The dark halls of the Sith Temple were in their usual silent state even with the occasional clashing of weapons, Cotorsis blades, that the adepts practiced fencing with. Drake entered the duel room and watched two black-clad men fighting and they were giving quite a show for a couple of teenagers. One of the watchers across the ring drew his attention; the short Zabrak with the hood down, he was looking straight at him. After the fight was over – the defeated asked for mercy, which he was denied – Drake followed the crowded of red-trimmed cloaks out of the room an adjacent hall where none would follow. There was a lot of light because of the high windows on this part of the templed.

"I hope your little exploits have earned you much fear and respect."

He turned around and saw the tattooed man's face smiling sardonically. There wasn't much blue left between the black markings. Drake greeted him with a lowered brow. "What exploits? I was taking out the trash."

"Of course," Nial politely replied with a nod. "No one would want to see their target lost to the hands of the garbage man."

"Ouch." Drake feigned offense. "I'm sorry to hear that, my friend. Got to have eyes everywhere."

Whatever amusement was left in the Zabrak's eyes suddenly faded and Drake felt a cold knot climb up his throat. Despite his shortness Nial went up to him, face to face, menacing. He could have sworn his irises had gone from brown to amber.

"I'm warning you, Riden. My time will come and I'll be first in line to rip your treacherous little heart out."

"Good. I need my enemies where I can see them." Drake took a step aside to walk down the hall, expecting to be followed. "Lunch?"

Nial stretched his lips in a solemn expression. "Yes."

There was a mess hall in the Sith Temple for the occasional officers, foot-soldiers and guards working there everyday but Drake would have none of it. Actually most Sith would rather starve themselves than to mix with ordinary folk, which was a good enough excuse to get away from the hierarchy once in a while.

They walked out of the Temple with ease, everybody looked the same in uniform, especially when masks were involved, while Inquisitors or Sith Lords generally dared wander with their faces uncovered. Drake liked the freedom that he had just by not sticking out from the crowd of spooky figures. And fear had its undeniable advantages.

"These habits will get us killed someday," remarked Nial before biting down on a hot, greasy nerf steak roll. "In all possible ways."

Drake finished munching on the spicy mix of meat, cereals and bread, and swallowed it down with difficulty. "Poetic. That's one more missed calling for you, Lord Nial."

He sensed gazes and heard all sort of curious comments around them in the diner. It wasn't a restaurant or a caf tap. Just a low profile joint for underpaid citizens, privateers and the occasional smuggler. Nial raised a black-gloved hand towards the waitress, but the forty-something year old beauty stayed behind the counter. The owner came instead. Fat old Weequay in his grease-stained apron and mean scars across his exceedingly creased skin. Letting out an audible sigh, Drake took another bite of his lunch and avoided staring directly into the chef's eyes.

"Tell me something," he said, fists resting on his hips. "For how long am I going to have you boys frighten my costumers? Do yourselves a favor and meet up with your friends in upper class establishments."

Nial cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. "No one looks frightened to me, chef. Now relax, and have your lady bring us a jug of tea. She will be rewarded."

The Weequay flared his nostrils then sharply turned his head towards Drake, waiting for a different kind of answer.

"Whorehouses don't open 'till five," he shrugged.

"And people wonder where their tax money is going..." The owner rambled off, going back to his stoves. When he left they didn't seem to have an audience anymore.

Drake would have wanted to say that this was work for him, all the time. He would have also wanted to remind them all that he was protecting these citizens by being among them. And if they stopped being so self-righteously outraged about that and just accepted that they weren't able to take care of themselves, things would go much more smoothly. But no one cared about justifications and rationale, not in this time and place. A Sith would have jumped on the occasion to affirm his power over the people and punished whoever stood in his way, because confrontations caused chaos, and chaos brought opportunities for power. He just wanted his homeworld to be safe. Smugglers, armed gangs and drug dealers just didn't work in his direction, and so he would keep on having his lunches at their meeting spots until they'd take the hint.

The Twi'lek eventually served them tea under the unveiled contemplation of a tactless Sith Zabrak.

