Chapter 2: As Chance Would Have It

Kantrum Obligan grinned as he strode through the entrance to the vast Canto Bight casino. He was a handsome young man, dressed in his finest clothes, a sharp suit of silver-grey with a neat blue spavat, on which he had spent a significant sum of his parent's allowance, and some of the scholarship fees. But you had to fit in, he told himself. He had been accepted to the University of Sundari, and when his new, and high-social standing, course mates had suggested a trip out to the casino, what would it have looked like if he'd begged off or pulled out a calculator to work out what he could manage?

"Isn't it amazing!" Sequela, a beautiful woman dressed in a form-fitting dress, the skirt of which had little folds designed into it which made it look like it was rippling, grinned at him and squeezed his arm. "I can't believe you've never been out here before!"

Kantrum shot her his most winning smile. "Well, I spent so much of my time studying," he drawled. "I was trying to be a good son.

She laughed.

And the place was amazing. The vast arch that opened onto the casino meant that the sea breeze and beautiful view of the moon could be seen when you looked out. And the inside was enormous. Gambling tables of all kinds, sabaac, roulette, and a number of other games Kantrum didn't even know existed. Species of all kinds, there a set of Ithorians, there some Mon Calamari, a Hutt squelching along in one corner, Twi'leks, and of course the Twi'lek dancers slowly moving in time with the music, tasteful but attractive. Dozens of others for which Kantrum could only dimly remember the names. Everyone dressed to their best, with their best game faces on, chucking dice, slapping down cards, cheering their victories, moaning about their losses. Stairs led up from either side of the main round room, with a large balcony looking out onto the race track below. And a giant bar was at the far end of the hall.

Marquis, the leader of their group, threw an arm around Kantrum's shoulder. "Come on then, if you've never been here before then we need to get you started with some chips and a drink!" he declared.

Kantrum laughed. "All right, but the first round is on you!" He hoped he could keep the others on the rounds and they would all be too drunk to drink more by the time it got to him. The nagging part of his brain was already letting him know that this place would be too pricey, too much for him to afford. But he had to keep up appearances. That's what he told himself.

"Hey, first he needs to see the fathier racing!" Sequela said, grabbing Kantrum's arm. "There's an amazing view of it from the balcony."

"Get me whatever you recommend," Kantrum called to Marquis. "I'll enjoy it when I've returned."

Marquis threw him a mock salute and he and the rest of the group made their way towards the bar. Kantrum and Sequela stepped out through another set of arches onto the vast balcony. It was quieter out here, only a few other people, and he took pleasure in the cool air that wafted onto him. Not too far away he could see the large race track, where the giant quadrupeds with large ears that he presumed were the fathiers were racing around the track to roars and shouts of encouragement from the large crowd seated around the stadium.

"Isn't it incredible?" Sequela said.

"Yes, it certainly is!" Kantrum breathed. He thought his eyes caught the sight of some children working in the centre of the field, with an overseer hanging about menacingly. But he shifted his eyes away and kept them from looking back. It wouldn't do to show such concern, that's what he told himself.

He glanced along the balcony. At one end, past Sequela, there was a Twi'lek male in a suit, looking despondent whilst beside him his partner tried to console him. Must have lost something at the gambling tables, Kantrum thought in sympathy. Possibly quite a lot by the look of it. This was a reminder to himself that he had to be firm in his principle of only gambling with what he won after his initial chips. He couldn't dip any further.

He looked over to his left and was struck by the woman he saw leaning on the balcony, staring at the race track. A Miralan, with olive-yellow skin and a pattern of black diamonds tattooed over the insides of her cheeks and nose. Her hair was short, with a long fringe draped over one side and she wore a skin-tight black unitard, which cut off just below her knees exposing her calves, her feet in soft sock-like shoes. A crimson half-cape was draped over her left shoulder and at her back...

