"Ash, these were supposed to be ready, like, yesterday!" Tilla thrummed her fingers on the bartop.

Two tables in her section seated a joyous reuniting. The all-female group of friends had already barrelled through their welcome drinks, a round of shots, popped a bottle of champagne—and had Tilla open the other two, as per Bust's safety edict—and were eager to continue celebrating their friend's last days of unmarried life by knocking back some festive tipples. In Tilla's defense, the sight of a group of Karkarodons growing impatient was another kind of disconcerting.

"It's all done!" Ashkhen called over her shoulder, then turned around. "I've just—"

Next to the tall wine glass, sat six sad shots in a row, lacking any artful touch.

Tilla grabbed another tray instead. "Ninety seconds before I'm back from the Krayt Dragon." She took off in a huff.

Ashkhen waited until she was out of range, then cleared her throat. "Fong."

"Hm?"

Earlier the evening, Fong had breached out of the blue, took a seat and ordered his usual so casually as though he hadn't been incommunicado for nearly a month. The offhand way he mentioned he was waiting for someone invoked a peculiar kind of indignancy in Ashkhen. She figured she would sort that out at a later convenience, and chalked the odd sensation in her stomach up to the leftovers she had scarfed down before her shift.

Deeply engaged in a text conversation over his comm now, Fong tilted his head to indicate he was listening.

"I distinctly remember preparing six glasses of Paint the Town Red," Ashkhen said.

"Mm-hmm."

"Now all I see are bland glasses of puréed tomatoes, artisanal vodka and some herbs on that tray."

"Hm."

"The garnish is missing."

"Hmpf."

When, why and how had Fong lost his habit of using ten words when one would have been enough left Ashkhen scratching her head.

"You haven't happened to notice which way those shrimp tails have run off?"

With a loud gulp, Fong finally looked up from his screen. "No, I'm sorry, I wasn't really paying attention."

Ashkhen, despite distinctly remembering having had performed the same action mere minutes before, took out a glass container from the fridge under the backbar. She popped the lid off and, with a slightly saline whiff, uncovered long rows of bright pink and juicy extra jumbo shrimp tails.

Their eyes met.

A lifetime of self-discipline triumphed over the allure of decadence. Ashkhen finished the decoration once again, packed away the rest of the shrimp, and held onto the tray until Tilla took it away, much to Fong's apparent disappointment.

In a short while, Tilla came back from the bachelorette party's table. An enormous kitschy tiara sat slightly askew atop her head, covering one eye. When she stood close enough to make out the sparkly cursive broodstock-to-be on the headdress, Ashkhen burst out laughing.

"I don't think that was manufactured with your skull anatomy in mind," she said.

Tilla flung the tiara at her. "I'd like to see you say no to the soused Karkarodon bride and her squad."

"I believe that's a shiver," Fong butted in, absent-minded and still buried in his comlink, thumbs flitting across his keys. He continued with note of nostalgia in his voice. "Way back in high school, we had this exchange student for a term. She was"—he checked himself—"not important."

Ashkhen observed the the group of maidens sitting across the dancefloor. "They seem fun," she said.

One of the bridesmaids had just lost a bet. Face buried in her webbed hands, she stood amidst her companions' roaring laughter and started doing a mighty uncoordinated version of some silly, repetitive dance of a children's song. The level of hilarity increased; the rest of the group joined in, singing the catchy tune and flailing their arms in unison. Ashkhen shuddered.

So many teeth!

"Not gonna lie, I'm a bit envious," Tilla said, looking in the same direction.

Ashkhen leaned against the back bar. "Of what? Marriage?"

"No, the wedding, of course!" Tilla said. "You get to wear a beautiful dress, invite all those people, throw a gigantic party and get lots of presents! Last year, my cousin went really top end, and had this silvery-white, specialty lichen shipped in from Sullust to serve with the cake." She stared off into space with a longing sigh. "What are Nautolan weddings like?"

Ashkhen pondered her question for a moment. "I've genuinely no idea."