"You should talk to her." Drake sipped on his cup and burnt his tongue. "She can't reject you, not in the first hour at least."

Nial emitted a puff in disbelief. "Got no time for these games, Riden. I'm not like you, my mind is ever focused. Distractions make us weak."

"Maybe your alien brain can take the pressure, maybe I like to multi-task."

He crossed his armored arms on the steel table. "Who's to say that bounty hunter you have following you around will never be identified?"

Drake consciously stared blankly at him, frowning slightly. "That's no one of consequence."

"See?" Nial pointed a finger at his face. "I highly doubt it."

Growing annoyed, he decided to change the subject. "So whose target did I off last night?"

"Mine, you inconsiderate bastard. Now the Inquisitors are all up on the case with their agents. No more prestige, no rewards. All of this for what? To impress your girlfriend."

"I'm just glad you can answer your own questions."

"This is serious, or are you being intentionally dim? You can't place your personal business above the orders. This is why you're always left here to rot with the masses. When's the last time you went off-world?"

"Come on, that's just mean."

Nial sank down his hot tea. "We could shine in the Outer Rim systems, friend. No chaperons, no policing and best of all, no Jedi. People there actually believe we're the good guys."

"Hm. No more swimming against the tide..." Seduced by the concept, Drake would have to take a moment to consider. "Well, everyone knows me here."

"And what is that worth in terms of advancement?" Nial got up and left a tip, Drake followed suit. "Just remember that you're wearing a uniform, not a costume."

There was no question that Nial had reasons to pull him back in line and before Drake started counting the many opportunities opening for his fellow Sith, he caught himself wondering what Daen was up to. If she had decided to leave the apartment for the day, he needed to have her as far away from him as possible right now.

Nial climbed on his speeder, mask back on. "I just have one question for you, Riden. Would it be too much for me to ask for the Jedi's lightsaber?"

"I suppose you have the right to claim it." Drake got on his own bike and started the engine. Thinking back to the other night he realized the weapon might not be at his apartment, or in his quarters at the Temple.

"Well?" insisted Nial, growing impatient. "Where is it?"

Calling Daen to have her leave the lightsaber at his apartment would be a mistake, and so was giving Nial any lightsaber Drake had collected over the years. He'd figure it out soon enough.

"You'll have to buy it off my bounty hunter."

Nial shook his cloaked head, disgruntled. "I'll slit your throat where you stand."

"Alright, fine. I'll handle it."

He knew Nial's patience was wearing out and he wondered for how long he'd be able to keep Daen a secret. They moved into the trader's district and down several floors below the surface where "shady" took its full meaning in terms of business relations. Parked in a hangar, welcomed by a service protocol droid, Drake and Nial stood beside a cluttered desk in what appeared to be a mechanic's shop-slash-reception office. He picked up a piece of transparent plastic square on the table which seemed to have holographic properties if repaired correctly. The rest was just random electronics, most likely looted off some geek.

Nial folded his armored arms in front of him. Drake looked him up and down exaggeratedly.

"Couldn't you look more hostile?"

The Zabrak didn't budge. "We're both dressed exactly the same."

"Shoulders down, hands where they can see them. I've already lost enough with your attitude."

Gray durasteel doors slid open behind the desk, appeared a short female Twi'lek in work overalls and spots on her green-skinned tattoos. Behind her a tall, stunningly white Wookie by her side, carrying a large concussion rifle. He roared something foul at their sight, apparently as surprised to see them as Drake was.

"Woah, settle down, Churko," said the female. Her designation was Tessan Ki, supposedly. Drake took notice of the strange shaped tattoos on her forearms. He'd say she was passed forty but it was easy to be mistaken with that species. "Sorry, I tried to tell him what or who you guys were before, he just likes to react that way."

"We mean you no harm," he replied, looking at the big furry alien, "we're here for business."

"That's what I like to hear." Ki took a seat at her desk and ran a hand over the clutter to clear room for a datapad that she turned on. "Got to say I don't feel too hot about those masks either."

