand, she tapped methodical patterns on the table with her right to the beat of programmed, monotonous pulses that might be considered ‘music’, if droids ever took an interest in the arts. She considered joining in for a game of sabacc; at least it would alleviate her of the boredom of waiting for her supposed contact.

“Kriff this,” the Zeltron swore under bated breath, taking a long and final drink of the grabd accelerator settling to the bottom of her glass. Her R3 unit, R3-M3 warbled a note of concern, noting its calculations of her alcoholic intake against her natural tolerance for such things.

“Yeah, I know Remee. But how much longer is this shutta going to take? We don’t even know who to look for!” Qyreia answered while slamming the vessel onto the blaster-scored tabletop. “Barkeep!”

“How may I assist?” a robotic voice answered in an imitation of a gentlemanly tone, servos duplicating its counterfeit demeanour as it gave a one-handed bow to its most regular patron of the last few hours. Qyreia Arronen hads little patience for niceties, waving it off with a gesture along with a request for ‘the usual.’ It was going to be one of those nights.

Were she sober, the Zeltron might have noticed the jeers of Club Vertica’s other patrons crooning amongst themselves, or the predatory swagger of the very figure that caught the attention of the den’s bettors heading straight in her direction. R3-M3 trilled a low note, prompting Qyreia from the bottom of yet another accelerator as she turned towards the commotion, her other hand falling below the table to unfasten the holster of her ‘insurance.’

One of two things was clear—either this was to be the contact she was told about, or an ‘exotic’ dancer from Shili. In either case, at least her boredom was over and she could be rid of this rock, or get some entertainment out of the night. The tables between them were littered with gawking lechers, and Qyreia could draw few details at a time about the newcomer; first the white-on-lavender markings on the Togruta’s skin, then the gnarled shaft of a branch that she used as a walking stick. She was sure that a dancer would have no use for one—a suspicion that was confirmed when the owner of a grasping hand found his jaw dislocated at the blunt force of the quarterstaff’s impact. For a moment, the bar fell silent save for the unimaginative thumping of repetitive rhythms.

“Well, that solves that.” Qyreia tiredly remarked, to the apprehensive beeps of her droid caretaker and the arrival of her would-be ‘employer,’ who she expected might have been someone more… inconspicuous given the veiled nature of the meeting.

“Karking hell! It took a while, I was just about to see if I could make some friends at the sabacc table,” the Zeltron scoffed sardonically, “but by the looks of it, I wouldn’t have gotten more than a round in before some purple-skinned shutta took away my competition.”

“The Red Qek, I assume?” the Togruta asked, leaning her quarterstaff on the edge of the Zeltron’s table, “Sorenn told me to look for the one who… ‘swears like she’s in the middle of a bad holoflick?’” She wasn’t sure what her benefactor meant, but she was less certain that she would want to know which holoflicks they were talking about.

“Of course,” Qyreia held her head in dismay, it had to be that Sorenn.

“What does the ice queen want, and who the kriff are you?” the Zeltron demanded in clear agitation at piecing together the name. Morgan Sorenn. How the blazes was she in the middle of one of her games?

“I am A’lora Kituri, Councillor of….” the former Consul began her introduction as if it were rehearsed for a more formal setting—was this person for real?

Just in case, Qyreia removed the barrel of her DL-44 blaster pistol from its holster and tracked it towards one of the Togruta’s legs. “Just tell me what the kark you want!”

A’lora let out a sigh of—was that relief?—as she detailed the job, “Something dark is building in the Judecca system, and what I need to do doesn’t have the…” she thought of an appropriate word in Galactic Basic, “...sanction of the Jedi Council. I need someone with the means to get me there with no questions asked. Someone without morals who can get into difficult situations and survive.”

“First of all, frak you!” Qyreia tightened the grip on her blaster, “Second of all, deal’s off!”

Glassware and stacks of credits cascaded in a hundred pieces as the blind fire of a DL-44 shot out from beneath the table, other tables falling to their sides as the club’s patrons dived for cover. Unfazed waiter droids continued to serve food and drinks despite the sudden fight-or-flight reaction of the bar’s inhabitants. One of the salvos grazed along the Togruta’s thigh as she instinctively reached for the staff leaning against the high table, her teeth clamping shut and grinding together as a natural reaction to the searing sensation.

The shot had grazed deep, and A’lora’s leg gave way beneath her just as quickly as she stabilized herself with the staff for balance. The Red Qek’s rage-induced blasterfire not quite hitting its mark despite being so close to the target. Remee, remind me to quit drinking so much on long nights out.