Kantrum's eyes widened. At her back was a pouch holding two gently curving lightsabres. Of course, they weren't real lightsabres. But it had become something of the fashion, among some of the more daring of the upper classes, to wear fake ones as part of their ensemble. Kantrum had certainly never seen it before.

The woman looked over and Kantrum whipped his head away, startled. He found himself looking into Sequela's face, her lips twitching into a smile.

"What?" Kantrum asked.

"You like her, right?" Sequela said.

Kantrum blushed. "I'm...intrigued by her..." He wouldn't have said she was attractive per se. Yes, the suit was nice, and she was lithe even if he could see the outlines of muscles that made it clear she could probably snap him like a twig. He wouldn't say she was beautiful, the lines of her face a bit harder than he would have liked, but there was something...fetching about her.

"Well, why don't you go and ask her to go to the tables with you?" Sequela suggested, now failing miserably to keep her humour in check.

"Well, I don't know...she doesn't look like she wants to be disturbed..."

"Oh, it's what everyone will be doing. It's expected." She gave him a playful nudge. "I certainly will be. So go on."

"Right. Yes." Kantrum smiled and nodded and wished dearly that he had waited until he'd had his first stiff drink. He turned and moved towards the woman, moving with what he hoped was an attractive kind of lope, and not looking like a man waddling because his trousers were far too tight. Suddenly it felt very hot outside, the cool breeze doing nothing, and his hands were getting very sticky and clammy.

"Hello," Kantrum said, just managing to stop himself from chucking in a wave. The woman looked up at him, face barely changing, but there was a slight raise of one brow that maybe suggested amusement, which maybe suggested some encouragement. "I was wondering if a fine lady like yourself, might not like to take a turn at the tables with me?" He put on his most beaming smile, as his heart thumped in his chest.

The woman quirked a smile, studying him a moment, and then she lazily waved a hand through the air and said, "You don't want to take a turn on the tables with me."

"No, you're right, I don't want to take a turn on the tables with you," Kantrum said, and he suddenly couldn't remember why on Mandalore he'd wanted to come and talk to this woman or could have possibly thought that taking a turn on the tables with her was something he wanted to do.

He was about to turn away, when she flicked her hand again and said, "You want to think about your poor mother and all the sacrifices she made for you."

Suddenly Kantrum couldn't stop himself from heaving up a sob, as his mind turned to his mother and father, and the scrimping and saving they had done, the meals they had gone without, just to put something together for him, something to get him into the good schools, something to get him into the best university, and they'd been so happy when he succeeded. And what was he doing? Spending scholarship money and the pittance they could give him on suits and jaunts to casinos. What a joke he was. "What am I doing...?" he croaked.

A gentle, sympathetic voice came to his ear. "You want to go home and rethink your life."

Kantrum stood up and wiped the tears away. What would sobbing in self-pity achieve? If he wanted to achieve things he would have to knuckle down, and not let those sacrifices go to waste. "Yes, yes I should get out of here. I should rethink things. I..." He paused and looked over at the woman, who was smiling at him. "Thank you. You've helped a lot."

He turned and marched away, a confused and surprised Sequela looking between him and the woman and then hurrying after him.

Barriss Offee watched the boy go and the girl chase after him with a small smile. She'd done one good deed for the day then. She glanced back at the race tracks with a frown and then glanced at the chronometer on her wrist.

No sense in putting it off, she thought. She drank the last of her wine and then hoiked the glass over the balcony and walked away, hearing the soft tinkle of the crystal breaking on the ground below.

In the end, Palpatine hadn't tricked her, or at least not in the way she'd been anxious about. She'd escaped smoothly. And then ran and hidden in the underworld of the city. She'd found a hole to crawl into and hidden and shivered in there, expecting guards and bounty hunters and Jedi to swoop on her at any moment.

But there had been nothing. Nothing at all.

She was, undoubtedly, helped by the fact that barely a day later the whole galaxy started its descent to hell.