Drake pulled a data chip out from his belt pouch, she extended an arm to have it. "It's all in there."

"Huh." She processed the data through her computer, beginning to suspect something. "Your delivery's not here yet."

"We can see that," replied Nial, sarcastic.

"Hey, I'm sorry, alright? My tracker doesn't get instant live updates on everything happening up the shipping line. Especially not for encrypted cargo ID like this."

Unmarked, unregistered, fully operational blaster arms. Five crates conveniently "lost" out of weapon industries through a dozen relay points through the Mid Rim. Drake slightly leaned over the desk, showing authority but some restraint too.

"Just tell us anything we could use."

She looked into his mask and tried to smile but her face didn't comply. Like everyone else, she was getting pretty scared. Diving back into her computer systems, she made them wait a little longer. Nial stood farther back, looking straight at the Wookie who softly growled in his throat.

"So it seems that your courier got stuck on Ord Mantell," she said, nervously scratching the side of her neck, scrolling her screen down with her other hand. "He's been there for two days..."

"Any starport code for the ship's status?"

They could have been under customs arrest, illegally parked or plain and simply destroyed by competitors.

"Nope, you'll have to call your guy. Sorry."

She handed him the chip back. Drake took it and nodded, unwilling to have anything to do with these two if they weren't going to be of any more help to him. They probably felt the same way, as in hoping these freaks would get the hell out of their hangar. Drake and Nial got back on their vehicles.

"All these manners for so little result..."

Trouble was pointing its nose into his economy and he knew his fellow co-worker was worried too. They were basing their retirement funds on these alternate revenues after all.

"I won't bring you along the next time I need their help."

"Well, those are my investments too, remember that."

"The question is: are you ready to go AWOL for a few days so we can pick up the cargo?"

"Ourselves?"

Drake shrugged and started the engine on his bike. "You said you wanted off this planet, here's an opportunity."

"Ord Mantell is not my scene."

"It's not mine either. Luckily I have just the right tour guide for us."

Taking Nial up to his private apartment hadn't been an easy decision, but he needed to show that Daen was more of a co-worker than a friend.

She stood firmly in the middle of the living room, arms crossed.

"You don't need an escort," she said. Two black-robed Sith didn't impress her for a second. "And you don't need to go to Ord Mantell, whatever you need there I can send Mak to retrieve it."

Drake bit his lip behind his mask. "It's a little more complicated than a retrieval operation."

"We can't trust more people with this information, Riden." Nial glared at him. "We're already losing enough money with the delay."

Daen seemed alerted at the mention of credits, and raised a suspecting eyebrow. "From what I gather, you two aren't very good at this smuggling business."

"That's why we need your help," Drake replied, mirroring her condescending tone.

"Yes, you do." She sat down on the couch and crossed her legs. It didn't look like a comfortable position with her armored suit on. "I want ten percent."

Drake chuckled. "Please."

Nial took a step closer. "You better keep a short leash on your girl, or I will forget my good manners."

Daen smirked, overly confident.

"Woops! The fee just got to twenty! You seriously need to brush up on your bargaining techniques."

"Alright, fifteen percent." Drake motioned for Nial to relax, palm down. "On my share."

She got back up and grabbed her helmet that was sitting on the table. "Agreed!" She pulled her tongue out at Nial and disappeared behind her own mask. "The first one to get to Worlport wins a lightsaber."

They watched her rush out towards the hangar where her speeder was parked since the previous night. How was she going to travel to Ord Mantell if she had no ship?

"What is she talking about?" asked Nial.

"We take our starfighters to get there," replied Drake, deep in thought. "Hit hard, get the job done. And sell some good propaganda among the Republic-loving smugglers."

"Or... Grab a shuttle ticket, lay low and sweet talk our whole way through. No diplomatic incidents." Nial sniffled with disdain. "But let's do it your way."

Worlport was the capital of Ord Mantell, and while corrupted from all sides the government and authorities still remained loyal to the Republic. Drake skimmed the HoloNet data file on the local politics and shut his on-board computer off. It was time for a change of costume.

