The Twi'lek lady pressed her palms together and raised them to her forehead.

"Arni'soyacho!" she said as she accepted the care package.

"Koahiko!" Ashkhen waved after the family of six, each member a different shade of orange.

They were the thirty-seventh asylum seeking family she had processed that day. Tilla had come up with the idea to volunteer for the Under the New Sun relief mission, a solidarity effort—suspiciously overdocumented, in Ashkhen's opinion—brought together by the Senate in order to extend a helping hand to the people of the war-ravaged Ryloth.

The Separatist invasion and the ensuing effort to retake the world had left the entire southern hemisphere devastated. Hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes and livelihood in the bombings and the drawn out surface warfare between the Republic forces and Wat Tambor's droid army.

Official sources claimed that life in the retaken capital city of Lessu had long returned to normal. Tilla's intel, however, contradicted the picture painted by the Republic's media coverage. Her friends and relations, people who actually lived in the city, complained about the continuous supply issues, infrastructural damage still unaddressed well over a year after the Republic army drove the Separatists out, general low morale, and Senator Orn Free Taa's representation in the Galactic Senate.

Ryloth struggled. People grew disillusioned with the new government—many flocked to join General Cham Syndulla's Resistance, and many envisioned a better life somewhere else.

With much pomp and ado, the Senate sanctioned the Grand Army of the Republic to allot three Acclamator-class assault ships to facilitate free passage to Coruscant for all who wished to start a new life, and decrease the numbers of potential freedom fighters.

Four and a half hundred thousand refugees had came out of hyperspace earlier that day and maintained high orbit around the capital. Even with volunteers working in three shifts, Ashkhen estimated it would take a week to shuttle everyone to the surface and get them settled.

When all members of the fiery family were out of earshot, Ashkhen turned to Tilla, tilting her datapad to the side. "Is that how you spell it in Basic?"

"The apostrophe goes here"—Tilla reached over and tapped Ashkhen's screen—"otherwise you change that family's clan name from 'Dayspring' to 'Rancor Snot'."

Ashkhen glanced at her list, scratching her chin. "Do you mind, um… giving my other forms a once-over too, before I submit them?"

"Only if you promise me you'll stop stressing the first syllable in every word," Tilla said. "I've never heard anyone say 'I'm happy to help' in Ryl and make it sound like they meant to start a fight."

"Few more days of practice, maybe?" Ashkhen administered a full dose of her infamous sad puppy face. She had tried eye batting before, like Tilla often did, but doing so with her nictating membrane usually had the opposite effect—people freaked the kriff out. This time, she went with just the standard wide-eyes-pinched-brows look. "The native environment is working wonders, I swear."

"I'll have to check in with Yanni," she said. Her tone confirmed the polite refusal Ashkhen sensed in her demeanour a moment before she spoke.

Ashkhen had never gone into extreme detail about the turbulent recon mission, she dismissed the episode as 'having had found herself in a bit of an awkward situation.' Tilla, however, kept making remarks about the edginess she had adopted, especially around Falleen customers. Even though Ashkhen brushed off her concerns as 'totally no big deal', when Tilla suggested she could stay over her place for a few nights, she jumped on the opportunity quicker than a Gungan on air-dried gorgs.

At first, Buyan hadn't objected to the idea—she still had quite a few people she wanted Ashkhen to deal with on her list. Yet as the days wore on, her quips about Nautolans being harder to remove from bathtubs than hard water stains increased both in numbers and in acridity.

Ashkhen didn't want to be that friend, unable to read the room—she took it in stride and promised to return to her small, dingy and lonely apartment.

A few minutes have passed without anyone knocking on their door. Tilla peeked outside, but the corridor was empty. She called out both in Basic and Ryl, but apparently no refugees were left for the day.

"Off to Irigo's then," she declared.

Ashkhen glanced at the chrono on the wall and saw a chance to break the week-long streak of dining on food of fungused treebark texture at various stages of fermentation in the name of cultural acceptance. A polite proposal ensued.

"Yes to the question, no to the terrible rolling of your r's." Tilla switched off her terminal and grabbed her things. "That sounded like you wanted to carve me up for dinner." She headed towards the door with Ashkhen following. "You're not speaking through water, there's no need for so much oomph behind each word. Twi'leks who don't know you might think you're combative."

Ashkhen tilted her head to the side. "How would you start a fight in Nautila?"

Tilla pondered the question for a moment. "I'd pee in the water."

"I said fight"—Ashkhen shuddered—"not bloodbath."

