Erected along the banks of the Solleu River and the Virdugo Plunge of Naboo, the refinery complex is a model of Neo-Classical design and exacts an efficient but elegant form. Large blocks of sandstone-like stone are sheltered by a ribbed roof and inlaid with a high-tensile durasteel support webbing. The stone construction boasts rigid, durable design and is lined with blast-proof green plates so the the roof is defended against bombardment.

The Plasma Refinery Complex is a triple-domed structure and located alongside the city's main hangar. Within the first of the three domed structures closest to the hangar lies the seemingly-bottomless extracting shaft. A hemispherical chamber with black paneled walls that constantly monitors and compensates for pressure changes, the shaft is crisscrossed by several concentric rings of catwalks. A series of twelve, evenly-spaced acceleration shafts extend from the bottom of the pit to disappear into the ceiling. A thermal carbon membrane contains the plasma that is forced out of the core and upward through vacuum suction.

The city’s power generator rests on the other side of the acceleration shaft and is located under the ground floor of the first domed building. Above it, the facility's main activator and purification chamber sits below a corridor of laser gates. The corridor, comprising of several doors that lock into position and hold back potentially dangerous quantities of power outputs, leads into the generator’s core.

Another massive shaft plummets into the heart of the reactor at the center of the generator’s core and is surrounded by a circular catwalk that extends to the walls of the smaller, cylindrical building. Along the sides of the shaft, high-energy particle coils are employed when excessive plasma slough needs to be curtailed.

The central building is, in fact, a drum-shaped holding tank of refined plasma. Mass amounts of energy is gathered below the recirculation lid at the top of the tank, this reduces the oxygen levels in the chamber in order to preserve the vacuum maintained in the tank.

Lucine leaned against the wall, listening to the steady thrum of the extractors as they toiled below. At this late hour, the Plasma Refinery was minimally staffed. Those few that worked the graveyard shift were unwary. It made an ideal meeting place for those with nefarious intentions. Her eyes left the acceleration shafts to study the two refinery workers she had encountered. They remained where she left them, slumped over their consoles, deep in a Force-induced sleep. They would not interfere.

“Psssst!”

She looked in the direction of the opened blast doors to see a Toydarian peering around the corner at her. “Lotus?”

They really need to find a better way of identifying each other. This is far too easy, Lucine thought. She offered the Toydarian a pleasant smile. “Bleeko, I presume? Do you have it?”

Bleeko fluttered past the doorway, his movements jerky with nervousness. “Yeah, I got it. And lemme tell ya, it wasn't an easy thing to get my hands on,” he said as he reached into his pocket and tossed a disk to her.“Now, about my money.”

“Just one moment, my friend,” Lucine replied, inserting the disk into her datapad. It chimed twice, confirming that the disk held the data she sought: a list of every Inquisitorius dead drop site on Nar Shadda. “Very well, a deal is a deal.”

A grin spread slowly across the Toydarian's dull features. “Yeah? Great. Then I'll be going.”

But before he could make a move, the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber caused them both to freeze. Human and Toydarian eyes turned toward the doors, which were now blocked by a blue Twi'lek holding an emerald lightsaber.

“This looks like a cozy scene,” the Twi'lek said with a grin. “I almost hated to interrupt it.”

Bleeko's rubbery skin paled to a light grey. Lucine was pale too, though it was not fear that had drained the color from her cheeks. “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“Obviously I am dealing with a Lotus agent and a spy,” he replied smugly.

“You idiot! You have ruined everything!” She was trembling with rage as she began to pace along the catwalk. “Were you acting on orders? Because I was. Contact the spy, secure the disk, and then kill him!”

“Wait, what?” Bleeko's jaw dropped at her words.

The Taldryan, meanwhile, looked thoughtful. “Why would a Lotus agent kill their own spy?”

“Fool!” Lucine stabbed her finger at him. She drew on her anger, lending veracity to her words. “Because I am acting as a double agent for the Iron Throne! Now, because of your interference, I have to remove his memories!”