With a snap-hiss, the Togruta reached for a cylindrical object secured to her waistband and ignited a brilliant emerald jet of plasma. Qyreia felt heat in her fingertips when she pulled the trigger again; only to find that the barrel had been severed to the base.

The bar’s denizens took note of the receding blasterfire and reacted as any group of drunken tuskens would.

“BAR BRAWL!”

“You sonofa monkey-whoring schutta. I liked that blaster!” Q lurched fully out of her seat and held out the remnants of her blaster to the R3 unit. “Hold this for me, Remster. Imma do this the old fashioned way.”

The droid and, by extension, A'lora watched as the remainder of the firearm fell with a heavy clunk to the ground.

Remee let out with a sardonic series of beeps and whirrs. ”I don’t have hands to hold this.”

“You’ll figure it out,” the Zeltron said, stepping around the table and squaring up with the Force user. In her mind she was steady as a rock, but her slight stagger was fairly obvious to everyone else. “Say I got no morals again!”

The Togruta let the energy blade dissipate and, with a quick twist of her staff, thumped the inebriated woman in the sternum. Qyreia was sent sprawling back into the table and knocking over the nearest chairs. A roar of derisive cheers and laughter erupted from the onlookers.

“You have no morals.” It was like teaching one of the students at the Praxeum, only sadder. At least they weren’t usually three sheets to the wind. Usually.

“Ow,” Qyreia groaned as she righted herself, struggling with the upturned seats that refused to remain still and steady under her weight. The situation wasn’t helped by her rifle, which had been propped up against the table, and was now amidst the pile. Eventually, though, she was soon back on her feet.

“Well, it would seem that you surely can ‘get into difficult situations’, but in your current state I question your ability to survive.”

“Listen here, fracknuts,” the Zeltron almost spat in frustration. “The Sorenn that’s even worth a damn, Turel, still owes me a favor. The other one should know better than to even try to contact me, much less hire me.”

“You’re a mercenary. It’s expected of you.”

Qyreia grit her teeth, her head still fuzzy with liquor, making her irritation at the head-tailed woman grow all the more rapidly. It was fortunate she had the second liver to at least keep her relatively stable. She had been really bored waiting for this waste of a contact.

“Try ta hit ‘er again!” came a voice from the back of the room, some mumbled encouragement following close behind.

“Frack off, ‘fore I shove that pazaak deck up your ass!”

“If you are done with your outburst,” A'lora intoned, calling the Arconan merc’s attention back to her with a pointed guiding motion from her staff. “Perhaps we can get back to the reason I’m here?”

“Wasting my time, you mean?”

Before the Jedi could return with another quip, surely to include a rap with her staff, Qyreia leaned into a short-range charge. Even inebriated, the Zeltron clearly had some strength hidden in her slim frame, and A’lora barely heard the whisper of the Force in time to sidestep the assault. Her gait faltered as she put weight on her injured leg, the pain of which she’d forgotten amidst the raucous display and influx of neural chemicals. It was that distraction that allowed her red skinned opponent to pass by unmolested as she focused on maintaining balance on her staff.

Her would-be soldier for hire was slow to recover from the charge, having to contend with the tangle of cheap furniture just beyond A’lora’s position. Blunt force was clearly not working. Perhaps it’s time for a different approach.

When Qyreia spun around, arms ready to at least try to block an imminent staff attack, her eyes narrowed in confusion and annoyance. “You gotta be karkin’ kidding me.”

“Problem?” asked the first A'lora.

“Maybe this is too much for you to handle,” the one on the middle-right said.

Four images of the purple skinned Force user stood before Qyreia, identical in every way. At least, that was what she saw. The nearest patrons looked on curiously as the gunslinger’s eyes quickly darted left and right, only occasionally crossing over the Togruta. To her credit, the Zeltron just scoffed, puffing air at the bangs hanging in her face.

“Well, at least you’re not dumb enough to call up an illusion of a rancor or something.”

A'lora, in all her forms, looked confused. “You… Has that happened before?”

The mercenary chuckled. “Honey, have you met my Clan? That ain’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“At least I’m not seeing double because of the drink,” Qyreia snickered between hiccups. “Barkeep, another drink!” she ordered, to the bewilderment of the former Consul.

“Haven’t you had enough?” the purple-skinned Force-user admonished. At this rate, it won’t be my staff that knocks her to the ground.

“Always have time for another round,” the Zeltron retorted with a sly grin, reaching for a waiter droid’s platter. Choosing her drink of choice—an Alderaan Twist garnished with a wedge of fruit—she inhaled half its contents in a single swig. Her hand hovered near the platter for another, to the dissatisfaction of the Togruta whose clones took a step forward in unison, reaching a hand out for the beverage before her would-be hireling drunk herself unconscious.