••• ••• •••

Later that night, Ashkhen thanked the girls for their hospitality, bid a silent farewell to their heavenly and much-coveted standard bathtub, and moved back to her own place. Within ten minutes of arriving, she was out the door again—a quick inventory had confirmed the lack of anything edible on premise.

Before Drosili had permanently closed down the restaurant, she solicited Ashkhen's help in clearing out the kitchen. In return, the ex-manager allowed her to grab any non-perishables she wanted and take them home. Many, many days had passed since, however—all that was left from that food haul now was an unopened barrel of burger sauce and a lifetime supply of salt.

Ashkhen headed for the closest corner store, the one operated entirely by droids. She had never once seen it closed since she moved into the neighbourhood, which was convenient, but it had the same trendy shopping music playlist on repeat, which had grown a little grating after three years.

She bent over the island freezer with a dejected sigh. Twenty-seven price labels flashed above the display, none of which matched the package in her hand. Either the content, the net weight or the brand was incongruent with the product she picked out.

"I wouldn't. It says swordfish on the label, but in truth, that's just a frozen bag of mercury on sale."

Kriffing creep!

Ashkhen dropped the fish. Morrdul continued before she could have spoken.

"But that's why we're in a grocery store," he said. "Creepy would have been catching you yesterday, when you went underwear shopping."

"Don't you have enough Seppie HVT's to annoy?" Ashkhen headed for the kitchen supplies. Cleavers and boning knives seemed to be on sale, too.

"They are a bit more challenging to track down."

As she slowly walked down the kitchen appliances aisle, Ashkhen gave a concise report on Doushan's investigation. Morrdul seemed neither surprised nor fazed by the Black Sun slavers—Ashkhen doubted there would have been any effort on his part if she had truly gone missing.

"Has Senator Clovis been to Irigo's since?"

Ashkhen shook her head. "His secretary, Krahl Didyk, shows up every other week though."

"Is it confirmed?"

"Unless Senator Clovis surrounds himself with an ever-rotating squad of chin-tattooed Scipioans, it is," she said. "Plus Ekshi says the license number on the speeder he arrives in checks out."

"Ekhsi?"

"Bouncer. Front entrance."

Before she could have elaborated on Krahl Didyk's clubbing habits, an ancient little lady walked up to them.

"I'm sorry, young man, but the print is too tiny on this one"—she thrust what looked like a vacuum packed Klatooine paddy frog in Morrdul's face—"does it have any added flavour enhancers?"

Ashkhen looked on with breath bated. Even if one had no idea Morrdul was a ruthlessly efficient, autocratic and results-driven operative with commendable Force powers—a bully, in short—his towering physique still deterred most people from approaching him. Due to him never wearing the traditional Jedi robes, Ashkhen easily forgot about his original vocation—Morrdul's helpful smile caught her off-guard. He took the problem very seriously, and read all the ingredients aloud.

"Oh, dear, that's not good for my allergies," the lady said.

"Let's find you something without so many carcinogenic additives, shall we?" He offered his arm and gestured towards the deli. He threw a backward glance at Ashkhen, eyes conveying the message to, on penalty of broken knees, stay where she stood.

Ashkhen turned into a statue of herself for the ensuing quarter hour or so. The little old lady sure took her sweet time shopping with the tall and handsome Chagrian Jedi.

"Sentient or droid?" Morrdul appeared from an entirely different direction than Ashkhen expected.

"Wh-what?"

"The driver."

"What driver?" Ashkhen started to panic. Morrdul, doubtless, had used up all his very limited patience during the impromptu shopping trip. At least his aura conveyed so.

"The driver who drops Senator Clovis's secretary off at the club every two weeks or so."

"Oh! Uh, droid."

"That's unfortunate." He did that thing when the black tip of his tongue travelled across his lips, a sign of deep concentration and processing. Ashkhen gave up on the groceries and took her datapad out to order takeout.

"You could still check his itineraries," she said. "The droid might get its memory wiped, but I don't think he regularly deletes the the geopositioning logs from the dashboard computer."

Had she looked up from the menu, she would have seen the flicker of recognition across his face.

"No one can tinker with diplomatic vehicles while they are parked within the Senate Building," Morrdul said. "I doubt his home has any less security."

"I don't know about the Senator, but his secretary is attending an event at the Sunrise Spire Hotel tomorrow night."

Morrdul's eyes narrowed. "How would you know?"

"Someone I know is going and I, uh… got invited."

