I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight.

It'd been a couple of weeks. So far, progress had been slow but steady. A spice delivery here, breaking someone's arm there... it hadn't taken all that much to impress the idiots running operations out here. What had taken a while was for the idiots to get in over their head, though Atton had known they would, back when he'd put this operation together. It had just been a matter of time... and opportunity.

( The time had come. )

[[ nfb, nfi. ]]

Nothing had gone wrong so far. Atton didn't really trust it, but he also wasn't going to complain about it. Senator Immoan was not an asshole, unlike the last person Atton had had to save: in fact, she was downright helpful and knew when to stay out of the way, neither passing out nor throwing big showy fits about usefulness and security.

Downside was that yeah, there were Force-users hidden between the pirates, but they'd anticipated for that. That was why Atton had to be here, after all, shielding his thoughts. As far as he could tell, they didn't even know he was here-- they'd thought the Senator had escaped by herself, and considering her personality, it was a reasonable assumption.

By all rights, he should thank his luck and get out now, then signal in Visas and Onasi's troops to take the base. Problem was, he still hadn't found those artifacts.

Maybe he should stop looking. The smart thing would be to stop looking. It wasn't like Mical needed yet another thing to get stuffy about while Atton bled because Force artifacts always managed to get aggressive somehow. Yeah. Walking away would be good.

"We're going to head towards--" he said, turning towards Immoan.

And then he sensed them. The rest of the sentence died in his mouth. Instead he whispered something profane in Twi'lekki.

The Senator tilted her head at him. "Sorry, what's the problem?"

"I've got something to pick up," he said, "I've got to go pick it up right now, or we're going to be in deep poodoo--"

The power went down. The door in front of them slammed back with incredible power, and suddenly they were stuck in perfect darkness.

"Poodoo!"

It couldn't go right just once, could it?

[[ waiting-at-the-press-center updates are a go, apparently. nfb, nfi. ]]