What Was Not: Chapter 2
A few days after his departure from the Kesh system, Ahri dropped out of hyperspace to the closest planetary port there was; a desert planet called Tatooine, which was set in a binary star system. A few minutes of piloting later, he set the SoroSuub yacht in one of the planet's outskirts, just a few miles away from the nearest town. From what he saw via a brief flyover, he thought that it was best that he not park in any of the town's spaceports.
He needed to hide, Ahri thought. Abandoning the Lost Tribe like that would not be taken lightly by any of its leaders; by now, High Lord Taalon or even Grand Lord Vol himself would have called a manhunt out for him. It would most likely be alive so that they would learn why he abandoned them. Even if the Jedi did come to Kesh and wipe out the main Sith body there, it was likely that even as he departed the SoroSuub, there were already Sith Sabers who were already looking for him. That's why he had to ditch the yacht and find some way off the planet; were he to stay, whatever party sent after him would also stay and remain on the planet until they found him. Leaving the yacht was necessary, but so was finding a way off this dustball, too.
About half an hour later, Ahri entered a cantina in Mos Eisley dressed in a new tunic; during the journey from the Kesh system, he had gotten rid of the bloodstained shirt by leaving it behind on the SoroSuub and had found a new tunic in the yacht's massive cargo hold. It was old and reeked of dust, but for now, it was better than a shirt that Luke Skywalker himself could track him down by.
Ahri took note of the various beings around him who varied of species and gender. Few took note of him, and even fewer left lingering gazes; apparently, no one had seen someone of Ahri's skin color before. Their curiosity must have settled when they figured that he decided to alter or dye his skin a different pigmentation; as odd a thought as that was, someone like that would appear in a bar like this, Ahri thought.
He approached the counter. The elder human bartender with a scruffy visage and an even scruffier look on that visage regarded Ahri with an equal mix of curiosity and wariness; the former was obviously a genuine feeling while the latter was something that the man had developed working here. No doubt he had seen many violent brawls here. Regardless, the young Keshiri took one of the empty seats at the counter and ordered an alcoholic beverage with a wave of his hand; he assumed that a mind trick would work on the man.
The old human only regarded the wave of his hand the same way he did to Ahri's odd skin color. It seemed he had quite a strong mind, the Keshiri thought. It was a moot point since the bartender served him his drink; he didn't seem much to care that he was clearly underage on most planets. It was obvious to Ahri that the law of the Galactic Alliance didn't mean much on a world like Tatooine.
After a few minutes of downing the ale, Ahri set aside his empty mug and asked, "Say, you know any spacers here?"
"What?" the bartender asked, confused.
Ahri reciprocated the look. He asked him a simple question, simple enough for a guy in his position to answer with an easy yes or no. But then it clicked in the Keshiri's mind. Of course! he thought with a fitting mental slap to his head. I'm still speaking Keshiri! He then struggled to find the right words in Basic to ask the same question. During the Lost Tribe's time of raiding and pirating the ships that would help them build their space fleet, members like Ahri came to learn varying languages from their captors before they executed them. It was necessary, the Circle of Lords stated, for if the Lost Tribe were to rule the galaxy, they had to know the dialects of those they would rule. Basic was the most prominent among those languages, and it was definitely one that Ahri managed to learn alongside Vestara and their fellow Tyros.
After a moment, though, Ahri repeated the question in Basic without sounding too much like a foreigner. He still looked like an idiot though.
The bartender snorted. "You don't look like you've been from around here. Trust me, I'd know a face like yours around these parts. Why don't you take the starship you already got, which you no doubt used to get to this very dustball, and get off?"
Ahri repressed the urge to snarl at the human's insolence. Mind-tricking him was out of the question; he had to find some other way to earn this man's help. "There were some... complications regarding that."
"Oh?" the bartender asked. "Well, I know a Bothan who could help out. Where is it you're looking to go to, son?"
Anywhere off this planet, Ahri thought. "Why is that any of your business?"
The bartender regarded Ahri with a look of incredulity. "You don't respect your elders much, do ya, kid?"
On the contrary, you have no idea how wrong you really are, you Force-starved weakling, Ahri thought venomously. Then again, he supposed that the human did have a point. He did just abandon his entire people to most likely die under the hands of the Jedi and probably their Galactic Alliance allies. "You say you know a Bothan who can help me out?" he asked, ultimately deciding to ignore the bartender's previous remark.
