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 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.

Music assaulted the ears of the Togruta as he entered the club. His mental map shook violently for a moment, until he tuned out the noise and could focus again.

”Why of all the places available, did he choose to come here?” Lavanth grumbled to himself. Roaming through the den he heard chips clattering on tables and sounds of victory and loss ringing from them. No one fit the voice or height description of the man he was looking for. Smaller tables littered the further edge of the room. There Lavanth found Ka Tarvitz. His stature dwarfed most of those next to him who were playing the game.

“Ka Tarvitz?” The Knight asked aloud. The human turned around to look at the source of the question.

“That’d be me.” The man said turning his head. Lavanth nodded at him.

“Your to come with me. Let’s go.” Lavanth said turning away from the table.

“Wait, come sit. Introduce yourself and maybe play a hand or two with me.” The other knight said. Anger started to rise in the Togruta.

“Very funny telling that to the blind guy.” Lavanth growled at Tarvitz. “You want to take this outside or stay in here?” Lavanth slammed his hand next to the table. The Human merely stared at him. It was irrational to start something here, or even get into this argument in the first place.

“I believe anger is clouding your…” The human started. A growl came from the other side of the table.

“Are we going to play this or are we…” A Trandoshan asked but was interrupted by 3 shots entering his torso. The night had drawn his pistol and fired those shots. Tarvitz stared at the drawn gun. They had gone over the event horizon.

For a few moments, Tarvitz did not react, simply taking in the sight of the Trandoshan’s ragged chest. There had been no last moments, no realisation for the man, not even a last ragged breath to symbolise his final moments. One second he had been alive, the next he was simply dead, slumping into his seat and staring blankly at the growing red stain spreading across the carpet beneath him.

A fourth shot rang out, cutting across the blaring music as the dealer droid’s head exploded in a shower of broken circuits; it hung limply from the ceiling, chrome body twitching in time with the sparks rippling across the partially extended force pikes it had been readying to dispense this interloper. Clearly, whoever this was, he had done this sort of thing before.

“Do I need to ask again?” the gaunt Togruta pressed, slowly training the barrels of each gun from one player to the next. The smartest among them began edging away from Tarvitz, keeping their hands exactly where the gunman could see them.

“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” Tarvitz sighed, managing a polite smile in response, flipping the cards in his hands before neatly stacking them atop the table in front of him. As he rose to his feet, Tarvitz was still smiling right up to the point he lashed out with one leg, slamming an armoured boot into the table’s base.

With a screech of metal, it shot backwards, slamming edge-first into the Togruta’s abdomen with the force of a haymaker punch. The Togruta quickly folded as it struck home. Like most clubs on the crime infested moon, the club’s Sabbac tables were bolted to the floor to prevent this specific thing from happening. The only difference here was that Tarvitz had spent the better part of the last game quietly shaking loose each bolt with telekinesis, just in case someone happened to cause trouble. Admittedly, this had not been the specific gunman he had been expecting to show up, but Tarvitz wasn’t about to let that get in the way of a thorough beating. Not after he had just turned one of the few smugglers he was still on good terms with into a bullet ridden corpse.

Allowing the Force to lend him its strength Tarvitz launched himself over the table, pistoning a fist into his head of the wheezing gunman and smashing him backwards. A second punch caught the man in ribs, but before he could land the third the togruta weaved backwards. Leaning to one side and slapping Tarvitz’s blow away, he lithely twisted about the Jedi’s outstretched arm, dropping down and delivering a kick into his chest. Pain flared across his torso as he was driven backwards, but he had the sense to drop down on instinct as his foe finished twisting. His efforts were rewarded as the bullet intended for his head brushed by his head, close enough to sever a few strands of hair before punched a fist-sized hole into the gaudily decorated wall behind him. Apparently blindness was a mere inconvenience to this alien, rather than some career ending injury.