It began with the Separatist raid on Coruscant. Like everyone, she'd been awoken by the bombardment on the capital. She'd run around, doing what she could to help, whilst also trying to stay unnoticed. And then came the terrible news: The Chancellor had been kidnapped and the Separatists led by General Grievous were making a run for it. Barriss had shared the despair with the others in the tavern she'd holed up in as the newsreader reported the devastating news. But then the newsreader had brightened, shaking, trying and failing to keep their emotions in check as they announced that Kenobi and Skywalker had arrived and were making a daring raid on the Separatist flagship to recover the Chancellor.

Tension had hit everyone. Even Barriss who, not long before, had made a wretched attempt at killing Skywalker found that she was quietly hoping, pulled along in the collective atmosphere.

It was a long wait, an agonising wait. Then the newsreader burst into tears. Nobody said anything, teetering between hope and despair, unsure what the tears meant. The newsreader fought out the words around their blubbering, that Kenobi and Skywalker had succeeded against all odds; they'd recovered the Chancellor and more than that Skywalker had killed Count Dooku in a duel.

The tavern erupted.

People cheered, slapped one another, hugged one another, someone forced a drink, "on the house!", into Barriss' hands and she'd slugged it and then coughed and hacked as it burnt her throat like engine fuel and she'd stumbled out and staggered through the cheering streets and found her grotty apartment and slumped onto her bed and sobbed her eyes out in self-pity.

The war was over. If she'd just waited. If she hadn't set off the bomb, if she'd just waited, then she could have put forward her views. She could have argued them, brought Master Luminara round, convinced them that now the Jedi had to step back and with fresh eyes they would have seen the corruption for themselves and would have been able to become peacekeepers and guardians again.

She could have brought Ahsoka around.

And then, suddenly, none of it mattered.

It began with a scream. One that was ripped from her lips in the dead of night as a pain she'd never felt before had burst through the force and into her head and she'd collapsed out of her bed and writhed on the floor, shuddering with the intensity of it, disorientated and screaming and screaming-

And then it stopped.

And then she learned: the Jedi were being killed. They'd attempted a coup, attempted to take the life of the Chancellor, the news reported, and the clones were attacking them. The Jedi Temple was on fire.

Barriss was thrown into turmoil. She was ashamed to admit that she felt a twinge of vindication. She had been right, the Jedi had turned villainous. Obsessed and corrupt with their power. The end of the war had seen them forced into choosing to relinquish it or keep it and they had chosen the latter. She had tried to warn them, had tried to make them see, but they had refused to listen. They hadn't wanted to listen. And now they were all suffering the consequences.

She thought of Master Luminara and hoped that she was all right, somehow. Despite everything, she couldn't bring herself to wish for her death.

She had been watching, in a tavern, as Chancellor Palpatine appeared to make his announcement, about halting the Jedi coup, about purging the last of them, about reforming the Republic into a Galactic Empire, which had drawn thunderous applause from the Senate, just as it did the other patrons.

But Barriss had been frozen in fear, eyes staring at the screen so wide and horrified it felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets, as suddenly the curtain opened and she saw the whole truth.

Chancellor Palpatine was the Sith Lord, the Darth Sidious, that Ahsoka had mentioned.

And he knew she was alive because he had let her go.

She ran. She panicked and ran as far and as fast as she could.

And now here she was, in the casino, about to get on with her work. She took a breath and steadied herself. Not honest work, perhaps, but it brought in the credits and she wasn't in a position to complain.

She moved smoothly through the casino, lithely sweeping around other patrons, who hardly even noticed she was there. Just the way she liked it. She clocked her target, sparing him only the briefest of glances to confirm it was him, and then moved past without a backward glance.

Yup, that's Kam Sentarou all right... Kam Sentarou, a handsome human male dressed in an immaculate suit, and with an even more immaculate beard, with two women hanging off each arm. He roared with laughter at the dice table, handing the dice to one of his companions to toss and then laughed all the harder as his chips were taken away and called out to obtain more so his other companion could have a go.

