Give 'Goal of the Century' by Gang of Youths a listen for the full atmosphere of this chapter. Credit to their amazing song-writing for inspiring the central scene.

Chapter 3: Underdog Insomniac

In hours of insufferable economics classes, it had been traitor to Mandalore Jeren Almec who taught Korkie his favourite adage: "Always follow the money." It had been Almec's undoing, of course, when Korkie had followed the black-market money far enough to lead back to the Prime Minister himself. Korkie wondered what had happened to him when Mandalore had been obliterated. Had he still been locked up in his prison cell, quaking or resigned, listening to the bombs overhead? More likely, Satine Kryze would have freed the prisoners and allowed them a chance, at the very least, to fight for their own lives. Korkie's mother had been fair in that way.

But none of it mattered, in the end. Whether Almec had been in or out of that cell, he would be dead. An unrecognisable pile of scorched bones. Another lost fragment of Korkie's past life. Another memory that he would never be entirely sure he had recalled correctly.

Follow the money.

Korkie walked the streets of Corellia and thought of Han with his carefully accrued savings. There was money to be had in the black market but it was obvious that working one's way up from the bottom of the pecking order was no simple feat. He needed an industry with less intellect.

All anyone cares about is who wins the next barely-regulated cage fight.

Tipping a scavenged cap low on his forehead, eyeing what might have been a facial recognition droid, Korkie reached out in the Force for the roar of the crowd.

Korkie's proposal was met by a predictable roar of laughter from Rani Talapa, Master of Ceremonies at Coronet City's self-proclaimed bloodiest fighting arena.

"And what should make me believe that you're going to give us a good show, young man?"

The Weequay chuckled as he tossed a battered cleaning droid into the cage-encircled octagon. The droid bounced, righted itself, and began to steam clean the bloodied mat with a disconsolate low hiss.

"I've been training nearly all my life," Korkie told him. "Give me a fight and I'll show you."

Rani raised a sceptical brow.

"You saw that shoulder dislocation tonight, kid?"

Korkie wished that he hadn't.

"Yes."

"You saw Mana knock out Tresto?"

"I did."

"Can you give me something like that?"

Korkie swallowed his reluctance.

"I can give you more than that."

The Weequay considered him, bemused.

"You know I can only offer you small stuff first."

Korkie shrugged.

"That's fine. Start me small. But I promise you, you'll see me fight and you'll be in a hurry to move me onto something bigger."

Rani chuckled.

"Confident, eh?"

Korkie nodded earnestly. Rani sighed.

"Tell you what. If you want it so bad, I can get you a fight tomorrow. Curtain-raiser for the main event."

Rani eyed Korkie's rising grin with warning.

"Tha-"

"Save your thanks," Rani advised. "I'm only giving you the fight because the people will like watching a posh-talking pretty boy like you get whacked around."

Korkie rolled his eyes. His accent, deliberately butchered already from what it once had been, was still a subject of disdain.

"It'll be the main draw next week, Rani."

The Weequay chuckled once more.

"Sure, kid. So long as we make a profit."

As Korkie stood beneath the swooping lights – red, blue, blinding white – with his wrists wrapped in strips torn off a sheet he'd scavenged from a garbage bin, his head filling with the roar of the crowd, he thought of his mother.

When Mum hears about this, she's going to…

The brief flicker of forgetting. That tiny instant of comfort. And then a crushing sorrow, for of course she would never hear about this or anything ever again. Nor would she ever again throw up her hands and bemoan the day she ever chose to conceive a child with a belligerent, sabre-wielding Jetii who did not truly know the meaning of the word negotiation.

But Korkie let it fall away from him. Everything fell away. He felt his heart beating in his ears, in his chest, in every cell of his body. He knew this moment. He'd been here before. Light on his face. On a balcony with his mother at his feet and Darth Maul before him. Yes, he knew this moment. He knew what do to.

Today's opponent was no zabrak but a hulking Dowutin. No weight classes in this league, Rani had told him. He'd neglected to tell him there were no species classes either. But it didn't matter. None of it did. Korkie had a strange feeling in him now, an impossible weightlessness, as though he had been eviscerated of all that made him human, all that made him Korkaran Kryze, and he was rising now, levitating, inhuman and invincible.

