Ok, this one's a bit longer than Chapter 1 (about 3 times longer, in fact.) Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 2: Slow Business

After Kyrr Geron stepped out of the dark and smoky bar, his eyes actually had to adjust to the brighter environment of the city streets of the Coruscant underlevels. There were bright plasma signs all over the place, advertising various products. He noticed an advertisement for a type of cheap, supposedly blast-proof vest. He chuckled a bit at the irony.

Stupid Rodian. Wouldn't have gotten his shebs fried if he had spent his money on one of those vests instead of beer.

Kyrr liked beer, but not so much that he would drink enough of it to dull his mind or his senses significantly. If he let his guard slip, he could be in serious trouble. And he didn't need any more trouble, especially not now.

He started the long walk back to his parked airspeeder. Most of the people in the underlevels couldn't afford an airspeeder, and the few people who could got theirs stolen and sold for parts real quick. So Kyrr had parked his in a back alley he had noticed was almost always vacant, then covered it with a pile of trash to minimize its being found. When he'd bought it he'd even gone so far as to weld all openings into the vehicle's internal parts shut, so it would require a fusion cutter to take any pieces of it away while it was parked in the lower levels. The speeder was too heavy to move without turning it on, and he had the only encrypted data-chip key. After all these precautions, he had still gone further and rusted the external airframe with some weak acid to make it look like un-salvageable scrap metal in the event that some street urchin ended up finding it and considered stealing it. He couldn't afford to lose that airspeeder; it wasn't like the old days where he could own three at a time and pay for repairs without denting his funds.

His favorite airspeeder had broken down a week ago, and he couldn't afford to have it fixed or replaced, so he had actually had to sell the pieces for scrap. He still had one other one left, but he reserved it for use in the upper levels. Even that one wasn't running very well; the Aratech repulsorlift engine now made a sort of low grinding sound when it started up.

Life for Kyrr had slowed down a lot since the new clone shocktroopers had showed up on Coruscant. He had only seen them once, their bright white armor and shiny black, T-shaped visors paying homage to the man he had heard they were cloned from. They rarely ventured into the almost lawless underlevels, but not everyone important was in the underlevels. The Hutt crime-lord, Jakrata, had operated a thriving bounty office remotely from the upper levels, where he had lived in luxury for quite some time. People would pay Jakrata 3,000 credits, for example, to get someone captured or 'taken care of.' The Hutt would pocket 500 credits for himself, and then he would post the bounty for 2,500 to a long list of bounty hunters. Kyrr had been on that list. Of course, he usually didn't go after bounties under 8,000 CR; bounties smaller than that weren't usually worth a Mandalorian's time. Kyrr Geron liked to think he was one of the best bounty hunters on Coruscant. He had over 120 claimed bounties to his name. He had amassed quite a nice amount of money using his combat, apprehension, and assassination skills.

All that had changed a month ago when the clone troopers had shown up on Coruscant. They first were mostly focused on protecting the senate. Then their main job was supposedly to make sure everyone on the planet was safe now that there was a war going on, but it wasn't long before they were helping the Coruscant Security Force to enforce law and order on the streets. Their first order of business had been to clean up the upper levels. There were hundreds of them, going around patrolling the districts around the senate, gradually getting farther and farther away from the Galactic City. In the process, Jakrata had been found and arrested, along with several other crimelords in the upper levels, and no one had heard from them since. Jakrata's bounty office had quickly vanished as his underlings began to fight over who would take over his criminal empire.

As a result, bounties were getting harder to find, and Kyrr had seen some bounties go from 'posted' to 'claimed' within the space of a standard hour. He had only been able to claim two bounties in the last month, and they were much lower than he had been hoping for; one for a thief who had robbed a member of a small gang, for which he was paid 1,200 CR, and the other for a man who had looked at a Hutt the wrong way, which paid a measly 800 CR. And both bounties had had to be taken alive. Kyrr hated taking prisoners; he'd much rather have killed them and saved the trouble of listening to their constant whining. Still, it was another 2,000 credits he could live off of for the time being. But it wouldn't last for long. His savings were dwindling, and he calculated that if things didn't pick up soon, he'd be dirt poor in five standard months or so.

That was why he was planning to leave the district, or even the planet, and seek better work elsewhere.

As Kyrr was approaching the alley where he had left his speeder, he looked down and noticed the rusting, empty, red and white shell of an old astromech droid's dome that had apparently been gutted for parts. He stopped and bent down to examine it more closely.

Well, this seems… familiar somehow.

Then he remembered; he was almost certain that he had placed that very same astromech dome on top of the pile of junk under which he had buried his airspeeder in the alley. Except he thought it had been heavier before.

He stood up and sprinted towards the alleyway as fast as he could. A few feet from it he could hear a sort of constant hissing noise, like a jet of air escaping from something. He crept slowly and cautiously around the corner, and then he saw what had been making the sound.

There was a red Nikto using a fusion cutter in the alley, illuminating everything in blue light from the cutting tool's jet of flame.

Kyrr couldn't believe it. Could the Nikto have found his airspeeder? He tried to push the thought away almost immediately, and then noticed the pile of junk strewn all over the alleyway that had previously covered his airspeeder. He couldn't recall anything else in the pile that require the use of a fusion cutter, as it was mostly a tool for cutting up larger things into smaller pieces, or making repairs. And there weren't any large things in the alley except for his four-person, closed-canopy speeder. He shouted at the form bent over the pile of scrap.

