Anakin once visited Coruscant’s underbelly, as an escort for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s secret visit. Festering within the 2685th level of Coruscant, it is a feeding ground to the best and worst criminals—bureaucrats among them. Slaves and contraband are bought and sold on the hour, while others gamble with their lives or ill-gotten gains on the roll of a chance cube.

Others are content to seek entertainment, watching holographic projections of exotic dancers in various states of undress—the likes of which will no doubt be traded as slaves in exchange for credits or other services. Games of chance are often obscured under the sheer volume of patrons gathered around the game tables. Smaller round tables serve for social or business gatherings, with more discreet booths tucked into alcoves along the walls.

Having undergone unfinished renovations at some point, the ceiling has been raised to resemble that of a warehouse. Smoke gathers among the durasteel supports, making a buffer for the intense red and violet beams lighting the cesspit below. Zeltron perfumes are among the most common smells in the establishment, while the rolling of dice cubes make for the most recognizable sound above the music. Fights don’t often break out, and violence is often dissuaded at the sight of armoured bouncers several heads taller than most humanoids

Neither of them was supposed to be here. He for how antithetical to his being this place was, and she for how very much it defined her.

For him, the Zeltron perfume and clattering chance dice were misama and cacophony. In them was the adultery and avarice that had long abused him, all he opposed. He was ice, and quiet, and sharpness. He was order, and precision, and abnegation. He was the Gray, and the guilty, and he was such a creature of utter selflessness that to him even his breath was borrowed.

For her, the moans, curses and blood under glittering nails was an old skin. This was her birthing soil. Her roots ran deep into this hollow, and it would eat her alive and very soon kill her — kill the "me" she had worked so hard to make when she'd ripped herself free from the snarl of black briars and rubicund roses.

But both of them had been forged by pain and punishment, and both of them knew how to pretend. They knew what it was to be whatever tool they needed to be, and so they could exist even where it should have been impossible.

Marick Tyris met Satsi Tameike's eyes across the club dance floor the moment she walked in.

Marick wore gray robes and some other face, different in subtle ways that were probably easy to maintain, but she knew him when she saw him by the way he carried himself and the timeless age of his gaze. He was speaking to — frak her life — a small cadre of Black Sun bangers in a side booth. As if coming near her homeworld wasn't fatal enough. But the risk had to be taken. She had been trying to reach the Hapan since they'd missed one another on Nancora. She owed this. To him, and to Atyiru.

The woman swallowed her terror and approached leisurely, blending in amongst the party-goers even in her skin-tight armor. When she was near enough to the booth to overhear some of the chatter, she hooked her legs around the nearest available body, grinding back against them as if she was just any other spice-high streetwalker.

"...looking for new funds...new avenues...recommended by Capital Enterprises."

"One of our best…can provide…"

It was hard to keep track of a discrete criminal business conversation with a man panting in her ear, but she managed. That's what Tyris was doing? Tracking the Collective's funding?

Satsi disentangled herself and moved for a quieter alcove where she could wait the meeting out, but then one of the group looked up and at her and called in disbelief, "Doll?!"

Frakkity frakking—

"Doll, that is you! Isn't it my lucky day?"

Frak!

Well, there went any chance of subtlety or getting out of here alive, even with PB waiting up on the roofs with a rocket. She smiled, letting the Demon's Doll come over her like a second skin and stepping out in front of the booth.

"Hey, Oinotna. It's been awhile."

He stood up, and the rest stood with him.

"Three years since you ran out on us, and, what, coming up on the anniversary of your murdering the boss?"

"Time flies." His hand dropped to his gun in his coat. Hers did the same. She couldn't afford to look away long enough to gauge what Marick was doing.

"It does."

Satsi quick-drew her pistol and shot him in the face.

Everything else exploded into motion while her old subordinate's face exploded into moist pink mist. The bouncers shouted. Patrons screamed and scattered. The music scratched and died as the DJ ran. The Suns all drew their own pieces, pointing them at her even as she aimed at them.

