You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. A popular drinking and dining establishment located in the city of Mos Eisley on the desert world of Tatooine, Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina is run by the Wookiee Chalmun.

A single story building made of sandstone, the cantina consists of a bar area, private offices, a VIP lounge, a private hangar, a basement, and a phony shop in the rear. It caters to all sorts from across the galaxy, with spacious areas and wide arched doorways to allow patrons of all sizes passage. Unsurprisingly, a fair share of these guests lend to the cantina’s seedy reputation.

Entering through a small portal on one side of the building, a small passage curves around into the main bar area. Featuring many themed spigots resembling the heads of IG-series assassin droids, the bar is capable of producing several dozen drinks of Chalmun's own concoctions. Surrounded by eight different alcoves filled with stools, tables, and even a bandstand, the bar wraps from the public area around into the private back room.

Kojiro sat down at a table with a heavy sigh.

It had been a very long few days, full of travel: his trip to Tatooine, the jaunt to the spaceport, the journey out into the desert and back with camping in between. He was supposed to have made contact with his seller upon landing, but the little Rodian slime had not upheld his end of the bargain. It had been a small matter, to terrify and torture the man into a shell of himself, one that quite freely babbled about where he got his product and what he had done with it.

And then there had been sand. So much sand. Days of sand. And sun.

The Keibatsu scratched at his scalp. His pale skin felt well and truly baked, and he looked forward to returning to Kyataru.

But the bundle in his arms was worth it. Carefully, he unwrapped his cloak to peer at the precious cargo nestled in the armoweave strands. Blinking milky, wide orange eyes up at him were a quartet of newly-hatched dewbacks.

The clone smiled at the little reptiles, all so alike physically and from a multitude — the female adults laid nearly eighty identical eggs at a time — but each unique. They were kindred. Four more companions for him to train, to be eventual mounts for the Keibatsu family, to be his friends and partners. It was worth all the trudging and trouble and sand this blasted world over.

One of the lizards made a motion almost like yawning, then scuttled about and tried to wriggle back under its siblings for warmth. Immature reptiles were both extremely resilient and extremely sensitive. Kojiro tapped a finger to the tip of one baby's snout, then carefully reswaddled them and tucked them back under his arm, holding them close to his body. His heat would be good for them where the dry air indoors wouldn't suffice.

Raising his fist, the clone called for service; a refreshment would do him well while he awaited his droid to set affairs in order at the port area and have the ship prepared for departure.

Tatooine was an ugly planet, but it had many interesting animals, if nothing else. Kojiro ignored the people around him, instead peering out the tiny window he sat next to, one of the only few in the cantina, it seemed. The droid decor was more popular.

Outside, traders and slaves and criminals milled about, but he was more interested in the various creatures: eopie, jerba, and ronto for riding, massiffs for hunting, full grown dewback males.

Someone set his drink down and he slid over credits without much concern. The bundle under his arm wiggled slightly before settling again. Kojiro gave a small, faint smile.

Somewhere in the very crowded cantina, a clatter sounded, then another. It was a different sound than the rest of the clanking mugs and shuffling footsteps, but not so different as to be worth notice.

Not until a strange hissing noise accompanied it.

His senses screamed.

What happened next was a cascading blur of madness. Pale smoke or fog or something stared rising from the floor. Patrons slowly caught on, confused or curious at first. Then the choking started, the gurgling, pained wheezes as the mist burned, no trick or ploy but something much more sinister. Bodies began racing for the passage to the door only to find themselves bottle-necked in it, many going down under stamping feet and shambling, drunken limbs tripping from their stools and booths. The Wookiee proprietor made it through the throng with a well-placed shove or three, ready to tear down the door — or a wall — himself, but only managed to punch through the sandstone before his immense, shaggy body started to slump. Some people were scrabbling out windows if they could fit, bodies contorting at odd angles; others retreated to different parts of the building, into the basement or lounges or heading for the hangar.