Morrdul's intel and processing speed were as impressive as ever. He cocked a disapproving eyebrow.

"The maculate fellow?"

"He's not a pigment pattern, he has a name," Ashkhen said. "Besides, I haven't made up my mind yet."

"The lingerie set you've purchased yesterday suggests otherwise."

Ashkhen pictured herself lodging one of those cleavers on sale between his horns, and hoped he was still reading her mind.

"Fetch me his travel logs."

With that, Morrdul turned on his heels and marched down the aisle. Ashkhen stood dumbfounded, blinking as he turned a corner and vanished, both from her view and from the Force.

"You… you want my help?"

••• ••• •••

Breathing air with so few residuals in it felt nice for a change. Nothing obstructed the view from where Ashkhen stood, on the skytop terrace of the second tallest building in the Ambassadorial Sector. She looked for the Senate Dome, followed the scintillating strip of the Republic Boulevard, and found the tiny truncated pyramid of the Jedi Temple right before it disappeared behind Coruscant's curvature.

The setting triggered a predictable bout of nostalgia. However tedious diplomatic missions sometimes had been, she missed those conversations that went beyond the struggles of everyday life; that fecund milieu for initiatives and people with the power and means to implement them. There had been numerous memorable diplomatic events she had attended in a somewhat similar fashion—as someone's satellite, albeit with fifty percent more clothes on.

She slowly twirled the glass in her hand. Beautiful venue, extraordinary people, amazing catering. Ashkhen mused over the novelty of leisurely fun, an experience entirely alien to the Jedi. Not that there weren't any aspects of being a Jedi she enjoyed, but nothing ever was done solely for the sake of amusement. And now amused she was—unfortunately however, the same couldn't be said for Fong.

Without any substantial experience in navigating the nebulous world of romance, Ashkhen had turned to her best friend and confidante to pick her lekku. Tilla's general rule of thumb was to adopt a strategy based on the headcount—two people was a date, more than two meant hanging out.

A string of anecdotes had followed as Tilla rummaged through her wardrobe, reflecting on many a first date she had, with special emphasis on which dress she had worn. Buyan also offered her signature pieces, but Ashkhen politely declined. A few of them would have made Rix feel overexposed, others had to be entirely glued on. Ashkhen's skin was too permeable to be covered with so much fashion tape—both large patches of contact dermatitis and unintentional microdosing with adhesives would have put a damper on the night. And since the setting was a little ambiguous after all—the two of them hanging out with other people—Ashkhen decided to defer adopting a strategy until being on site, in real time.

Boy, did it get only more confusing!

The wisp of wariness Ashkhen had noticed around Fong upon arrival slowly thickened into a pall of peeve as the night progressed. Fong kept disappearing for a few minutes at a time to talk privately with some of the guests. Ashkhen couldn't say for sure whether his resentment sprang from whatever happened during those tête-à-têtes, or her having such obvious fun in his absence.

Moonlit contrails of orbital shuttles crisscrossed the night sky. Fong appeared in the open terrace door, pulling a case from his pocket with one hand. The efflux of his suppressed ire reached her before he did.

"Do you smoke?" He offered the pack.

She shook her head.

"Do you mind?"

She repeated the gesture and turned to fully face him. Fong tried ashing the t'bac within five seconds of lighting up, and with such force that it slipped from his hand and tumbled down into the abyss. He lit up again with a silent curse.

"You're not having much fun, are you?" she asked quietly.

Smoke billowed out with a snort. Then he saw Ashkhen's expression.

"I didn't mean—look, I don't want to be unfair to you, this is not how I pictured it in my head. Work and fun doesn't mix, period. Can't focus on both."

"Two porgs one stone?"

"Is a kriffing myth." He leaned on the railing with his back to the Coruscant skyline so he could shoot angry glances at the terrace door. "I was going in with best intentions and cast my stone. One of them just shat on me, the other flitted away to find other company to make merry with."

The unfounded and unjust sliver of his annoyance had Ashkhen bring up her guard. She dialled back on the placating tone.

"Your job is schmoozing with the glitterati and plundering buffets?"

"A necessary evil," Fong said, pinching his brows into a pained arch. The moment she turned defensive, he switched back to wisecracking to keep the conversation lighthearted. Ashkhen made a note to circle back to the source of his discontent at a later opportunity.

"You never told me what you do for a living," she said.

"You never asked."

"I just did!"

Fong marked the issue unimportant with a sweeping gesture of his hand. "I take care of problems people can't fix themselves. That sometimes involves reaching out to people who are hard to reach."