And then there was Marick, smooth and silken as shadow, gliding in between the two parties with a raised hand warding.

"Please," he spoke in clear, accentless Basic, raising his voice and lowering his cloak's hood. He looked to the Suns, then nodded at Satsi. "Allow me, as your guest. A demonstration of our new solidarity."

There was a pause, and then the gangleader laughed.

"You want to fight her? Go ahead. But when you die, I expect my credit to come through anyway. Your people and mine, we're in business now."

"Of course," the Hapan lied smoothly, not fluttering a perfect lash. Satsi paled.

A Sith dagger appeared in his hand.

Her gaze followed its descent for just a second, and in that heartbeat, he moved.

In a blink he was in front of her. She lashed out at him, and he easily stepped past the punch, yanking her forward by the arm instead. He threw her past him to the sticky ground and a kick plowed swiftly into her abdomen.

Breath burst from her chest as agony did the same. She resisted the urge to buckle and instead rolled upright, shooting in the direction she thought he was. There were more screams from the fleeing crowd but no Marick. Her gaze whirled—

He was there again in a blur. He slashed at her and she jerked back, feeling the edge slice up her cheek and over her eye. It wasn't deep enough to blind but blood spurted nonetheless and she swore as she shot again, blindly. Again he seemed faster even than the bullets, or able to know before she even pulled the trigger. Snarling, the Human drew her own blade, breathing fast and struggling to keep up.

Marick's movements were graceful and fluid, the hand that wasn't clutching a dagger open-palmed and striking at her between stabs. Twice he jabbed at the crook of her elbow, another at the juncture of her collarbone. Each strike was powerful, more so than his momentum could possibly afford him, numbing her arm as pain and shock radiated through her shoulder.

Her pistol clattered out of her grip and she was left barely bringing her dagger up quick enough to prevent a new hole in her chest.

Metal ground against metal. The sharpened edge of Marick’s dagger sparked slightly as it slid down the flat side of Satsi’s blade. Primal instinct and years of muscle memory wired for survival took control as she reflexively managed to push the dagger away from her body. In the same fluid motion, the woman let out a feral growl of defiance. She staggered her stance, shifted her weight into her scarred but iron-corded shoulder, and then dropped it solidly it into Marick’s center of gravity.

Marick Tyris was fast, but he was still bound by the laws of nature and physics. Even as he receded from the primitive attack, his lean frame absorbed enough force to stagger him backwards a good number of strides. It was not much space to work with, but it was the separation that Satsi desperately needed to regain some semblance of control of her situation.

Marick was fully aware that this was not unfamiliar territory for the former Demon’s Doll. The Voice had to trust that Tameike would understand the gravity of the situation before he lost this lead. He was so close. He could not afford a set back.

The Gray Fang shook away his trepidation and lowered himself into the detached, zen-like state of mind he had come to rely on to remain focused at all times. He would just have to trust her.

Casting a knowing glance at the Black Sun agents watching from the sideline, Marick brandished a second dagger from his belt and flipped it around into a reverse grip.

“Try and keep up, girly,” he called out as he darted once more at his opponent.

The two Inquisitors’ blades clashed in a flurry of fluctuating sweeps and slashes. The three daggers sliced at each other through the musky air through a cacophony of swishes and clangs. Marick moved with more alacrity and smoothness, but there was a raw, instinctive swagger to Sati’s defensive twists and counters. Whatever she lacked in the finer finesse of knife-fighting, she more than made up for with her experience in fighting against stronger, faster, and more deadly fighters in close quarters.

Marick had expected nothing less of the woman who had taken the Serpentine Throne in the vacuum of Arcona’s blindsided loss.

“Why are you here?” Satsi growled, her anger a veneer to veil her true feelings.