Tilla turned to Fong. He looked up, eyes darting between the two girls. He had completely tuned out for the past couple of minutes.

"Don't look at me." He shrugged. "I was barred from my brother's wedding."

Tilla propped the next round of drinks on her fingertips to head upstairs. As her friend disappeared in a pink whirl, Ashkhen gave the hen party another sidelong glance—the bride-to-be just got three penalty whacks over the head with a toy harpoon—and wondered from whence the novel sense of discontent had arisen.

Family life, in the traditional sense, had never held any relevance for her. In the past two years or so however, another fallout of leaving the Order started crystallize. Apart from losing the right to carry a lightsaber, by renouncing the Jedi, Ashkhen also lost everyone with whom she once shared a common frame of reference.

There had been many Nautolans in the Order, she didn't even knew all by name. They were all well spaced out in age, and at various stages of training, ranging from Youngling to Council Member. Even if Ashkhen had somehow found the opportunity to hang out with her kin at the Temple, they wouldn't have sung any Nautolan songs or played any folk games, for the Force was their shared heritage.

She stood between two cultures now, with an unplaceable yearning deep down inside. Who were her people? How could she find her identity, her place, and move forward in life?

Fong still didn't show any willingness to start a conversation; if anything, he seemed even more absorbed in the one he was already having. Ashkhen suddenly saw him in a different light. He had grown up on Glee Anselm. Him identifying as Nautolan likely wasn't just a byproduct of having gills and headtails.

On the spur of the moment, Ashkhen almost blurted out, 'What was your school like?', but reconsidered. It sounded like some awkward ice breaker.

Hang on, is there ice between us that needs to be broken?

Fong's aloofness put her off of striking up a conversation. To give her inexplicable sulk a productive outlet, Ashkhen turned to the backbar to do some prepping. An unfortunate jogan fruit plunked on the cutting board, undeserving of the rough treatment it underwent as Ashkhen carved it into serveable pieces. Observe and adapt—if silence was the kind of customer service he wanted, she would let him wait for his friend in silence. The next handful of slices missed the bowl and landed on the counter with a plop. He didn't actually say the friend was a he.

Takeout from the previous day belongs in the kriffing trash, not in the microwave!

Tilla, back from yet another private suite run, hopped on one of the vacant stools to give het feet a break.

"That pout is new," she said, observing the deep cuts and marks Ashkhen's fruit knife left on the wooden board. "Have you been scrolling news again?"

"No, I—" Ashkhen struggled to rearrange her features as she carried on with another order, "It's nothing."

What Tilla lacked in extrasensory headtails, she more than made up for in a quick, deductive mind. She took Ashkhen's mien, Fong's abstractedness and the pulverized remains of the fruit as a sign to step in and use her short respite to try and cheer up her friend.

"Divination time!" She clapped her hands, startling both Nautolans on either side of the bar. "We used to play this all the time with my sisters. We're gonna need a… This'll do." She grabbed the straw dispenser and held it up before Ashkhen.

Ashkhen blinked at the box. "What do you want me to do with it?"

"Close your eyes and take some!" Tilla gave the box a rattle.

"What for?"

"So I can foretell your future, silly! You never played this with the other Je—kids? To predict whom you're going to marry one day?"

Ashkhen slowly closed her eyes, beaten.

…on so many levels…

Still, she grabbed a handful of straws for the heck of it, and handed them to Tilla. Either the lighting in the club, or excitement turned the Twi'lek a more vivid shade of pink.

"Here we go." Tilla started counting it out, placing the straws on the bartop one after the other.

"Twi'lek, Moogan, Zabrak, Human, Nikto, Duros, Mikkian, Bith!"

She held up the last straw. "Oooh, a musician!" Her eyes wandered over to the platform on the far side of the dancefloor.

The resident DJ's pale yellow fingers danced up and down his turntables, his bulbous head bobbed with the rhythm of his own music. He weaved the beat and tunes with such virtuosity, even the people sitting at the tables couldn't help but tap their feet.