Baited into arm’s reach and a false sense of security, A’lora felt something wet against the back of her forearm—the remaining contents of the Alderaan Twist. “Got’cha, fracknuts!” she heard the red-skinned woman shout behind feeling the weight of a boot on her injured calf.

Hoots and jeers gave the endorsement of the patrons collecting to watch the spectacle; after all, it was a rare day on Nar Shaddaa to see someone square off against a Jedi. Even the bettors—those who could remain focused on the games—shifted their bets in favour of their chosen combatant as if gambling in the droid fighting pits of Vandor.

Grinding her teeth to offset the throbbing in her leg, A’lora’s fell to a knee. Shifting onto the midsection of her quarterstaff, the knuckles of her hand turned a bright shade of red fighting to distract from the tenderness of her charred skin. The boot swung back into her vision, heel raised above the Togruta’s montrals to deliver a solid kick to the woman’s cranium.

“Take this, laser-brai—” the Zeltron’s word cut short as she found her own legs being swept from beneath her, the empty glass of an Alderaan Twist flying haphazardly from her grasp a moment before she faced the floor. “Oh, staaang!” was all the loud-mouthed merc managed when she caught sight of the staff’s tail-end clearing the path of her descent.

“Seems we’re on equal footing, now,” the purple-skinned alien said in a derisive tone. “Now that we’re here,” she held out a hand as a peace offering, “can we get on with the matter of this meeting?”

“Frack off, tails!” the Zeltron swatted away the gesture from her prone position, rolling over to let the air back into her lungs.

“Pure sabacc!” a patron hollered from the back, the sound of credits being raked across the table demonstrating the wealth of his earnings. Concurrently, the sound of blasterfire froze that satisfaction on that Gran’s face atop the stacks of his newfound wealth. A den of thieves and scoundrels. Not unlike this criminal, thought A’lora. Wincing even while she leaned on her staff as a crutch, the Togruta herself reached for a glass of some pink-coloured liquid a droid had prepared to serve another customer, much to the dissatisfaction of the waiter who complained in a series of furious beeps before carting off to another destination.

The alcohol, brought to her lips tasted of Meiloorun rind and not much else. The smell was just as pungent, radiating a scent of fermented fruits telling of the drink’s strong alcohol content. It reminded her of home, the simultaneously sweet and bitter tastes mixing on her tastebuds like the fermented ‘curatives’ of her people on Shili. Almost immediately, she felt a numbness in her extremities, dulling the throbbing pain of blaster-scored flesh as she drained away the last drops of the pink vintage.

“Round two, lek-head?” a visibly intoxicated Qyreia challenged, barely managing to clamber onto her feet, using a nearby barstool as a ladder.

“Only if you’re offering,” A’lora retorted as audibly agitated as a Jedi could muster, “but to me, it seems you’re more than a few ahead.”

“Well then, have another!” the Zeltron spat, hurling a bottle from the neck-end into the Jedi’s direction. Embarrassingly, rather than shattering the shaken contents exploded from the end of the bottle after colliding against the Togruta’s toned abdomen, following the cork which escaped with an audible ‘pop.’

A’lora didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh in disdain—was this the fight or flight response of a hardened criminal? Hardly fit to look after a Tooka, much less smuggle a passenger.

Taking a deliberate step forward, the threatening frown of the Jedi elicited a series of distraught beeps and whirrs from the R3 unit, now having moved to stand between two women as a sort of referee, pleading for the wellbeing of its master—all the while apologizing on the Zeltron’s behalf for her behaviour this evening.

“Kriffing—fine, Remee. Jedi!” the Arconan yelled to mask her wounded pride, “Help me to the nearest ‘fresher, hold my hair, and we’ll talk in the morning. Remster’s orders.”

A’lora only gave a remorseful shrug before draping a red arm across her shoulders, Yes, this was going to be a long night, indeed.

Blinking several times, the Togruta shook away the panorama of potential options for ’weirdness’ offered by her imagination. In a roundabout way, it made her wonder if she really even wanted to consider this mercenary as an option. As if she wasn’t questioning it already.

“Remee,” Qyreia said, breaking the moment of silent contemplation, “mind zappin’ these schuttas ‘til one of ‘em sqeaks?”

”Bleep doort-deep boodeet.”

“Whaddya mean ‘there’s only one’? I’m…” Qyreia slapped her own face. “Right. Illusion. Doesn’t really apply to my droid here.” How many karking drinks did I have?!