Kojiro, meanwhile, had stopped breathing as soon as his mind had caught up with the chaos. The gas sweltered in his lungs from a gasp he'd inhaled, slowly eating him inside out, but the Force bolstered him if he focused on keeping his lungs still and his heart beating despite the lack of oxygen.

He would be fine. He could get to the hangar as well, slip past all the others and remain unharmed, so long as he focused.

And then he remembered his infantile dewbacks.

No! the clone thought in dismay, mismatched emerald and azure eyes falling to the bundle. He moved back into his seat, drew his Sith sword, and slammed its hilt into the window there with all his Force-fueled might, even though it cost him a breath. The bars, of the cheapest grade, cracked out of their sockets with some ease, and the clone hurried his bundled cloak through the opening, hearing it drop to the ground.

He needed to get outside.

Forcing his body to endure yet again, with a headache forming and all his muscles aching, the Keibatsu strode over several corpses to the bent and dented door. He raised his hand, willing it to blast free with all his pain and fury, and an invisible force answered, punching into the obstacle and sending it flying in a skid of sand. Kojiro rushed forward, gas trailing behind him out the new opening, faint swirls curling around his dark clothes. Emerging into the sunlight was blinding, but it allowed him to finally cease his hold on the Force and breathe in great lungfuls.

It was as his mismatched eyes adjusted to the twin suns' glare that he noticed a woman lounging not far from the cantina entrance, perhaps three or four meters away from him. Her hair was dark, skin a deep tan, what looked like a combat suit fitted to her form and something in her hands. She looked decidedly more calm than any of the other escaping patrons or the grizzled but nonetheless worried onlookers from other stalls or shops.

And she was looking right at him. Staring at him. Watching him.

"Damn. I was really hopin' you'd stay down in there," she said after a heartbeat, spitting the cigarra from between her teeth and lifting the object she held onto her shoulder. "Woulda made my day so much easier."

Then, she fired, the rocket launcher's kick rolling her shoulder back and exiting its large, single-charge chamber with a thwump.

He had just enough wherewithal to draw quickly upon the Force with his gasp of breath and telekinetically shove the projectile to his right. No more than that could be done before the explosion came, all fire and concussive force. He was flying. He was burning. He was landing.

He didn't know what he was anymore.

Blackness and heat were his world, and they gnawed at him, slowly, like lazy predators. The clone floated in the haze, slipping above and beneath waves of simmering shadows and specks of light, until something reached him, a ringing, high-pitched and persistent. Then, more: the uneven press of sand underneath him, the cling of molten cloth stuck to molten skin, smoke in his mouth and nose and the taste of copper.

Kojiro groaned as he came back to himself, instinctively inhaling the Force as best he could to cling to consciousness. More details floated around him, the scrape of shifting metal and the crack of crumbling rock and superheated wood. Animals and people cried out. A pressure lifted off of him, and dessert sunlight flooded in, making the previous blackness seem like a welcome blanket. Something nudged him, rolling him over. He bit his tongue on a gasp of pain.

The woman's voice whined above him, sounding watery and vague, "WHY won't you die? Shadows frakking below."

A blow landed against his side, smashing the little air he had out of his lungs. Then, another. She was kicking at him.

"Wha—" he choked out. Tried to focus. Opened his mismatched eyes to squint up at her while his body throbbed all over. He hadn't recognized her before, and he didn't then, but something seemed passingly familiar. "Wh…"

His attempts at questioning though seemed to be enough, because she drawled at him, "Oh, what, precious? You think just 'cause you walked away means all you done is gone? Oh, ooooh, no. You frakkers attacked me and mine. Killed my girl's godmommah. You're still not too keen on we Lotus types. And you think we were just gonna let that go? That I would just let that go? Oh, no, no, no, no, no."

Her boot adjusted to leverage more weight onto his windpipe.

"I did some digging around, Kojiro Keibatsu, and my whispers say you gave the order for Sadow. Heard someone shot you in the back for it. Shame on them, not finishing the job." Her pistol pressed to his forehead.