As the Togruta took aim again, Tarvitz reached out with the Force, gesturing towards ceiling with his open palm and smirked as his opponent’s pistol’s barrel was suddenly yanked skywards. The Togruta struggled for a moment, but had the sense to dive to one side, disappearing behind an empty table as Tarvitz drew his own sidearm. The table’s occupants had fled at the first sign of trouble - joining the rest of the club’s players in a minor stampede towards the exit, including those previously seated at Tarvitz’s table - each knowing just what would happen if they stuck around. Just because Nar Shaddaa was lawless didn’t mean there weren’t rules, and right now someone, somewhere was no doubt screaming for help into a Holonet terminal. No matter their fortunes or skill with a blaster, one wanted to be here once the enforcers of the local Hutt came calling, demanding to know who had been shooting up this particular establishment.

Sliding behind one of the nearby sofas, the closest nearby object which could passed for cover, Tarvitz quietly considered his options. Run for the door? Fight? Out the window and risk the several story drop?

“Tell me,” he called out to his assailant, trying to buy a little time as he mentally the distance between his hiding spot and the nearest exit “Does whoever is paying you want me alive or dead?”

Confusion sprung in Lavanth’s head. Why would he want him dead? They were on the same team after all. He just simply wanted the Human to come with him, but he had started all of… whatever you could call this mess.

The Togruta needed his guns back, other wise he wasn't going to do so well. His cloak could probably take a few shots from the gun, but not an entire battery. His guns shifted every now and then. They were essentially bolted there for the moment. Lavanth smiled. He closed his eyes and laid his head back. He reached out to the Force, found the Human’s connection, and started to attack it. Cutting off a force user connection wasn't something he could do, but weakening it by assaulting it? That was simpler. A clang rang out in the club. Roughly a meter or so away was where Ebony and Night had fallen. The distance most likely wouldn’t get him killed.

In a flash the knight popped out of cover and rushed for the twin slugthrowers. Tarvitz himself came out of his cover to take a shot. Lavanth though had thought he would do this and raised his hand. A brilliant light erupted from the palm of the Togruta’s hand and enveloped the room. The Human quickly returned to his cover.

“I’m not here to kill you!” Lavanth shouted from his new cover. “The clan sent me to get you.”

Confusion now floated in Tarvitz’s head. Why would the clan send someone to kill him. Well granted he hadn't started out trying to, but the insuring chaos made him question the truth in the statement.

“Prove it!” He shouted peaking over the sofa. The Togruta held both hands up and had pistols holstered.

“Proof enough?” Lavanth questioned. At the same moment enforcers entered the building. Their gazes fixated on the two knights.

There were eight of them, each armed and outfitted with the best the galaxy’s criminal scum could buy. Typical of most Hutt enforcers, the bulk of their number consisted of axe wielding Gamorreans and gun toting Nikto, with a handful of humans to back them up. Stomping over the discarded glasses of patrons, with one quietly slipping the discarded winnings of one high stake Sabbac game into his pocket, they began to spread out before noting the only two remaining individuals left in the now empty club. The Jedi were given a momentary warning as the first - and largest - of the Gamorreans let loose a squealing warcry, sprinting forwards with one axe raised above his head. He barely made it three paces before his howling charge came to an abrupt and bloody stop.

Drawing the two pistols again, the Togruta smoothly turned and dropped to one knee, loosing a hail of bullets. The Gamorrean stumbled forwards as wet explosions of lifeblood erupted across his body, groaning as he collapsed into the nearest table. The others, the more sensible members of their group who had ignored this act of bold incompitence, merely raised their blasters and started to fire.

“Well then, what was your plan for after I agreed to go with you?” Tarvitz asked, raising his gun and putting two bolts into the nearest human trying to find cover.

“I didn’t plan for any of this!” The Togruta yelled, ducking beneath the burning storm of ionized energy hurtling overhead. Tarvitz paused momentarily, staring at the other Jedi in absolute disbelief before he leapt behind one of the supporting beams and out of sight.

“You drew a gun in Vertical City’s busiest night club, shot a man I was having a card game with, and demanded I follow you with no questions asked. How did you think this was going to end!?”

“Look, you were the one who gave some nebulous mention that you needed to-” the Togruta stopped and fired, eliciting scream from another charging Gamorrean “Can we save this until later?”