Tyris shook his head. “That’s entirely the wrong question,” he whispered between breaths as he leaning away from an elbow aimed at his temple. Satsi followed the strike with a tight uppercut that had the full torque of her hips and pivot of her foot. Marick managed to shuffle step backward but still felt a rush of air pass just in front of his chin as her knuckles missed by just a hair's breadth. Unrelenting, Satsi stepped immediately into the half-Hapan’s guard and drove her knee into his solar plexus, driving the wind from his lungs.

Tyris gasped for air as he doubled over, giving Tameike the chance to clasp each of her hands behind the back of his head in a clinch to pull his forehead against hers. He could almost taste her clean sweat and smell the fragrance of her matted hair as their foreheads pressed against one another. He could feel her hot breath on his cheek inching towards his ear.

“What do you want with the Black Suns?" Satsi sneered through gritted teeth into his ear. She went to drive another knee into his sternum, but Marick crossed his arms protectively in an “x” to block it. Satsi growled and shoved the half-Hapan’s head away from her own and followed up with a roundhouse kick to his jaw.

Marick took the hit, quite literally, on the chin this time, but just barely. The toe of Tameike’s boot made contact, jerking the Master’s head and shoulders back a few steps and leaving a sharp stinging sensation in its wake. Pushing the pain to the side, he brought both of his daggers up into a guard stance and dared the woman to come at him.

"Why are you trying to work with them?" Satsi repeated, her voice low and guttural.

“Still the wrong question,” Marick replied quietly, keeping his voice hidden beneath the shouts of frantically fleeing patrons and overturned furniture. He made an almost exaggerated gesture to draw her attention to the daggers clasped in each of his hands. "Think, Satsagi."

Satsi wiped sweat away from her eyes with the back of her hand, only now remembering the faint trail of blood from her earlier cut. Her eyes darted to each of the Voice's daggers, and then down to his belt where she could see no other weapons visible.

Why isn’t he using his lightsabers?

Marick studied Satsi's face intently and saw the sudden flash of understanding creep through her carefully crafted mask.

And why is a Gray Jedi Master and renowned assassin wasting his time in a drawn out brawl in a club?

Marick inclined his head ever so slightly as a subtle sign of acknowledgement. He trusted that the Grand Inquisitor had pieced together the scope of the situation without him having to tell her. The two fromer Shadow Lords of Clan Arcona were more alike than either probably cared to admit.

"That all you got, girly?" Tyris taunted loudly as Tameike swiped again at the blood dripping into her eye. She snarled at him in an obvious manner, keeping up their pantomime.

A fragment of his mind was dedicated to maintaining the figment, both his Force-made mask and his charade, but every other crystalline fractal was focused on the fight. Marick was an excellent killer, lightning-fast and preternaturally precise, but Satsi fought with a manic fire in her eyes, never slowing down as she sprinted straight at him.

At the last instant, the Voice stepped aside and slashed at the back of her neck as she passed, not wasting any movement. She threw herself under his strike and dove into a roll that brought her to her feet with her back to him a few paces away. While one of her hands touched the floor, the other lifted as if to show off the blade she held reversed along her forearm to their audience. Then, she whirled and cut at Marick's legs while he lashed a kick at her kidneys.

Her forearm parried the kick, but Marick's other dagger turned her blade. He followed with a slanting slice towards her throat while she somersaulted back and threw herself onto her shoulders. When she came back up, she was pointing her dropped gun.

The Voice's senses did not guide him to move, and that was hint enough as she fired just above his shoulder, bullets exploding into the blaring club lights. The bouncers scattered again, and the little area immediately around the booth went dim. The Hapan's nightblind eyes struggled to adjust as he was plunged into enhanced darkness. It was that moment's disorientation that allowed Satsi to vault back to her feet and charge him with her knife, shoving him hard as their bared steel met, barreling them both back; back into the center of the games area and away from the gangsters.

For a moment they struggled as if alone, blades locked, noses brushing.