Ashkhen placed the last two glasses on the merrymakers' tray, then followed her friend's gaze. "Bez? No way! Think about it, with his hearing and my sense of smell, our kids would go bonkers from sensory overload!"

"I think I might ask him to DJ at my wedding." Tilla jumped off the seat, lit the tray up with a bright green light and rushed away.

"That's not how it goes," Fong interjected. His furious exchange had wrapped up, his comm was now back in his pocket. He snatched up the box Tilla had left, shook it around a bit, then proffered it to the withdrawn and reluctant bartender. "Go ahead."

"Must I really? This is so stupid."

Fong wouldn't budge. "This is a very serious matter, one we're trying to settle by the ancient art of Twi'leki fortune telling. Show some respect, love."

Ashkhen reached into the box, took out a handful of straws, then placed them on Fong's outstretched palm. "The future doesn't work this way," she said.

"Shush." He cleared his throat, then proceeded to count it out, laying down the straws one by one.

"Falleen, Bothan, Gungan, Quarren, Noghri, Ongree, Nautolan… shit!"

He tsked and tossed the last remaining straw over his shoulder. "Stupid game."

His brows shot up in surprise when the straw came spinning back and landed in his drink.

"So yuh really back." The gravelly voice came directly from behind his seat.

"Aw, you missed me?"

Fong's smirk turned into a painful grimace when a fist closed around a handful of his headtails, forcing him to sit up straight, head tilted back. His alarm was not entirely groundless—ever-increasing waves of annoyance rolled off the man standing behind his back, and the bartop was plenty unyielding and sturdy to cause permanent damage to his facial bone structure.

"Wi did have a deal."

"And it's still on. We never really specified the time frame."

"Is dat so?" He pulled his head further back.

"Easy, easy." Fong carefully slid his glass far out to the side, just in case. "We can work this out civilized. Let's talk, yeah?" he said, then met Ashkhen's eyes. 'Little help?' he mouthed.

Ashkhen considered him for a moment. She gave the hostage-taker a welcoming smile, then started picking up the straws from the counter, humming a tune. Fong, hurt and betrayal in his eyes, assumed the colour of dried sea grass.

"Den buy mi ah drink and talk, blabbamouth." He released his grip, turned him about with a hand on his shoulder, and threw his arms around his friend in a bear hug. The mood lifted up like ocean fog in the morning sun. "Fon', fi mi cha cha bwoy, how yuh stay?"

"Everything nice."

Fong extracted himself from the bone-crushing clinch, and indicated the seat next to him with a wide sweep of his arm. The other Nautolan, now perched atop the barstool, had the most unusual coloring Ashkhen had ever seen—his light beige skin, bedecked with large patches ranging from tawny to hickory, reminded her of the loggerheads she had seen on Dac.

Fong beckoned to Ashkhen.

"All the same?" she asked in a smarmy tone, awarding the twitch of his face with an angelic smile. She placed a second lowball glass in front of the newcomer and nearly bumped into Tilla as she turned back to grab the bottle. The Twi'lek had unexpectedly materialized behind the bar, with the Thalassian single malt already in her hands.

"Who's the mysterious stranger in the shirt so tight that it looks painted on?" she asked in a low voice. Hazard lights went on in her pink eyes.

"Debt collector or childhood chum, possibly both," Ashkhen whispered back and held out a hand for the bottle. "Want me find out if he had other plans for the night besides flexing?"

Tilla shook her head, clutching the bottle tighter.

"Tills, he's sitting right at the bar," Ashkhen said under her breath. "That falls under my dominion."

Tilla, unwilling to surrender the opportunity, gently pushed her friend out of the way, threw one lekku over her shoulder and leaned forward to pour a generous amount into the glasses. Ashkhen's jaw sligthy dropped in disbelief as Tilla's entire body liquesced into an intricate coreography; her back arched to an extent that she risked lumbar strain and her lips parted in concentration as though she hadn't been serving food and drink eight to ten hours a day for the past six years, all the while maintaining eye-contact with Fong's friend for whatever reason.