“And why didn't I hear anything about this?” the Twi'lek asked, his brow furrowed.

“This may come as a shock,” Lucine said venomously. “But some missions are conducted without your knowledge. This was need to know only!”

“Hmm,” the Equite tapped his lower lip as he considered her words. “Well, I suppose that would make sense. But there's one problem. If you're going to kill him, why would you need to remove his memories?”

The redhead paused, realizing she had overplayed her hand. “A precaution!” she sputtered.

“Uh huh,” the Twi'lek said sarcastically. “On second thought, I might not just kill you here. It might be more fun to find out how much you know first.”

Lucine quickly decided to continue with her ruse. “Fine, no problem. I will happily go with you. It will be a pleasure to see the look on your face when you realize you were mistaken!” She raised her arms, showing that she did not have any weapons in hand. “Since I am being so cooperative, you could at least set down your lightsaber!” She threw all of her rage into her words. This was not the time for finesse.

The Taldryan paused, his gaze turning toward the weapon in his hand. He hesitated, before deactivating it and setting it down upon the catwalk.

Trying to ignore her blossoming headache, Lucine desperately threw out her hand. The lightsaber clattered across the floor and down the shaft, landing upon a catwalk below.

“I am going to send you down after that,” the Equite growled. He turned his eyes back to the redhead in time to see her dart forward, lightsaber in hand. He drew his kukri and dropped into a defensive stance as she closed, her own emerald lightsaber flaring to life. At the last moment, he jumped backward to avoid the blow.

Simplicity

“I’m impressed,” the Twi’lek’s praise dripped with the dark side. “Your anger flows off you in waves. Such power should be used for the Inquisitorius.” He stayed just outside of the young woman’s long reach. He admitted to himself that it was not as easy as he would have liked. The Force had told him that he would be facing a young woman, but gave no indication at her skill level.

She continued her advance along the platform. Lucine pushed the fight away from the Toydarian, something Alaris did not ignore. The Twi’lek slowed his retreat down until he was just within reach of the lightsaber. Lucine took advantage of this and swung laterally, attempting to spill the Inquisitor’s guts.

Alaris’s timing was perfect. With the dark side coiled around his quads and calves, he sprung upward. The lightsaber missed him by inches. He planted his left hand on the tall woman’s shoulder. Using it as a springboard, he pushed off, which gave him a head start toward the Toydarian, and also caused Lucine to stumble in the opposite direction: an added bonus. He landed softly and immediately launched into a sprint.

Had Bleeko been a bit more focused on self-preservation he may have been able to escape, but he spent too long watching the onset of the fight before turning tail. It wasn’t long before the smaller creature was tackled in mid-air. He pumped his wings as hard as he could, but soon felt fingernails digging into them. He was useless on the ground and soon found himself stuck there with some kind of blade stabbed through both of his wings and into the durasteel flooring.

“Don’t move,” Alaris spat at Bleeko. “You and I are going to have a little chat when all is said and done.”

“I’m a Toydarian. I don’t know how you expect to extract any information from me,” the whiskered alien said defiantly.

“I don’t need the Force to hurt you.” With that, Alaris was back up on his feet and staring at the human who was charging after him. The dark side had given the Twi’lek a huge head start, but Lucine had finally caught back up. He drew the Inquisitorius Sith Dagger from its sheath and readied himself for the coming onslaught.

Her initial slash would have sliced through Alaris’s blade and across his chest had it not been alchemically treated by the Inquisitorius. Instead, it deflected upward, leaving an opening for Alaris to deliver a strike of his own. A clumsy kick struck Vasano in the right side of her upper torso and she stumbled to her left.

“Focus!” the Augur yelled.

What is he doing? Lucine expected to be dead. She was left open and the Twi’lek had every opportunity to drive the dagger into her chest.

“You are clumsy in your attack.” Alaris took a step back and allowed the Knight to ready herself once more. “Pay attention to your advantages. You are taller and have a longer reach than I do.”