And then she leaned close and whispered six words into his ear. It was not a proper and true number, not like three or seven, but they might as well have been magic all the same for the effect they had on the Hapan. He didn't so much as react at all, but deep beneath his cold and clockwork exterior, down between his rib bones and the empty spaces and the hollow where his heart sat, steady and tame, something fluttered, shivered, then took flight. His too-blue eyes might have widened a millimeter. His fingers might have clenched. They didn't, but they might have, because those words gave him something when his life had amounted to taking, again and again, as inevitable as a gravity well's slow pull.

There was a question in her eyes as she pulled back, gaze boring into his, and an answer in his solemn, single nod. Satsi's intense expression softened for a second into what was, objectively, a lovely smile, the only genuine one he'd ever seen her grace him.

There was something else in that expression too, even more foreign: trust. His mercurial mind registered it even as she slipped one of his daggers from his grip, the motion hidden between the press of their bodies, still close enough to share breath. She flipped it about in her hand, pressed it back into his palm, and then, clutching his fist, yanked the blade towards her. It was a joint move: she pulled, and he guided the stroke.

They were assassins, he even more specialized, armed with knowledge of the body and all that broke it. He knew he was cutting into her pectoral one rib too low to sever her major arteries or bronchus. The flat of the blade ground cold against bone and brushed her heart's apex. She made a sound like a sigh.

When she fell backwards, she actually had the gall to wink at him.

Both of their bodies were conditioned to more classic poisons, but Marick was no novice. He grew and mixed his own herbs in his toxins, and the inhibiting concoction on his daggers was strong. But while Marick could deftly sense her torpid spark of life with ease, the mundane criminals could not, and she looked, at a glance, quite deceased. The woman's body went slack rapidly in flaccid paralysis, all her color draining as dark violet bloomed under her collarbones and bright scarlet pooled in her mouth, leaking free to dribble over her frozen cheek. He wondered if she'd bit into her tongue to achieve that bit of drama.

There was a shocked pause as the Hapan made himself pant as if winded, the sound of sirens in the distance growing louder. Then, the Black Sun members erupted into exclamations.

"This guy just took down the Demon's Doll!" hooted the gangleader, approaching. He crouched to prod for a pulse, for which the Gray Fang waited; but the thief seemed satisfied, standing and slapping Marick on the back. "Karabast, you can contract with us any time! We're celebrating tonight, boys! Get us a whole LOAD of cred! Hah! Us and the Doll's killer. How's that, eh? Doll-Killer!"

During the man's spiel, the Voice spared not a glance for the prone Arconan. He would have to trust that the woman had a plan of extraction. Failing that, he knew she was strong-willed enough not to reveal anything about the Brotherhood if caught. And even if her enemies here did get ahold of her rather than an ally, they would find it a useless endeavor; that wound would not be survived long in the hands of torturers. Risk to his organization was minimal, acceptable.

Marick made a smile on his altered face and allowed the cabal to whisk him away to some new destination. Satsi's words curled tight around his dead heart.

"...needs you," she'd said.

He would go. First, there was the mission. But when that was done, he would go.

Forward, always.

Understanding the game that was being played, Satsi came at Marick this time. He wove through her combination of crosses and uppercuts, then slid sideways to avoid an ascending knee to his face. The half-Hapan could feel his breathing becoming more ragged. While he still had the upper hand, that would quickly change if this brawl dragged on for too long. He did not have time for this.

“Sorry,” Marick murmured as he tapped the Force for a momentary burst of speed, focusing so as not to overdo it and give away his cover. It was enough to allow the next three slashes from his left-hand blade to bite through her padded bodysuit and draw blood.

She answered by driving her forehead into his chin, reigniting the lingering tightness he had felt from her earlier hit. Marick staggered backwards, stretching his jaw awkwardly from left to right in a lame attempt to shake off the blow.

“That all ya’ got, twinkletoes?” Satsi taunted, somehow feeding on the pain of the wounds he had inflicted on her.

Marick was about to reply when he saw Satsi suddenly tense up. The woman’s whole body seemed to grind to a halt as her muscles twitched. She struggled to take a step forward but stumbled. Her feral grin stretched the scar across her nose slightly.