“Fine, just give me two things - Your name and who sent you,” Tarvitz said, leaning further into the relative safety of the sofa as a bolt shrieked through the air, close enough to leave a blackened streak across its fabric.

“Lavanth,” the Togruta answered, his irritation evident, between metallic clicks as he reloaded his two slugthrowers “and your house’s Aedile sent me, who else.”

Who else indeed. Tarvitz sighed slightly, before leaning out into the open and firing off several shots at one of the more over-eager thugs. Edgar Drachen had been one of the few he had announced his departure to, stating simply that he had needed a few days to tie up a few loose ends from his former life. That had been almost a standard month ago, after one particular exchange of information had become extremely complicated. All the more so now this deal had gone up in flames, which was going to take a great deal of explaining before the night is over. For all the leeway Odan-Urr had granted him, it was situations like this which truly made him miss the freedom allowed by the Jensaarai.

Noting another thug drawing a bead upon him, Tarvitz reached out with the Force, hurling one of the abandoned stools through the air and into the man’s chest. He collapsed with a surprised yell, pulling the trigger on the blaster as he toppled and punched a large hole into the ceiling overhead. He didn’t rise again afterwards. So, that was two wounded, albeit bleeding heavily, and one concussed thus far. Not many to be sure, given the size of the group, but it was enough to rob them of the usual cocksure attitude found in criminals seeking an easy target. Enough, perhaps, even to get them to listen to reason.

“Gentlemen,” Tarvitz yelled over the blaster fire “Could I have a moment of your time, please!?”

The gunfire faltered, and even Lavanth paused for a moment, though something told him it was more out of confusion than anything else.

“Three of your number are down,” he said with all the politeness he could muster for someone who had been avoiding blaster bolts mere moments before “two are likely to bleed to death any minute now. Take them, walk out that door, and you will not be pursued. In return, we will leave the club as it is, and we will not pursue you.”

Normally this would have resulted in laughter, or perhaps the odd boasting threat. Instead, this particular group apparently decided to skip all of that and returned to attempted murder.

“Did you really think that would work!?” Lavanth yelled.

“No, but I had to give them a chance,” Tarvitz answered, peering out at the ruined club interior before ducking back into hiding “Do you think you can shoot the bar a few times?”

“Yes, why?”

“If we waste too much time here they’ll call for backup and we’ll end up with half the city after us. We need a distraction and I just happen to have a flame projector.”

Tarvitz could have sworn he caught the ghost of a smirk on the Togruta’s face before he rose up, took aim and fired a dozen shots. Each bullet sped past the thugs, missing them entirely as they ripped through the small bar to their left. Each and every one ended with the familiar crunch of shattering glass as bottles exploded under the impact, spilling their contents out onto the carpets below in a slowly spreading stain.

Just as the last round hit home, Tarvitz leapt up out of cover, raised his right arm and struck the micro-trigger hidden in his gauntlet. A five meter tongue of flame erupted from the small projector barrel at his wrist, hurtling across the short distance before striking the counter’s surface. It latched onto the polished wood, curling about the interior as it ignited everything in its path before finding the exposed liquids. Alcohol was volatile enough at the best of times, but few worlds held anything close to what Nar Shaddaa deemed a “strong” drink. Tarvitz had seen things served here which made undistilled Rhydonium seem tame by comparison.

The bar did not ignite so much as explode. One moment it was there, burning brightly, and the next, it was as if a small supernova had been unleashed within the club. Burning shards of wood, fragments of glass and an inferno of burning alcohol rapidly spread across the room. Anything it touched was reduced to a bright burning cinder within moments, and what little it could not simply burn it coated in blazing substances. The thugs, being the closest of the two groups, were lost amid the sudden explosion. Cut off by the rapidly spreading fire, Tarvitz barely made out a few alarmed screams, a door being forced open followed by the grunts of something heavy being dragged after them. Hopefully several someones, in this case.

“What now?” Lavanath asked, stepping into view and holstering his pistols before Tarvitz, making certain the other Jedi saw the action.

“Now, we run like every damned soul in hell is at our backs,” he said, turning quickly heading for the far exit “And hope we can reach our ships before the club’s owner learns of this.”