Like most of the patrons at Canto Bight, and certainly those with so much money they didn't care how much they lost, Kam Sentarou had earned his through less than ethical means and trades. Arms dealing in his case.

Barriss had been hired to put a stop to that.

She sat down at a table nearby and glanced back over at Sentarou. He almost certainly had a larger detail of bodyguards about, and Barriss quickly clocked a couple of them trying to look inconspicuous and keeping a distance, whilst also keeping firm attention on Sentarou. This might complicate her choices...it had to look natural, but it also had to be something that his entourage couldn't do anything about to save him.

That put choking out of the question. People would wonder what he choked on. So she needed something subtler...

It might work. There was a chance someone could do something to revive him, but she could always step in and pretend to help and ensure nothing of the sort happened.

She concentrated, closing her eyes and drowning out all noise in the casino until it was just her and Sentarou and the Force. Time seemed to slow. In her mind, she stripped Sentarou of his clothes and then his skin until the muscles and bones were revealed. She focused and found the organ she was looking for, magnifying it in her mind: the heart. It was pumping blood along, a slight mistime here and there, a slight clog as a result of too much bad food in his diet, high on salt and fat and precious little else. She held her index fingers and thumbs apart and concentrated until she felt the ghost of his coronary arteries between her fingers.

Then she squeezed her thumb and index fingers tight.

Sentarou gasped and stood bolt upright, clutching at his chest. Veins bulged along his body, and his eyes popped, his jaw tight and he let out a choking gasp as he collapsed to the ground. His companions both screamed, and from all over people looked up startled, and other patrons began to crowd around.

Barriss opened her eyes and dropped her hands, and stood up as well, putting on an expression of shock and horror.

"Please, let me through!" a voice cried, and a Togrutan pushed their way through the crowd to Sentarou.

Damn, Barriss thought. Some interfering busy body. One of his entourage or just another patron? She hadn't clocked them in any case. Time to get involved.

Barriss shoved her way forward towards Sentarou. "Let me help," she called. "I have some medical training." She knelt down beside Sentarou, reaching out a hand towards his chest, thinking about the best way to appear to do something, whilst in fact doing nothing.

"Thank you," the Togrutan said. "If there's anything I can do to-"

"Please, it's no problem, just give me some room," Barriss said and looked up with a reassuring smile. "I'll do all I can to-"

And she paused as she found herself looking into a pair of beautiful cerulean eyes as if they were a clear sky and tranquil ocean all at the same time. And there was something familiar about them as well that Barriss couldn't quite place...

Then an unfamiliarity came over them, as they narrowed and an avalanche of anger built behind them and came thundering towards her.

Oh.

Kriff.

There was a snap-hiss and a silver-white blade swiped for Barriss' head, and her own blue blade shot out and crashed into the silver one, halting it inches from her cheek. The crowd gasped and backed away and the blades crackled against one another, the distinctive ozone touching Barriss' nose. Another crackle and another silver-white blade shot for her, and a green blade snapped out to meet it.

"You!" Ahsoka Tano spat.

Barriss' smile turned weak and wobbly. "Hi," she said. "You're looking well."

Ahsoka let out a shriek of anger and leapt backwards and then shot forward, Barriss leaping backwards out of reach of Ahsoka's slash. She landed firmly, setting her legs to steady herself, and raised her blades in a defensive position as Ahsoka came at her again.

Well...at least Sentarou is definitely dead... she thought, as a whirl of silver light assaulted her, an equal whirl of blue and green slapping them aside.

Hello and thanks again for reading, and I hope you have enjoyed this brief reunion. The duel will be kicking into high gear next time, and of course the consequences of it. I'm aware that this is more of an exposition dump chapter, but I thought it was necessary to show some of what Barriss' had been up to and how she made it here.

Any thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated! And I'll see you next time, where we learn why it's a bad idea to have a very visible lightsabre duel in a densely populated area!