"So you hunt down people, gatecrash their parties, and twist their arms on behalf of other people?"

Alarm flickered across his face. "That's one hell of an awful way of saying intermediary."

"Huh." Ashkhen took a sip and dropped the subject, warned off by the intentional vagueness. Small talk didn't make him any less edgy—she tried another approach and gave him a little assuaging nudge on the arm.

"Look, I'm sorry you feel that you're not making headway. And I get it, these diplomatic socials do tend get a little tedious after a while."

His reaction was not one she expected—Fong's features tensed into the facial expression equivalent of a targeting system's lock-on.

"Theeese?" He stretched the vowel to triple its length.

Ashkhen caught the blunder a moment after he did. She kept her posture relaxed—tense shoulders in a halter neck dress would have been a tell so obvious that the people sitting inside would have noticed. Alarm was hidden behind an evasive smile, embarrassment done away with by a slight arch of her neck, and the frantic thinking about how to steer the conversation to less turbulent waters immediately covered by taking an encouraging sip.

What she didn't account for were Fong's headtails.

"Cards on the table, love."

Ashkhen did her best to look genuinely lost, despite her hearts jackhammering against each other.

"Fine, I'll start." Fong flicked his second t'bac stick over balcony railing. "You wanna know what put you on my radar? It wasn't just being cute, let me tell you, but how you stuck out like nobody's business at Irigo's."

So does that mean I'm not cute, or…?

"Don't get me wrong, you're doing a remarkable job"—Fong raised a finger to stop Ashkhen's interruption—"pretending but the backdrop doesn't match your energy. I had this idea to bring you up here and put you in a different setting, and holy kriffing whitecaps, you completely threw me off!"

Ashkhen tried balancing her glass on the balcony railing, but soon took hold again lest it should chase after his vice. It would have been a tough decision to either catch it with the Force in Fong's presence, or risk accidentally killing some unlucky pedestrian a few hundred meters below.

"So your plan was to get me shitfaced and experiment on me?"

Fong ignored the gibe. He had dropped the humour filter in the conversation entirely about three turns ago.

"How many of those"—he nodded at the glass in her hand—"have you had?"

"Uh… three. Four, maybe?"

The frustration diminished—it gave way to an aura of hyperfocus, which Ashkhen found equally uncomfortable.

"Drinking makes people shed their filters. Remove the layers of social conventions, pretentiousness, and you get the genuine idiot at the core. What doesn't make sense is that the more you drink the more highbrow you become, the more you feel at home with statespeople inside! You're cracking jokes about Xim the Despot, chit-chat about Echani traditions… The kriff kind of bartender has an opinion about the Melida/Daan civil war?"

Ashkhen shrugged it off. "People learn that stuff in school."

"Not in many schools below Level 5127." Mistrust and traces of contempt bled into his words. "So what's your deal? Do you get a kick out of descending from your world and watching how we, dirty little animals, live down below?"

Was this the right moment for a full disclosure of the past? Would he laugh? Think her pathetic? Would he even believe it? Why was it so damn important to always say the right thing, the cool thing, the funny thing?

I need a week to thoroughly meditate this shit out!

Ashkhen swallowed and went with a close-enough-to-the-truth-without-oversharing approach.

"Look, it's true. I have been to events like this in the past, but it's not like I was personally invited, I was just expected to tag along."

Fong made a noise reminiscent of a cetacean spout. "Yeah, not buying that. I've known a lot of high end hookers, and trust me, whatever vibe you're giving off is the farthest thing from it."

It was Ashkhen's turn to fold her arms. "A lot?"

Fong rolled past yet another banter opportunity without blinking an eye. "You're a topsider, yes or no?"

The conversation turned into what felt like stilt walking on a minefield covered with ice.

"No! Yes… No, I mean—uhh… I had been. For a while, not anymore."

Why is this so kriffing hard?

"I was brought to live on Coruscant when I was four. I sort of had this life path set out, but I, uh"—she looked away—"I fell short of expectations. Had a fallout with my family and I… left."

An odd expression drifted across his face, a blend of recognition and empathy. The tension slowly dissipated.

"Was that because you got kriffed up on Manaan?"

Ashkhen startled. He had listened, paid attention, remembered, and now connected seemingly unrelated points in her past crazy fast. Borderline unnervingly fast.

"No! Well, uhh… correlation, not causation."

Fong slowly shook his head. "Major dick move. Come, let's get back inside. I propose a toast to families and their kriffing expectations."