Sith were issued a starship with the bare minimum, no room for trivialities though they still had a sleeping cabin and a cargo hold. Drake opened up a storage closet to retrieve a shoulder bag stuffed with food rations, in another pack he kept a set of neutrally aligned clothes and light armor, fake ID chips, a blaster.

He walked off his ship down on the docking bay at the spaceport, feeling strangely exposed without his mask so he pulled the collar of his trench coat up. The fresh early morning breeze felt like a slap across his face. A protocol droid came up to him with a registry datapad and he got his fake chip scanned. He didn't even know which name that was. He kept walking until he arrived up towards Nial's starfighter – thanking the Force nobody happened to stand there, watching, not even a mechanic – and wanted to laugh.

"You should have warned me we were going for a real tour. I left my holocam at home."

Nial set foot on the ground with an amused grin on his tattooed face. His outfit was just as alarming as a Sith uniform because of how ill-fitting it was for him. Blue-skinned Zabraks did not pull off the tourist look, anywhere ever.

"Where is your lightsaber?" he said impartially, squinting behind a pair of decorative spectacles. And his multi-color printed shirt barely took the attention away from his knee-level pants that revealed his very blue calves. "Or did you sell it off to buy that disgusting coat?"

Drake shook his head in disbelief. "Sorry. I couldn't hear you over the sound of how awful you look."

"Working as intended. Just wait till we take our weapons back: it's going to be ludicrous. Then I'll kill them all."

"I'll leave you the honors."

Eventually out of the docking bays, terminals and passenger lobby areas Drake stood out on the street, hoping to find Daen around soon. While he did that, Nial looked conspicuous, pretending to compose a text message on a small comm device.

"I suppose this is acting casual for you," told Drake.

"Just keep talking," Nial mumbled back, not looking up from his gadget. "Master of disguise at work here."

Ord Mantell, for someone like Drake who had always lived on Coruscant, was barren. Okay, closer to country than town, rugged, gritty... all those things. What Drake couldn't understand was the wait, and why he was sure he had seen that spaceport security agent walk by twice already. There was just nothing to do.

It took ten more minutes for Daen to show up at the controls of the speeder he was used to seeing.

"My, oh my," she said as they climbed aboard. "Did I just step into another dimension or am I at the wrong gate?"

Drake sat on the backseat and looked over at her, smiling discretely. She hadn't changed her outfit so it felt strange to be the one without the helmet and he couldn't see her eyes through her visor.

Nial stowed his handheld comm in a belt pouch and cleared his throat. "I believe there was a contest for the first to arrive and a prize to be had?"

"Oh. I got here first, it's the speeder rental that took a long time, so yeah. I get to keep the lightsaber. Equal rights, balance of power. Win-win."

"You'll regret that decision soon."

She turned her head around and laughed out loud through her voice filter, but Nial's serious expression didn't fade. Next, she drove through the city with ease, as if she'd done it numerous times before. And Drake spotted a few Republic shoulder patches, propaganda graffiti and posters on some walls. He fought against a knot in his stomach: he didn't want to end up in some backwater Republic prison to be humiliated by some Jedi.

"Here we are," Daen called.

They had stopped at a large repair shop for vehicles and ships. When he got out to look around he realized the "shop" had its very own landing pads. Then there was the working force: lots of species in overalls busy around engines, bikes, droids, and even a laundering appliance. His instincts said he was looking at a cover front.

Later a man showed up: human, imposing, in his forties and with a shiny scalp. Daen removed her helmet and he gave her a fatherly pat on the head. He sized Drake up with a glance before getting horrified at the sight of Nial.

"I'm not the one to talk about fashion," he said. "But that outfit just made my brain throw up a little bit."

Daen, smiling up to her ears, made the introductions. "Guys, this is Mak. My role-model, great cook and all around scoundrel."

"Don't listen to her," he said, with a familiar smirk on his face, "private contracting is my area of expertise now."