A single drop of whisky trickled down the neck of the bottle. Tilla's pink cheeks reddened on cue, then she traced a delicate finger up, up, up the bottle's neck to wipe away the spilled beverage. She ignored the towel Ashkhen held out, and licked the whisky off her finger with eyes closed, bosom rising and falling with a deep sigh. The perfomance wrapped up with her breathing a voiceless 'Enjoy!' in her quarry's direction, eliciting a collective quiver in every male even remotely humanoid within a five meter radius.

Ashkhen turned her back on the Twi'lek to tend to a young Kiffar who momentarily lost his ability to form a coherent sentence, and could only blink at the beer tap.

"Un-kriffing-believable," she muttered under her breath.

"I know, right?" the boy exhaled, swallowing hard.

Ashkhen filled the next two trays to the brim with record speed, then gently but firmly sent Tilla on her way to smile at the senators and their entourage upstairs instead.

With Fong and his friend seated and served, restocking the back bar was the next on her list. As she worked her way through the inventory, snippets of their conversation floated over.

"Listen, Skip, I'm gonna need a little help from you."

"Nuh again!" Skip let his head drop back, pain etched into his blotched face. "Fon' always say lickkle help, turn out to be huge fava every time!"

Fong placed a mollifying hand on his shoulder. "Breathe easy! Just let me talk to the boss."

"Nuh-uh. Boss don' like you nuh more. Him did say explicit ongle wanna see Fon' pon da grill or in stew next time."

"Such flair for the dramatic!" Fong dismissed the threat with a flick of his hand. Ashkhen turned her back to hide her amusement—his fingers brushing against his collar and his uncomfortable shuffle in his seat promptly undid his façade of nonchalance.

Fong spoke again, voice tinged with the constrained calm of a pupil making excuses for his poor grades in front of his guardian. "I couldn't trust anyone with the legwork, and sure, that took some time, but this one is solid, and it's good. Trust me."

Skip snorted into his glass. "Good, uh-huh? Fishaman neva' say him fish stink."

"Your words hurt, Skip!" Fong said, pressing both hands over his centermost heart. He switched between jaunty airs and ridiculous affectations at such a speed, Ashkhen wondered if he had at some point dabbled in theatre. "When have I ever let you down?"

"Fon' always say him did find good intel, intel nuh good, Fon' always gaan missing fi six months."

"Okay, that might have happened once"—Skip cleared his throat—"or thrice before. Not this time, I swear. Just let me in so I can talk to Daggi. He would be very appreciative if he learned what I've learned." Fong swirled his drink slowly around before taking another sip.

"Or maybe he wud'n. Den mi get inna trouble. Again."

Ashkhen ducked under the beer tap to wrangle the keg coupler free. Using the Force to change the keg would have taken less than a minute, but she didn't want to risk raising any more eyebrows. A few waitresses had already expressed their surprise over Ashkhen moving half barrels with such obvious ease—and brushing it off with 'gotta lift with your legs' could only stretch so far.

Fong switched tactics. "I've got you a souvenir."

If that's a codeword, it's a shitty one.

Ashkhen checked the gauge on the CO2 canister, curious what Skip would say, but he remained silent.

"Brother, come on! You say all the time, wi run tings, tings nuh run wi, don't you?"

"A true."

"So... deal?"

Just as Ashkhen resurfaced, their hands unclasped from a weird pass grip handshake.

"Trouble gwine trouble yuh," Skip said, quickly adjusting his headwrap. Whatever Ashkhen thought she saw had disappeared from his hand.

She wasn't the only one who had noticed, however.

Even the heavy bass line vibrating through the floor couldn't mask the approaching footsteps. Bust strode up to the bar and stood uncomfortably close to the pair of them.

"Having a good time?"

"Yah, wi criss."

"Need a reminder of the house rules out back?"

"Thanks, we're cool."

The flip undertone in Fong's voice did not sit well with Bust. The Klatooinian tilted his head to both sides to crack his neck, loud enough to be heard over the music, then raised an expectant eyebrow at Ashkhen.