The outside sounds cross-faded into the hum of talk and warm laughter, the soft music, and the clinking of glassware as they approached the skytop parlour. Ashkhen allowed herself the rest of the month to sort through the vortex of emotions his hand on her waist prompted.

Once inside again, a smaller aftershock of punch-your-teeth-down-your-throat nudged her senses. Ashkhen followed Fong's gaze and saw Krahl Didyk sprawling at the Sabacc table. The way his yellow chin tattoos accentuated his arrogant smirk made Ashkhen want to deck him, too.

"The Scipioan?"

Despite his outwards calm, murder flashed in Fong's eyes. "For one whose job is to sit and talk to people day in and day out, he sure kriffing sucks at listening."

Ashkhen stopped in her tracks. Fong had been set on Didyk, too? She discarded her half-formed plan in a blink of an eye and examined the question of getting into Didyk's aircar from a new angle. Maybe there was a way to align their interests. She threaded her arm into Fong's, and marched him towards an empty place between the players.

"You want his undivided attention, right?" she addressed Fong's raised eyebrows.

And I need his attention occupied.

"It's a cute sentiment, love, but Didyk's the very definition of big stack bully. You won't lure him in with your tip jar money."

"Oh, I'm not playing, you are!" Ashkhen pushed him into the seat, effectively preempting any protests. She settled right beside him and whispered, "I'll just lend you my luck."

"I'd rather you lent me the buy-in," Fong muttered back.

The other players acknowledged him with a nod, a smile or a combination of both; the Sullustan to his left immediately offered a clammy handshake and introduced himself as Boh Baredo, vice president of Tahura Holdings, the winner of the Colonies Financial Corporation Of The Year award third time in a row.

The croupier took Fong's credits, two cards slid across the baize in return. Ashkhen closed her eyes for a moment as he peeled the cards up.

Just like Master Windu's testing screens, only seventy-six of them.

"Which part of 'no' was unclear?"

Didyk's voice struck a discordant note in the atmosphere of convivial warmth, challenging Ashkhen's composure in a novel way. To greet anyone with a kriff off went against everything Master Balian had once taught her about diplomacy.

The insult glided right off Fong. He reverted to his default state of being at ease with himself and his surroundings, and looked the Scipioan straight in the eyes with a smile that matched his provoking.

"You know I don't like that word," he said, and tossed his bet in.

Ashkhen simply watched the first two rounds play out to get a general feel for the six people around the table. Didyk switched to a tight aggressive gameplay—the elderly gentleman sitting on Fong's left folded out by the end of the second hand; the beads of perspiration glistening on Baredo's facial flaps increased both in numbers and size; and the woman on Didyk's right wouldn't stop fiddling with her pendants, bangles, earrings, noserings and the dangly ornaments on her topknot pin. The man on his left, Ashkhen realised with a start, was shielding. She looked into his saturnine face, but he could have been a droid for all the traces he left in the Force.

"Whatever it is you're selling, I'm not buying." Didyk thrummed his fingers on top of his cards.

Deuce of Staves and Master of Staves, positve sixteen, off to a strong start.

Fong traded a card from his hand for one in the deck. "I merely hope to liaise between those with a strong reason for pooling resources."

"Your kind is the last we'd be willing to associate with."

"Now, now." Baredo raised a four-fingered placating hand, bringing everyone's attention to the fact of there being only two non-human players at the table. "There's no need, Mr. Secretary, there's really no need."

Ashkhen's concentration broke. She shifted in her seat, clamping down on the urge to dislodge a few pieces of the lady player's pointy metal hair jewellery with the Force, and staple Didyk's hands to the table with them. Fong casually dropped a hand on her knee. She slowly exhaled, and remained silent.

Baredo has the Endurance and the Demise, negative twenty-one, tricky.

"Oh, there be backs to be scratched a lot bigger than mine," Fong continued. "Some span quite an expanse between the Mid Rim and Outer Rim."

The Scipioan reached for the deck and drew two cards. A frown appeared on his face, puzzling Ashkhen. Didyk was a real shark in a suit—drawing the Mistress of Staves and the second Demise which promptly cancelled each other out, didn't warrant such an obvious display of consternation. The shift in his mood however, also coincided with what Fong had said. Didyk placed the Demise in the interference field, and looked across the table with a condescending smile.

"Do you have any idea, Mr. Do, how many people are trying to get a foot in Senator Clovis's office door?" Didyk propped a credit chit on its corner and slowly twirled it around. "Flocks of entrepreneurs like yourself, fondle our doorknob and whine and scratch at the door, expecting the Banking Clan to just hand out money."