The human scoffed. "Sure. But as to whether or not I know where he is... maybe I do, maybe I don't. How 'bout you settle your tab right here right now and I forget how much of a tone you put on me."
Ahri gritted his teeth in repressed anger. He would pity the bartender for his petty desire for even a remote apology for the disrespect that the Keshiri had shown him just moments earlier had Ahri himself not been angered by such trivial desires. It was those desires and motivations that fuelled one's passion in the dark side and made them into a formidable Sith after all. Of course, petty accounts aside, the real problem was that Ahri didn't have a credit to his name here. He didn't really think ahead as to how he could even pay the one drink that he was just served; he was quite worried about the Sith party that was after him right now.
But before he could find a way of bumming his tab, Ahri felt a disturbance in the Force. He sensed two presences that he clearly recognized; Tola Annax and Sith Saber Gavar Khai, Vestara's father. If not for what someone like Vol would want Ahri for, Khai himself was here to inquire about Vestara's death. No doubt the human had sensed her passing in the Force when she was slain.
Ahri turned in his seat to observe the door. Just two seconds later, Khai and Annax stepped through the door, and their eyes locked on the Keshiri instantly. They wasted no time as they began veering around the tables of lowlife sentient beings who paid them little mind.
Ahri then turned back to the bartender, who, after looking over the Keshiri's shoulder, asked, "Friends of yours?" It was clear that he was indicating Khai and Annax.
Ahri didn't answer him. Instead, once he felt that Khai and Annax were just a few meters behind him, he launched himself into a Force-assisted backflip that carried him up and over the two Sith's heads. During that time, he whipped out and activated his lightsaber along the way. He aimed to decapitate them in a single swift strike, but they were trained and experienced enough to dodge beneath the humming blade as the young Keshiri continued to soar through the air of the cantina. Once he had landed on top of a table occupied by a Bith and a Muun, lightsaber still humming, it was then that the crowd had caught up with time to begin screaming and panicking. Strangely, Ahri noted at the edge of his awareness, relatively few patrons were actually scattering for the exit in a hurry, if at all.
A split second after Ahri landed, though, Khai and Annax, heedless of the reactions of all the other patrons, whipped out not their lightsabers but standard blasters. They fired stunbolts at Ahri without hesitation. In the instant that Ahri had to react, he already knew that trying to block these bolts would only get him knocked out; during the raids to pirate ships for the fleet, quite a few captains and crew members fired stunbolts at Sith that their lightsabers had no chance of blocking or absorbing. They simply passed through the blades themselves and knocked the Sith invaders unconscious. It did those individuals no good, for they were soon killed anyway by those they failed to defeat.
So Ahri did the sensible thing and decided to quickly allow himself to fall back off the table. As the stunbolts arced over him, he tumbled back across the dirty floor in a backward roll before coming up in a crouch with an unoccupied table behind him. He then used the tables as cover as he crawled and scattered across the floor and beneath the tables as a cockroach before he reached the exit of the cantina. By then, he had already deactivated his lightsaber and hung it on his belt.
Once there, he rushed out the door and out into the harsh blares of Tatooine's twin suns. He quickly looked off to his side and found an incoming landspeeder headed his way. He decided to jump into the speeder's way before launching himself up and over its incoming form to land in its open-topped cab. The Ithorian driver was the only occupant of the vehicle, so Ahri quickly killed him by braking his neck before shoving him up and over the cab before he hurriedly took control of the vehicle himself.
He zoomed past the cantina, briefly noting that by then, Khai and Annax had already exited him and were viewing his leave. They fired a few stunbolts to try to get at his head, but they missed and didn't even scratch the paint job of the vehicle.
Seeing that they would never get Ahri standing around, Khai and Annax looked to each other and nodded. They quickly rushed to their own landspeeder and hopped in with Annax at the controls. She zoomed off in pursuit of Ahri.
By the time Ahri saw that he was coming up on an intersection, with the road he was zooming on no longer continuing thanks to the small building he was coming up on, he took a brief look in the rearview mirrpanel to find that Khai and Annax were already on his tail. Great, was all he thought sarcastically before he turned left.