He reached for the darkness that was always with him, part of him, rending and remaking him. He reached for it, and directed all of its hate and horror upon the figure pulling the trigger.

The scarred woman choked and froze as a wave of dread, made manifest from the clone's will, boiled up and rolled over her, making her shudder, breath hitching around a gasp. She stumbled backwards, away from Kojiro, thin almond eyes blown wide. A cold sweat pallored her skin despite the dry heat that cracked their lips, and she shuddered hard enough that her gun fell from her grasp and into the sand with a muted thump.

The Keibatsu did not waste the opportunity, vaulting to his feet and delving deeper still into the Force to heal his burns. It took more concentration than instilling the proper horror in the impudent harlot, but he was able to do it, willing blood to bubble and flesh to knit. Even as he did so, though, the supposed-Lotus agent was recovering. Her cybernetic spine straightened, her chin lifting, showing every proud scar.

“No,” she growled the man, gaze meeting his unflinchingly even as her fingertips trembled under the force of the fear that swallowed her like a miasma. She flexed her hands, lowered herself as if to tackle him straight on. He almost felt a flash of respect for her, before he remembered the recently deceased.

"You hurt my animals," he snarled, menacing, as electricity crackled down his arms and from his fingertips like a howling storm unleashed.

"Oh, motherfra—"

The glowing white claws of lightning cracked into the woman with a deafening boom of superheated desert air, throwing her into the dust and raining down shards of sand-turned-glass.

Dust billowed around the area and caused the Dark Jedi’s cloak to drift lazily behind him. A depression in the dust cloud where the woman had been thrown had begun to fill itself in as Kojiro moved forward. His eyes scanned the area and noted the scuff marks in the sand where his attacker had impacted, but there was no sign of the woman. The clone’s hand arose to shield his eyes from the muck when a barely audible sound to his left caused him to dive forward. As he hit the ground himself, something passed overhead and impacted in the structure to his left.

“Frak,” he managed to mutter before eating the ground once more. This Lotus agent was starting to annoy him. Plus where she struck him ached as his body hit the ground. This was not how the day was supposed to go.

Kojiro rolled to the side and pushed himself up, allowing the Force to hasten his ascent. His feet found purchase and dust rose around them as he scrambled to cover behind a parked speeder. As he clattered into the side a squawking met his ears and he turned his head to notice a Jawa huddled behind his new cover too. The scavenger, Koji assumed it was a scavenger going by its species history, looked at the Dark Jedi and gesticulated wildly, causing the clone to sigh in annoyance. Kojiro dared a quick look over the edge of the speeder when something impacted the vehicle just above his right temple causing him to duck down further into the dirt.

The Quaestor peeked over the speeder’s edge once more and attempted to take in the area, but all he could see was dust and empty streets. What was once filled with people was now deserted and no sounds escaped the once boisterous cantina.

“Where is that traitor?” the clone snarled to himself. His anger and annoyance were building and he cast his gaze back towards the small charred bundle laying on the ground. A bundle nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the sand and grit that covered the ground. “What kind of monster kills babies?”

“The kind of monster that eats bigger monsters for breakfast,” came the reply from his blind side. The reply was followed by a low flying boot which connected to the clone’s shoulder with a crack. He rolled in the dirt a few times before coming to a stop. “You look good down there. Perhaps you should stay put and we’ll get this over with, scum.”

Kojiro looked up as the woman advanced towards his prone position. His body was taking a beating and he was confident his shoulder was dislocated.

A snort escaped his lips and he pushed himself up a little from the ground. “You do like to talk poodoo don’t you? So what, I ordered the attack by my forces on the traitors,” a sneer crossed the clone’s face as he pushed himself to his knees and looked up at her. “I stood for what was right. Your kind stood for disorder and betrayal.”

Blood escaped his lips as her fist connected to the side of his face. Anger creased her expression before the Lotus agent swung her fist again.