"They're cool, Bust," she said.

"You let me know if they're being bothersome, Ash, you hear?" The bouncer looked them up and down one last time, then made his way across the dance floor as though he meant to push through pack ice.

Ashkhen leaned on the bartop. "Just so you guys know, Bust is not his real name. That's what he does."

Fong and Skip raised their glasses in unison and drank in silence. Ashkhen walked back towards the sink, sensing two pairs of black eyes trailing after her. She glanced at the mirror above the back bar—Skip's mouth pulled into a wide grin as he brought himself up to speed on the situation just by taking a breath next to Fong.

"Duppy gyal? Nah in ah million years!" He gave a hearty laugh, then thumped Fong on the shoulder as he stood. "Mi will see wah mi can do. Keep near shore, mi brejin."

"Bless up yourself, Skip."

Ashkhen came back with a few glasses and continued to restack the overhead glass rack. Skip's empty tumbler sat on the bartop, she leaned over to collect it.

"What's up with your friend?" she blurted out.

Fong regarded her with a slight frown. "In what sense?"

"He looked—" Ashkhen bit back the last word. In all fairness, she was in no position to cast up to anyone that they looked weird. "I couldn't place the accent."

"Well, he's quite manifestly Benthic," Fong explained in a things-fall-when-you-let-go tone. "So Basic's the only way to go. Construing his native dialect underwater would be about as productive as guessing what he's had for lunch based on a fart."

Ashkhen stayed quiet, brooding over her barely elementary proficiency in Nautila. It had hardly been a conscious choice that she stopped absorbing the language at preschool age. In the following years however, the convenience of Basic heavily stunted her ability to carry on any type of conversation underwater.

Fong mistook her dejectedness for disdain.

"I know what you're thinking, I'm not classist, I'm just pragmatic! The Great Western Sea is a three-day journey from here, we could hardly have a conversation in a solution of human piss and sunscreen anyways, and I'm not doing bathtub bonding with that guy." He shuddered.

"That's not what I meant," Ashkhen said. It took her a confounded moment to realize that there existed social inequality among the Nautolan people, a phenomenon she had never given any consideration previously. Her hearts sank at the thought of folk traditions, regional holidays, and ancestral religions of which she also had no kriffing clue whatsoever. "It's just that I've never seen anyone like that before."

"How is that possible?"

"I grew up in foster care." Ashkhen had learned long ago there was never a good time to drop the Jedi bomb on anyone. "Right here, on Coruscant."

"Do you know where you're from?"

"G. A."

Fong incorporated his entire upper body into the massive eye-roll. "No shit!"

"North of the capital, the Deell-delta."

"You're Estuarine?" His reaction was genuine this time. "Aren't you freshwater fairies all blue?"

"You might want to rethink using colour as the primary attribute you sort people by." Ashkhen glanced over the terminal, then turned her back and stepped to the wine cooler to pick out the requested vintage. "I guess I just happen to have a wider range of salinity tolerance. Unlike you, inland waters don't send me into anaphylactic shock."

"Are you kidding? I thrive in freshwater!"

"Bathtubs don't count."

Fong let out a soft sigh, closing his eyes. "Those are the best, though!"

Can't argue with that.

The sad excuse of a shower in her rental popped into Ashkhen's mind. The last extensive plumbing system maintenance must have taken place around the Great Sith War. Nowadays, attributable to the ever-changing pressure in the pipes, the daily attempts at taking a shower alternated between dripping water torture and enduring puffs of cold mist.

Fong wasn't going to drop the topic just yet. "So, how come you're not blue?"

"Told you I was adopted. I might be half Wampa on my mother's side."

"Unlikely. You smell way too nice for that to be true."

"And you, my friend, smell of kush, balo shrooms and something synthetic I haven't seen in action on our dancefloor before. Bust is still just a nod away, I suggest you tone the creep factor down."

Fong spread his arms. "Go ahead. I'm not holding."

"Hmm. Bust turning out your pockets might result in a broken femur."