"Hey!"

The Nikto, who hadn't noticed Kyrr's approach over the loud hissing noise of the fusion cutter, deactivated his tool and looked up at Kyrr. He promptly turned to run. He could tell Kyrr was obviously angry at him for something, and he had seen the blaster on his hip. The Nikto knew better than to get in the way of an angry man with a gun.

His old instincts and habits kicking in, Kyrr pulled out his blaster and ran after him, jumping over several low piles of trash that the Nikto had apparently sorted out from the large pile on top of Kyrr's airspeeder. Kyrr fired a shot just as the Nikto turned the corner, leaving a blast mark on the grey duracrete wall where the Nikto's head had been only a split second before. Kyrr rounded the corner to find it led into another alleyway. He ran a short way into the alley and then stopped, scanning the narrow corridor for the red-skinned, horned man. When Kyrr could find no sign of him, he assumed the being he pursued had already gained considerable distance over him. He hadn't.

The Nikto had been hiding behind a stack of rusty old produce crates that workers from some diner had put in the alley long ago. Kyrr had passed him by a few feet without seeing him, and as soon as the Nikto saw an opportunity he tackled Kyrr from behind. Kyrr fell to the ground with the Nikto on his back, groping for Kyrr's pistol.

Kyrr was struggling to get out from under the heavier Nikto's weight, but he had Kyrr pinned down so well he could barely move.

Osik, I'm really getting out of shape.

One of the Nikto's hands gripped the barrel of Kyrr's blaster, while the other grasped Kyrr's right arm, trying to separate Kyrr from his weapon so he could steal it to compensate for having to leave the scrapheap empty-handed for the day. He wasn't making any progress on loosening the gun from Kyrr's grip, but Kyrr realized that the Nikto would eventually win in the end unless Kyrr gained the advantage. He could find no way to get out from under his opponent, and was tiring quickly. Then Kyrr Geron tried a new tactic. He aimed at the Nikto's possible sense of pride and fired.

"Hey you ugly nose-less Nikkie, get off my back!"

The Nikto howled with rage and screamed back at Kyrr in a low, gravelly voice.

"How dare you! How dare you insult a Kajain'sa'Nikto! For that you will pay dearly, I have allies who will –"

The red Nikto never spoke another word. His outburst of rage made him drop his guard, and Kyrr was able to roll over and knock the Nikto against the rock-hard wall, stunning him momentarily. The Kajain'sa'Nikto was dazed enough by the force of the blow that he lost his grip on Kyrr and lay clutching his head on the ground. Then Kyrr sprang to his feet and, before the Nikto could comprehend what was going on, shot him once, twice to make absolutely sure he was dead.

Kyrr sighed in relief, wiping the sweat from his brow and rubbing the sore wrist the Nikto had grabbed in his attempt to pry the pistol from his grip. Though he had enjoyed being challenged, Kyrr was distraught that he had not been able to dispatch his adversary using his physical strength alone. He reflected on this.

If that'd happened ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have missed him when I shot at him in the first alleyway… And he shouldn't have been able to pin me down like that.

Then, a flood of comprehension washed over him.

I didn't need to shoot at him in the first place, I could have just let him go free. He wasn't really much of a threat.

Kyrr suddenly remembered the Mandalorian code, the Supercommando Codex that he had learned after he had left the Death Watch, long ago. He realized that the Arala beer he drank earlier was probably kicking in now, at least slightly affecting his judgment. He had meant to drink it slowly, and stay in the bar until its intoxicating effects had worn off; despite its wateriness, it was surprisingly potent. But instead, he had been forced to leave the bar earlyto avoid giving any of its denizens too good a look at him now that he had drawn attention to himself. For the second time that night, Kyrr felt a sense of disgust.

I'm barely any better than Viszla himself.

He usually didn't feel guilty after killing people, but this was different. He hadn't been paid for killing the Nikto or the Rodian, and he felt their deaths had been somewhat unnecessary. Trying to shake the feeling off, he told himself that he needed to get a grip and deal with it. He quickly started to return to his old self, cold, calculating, ruthless.

I must be going soft! That must have been the beer talking. Not supposed to drink it so fast.

He searched the body of the second being he had killed that night, and found a total of 74 credits and a small assortment of spare electronics parts. He decided he would keep the parts to use them for repairs if anything broke later on.

He walked back up the second alley and into the first, going over to his airspeeder to inspect the damage. There was barely any junk left on top of it. He inspected the airframe, finding that the Nikto had scraped off most of the superficial rust and had started cutting a circle into its side that would have allowed him easy access to the engine. Luckily, he hadn't gotten halfway through cutting the circle before Kyrr had found him, and everything was in working order. He inserted his encrypted key into a small slot behind the windshield, which promptly popped open and granted him access to the cockpit. He started the engine as the windshield closed again, flying upwards and then merging into the closest skylane far above the underlevels. He set the speeder on autopilot, and leaned back in his leather-upholstered chair and relaxed as he floated toward his upper level apartment. He watched the sprawling metropolis of Coruscant go by out his window, feeling the square credit chips he had taken from the Nikto in his fingers. He realized that under normal circumstances he would have left the body undisturbed, but now he was really getting desperate for money.

What can I say, he thought. Business is slow.

Please don't forget to tell me what you think! Thanks for reading.