“You know nothing. Look at you. On your knees, beaten and bloody. You’re weak, your House is weak and the Iron Throne is weak,” A smirk creased the woman's lips as she reached down to her holster, drew her slugthrower and placed it to the temple of the Seer’s head.“Probably time we end this. I’m going to take some satisfaction in this outcome, believe me.”

Kojiro stuttered out a laugh as he stared up at the woman, his hand motioned at his side. “You’d be pretty if you smiled, and looked behind you more often.”

“Sure, like I would fall for that…”

A scream of “UTINI!” filled the air causing the Reaver to turn her head. The Jawa that had been cowering by the speeder rocketed towards her, dragged harshly by the Force, the woman raised her eyes before the wind escaped her lips as the Jawa struck her.

Everyone went down in a heap. Robes tangled with the woman, the Jawa tried to disentangle itself from being under the clone and Kojiro tried to move away from the other two with little luck. Legs kicked out and connected with something, Kojiro felt a thump once or twice on his side and he delivered a harsh thump of his own that hit something but to what he had no idea.

“Get off me you rotten scavenger!” Curses escaped the lips of the woman as she finally disentangled herself from the group and tried to rise. Kojiro managed to push himself into her and bring her down once more, pinning her badly.

“This isn’t going to go the way you want it to, traitor. I promise you that.”

"I said...get...off...of...me!" snarled the woman writhing beneath him, arms flailing out between them as his fingers tried to grab onto her shoulders. She half-threw him off, reaching out for the Jawa trying to disentangle himself and flee; but the woman grabbed the poor creature by his small ankles and started swinging him bodily at the clone like a badly weighted bat.

"Nyeta! Nyeta! Togo togu! Sabioto!" screeched the Jawa, wailing for it to stop while Kojiro yelled as well, one arm coming up to protect his face. The whole thing was a mess of limbs and gravity and leverage, however, and the traitor dropped the tiny, cloaked trader trying to kick free. His landing knocked the wind out of the woman, who gasped and spat, and the Keibatsu managed to shove her down by the chest again. The Sadowan threw himself about, tangling their legs and bearing down with his weight as best he could.

The Jawa crawled and stumbled away, running, and before the woman could throw Kojiro off again, he focused the Force into a telekinetic punch and slammed it into her face. The blow flattened and spread her nose over her scarred cheeks, spraying blood all down her chin and neck and back up at him. The sand was stained with crimson in a halo around her head.

But she was still conscious, and she was smiling up at him with smeared lips and reddened teeth. Her eyes went from glazed to focused almost in heartbeats, and she whistled a wet, spittle-flecked exhale. Kojiro sneered down at her, debating between filling her with terror or electrocuting her to a crisp.

"I will break every bone in your body while naming them," menaced the clone. "And then I will mend them and break them again. And if your heart stops from the pain, I will shock it into restarting and start all over again."

"Oh, sugah. That's what I call a weeknight," murmured the Lotus agent through gritted teeth. Her voice was bright but silky soft. She reached up and grabbed his shoulder in a grip so crushing it didn't even hurt — his arm just went numb as she peeled it off of her, irresistibly strong. He inhaled the Dark Side, power burning and freezing in his muscles, his veins, and pushed back, the struggle of their limbs trembling for a moment.

Kojiro had only time to debate trying to hit her again, this time with a punch, even at the risk of releasing her, but then her elbow was swinging into the side of his head. It wasn't a hard blow; there wasn't much leverage lying down and nearly pinned.

But it did distract him from her other hand sliding up his shoulder and neck and over his jaw to hook her thumb for his eye.

There was pain and pressure and a very tiny snap and he screamed because suddenly half the world was gone. There was just black. Black. As if he had one eye covered with his hand.

But his hands were on the agent. And his face was wet. And there was something in the woman's grip. It was white and blue and very milky-red. And he couldn't see anything on his left side but the black. His emerald eye wheeled, his head swiveling as he tried to look around, to comprehend. He saw sand, and the deserted streets, and the window where his murdered clutch would be, and her, and her fist tightening with a squeeelchhhh.