Korkie had left Tatooine to change the galaxy and he'd not done it yet. But he'd made a pact with himself as he fled Kalarba and he wasn't going to fail now. He'd right all his wrongs. He'd be a hero, one day. And until then, he'd be the underdog. The thorn in their side.

Rani Talapa's throaty cry rang out over the jeers and whistles from the crowd.

"Aaaaaaaand fight!"

Forward and into the light. Into the sound. Barely seeing the Dowutin before him, only feeling. The way his father had taught him. Knowing where his opponent would cast his blow and dodging easily, watching him stumble. Korkie carried no weapon but the weapon was within him. A kick landed in the abdomen. An elbow into an eye. Korkie nearly felled his giant before he remembered the patrolling droids outside.

The people will like watching a posh-talking pretty boy like you get whacked around.

Korkie ignored the warning in the Force – it took every ounce of his grit, to ignore that screaming protest – and took the blow to his face. He somehow heard and did not hear the pop of his nose bursting apart; perhaps he felt it, the vibration of it, for he surely could not have heard it over the crescendoing shrieks in the crowd. He stumbled with it and for a few moments saw nothing at all.

When Mum hears about this, she's going to…

Korkie staggered, righted himself, ducked the follow-up blow and found the Dowutin's temple with his bare foot. The giant crashed to the ground. Korkie lifted his arms and dropped to his knees as the lights engulfed him. The blood was iron in his mouth. It was beskar. He had won.

He felt his Ba'vodu Bo-Katan's hand beneath his arm, hauling him to his feet, as she had done a hundred times before. It took Korkie a few moments to realise that the leathery hand belonged to Rani Talapa.

"Well, young Ben, you've taken a beating," he boomed. "But you've done it! What a debut! A victory over the infamous Gansar Khan!"

Korkie's tongue fumbled over the words.

"I'll take a beating for it, Rani," he managed. "Anything to get the people on their feet."

Anything to make this whole mess right again.

The crowd did not understand him. They clamoured at the wire-fenced cage. They were calling out to him. Calling him by his stolen name.

"I don't know how you've done it, young man. But I congratulate you sincerely."

Rani flashed him a smile before turning to the crowd.

"This young warrior told me he wants a main event! Will we give him a main event?"

The cheers were deafening.

"Ben the Giant Slayer will have his main event!" Rani roared. "Let's see if this underdog can make a rich man of another brave punter next week! He'll come up as an outside six-to-one against the in-form Razor Rex…"

Korkie spat a glob of blood onto the mat and managed his heartiest smile, offered a wave.

If his mother could have seen it, she would have cried and cried and cried.

Korkie walked the streets a long time that night. A fine rain was falling and softened the sounds of the late-hour stragglers: the drunks vomiting into the gutters, the shouts and slammed doors of a domestic argument, the infants crying for milk. The moons were smothered in cloud but there was enough light to walk by. Neon signs in the shopfronts. An occasionally functional streetlight. Sweeping fluorescent arcs as speeder-cabs flew intermittently overhead. Korkie plodded through the not-quite sleeping city and was glad for the distant company.

The thought of laying down was unbearable to him. He thought his father might have told him something about that once – the desperate desire for forward momentum that he too had known in his youth, all the trouble he got into for leaving the Temple at night, in the years before Qui Gon Jinn and the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Korkie wanted to talk to him. He wanted to talk to him so badly. Not to say anything particularly profound. Just to tell him about the fight and why he'd done it and to try to put words to the strange way that he felt now. The way that he felt a stranger in his own body.

"I'm not the same person that I was," he voiced.

A rubbish-choked sewer gurgled with the influx of rainwater. The yellow gaze of a patrol droid swept blankly across his broken face.

The rain began to fall harder and Korkie lifted his hood. His jacket wasn't quite waterproof anymore; he'd had to meddle with it, sew a few choice patches on, to disguise that it had once been the uniform of a Mandalorian cadet. An even more useless cloak lay rolled, damp and heavy, in his backpack.

Why had he brought it with him?

The heavy brown wool would not keep him dry in the rain and it would not bring his father back to him. It could not bridge that impossible distance from the living to the dead. Korkie would never hear that voice again.

He trudged onwards. He wasn't the same person that he once had been. But what did it matter? There was no one left to mourn the loss.

Aw, Korkie. My baby. I love this rainy nighttime moment and I hope you enjoyed it too.

Next chapter, Korkie's cage-fighting career lands him in some trouble. Han does his best to help him out of it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

xx - S.