“If you can’t see past this simple of a ruse,” A’lora injected amid the Zeltron’s introspection, “I doubt how long you would survive on Judecca, much less be of use to Odan-Urr or myself.”

Rolling her eyes, Qyreia picked up a chair and, with a little wind-up, swung it around in a wide arc that clove through the first illusion, stopping with a deep wooden clack when it struck the defensively postured staff of the second. The mercenary managed to grin and say “I found you,” before the staff swung out and struck her behind the knee. It did no so much hurt as it destroyed what balance she had while wielding a chair one-handed with her arm full outstretched. She only narrowly avoided the follow-up swing, rolling under the adjacent table and frantically crawling out the other side.

A’lora quirked an eyebrow at the spectacle, at once appreciating the Zeltron’s ability to react and despising the haphazard methodology. Limping as she adjusted her position, watching her erstwhile opponent’s movements, she saw her moving closer to the rifle on the floor, all while the audience in the background filled the peripheries of her senses.

“Git ‘er!”

“Takin’ bets on head-tails!”

The spectacle quickly grew tiresome. Hooking her staff into the wide array of seating scattered about her, she flung the furniture between the red woman and her weapon, forcing her to retreat back apace. A’lora allowed a smirk to grace her violet lips as the inebriated Zeltron staggered back fully upright, knocking roughly into a table and rattling the abandoned glassware thereupon.

Qyreia had only just regained her balance in full when the Force user began to fade from sight. “Perhaps this will top your rancor tale,” Alora said as her image disappeared completely into the air.

The Arconan’s eyes rolled in what appeared to be annoyance, her vision falling on the array of glasses in various states of fullness and emptiness — depending on one’s viewpoint — that littered the table she stood against. Glancing back to where A’lora had been, she picked up the cleanest-looking one and took a sip.

A voice in the background yelled, “Hey! That’s my beer!”

The rest she let spray across the room in a wide arc in front of her as she swung the glass around, much as she had the chair.

As smoothly as A’lora could move while cloaked by the Force, she had not anticipated such an unorthodox maneuver from the mercenary, nor that the spray of alcohol would splash at eye-level. A glimmer flashed across her invisible body as her arm went to defend her face, wholly unaware of how her form was outlined by the amber mist as it clung to her body. Almost simultaneously, she could hear as well as sense through her montrals, though, the movement of the mercenary.

The clatter of cheap furniture.

The scrape of cloth on the duracrete floor.

A’lora stepped out of her camouflage to see the Red Qek in the midst of dragging her blaster out from the bramble of toppled chairs, lips pursed angrily. Ignoring the quips about her “wet shirt”, she leapt forth, her staff meeting the Zeltron’s rifle-turned-club with resounding noise. Qyreia’s movements were unpracticed compared to even a basic Force user’s stylistic use of a lightsaber, but somehow she continued to deflect each and every strike by A’lora’s quarterstaff. Her exertions, growing gradually more labored, were met by the tight-lipped grunts of the mercenary until they found themselves in a deadlock.

“Maybe I was wrong about you,” A’lora quipped as they stood static against one another.

Qyreia grinned, and her opponent quickly learned why her lips had been so tightly sealed. A spray of cheap beer seared into her eyes, making her blind to the Zeltron as she brought her leg back for a harsh knee to the Togruta’s groin. While Qyreia panted as she caught her breath after holding the liquid in her mouth for so long, A’lora found herself without much of any breath at all.

“Ooh,” the mercenary mocked. “Right in the bean.” She swept her rifle butt into A’lora’s face, knocking her to the floor, and stepped back well out of range of her staff or any other weapon in the Jedi’s arsenal. “That’s gotta hurt.”

“Ugh… I might have… been wrong about your chances of survival,” A’lora muttered as she slowly recovered from the shock to her crotch. “Perhaps…”

“Listen here, karknuts,” Qyreia said, stooping low but no less wary of the Jedi. “You tell Morgan that if she ever gets the stupid idea to try and hire me, she’d have a better chance surviving a gangbang of Wookiees and rancors.” She watched the Togruta as she slowly recovered, grunting in pain as she rolled onto an elbow. It lessened the already cooling fire in her blood. “I’d help ya up, but I’d rather not get wailed on by that stick again.”

A’lora scoffed. “You might be sturdier than I thought, but you still have no morals. Cowards fight like you do.”

The Zeltron clicked her teeth and sighed, checking her own temper at the comment. “Yeah… frack you too, schutta.” She rose and walked away, motioning for her droid to follow. “When you limp home, tell the other Sorenn he still owes me that drink!”