Okay, so Miss Trinket is about to bomb out, Mysterious Stranger totals at positive fourteen, and Baredo will stand if he knows what's good for him.

"I'm not asking for money, I'm offering, in a sense," Fong said. He traded yet another card with one from the deck, but his hand was still far from totalling twenty-three. He didn't seem particularly concerned. "What if I said I knew a way for Senator Clovis to reduce freight costs by a significant margin? What if he didn't have to waste all that time going around the Triellus trade route to get his shipments to the Capital?"

Didyk looked up. His alarm rang through the Force as the Randomizer went off. The suits and values on all the cards changed but on the four that had already been placed in the interference field.

Oh, my. Baredo, Lady Bibelot and Didyk all got the short end of the stick. And Fong's at positive twenty-one.

Ashkhen was too busy keeping tabs on all the players' cards to address the question tingling at the back of her mind—the Triellus Trade Route lay nowhere near Coruscant.

Fong's rhetoric had the tendency to put people on tilt—Didyk was no exception. He lost the hand pot to the mysterious man with the dark complexion, but didn't seem to be bothered by it. Ashkhen had a vague feeling they were playing in tandem. A few minutes of conversationless play passed before Fong continued his pitch.

"True, there are mountains of candidates, but affiliation with the one I bring word from would be the most profitable for Senator Clovis and those in his circle."

Didyk acted as though he didn't get the message, insulting both Nautolans' perceptivity across the table.

"I'm afraid setting up even a precursor meeting would require reaching depths well beyond my recreational diving range."

"My client, Mr. Secretary, is a very private man. All negotiations would be conducted via courier."

"Let me guess: you?"

"Trust me, my kind is still the least conspicuous to be seen in the Senator's spotless and pristine presence." Fong leaned back and draped an arm over the back of Ashkhen's chair. Cards laid face down on the baize, he reached for a glass on a passing server's tray.

"How about this," he continued. "Bet one hour of your time. If I win, you'll listen to what my client has to say."

Didyk regarded him with an expressionless mien, then his lips pulled into a predatory smile.

"And if I win, I'll take your lovely lucky charm off your hands for the next hour." He gave Ashkhen the glad eye.

Ashkhen's huff over his taunting was nothing compared to Fong's seething storm of rage. He raised his drink with such strained reserve that Ashkhen was afraid the glass would shatter between his jaws. Didyk threw away his last card, enjoying the moment as he waited for Fong, effectively unsettled, to answer.

"If brazen enough to goad the gundark in its own den, then don't expect to get away scot-free."

For a moment, they forgot the evening. This was a private affair between two men.

"Call!"

Ashkhen's cheerful announcement had Fong cough into his glass mid-swivel. She gave him a mock innocent look.

"This is so exciting! Ooh, can I?"—she pointed at the deck and drew a card without waiting for his answer—"I mean, it's kind of, like, now I'm part of the game too, isn't it?"

Assuming such a doltish persona didn't come naturally, but Ashkhen needed everyone's focus on the final showdown, especially Didyk's. The card he had thrown away wasn't from the pack they were playing with—he was planning to use a chiseled Pure Sabacc hand to humiliate Fong. Kriff him.

"Look at that!" Ashkhen handed Fong the Three of Sabers, voice dropping to a whisper, "Four of a kind!"

"That's a different game, love." Fong threw away the card with the highest value, so he wouldn't bomb out. As blind with rage as he was, his gestures remained remarkably steady and light.

Didyk drew a finger across his throat and fanned his cards down the table. A collective 'oooh' of appreciation spilled from the other players and those following the game with bated breath. Ashkhen looked on through half closed eyes. The Randomizer went on again, leaving Fong with the Idiot, the Two of Flasks and the Three of Sabers. For someone ending their turn with the rarest of the winning hands, his demeanour remained remarkably relaxed and laidback, as though it happened every time he sat down to play.

Ashkhen tried her damnedest to look as surprised as the rest of the players and give a giddy little applause as Fong pulled the sabacc pot towards himself.

"Good game." Didyk nodded. He seemed an awful good sport about losing. Ashkhen suspected that despite his previous conduct, he was truly interested in what Fong's client had to offer. "Meet me upstairs in five minutes."

When he left, Fong turned to Ashkhen, pulling his comlink out of his pocket.

"I swear I'm hopping off for the last time," he said. "Give me six minutes, then I'm taking you to Canto Bight."