The Lotus woman had popped his eye out of its socket and crushed it as he watched.

A high-pitched whine rose in his ears. He tasted bitter on the back of his tongue. His jaw worked. He felt oddly numb, despite the terrible pain radiating out from his skull as if a knife was being twisted there.

Watery fluid was leaking down the Lotus woman's hand. It was clear, and made her skin shiny in the sun.

Then the world was whirling as limbs shifted, and suddenly Kojiro was on his back, the traitor's hand on his throat, crushing his windpipe. It was slimy, and the pressure hurt, almost worse than his head. It was a different pain, and it caused a distinct panic as he gasped for air and found none. Just that terrible pressure.

The clone writhed, flailed, tried to kick and scrabble and pry her off. His blunt nails scoured over her flesh but she didn't seem to care even when he drew more blood. He kicked with knees and elbows and she just endured it, coiling overtop him, all but perched atop his chest, further crushing his lungs. He couldn't get a breath.

The half of the world that wasn't black grew gray and nauseous at the edges, spots popping quickly. Kojiro's neck lolled aside, cheek meeting turned sand, and his remaining vision fixed on the cantina and its wreckage. He thought of the dewbacks, and his family in the Keibatsu, how hard he had worked to make this him, this person.

He spied a familiar hilt in the crumpled metal and stone.

The Sadowan fell into the Force, like falling at last into death's arms. It was cool and sweet and poison, and he drank deep. He stared at that hilt. He poured all of what he was, all of what remained in him of the life he had earned, into his task.

The Sith Sword lifted, scorched but whole, from the debris. It rotated so very slowly in the air, point aimed towards them. Then, it answered his call, flying swiftly across the short distance.

The Lotus woman made a sound like, "Guh."

The weight on him slackened, then nearly disappeared but for a muscled thigh still draped over him. The clone gagged and gulped in great lungfuls of dry, gritty air. After a moment he sat up and finished shoving his opponent off of him. She went easily, her previously shocked face already slack and paling, her hands trying to staunch the bleeding around the blade lodged in her side, near her hip.

All was still, except for the wind and shifting sand, and their breathing. Hers was slowing whereas his grew stronger, if reedy.

The clone began to laugh. Relief beyond his control flooded him, born of adrenaline alone. He rasped a chuckle past his damaged throat and the sound came out sounding not unlike a manka's purring, guttural hiss.

Another sound came then, drawing Kojiro's attention along with a faint, exhausted tingling of his warning senses. He twisted, trying to see, and had to experience the frustration of turning about completely just to aim his remaining eye properly. When he did, his gaze widened in alarm and he shrank back, not having realized the looming figure had drawn so close.

The droid's chassis was black as night and seemed to shimmer in the heat, a faint ripple radiating off of it. The familiar, menacing lines of an HK assassin model had the clone preparing for battle all over again even as he sagged from stress and exhaustion. But the robot did not tend to him, even if its modulated voice gave a quiet, perfunctory threat for his soft and fleshy demise. Instead, it lowered itself with a whir of its knee joints and gathered the woman's limp body into its arms. Kojiro's sword slipped free of her flesh in the process, spattering scarlet. The droid reacted little to the extra distress placed upon its dying master, who moaned something like, "Peh...beh…" It merely rotated its torso section all the way about and reversed its course, headed towards the nearby shipyard with a Human dangling like a doll in its vice grips.

The clone turned about to watch them go, almost too tired to wonder whether or not the woman would die. He hoped so. Shaking, he coughed more and fumbled for his comm, struggling to summon his own medical unit from his ship. The droid had some difficulty understanding him, his voice all but crushed out of him, trachea somewhat mangled. But, the call seemed to be enough, as his predatory assistant tutted about squishy meatbags needing repair.

Kojiro laid back down as he finished the comm, lacking the strength to stay upright and feeling his toes and fingers numb. Perhaps he was finally going into shock, or just finally noticing it, as his body failed now that the threat had been beaten. Blackness lurked on his right, swallowing him up. It unnerved him, that waiting blackness, so empty and hungry. What it hid, he couldn't know. He kept swiveling his head, looking for his droid and watching other ships take off or land, waiting, waiting. Waiting like the blackness.