"Why do you keep going up for air when you could just tell me?"

"What?"

"The story behind getting rendered in greyscale."

Ashkhen sighed. "Does it ever occur to you that maybe people just don't like to talk about their skin condition and missing limbs?"

"I'm sorry," Fong muttered, dipping his head. His dimples bespoke the insincerity of the gesture. "That totally would have been my next question."

"Oh, bug off!" she huffed. "Whatever. I'll abridge it for you. I used to be blue. Took a dip in industrial sewage on Manaan. Got sampled by a Firaxa shark. Almost died. The end."

"Oof. I'm sorry," Fong said. "Maybe you should just stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to."

Ashkhen grabbed a glass to rinse it, then pulled the lever to fill it up. Beer was flowing out a little foamy again, she noticed with a frown. "Like you've never had a clash with fiercly territorial lower marine vertebrates."

"Do cuckolded Chagrians count?"

A short bout of unbridled laughter later, Ashkhen steadied herself with one hand on the bar, and wiped at her eyes with the other.

"First of all, she made the first move," Fong said in his shift-blame-first-ask-questions-later voice. "Second of all, how the kriff was I supposed to know what those lethorn decorations meant?"

Ashkhen composed herself and asked, "What happened?"

"Well, who's sitting here telling you the story?" he trailed off with a mysterious smile.

The expectant pause between them stretched to an awkward length. Braggadocio bounced right off Ashkhen, she expected an accurate retelling of the events.

"Look, duelling wasn't really an option, me standing there bare-assed, this Chagrian dude charging me with his horns down," he admitted with a shrug. "But I swim really kriffing fast."

"It takes great courage to admit our weaknesses," Ashkhen said, marvelling at how Fong's psyche shielded his ego. The lack of protest on his part evidenced that he took everything as a compliment.

Fong, drink in one hand, arranged his features into the expression of someone about to impart words of great wisdom upon their audience.

"Whatever lengths one's willing to go, no tail is ever worth getting gored for," he said. "And I sure as hell wouldn't want some dewy-eyed Chagrianette to be the last thing I see before the long night."

Ashkhen's gamesome mood iced over in an instant. That fateful mission to Manaan flashed across her mind. The reward for success would have been a Knighting ceremony, instead, it had become the final one she had undertook as a Jedi. The sheer terror in Khosrovi's eyes had been the last thing she saw before the world went dark. Ashkhen had been exfilled on the brink of death; the Chagrian Padawan's body had never been recovered.

Ashkhen shook her head. That was in the past.

"Skip said something," she said instead. "I believe he called me a 'duppy gyal'?"

"Yeah, that's—"

His comm chimed. Fong barely glanced at the screen before he shoved it right back into his pocket. "Hold that thought," he said. "I, uh… gotta see a man about a Massiff."

Three trays worth of cocktails later, Ashkhen spotted Fong making his way back to the bar with great haste, positively beaming as though he had great news to share. Ashkhen did not care for what went down during the twenty-minute toilet break that lit up his aura with such a blend of great achievement and relief, not one bit.

"Listen, I'm heading out to the Rim in a few days"—Fong shrugged into his jacket—"work stuff, but I'll be back soon. There's an event coming up in two weeks. Some ambassador or another is throwing a la-di-da reception for his new attaché."

"Okay." Ashkhen took his empty glass, wondering if there was a point to Fong's statement, or he just liked to hear himself talk. All citizens of the Republic had the right to freedom of movement and politicians threw expensive parties all the time, both proclamations were hardly newsworthy.

"I'd love it if you joined me."

Oh.

"Food's gonna be great, and if rumours are true, there's an infinity pool on the rooftop, overlooking the city skyline. That'd worth dolling up a bit, hm?"

"I'll… think about it."

"You do that," Fong said, and disappeared in a wink.

"Wait, what's a duppy gyal?"

••• ••• •••

Irigo's had settled into its typical 4 AM lull, shortly before last call. Ashkhen allowed herself a little headstart on the closing checklist, and dumped all the ice from the champagne coolers into the sink. Tilla sat in Fong's seat, working her way through a bowl of unused citrus wheels and listening to Ashkhen's recount.