“Why are you doing this?” Lucine angled her lightsaber away from the Twi’lek.

The Inquisitor let a smile creep into his visage. “You disarmed me. You manipulated me. There are scarce few who can manage this, and never have I encountered someone at your level who could. You have great potential.”

The human let a brief laugh escape. “You wish to train me? To be my master?” She refocused. “I have been knighted.”

“And yet,” Alaris readied himself again, “you would be twice killed by this point if I had willed it. Nobody’s education is every truly finished. This was the arrogance of Palpatine, and it appears to be yours.”

Alaris shot out his left hand and violet electricity sprung from his fingertips spanning the distance between the two nearly instantaneously.

The violet lightning arced toward her. Reacting on instinct, Lucine raised her lightsaber in a two-handed defense against the dark energy. She gritted her teeth as the lightning struck the emerald blade, before being deflected to the panels that lined the wall. Sparks exploded from the paneling as the monitoring equipment was overloaded by the electrical onslaught.

The violet current ended as abruptly as it had started, and Lucine resumed her stance. For several seconds the Human and Twi'lek stood in a silent tableau, each assessing the other's weaknesses and considering their attacks.

Before either could move, the air was filled with the sound of a blaring klaxon and a feminine voice.

“WARNING. PLASMA PRESSURE RISING.”

Lucine's eyes narrowed at the words and the clangorous alarm. She would have expected a facility of this size to have redundancies, in case a few of the monitoring panels went down. How odd. “Well, that does not sound good,” she said as her gaze returned to the Twi'lek. “Perhaps we should finish this elsewhere.”

The Taldryanite chuckled softly, barely heard over the alarm. His readied stance remained unchanged as he said, “I think not. We haven't finished our lesson, and I still want to have a chat with Bleeko.”

His calm demeanor added to her feeling of wrongness. But the dull headache from her earlier exertions combined with the klaxon's auditory assault made it difficult think.

The Arconan took a deep breath, drawing on her rage to aid in her focus. “If you insist, darling.”

She sprinted toward him, bringing her weapon down in an overhead strike. His dagger deflected the blade to the side. She reversed, slashing at an upward angle. He retreated backward; her blade cut harmlessly through the space where he once stood, leaving her overbalanced. Seeing his opening, he darted forward with a quick stab toward her abdomen.

Her senses screamed a warning that momentarily drowned out the alarms. She gasped and twisted to the side, feeling the dagger cut a thin red line through her flesh. She stumbled to a stop a few steps away, her wound immediately beginning to burn.

“Better, but you're still getting way to close,” the Twi'lek said, noting the blood on the blade with satisfaction. “And you really shouldn't let all this noise distract you so.”

As if to punctuate his words, the alarms increased in volume and the automated voice spoke once again.

“WARNING. PLASMA PRESSURE REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS.”

Lucine assumed a sideways stance, trying to her injury. As her heart raced from the exertion, it carried the poison from her wound through her system. The floor began to take on a wavering quality, like ripples on a pond. Though her eyes told her the durasteel floor was moving, it felt solid beneath her feet, worsening her vertigo. Poison, she thought grimly. I must end this. Quickly.

Using her stance to mask her movements, she palmed a bag into her free hand. The Equite waited patiently as she struggled to find her footing. The floor is perfectly solid, she tried to rationalize to herself. Realizing she did not have much time before the poison took it's full effect, she sprinted forward, slashing at him as soon as he was within reach. As he moved to avoid the blow, she used the follow-through to throw the blinding dust in his face.

The Twi'lek's free hand flew to his eyes as he recoiled, tears streaming down his cheeks. Keeping him in her peripheral vision, she moved unsteadily to Bleeko. “Time to go,” she said, pulling free the kukri that pinned him to the floor.

The Human and the Toydarian fled through the blast doors and into the night, Lucine stumbling more and more frequently as the hallucinogenic took hold.