He thought of the traitorous Lotus agent boasting over her intent to kill him, and felt a small thrill of satisfaction. It hadn't gone how she wanted it to, far from it.

He was a Keibatsu, after all.

He kept his promises.

Her knee rose and nearly caught the clone in the groin, but something sparked within his senses that told him to react. The knee struck his leg instead and then struck again and the clone had to roll off the woman before a third blow did any real damage The wounded shoulder shuddered under the effort of the movement and forced a groan from the Quaestor’s lips.The roll continued and as it did he brought himself to his knees and pushed up. His opponent did the same and in a heartbeat, the clash of metal filled the air.

The woman’s dagger was drawn and as Kojiro had risen, his own blade had swept out. The weapons collided and sparked. Metal rang upon metal and with each swipe of her blade, the clone managed to riposte and return the strike. The clone was gaining the upper hand as the blows continued, but the Arconan was proving to be quicker than he expected, nimbly weaving around his return blows and returning her own. Kojiro was evidently the better blade user, but his prior injuries were beginning to slow him down. A particularly high blow from the clone caused the woman's arm to shudder as she brought her dagger up to block and rather than complain, she simply jumped back to give space between the two.

“Seems like I just need a few more minutes and your wounds will do the job for me,” she smirked. Her dagger flashed in front of her face as the woman came to rest in a protective stance once more. “Hard to believe you’re the frakker who helped kill her. Gonna enjoy gutting you.”

Kojiro didn’t reply. Something rattled in his mouth and something told him a tooth was loose. A thick wad of bile and blood hit the ground as he spat and his hand rose to wipe away the muck that crested his lips.The clone eyed the woman before him and stood his ground, then with a small shrug he chuckled.

“Some frakker like me? The silly woman, whoever you refer to and don’t bother telling me who because I’ve killed a lot and none of their names matters when they are dead, was probably on the wrong side of the war and deserved to die,” another thick wad hit the sand and he was sure he noticed the tooth go with it. “People die in war. Get over it. Like the rest of the galaxy manages to do. You Lotus types. You lot caused a war and the end result was death. What do you expect? Glitter and cupcakes?” A scoff escaped his lips and his face turned into a smile. “You live in a fantasy world, girl. It's time I dragged you back into reality.”

“You’re dead,” were the only words the woman muttered as she drew the slugthrower from her hip and fired a shot off towards the man. His Sith sword reacted slowly. Metal struck the edge of metal and what should have been a slug for his heart struck him in the side and spun him on the spot. Kojiro stumbled and heard footsteps approach. The pain was excruciating and the clone winced, but as he fell he turned he twisted and lunged.

The Lotus’ dagger stopped some inches from his face. Kojiro’s sword felt heavy as the weight of his opponent ran along the length as he finished pushing it through her abdomen and out her back. A cough racked the woman and a familiar mixture of bile and blood escaped her mouth. The hilt of the sword still rested in the clone’s hand and he stared at her defiantly as his own lifeblood left him. Then, in a sense of pointless cruelty, as she attempted to mutter something, Kojiro channelled the Force through him and used the weapon like a lightning rod.

Lightning coruscated along the blade and directly into the wound and body of his opponent. The smell of cooking metal seared his nostrils and her screams filled the air. The backlash from the lightning danced across the clone’s own body and he began to feel his own body fail him as he collapsed first to his knees, then sat on his haunches. The lightning dissipated as the Battlelord lost concentration from the pain. The woman slumped to the ground and Kojiro lay bleeding on the floor, his body still juddering every so often as his nerves continued to rebel due to the large amount of electricity that had gone through his body. The Sadowan tried to look up as the sound of footsteps approached him, but failed as heavy hands grasped the clone around the shoulders and dragged him roughly away from the scene, Kojiro’s eyes closed and the darkness swallowed him up.