Barely a few seconds later, Khai and Annax's own landspeeder rounded the corner and was again chasing Ahri. With Annax piloting, Khai decided to stand up on his seat, carefully balancing himself with minimal help from the Force, and began firing stunbolts at Ahri. The young Keshiri was beginning to note that some of the bolts were actually zooming past his head before dissipating harmlessly against his speeder's windshield. So he ducked his head down as far as he dared without letting his eyes off the sandy paths before him, although he carelessly mowed down helpless pedestrians thanks to the speed and durability of the vehicle. For other landspeeders in the area, he quickly piloted his own vehicle up and over them, calling in all the power they had to their antigravitic thrusters.
After rounding several corners and travelling various sandy paths that all looked too similar for Ahri's tastes, he decided that this chase would have to end. Seeing as how this was already a high speed chase, the young Keshiri abruptly stopped his vehicle, causing Annax to stop her own vehicle, but too late. The front of her speeder crashed into the rear of Ahri's own, but by then, he had already backflipped out of his cab and into the air, quickly unhooking and igniting his lightsaber along the way. Khai aimed his blaster for the younger Sith, but before he could pull the trigger, Ahri had severed his weapon hand.
As Khai collapsed in his seat in pain on account of his burned stump of a forearm, Ahri landed in the backseat of Annax's landspeeder. The aforementioned Sith unhooked and ignited her own lightsaber in one swift motion as she leapt onto her seat and pivoted around to meet Ahri in combat. The younger Sith blocked the first strike while simultaneously kicking Annax in the solar plexus. She flew out of the vehicle and crashed into the backseat of the speeder that Ahri had been piloting. The split second after she landed, Ahri launched from his position and rocketed for the older Sith.
The latter rolled out of the way and hopped out of the cab as Ahri stabbed his lightsaber in the spot where Annax was just laying. He turned and also leaped out of the vehicle before clashing blades with Annax again. He then disengaged and backflipped away from the swipe that the older Keshiri tried to kill him with; obviously, she was now intent on killing him. It was apparent that she no longer found it worth bringing him back to Kesh alive, or in one piece either. Either way, even in his own adrenaline-filled madness, Ahri knew that he could not take on a more experienced Sith like Annax and hope to win. He needed a better strategy if he hoped to make it out of this alive, if at all.
Ending up on the other side of what was once the speeder he stole, he turned and ran into an alley. Naturally, Ahri felt Annax's presence behind him as she vaulted over the crashed speeder and pursued Ahri in the alley. The younger Keshiri then began leaping up the various staircases that scaled the sides of the two buildings between them that were facing each other. Annax was behind Ahri two staircases at least.
For a building on Tatooine, the one that he was currently scaling was pretty tall, Ahri thought. It was a good twenty storeys; enough for Annax to fall to her death and finally end her chase for him.
Once he reached the rooftop of the tallest building in the alley, Ahri swiftly turned around, and just when he saw Annax in midleap after him with her lightsaber ablaze, the Keshiri Tyro simply waved his hand and sent out a Force wave that blew Annax back. The older Keshiri then began falling. During her rapid descent, she managed to swiftly deactivate and hook her lightsaber onto her belt before reaching out to at least one of the staircases. But for every staircase she reached out to in order to break her fall, Ahri used the Force again to flatten the metal frameworks of the staircases themselves against the walls of the buildings, just out of Annax's reach.
After several seconds, Annax hit the ground with bone-shattering impact, and lay still. Ahri felt her Force presence disappear instantly; she was dead for sure.
A few moments later, Ahri began to descend the alley by simply landing on the staircases that Annax didn't reach for until he made it safely to the bottom. He walked past Annax's corpse before walking out of the alley and heading back for the wounded Gavar Khai, who was going into shock because of his stump. Spectators of various species only looked about in curiosity and a mild sense of fear without actually doing anything. Not wanting to attract attention from anyone, not even Khai, Ahri stood at the back of the crowd and, since all attention was focussed on Khai and none on Ahri, the young Keshiri used the Force to snap the human Sith's neck, ending his life.
Now back to the business of finding a vessel to get him off this rock. Taking the ship that Khai and Annax took was out of the question; the Lost Tribe of the Sith obviously had ways to track it.
At least he got rid of the search party after him.