Alaris opened his reddened eyes and looked around. Though his vision was still blurred by the dust and his tears, he could see that the redhead and the spy were gone. Despite the burning sensation in his eyes, he grinned as he dispelled his illusion. Abruptly, the klaxons fell silent.

Unhurried, he waited for his sight to clear before retrieving his kukri and calling his lightsaber to his hand. He had time; his meditations indicated that they would retreat to their respective safe houses. His visions had also given him an indication of where they would be hiding. The only thing that remained was to decide which to do first: recover the disk or have his chat with Bleeko.

“Lesson one.”

Alaris spoke calmly as electricity coursed through the young Knight and escaped into the durasteel floor. She clenched her lightsaber tighter as her muscles spasmed. She would have screamed through the exquisite pain if her jaw wasn’t clenched shut.

“Learn a new lightsaber form. Niman is the form for a Jedi. You are no Jedi.” The current stopped abruptly. “If you had been mastering a different form, your lightsaber would have been in a position to deal with that. You were not fast enough to bring your lightsaber to bear. Know your weaknesses and use them to your advantage.”

Lucine gasped desperately for air. She collapsed to her knees and her right hand, still holding her ignited lightsaber in her left. She tasted iron; she had bit her tongue. She spat out the blood to no avail: the taste remained.

“I have advantages,” she managed to say between gasps. The dark side launched a tendril from her skull to behind where the Twi’lek stood.

Alaris heard a lightsaber ignite behind him. He twisted his head around, briefly, before his brain recognized it as a ruse. He smiled slightly and turned back to Lucine, ready to spit another witticism. Something immediately struck him in the face. It didn’t hurt so much as sting, but he could no longer see. It wasn’t as if the world had turned black, just that it stung to keep his eyes open so he was forced to close them and allow his tear ducts to clear the impediment.

He should have been ready for something to come, but he had been distracted, so the punch to the face happened without any preparedness. He stumbled backward and his hands rushed to his face to cover what he was sure was a broken nose. He heard the clang of his dagger hitting the durasteel. The Force screamed at the Twi’lek and leant him its strength. He leapt forward at a very high angle. He still couldn’t see so he knew he only had one chance. He reached out and felt a shoulder. He grabbed at as much as he could and used it as leverage to bring him back down.

Alaris found himself grabbing firm on Lucine’s back. He wrapped his arms and legs around her and held on for dear life. She struggled to throw him off, but nevertheless, she persisted. Alaris knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on forever, so he gave into the basest of instinct and let his sharp teeth do their job. He bit down hard into Lucine’s shoulder and now both combatants could taste human blood.

She screamed in pain and Alaris let go. He dropped on his rear and pulled himself upright again. The dust was clearing from his eyes, but tears still ran down his face. He futilely wiped them away and looked around desperately for something to fight with. Both of his blades were on the other side of the human: one lying on the ground, one embedded in a pair of wings. His lightsaber sat several meters below. That was his best chance.

He knew he had dropped further down quite a ways, so he took off in that direction. This would actually work out better for him, he realized. It would take Vasano a bit of time to catch up. He reached the spot he had initially set it down and looked over the edge to where it had fallen. He closed his eyes. It took a few moments, but the lightsaber finally shot up and landed cleanly in the Twi’lek’s hand.

He ignited it and readied himself against what he was sure would be an incoming attack. He was wrong. Vasano stood square toward him right above the Toydarian. She held the kukri in her hand that had been pinning the creature to the platform. Alaris smiled. The Toydarian wasn’t moving. He had pushed himself up against a wall and his head was darting back and forth at what Alaris was sure was pretty vivid imagery.

Then he frowned again as Lucine drove Alaris’s own blade into the Toydarian’s skull. She walked calmly toward an open set of blast doors and looked out at Alaris as she keyed the locking mechanism. It slowly shut, separating the two combatants.

The Augur chuckled to himself. “Lesson two. Know your disadvantages. Clever girl.”