Drake shook the hand Mak offered to him. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Autographs and souvenirs in the back of the shop," he replied with a sharp nod. "If you kind gentlemen would follow me..."

Nial shot a nasty look at Drake and he shrugged at him. He had actually taken care of looking up Mak Cera a long time ago, when Daen first got involved with bounty hunting. It had turned out that the man had long left active duty among the Mandalorians to spend his retirement days away from the battlefield.

They took a seat in front of a large desk in a untidy, cramped up office - Mak sure wasn't fussy about his records - while Daen stood near the door like a bodyguard.

"I've heard about your cargo," Mak blurted out, leaning on his desk with his large arms folded. "Five crates, unregistered, not-yet-issued weapons?"

Nial jumped off his chair, an accusing finger pointed at him. "Tell us where they are!"

Drake used the Force - yes, it was necessary in this precise moment - to pressure his colleague to settle down with a firm tug at his shirt. Mak didn't even flinch, and just leaned back in his chair with an air that said who are these clowns?

"We could use your help to retrieve them, if possible." Drake said and motioned his head towards Daen. "She got my hopes up saying you could do that for us."

Mak rubbed his chin thoughtfully, not hiding a hint of amusement. "Well, it could be tricky, considering the fact that it's already looking for a new buyer in a pretty harsh side of town..." He looked up at the ceiling, then snapped his finger. "I know. Daen'ika, will you go ahead and call your brother for me? Tell him it's about payback."

"Oh god," she said, rolling her eyes. "That again?"

"It'll work this time."

"Right."

She disappeared through the door. Mak got up and opened a locker behind him.

"So, as I was saying, it's gonna be tricky but I figured that now we have a couple more hands to do the heavy lifting and, besides, I got a score to settle with one major competitor."

He turned around, one pretty large assault blaster rifle in his arms, cradled like a newborn. Drake nodded approvingly and Nial sat there speechless.

"We can't let these crates be sold again," Drake said. "Who took them?"

"Some broad who owes me money. And feelings." He loaded a power cell into the rifle, eyes squinting with anger for a second before his face resumed to its friendly expression. "But mostly money."

"Revenge," Nial commented, smiling sadistically. "Nice."

Mak grinned. "Hah, yeah! It's great that you're psyched about it, but I beg of you... Change back into your scary robes. I want to crush these thieves."

There was no time to lose and Mak was good at scrambling into action. In a matter of minutes, he had managed to change from his "smuggler slacks" to a practical set of sand and silver armor with a T-visored mask, the mark of all Mandalorians. He kept it clipped to his belt while it wasn't needed. Despite the looks, the man that acted like a slob was still fit to fight and Drake had to admit he was impressed.

They gathered within the more confined space of a trader ship: a light corellian freighter, surprisingly more clean than the shop or the office. Drake found Daen there, sitting at a holo-console.

"Load's on his way," she announced.

"And Load is?" Nial asked.

"My other son," Mak replied, carrying two small duffel bags from the cargo hold. "You three will get along just fine."

Drake watched the man extract what obviously looked like an explosive charge and waved the thought of warning him that he needed his merchandise intact and not blown to dust.

"So how did you know about the information on those crates?"

Mak eyed him sideways and seemed to hesitate, but shrugged and answered casually. "My wife told me. She relocated on Coruscant... Big fight, blah blah. You probably don't know this yet so let me warn you: do not marry your hot female coworker. Especially not if it's a Twi'lek!"

The thoughts sunk in Drake's mind before he could understand what Mak was referring to.

"Interesting..." Nial said. "Your wife left you for a Wookie."

"Hey." Mak dropped what he was doing to point a menacing finger at Nial. Drake almost gasped, thinking the explosive would hit the ground and they'd all die. "Churko is a lifelong family friend who owes me his furry ass. And Tessan doesn't do furries. End of story."

Daen turned around on her chair to face them. "Drake, your friend needs to switch the Sith off now and then."

"Can't help with that. It's the constant social alienation from facial tattoos."

They all laughed, except Nial who kept it in, though at least he'd stopped complaining.