Shadow's Odyssey 2: The Chaos Continues
I was another busy night in Canto Bight. The alcohol was flowing, the money was jingling, and Snook Uccrfay had just won another dice game. Life was good.
As he reached greedily for his pile of winnings, a sudden bright light blinded everyone at the table. When it cleared, a diminutive alien was sitting in the pile of shiny stuff.
"Thief!" Snook cried. "Security!"
Rouge looked around, super confused. She discovered to her great pleasure that she was sitting in a pile of treasure. She was less pleased to hear someone yell 'thief!' at her. Rouge reflexively sprang up and spread her wings but didn't get far before she was shocked into submission by the security guards.
"She used a flashbang to blind us! She was trying to steal my winnings!"
A chorus of voices agreed, cursing Rouge for ruining the fun. The guards took Rouge to the prison. Snook turned back to his winnings to start counting. In the middle of the pile, he found something odd.
A large, silver, diamond-cut gemstone lay nestled among the gold. Snook couldn't recall anyone betting it, but he wasn't complaining. He couldn't wait to start showing it off.
Rouge woke up in a cell, her whole body aching. She groaned and sat up.
"Well, good morning sleeping beauty!"
Rouge whipped towards the sound and shifted to a defensive stance. A dark-skinned human was grinning at her.
"So, what are you in for?"
"Stealing, I think? Except I didn't steal anything. Yet. What about you?"
He scoffed. "Some sore loser accused me of cheating."
"Do you know anything about the Jedi?" Rouge asked.
"What, we're not gonna introduce ourselves? Here, I'll go first. I am Lando Calrissian. And you are?"
"Not in the mood for a conversation." Rouge began examining the lock on the cell door but kept part of her attention on Lando via an ear turned in his direction.
"Well miss 'not in the mood,' if you're looking for the Jedi you definitely came to the wrong planet. But perhaps I could point you in the right direction?"
"What's the price?" Rouge asked, not pausing her inspection.
"Well that depends, what do you got?"
"The possibility of getting us both out of this cell."
Lando wasn't impressed. "I'm afraid I've already got someone on that."
Rouge briefly considered offering some… other favors, then decided that she wasn't that desperate yet.
Before Rouge could crack the lock, a robot appeared outside the cell. Rouge considered herself to be pretty good at reading robot expressions and this robot looked very annoyed.
"Lando." Its voice was feminine and definitely annoyed. "Did you get caught cheating again?"
"Look, it wasn't my fault!"
"Just like how the Sarlacc Incident wasn't your fault? And who's this, your latest girlfriend?"
"L3, this is Not in the Mood. Not in the Mood, this is L3."
"My name is Rouge. And I'm not his girlfriend."
"And I suppose you lost all our money, didn't you?" L3 continued.
"Just get me to another casino and I can win it all back." Lando placated.
Rouge saw her chance. "Perhaps I could help with that? In exchange for helping me find the Jedi?"
Lando grinned. "I'm listening."
"Just like that? How long have you known this girl?"
"About five minutes."
L3 made an electronic sighing sound. "I suppose you've done dumber things with girls you've only known for five minutes."
"We just need a couple smoke bombs and one of those guards' uniforms." Rouge said confidently.
Rouge stealthily crawled across the ceiling. She scanned the casino below her. All the rich people were still going about their drunken revelry. Rouge analyzed them, trying to determine which one had the most money at the moment. Then she spotted the guy who called her a thief and almost fell off the ceiling.
He was holding a Chaos Emerald.
He was proudly showing it off to his peers like it was some sort of trophy. He was even taking selfies and posting them to whatever this place's equivalent of Instagram was. Almost as if he was begging for someone to steal it off him.
Rouge activated the comm Lando had given her. "Alright, I found the perfect target. Get ready." She took out a smoke bomb and launched it at him.
It landed at his feet and sprayed a cloud of smoke into the air. She dropped into the smoke cloud.
"Ahhh! What's going on?" Snook screamed. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Sir, are you alright?"
As the smoke began to clear, Snook saw that it was one of the security guards.
"I'm fine, I just need…" Snook looked back at the table to see all his winnings gone. He immediately broke out into unintelligible swearing.
"Would you be looking for this?" A female voice called out.
There was the thief from before. She was holding up the strange gemstone and waving it smugly.
"Get her! Get her!" Snook ordered.
She bolted. The guard pulled out his comm. "We have a robbery in progress. I need guards at every exit."
Rouge raced up a staircase with about half a dozen guards following her. Eventually, they cornered her on a balcony.
"Freeze! You've got nowhere left to run!"
Rouge held her hands up. "All right, you got me."
"Drop the money you've stolen!"
Rouge calmly put down the Emerald.
"And the rest of it!"
"All right, all right." Rouge slowly reached into her pocket…
And pulled out another smoke bomb.
Smoke filled the air before the guards could react. They shot blindly into the smoke. When it cleared, the girl and the Emerald were gone.
Rouge fluttered down to land in front of the Millennium Falcon. Lando was already inside, dumping all the money out of the pockets of his security guard uniform.
"See, L3? I told you everything would be fine."
"There's still time for things to go wrong." L3 informed him.
"Just fire up the engines and get us out of here."
"Hyperspace is boring!" Sonic whined. He hadn't believed it possible for traveling at lightspeed to be boring, but somehow, these people had done it.
Where's the rush? Where's the G-force? Could he at least get a little sensation of movement?
"Are we there yet?"
Greedo groaned. "Did we really need to bring this guy along?"
"Trust me, he's gonna be useful." Han replied. "With him, this heist will only take about five seconds and all we'll have to do is fly the ship. Easy money."
"When has it ever been easy?"
"Well, there was that one time-"
"I told you, we are not speaking of that mission ever again!"
They dropped out of hyperspace. Han turned to Sonic and gave him a device.
"What's this thing for?" Sonic asked.
Jabba says this can track the rock we're looking for."
"Really? And where did he get this, exactly?" Sonic tried to keep the question innocent and leave all the suspicion he felt out of his voice.
"How should I know? Besides, that doesn't matter. Just turn it on and find out where the thing is."
Sonic switched it on. "Okay, it looks like it's… moving right past us."
Han looked out the window while Greedo checked the scanners.
"Oh no." Han moaned. "Not him again."
"Who?"
Han pointed at a roundish ship that the tracker said housed the Emerald. "Lando"
"I don't know who that is." Sonic pointed out.
"He's a fancy-pants, smug-faced, cape-wearing cheater! Greedo, get on the guns!"
"So I've given you what you want, now where do I find the Jedi?"
"Well, according to some stories I've heard, they're on Lothal. I can get you to the planet but after that, you're on your own." Lando answered.
"Good enough."
The ship shuddered.
"Oh, now what?"
"We're under attack." L3 blandly responded.
"By who?" Lando asked.
"Looks like it's your old friend."
"Oh no, not him!"
"Who's him?" Rouge asked.
"He's a sloppy, arrogant, unfashionable, moldy fruit basket!" Lando got up and went to the guns. "I'm gonna blow him out of the sky!"