"You sheem weally tshight." She grinned through her late night snack, reminiscent of bright orange-coloured retainers, then dropped the peel into an empty glass. "Is it getting serious?"

Ashkhen stacked an empty beer case on top of another and continued sorting away bottles. Dottie would be back in a minute to take them out back. "No, I think it's getting weird."

"Are you going to go?" Tilla pulled another glass container towards herself. The cucumber ribbons disappeared in her mouth with the speed of an industrial paper shredder pulling in sheets.

The last bottle slid into the slot with a soft clink. Ashkhen wiped her hands and grabbed a tapered rectangular bottle from the back bar. "I'm not sure if it's a good idea."

"Why not? He's cute!"

"Not the first word that comes to mind, but okay." Ashkhen pushed a shot glass of clear liquid across the bar. Rix had been cooped up in her booth upstairs since before midnight, and was determined to make up for the missed time.

"You're making such a fuss for no reason!" she said, licking her forepaw—a gesture that had nothing to do with Zygerrian grooming rituals and had everything to do with salt and drinking distilled spirits made from succulents. "Guys work on a single principle. You work that principle right and you can make a lapdog out of any one of them, have them sit pretty and do all kinds of tricks for you." She threw back the shot and slammed glass on the bartop. "Here's your first tip"—she stifled a burp—"watch the teeth."

Ashkhen watched Rix sink hers into a lime wedge, brows furrowing in confusion.

…teeth?

Tilla swooped in for the rescue. "You're an ex-hooker stripping for a living, Rix. I think you're over-generalizing based upon your exposure to a very specific type of male clientele."

The Clawdite dismissed her with a snort. "Politicians, academics, artists, scientists, same old, same old. I've met rebels and revolutionists too, fighting for their great causes, but even they were always down to f—"

"Rix, when was the last time you felt you had a meaningful connection with someone?" Tilla asked.

"Twelve minutes ago."

Ashkhen's features arranged themselves into a look of pure disgust. "You were Askajian twelve minutes ago."

Jedi compassion and acceptance was boundless, in theory. Ashkhen drew the line at kriffing up one's buoyancy on purpose, sacrificing a streamlined physique and using water storage as an excuse.

Rix's yellow eyes narrowed in disdain. "He padded all six cups of my cargo bras with peggats, and for a sea creature, you're really kriffing shallow."

The thus degraded and humbled barkeep offered the stripper a rectifying refill, which she accepted without a second thought. "Your loss. I know I wouldn't miss a party a thousand levels up."

"One can never know for certain," Dottie joined in. "Do you wish to know the latest statistics on assault, abduction, rape or murder?"

"Thanks, Dottie, I'm good."

"Considering your species, we can't rule out organ trafficking either."

"Dottie, you're not helping."

"Friendly concern lowered to forty-two percent. Confirmed." Dottie plugged into the terminal to carry out her regular system maintenance. "Have fun! Imos will let me know if I'm needed to analyze tissue samples and train a new barmaid."

Rix signaled for a last refill. Her about-to-throw-up face didn't fool Ashkhen anymore—by the time the glass hit the bartop, Rix had already smoothed her features into those of a plain and unassuming wallflower, the one she always put on before heading home. "Also, I could turn into you and take your place, win-win-win for everyone. Hit me up if you wanna test the waters, so to speak."

"No, thank you," Ashkhen said, looking after Rix as she left. As she reached for the Clawdite's empty glass, her comm buzzed with a message.

'Cpt. Obrim wants a word'

"That him?" Tilla slowly eased onto her aching feet, keeping both hands on the bartop for support. Ashkhen shook her head and shoved the device back into her pocket.

"Why don't you just listen to what your hearts say?"

Ashkhen sighed. "They've yet to reach a consensus."

When Tilla left, she took the comm out to look at Doushan's message again. Four new ones had appeared in the meantime, all with the same content.

'URGENT'