Tyris lowered his weapons and stalked over to Satsi. She dropped to one knee and strained to raise her arms in defiance. She couldn’t even reach for the thermal detonator on her belt, though.

Marick flipped his dagger around in his hand and in the flowing same motion cracked the woman across the jaw with the hilt. Satsi crumpled adroitly to the floor, struggling against the sluggish sensation dominating her nervous system.

“Poison?” one of the Black Suns asked as the cadre closed a circle around the two fighters.

“Inhibitor,” Marick explained as he sheathed his daggers and started to massage his throbbing jaw. “Best way to handle these Brotherhood folk. Can never be to careful.”

The leader of the group he had spoken with earlier nodded, and lifted the prone Satsi up by the hair. She grunted and tried to struggle. A sadistic glimmer glinted in the mercenary’s eyes as he took in the helpless woman. “If there’s nothing else, you’ll get your intel. If you can deliver on the goods you promised. Pleasure doing business with you. Now, scram.”

Marick blinked once, his face showing no sign of offense or insult otherwise. “What will you do with her?”

The Black Suns looked at each other knowingly and let out a series of low chuckles. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Needless to say, this little piece of flesh owes more than a few of us our due.” He licked his lips.

Marick did not respond. His mind churned as it quickly calculated countless potential outcomes. He weighed each of them against one another, the pros and cons, the merits and drawbacks. The logical thing to do was to walk away.

Somewhere within that same rationale, however, the flicker of a memory flashed across his vision. He remembered two siblings reunited and left to their anomonity by his command. Satsi and Uji Tameike. He saw them together, at the Citadel, smiling. He saw a child, crying out for her mother. He saw long ashen hair and an unrelenting, unforgettable smile.

Marick made a decision. From that moment forward, there would be no more hesitation or trepidation. His hair returned to its natural raven color and his eyes to their too-blue hue.

There were three Black Sun mercenaries in total. The two closest to Marick had their backs turned. The Gray Fang moved like quicksilver, the Force surging through him without restraint. He moved with preternatural fluidity, a violet lightsaber with an obsidian core springing to life and seamlessly slicing the heads clean off of both guards. By the time their skulls squished meatily against the ground, the leader had tossed Satsi aside and drew his blaster.

Well, at least now he had his attention. Marick sprinted for one of the overturned table, a trail of crimson bolts hot on his heels. He slid behind it as chips of steel splinter and sprayed around him.

Satsi noticed a small vial lying on the ground where Marick had previously been standing. Crawling towards it, she knew it had not fallen by accident. Satsi grit her teeth. Like Marick, she had trained her body to handle toxins better than most. That did not mean she was immune, however, so she gladly downed the vial and felt her muscles loosen somewhat.

Meanwhile, Marick peaked out from behind his makeshift cover and then quickly withdrew.

“Come out and fight you backstabbing fra—yeeeow!”

Whatever the Black Sun leader was going to say was cut off by a cry of pain. Satsi had climbed back to her feet and positioned herself behind him. She deftly pinned his blaster arm behind his back and twisted it until she heard a gratifying pop followed by a snap.

“There, there.” Satsi gave the leader a delicate peck on the cheek, just below the ear, and then neatly slit his throat.

Marick watched the thug fold limply to the floor in a pool of his own blood. He calmly looked around the room to asses the remaining threats. There were none.

Seemingly content, Satsi limped her way towards the bar. She somehow managed to find the only bottle that hadn’t been shattered and grabbed two tall glasses. She filled each with the amber liquid, sliding one down the bar towards the half-Hapan.

Marick stepped over the bar and studied the drink dubiously.

“Shut up and drink,” Tameike growled.

Tyris started to decline, but then reconsidered.

“Alright,” he conceded as he took a seat at one of the stools. Marick lifted the drink to take the slightest of sips. His training prevented him from scrunching his nose at the astringent taste of the brandy. “What do you want?”