Nar Shaddaa, Monday Morning

[myownface]

"Shit, do you think we lost them?" Sparkle's (admittedly very stupid) question had been answered pretty immediately as the hot white glow of a blaster shot just barely missed his head. He squawked and ducked down low before turning wide eyes to Atton. "We haven't lost them."

In case Atton needed the update. Odds were pretty good that he didn't. They'd come to Nar Shaddaa because on some pollen-warped desperate level it had seemed more appealing than Baltimore, what with its distance from Fandom and tendency toward questionable morals and its Twi'leks. Possibly mostly for the Twi'leks. And this had turned out to be a very good idea for them both for a while. Right up until they found out, and not for the first time around here, that perhaps they had been getting a little too comfortable with the wrong Twi'leks.

So, now there was a Hutt mafia boss who was extremely upset (or else bored and feeling especially vindictive, which generally worked out to the same thing when it came to the Hutts in the first place), and Sparkle and Atton were sort of being chased. Ruthlessly. Not by the Hutt, obviously. But by a handful of people who worked for him, who were all, apparently, actually pretty decent at their jobs.

"Shit. Shit, fucking shitfuck fuckshit. How is it that we always end up in the wrong place at the wrong time when we come here?"

See, that was the thing. On Nar Shaddaa, it was always the wrong place, and always the wrong time.

[OOC: NFB for distance, of course, and for that guy!]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

All right, good. See, the reason Atton had made Sparkle go first was because Sparkle couldn't do things like launch himself up off the ground and onto a sign several feet up into the air. And then speed, one Force leap after another, up and forwards, towards the speeders.

He was going to ignore the fact his gut kept screaming at him over it. People were shooting at him. He didn't have time to deal with lingering injuries from the last time he'd been an idiot.

Force projecting emotions wasn't entirely his specialty, or at least not something he was heavily trained in-- so the 'hey, do we have a speeder?' he tried to pass on to Sparkle mostly translated into a blast of psychic ???????????s.

[myownface]

Sparkle had no idea what to do with a shit-tonne of ?????????s suddenly smacking into his brain, and he actually jumped a bit, wide-eyed, with something of a !!!!!?!?!? in response.

Here he was, minding his own business (his business was 'not getting killed') and giving dirty looks to anyone who wandered close enough to the speeder he'd staked out to have them sort of side-eye him and pick another one, and then there was just this wave of Atton-flavoured-question in his head and he wasn't completely certain for a few moments if he'd just gone insane.

More insane? Everything about this was pretty crazy fucked-up, dammit.

[suitably_heroic]

For Force's sake, how long had you been on the island, Sparkle? And you'd never run into anyone with weird psychic powers? For the love of-- Atton let out an irritated noise that was lost on the empty air he was currently occupying.

Then he hurled himself off the roof of the building he'd just landed on, slamming into the speeder next to Sparkle's with a loud thump.

Feet-first, so he was technically upright and ready to go, but seriously, last week's injuries weren't enjoying this one bit.

[myownface]

You know, he actually hadn't? Which Sparkle would have considered nothing shy of miraculous under most other circumstances, but right now it was just sort of looking more and more inconvenient.

At least he didn't jump quite as much when Atton landed, since he'd sort of been expecting something like that to happen anyway. But now that Atton was here, Sparkle was heaving himself up onto his own speeder and giving him the side-eye.

"So, now how close are we to losing them?"

Sparkle really needed to stop asking that question.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton looked over his shoulder.

"Get in the seat quick," he said, jumping out of the one he'd landed on and practically vaulting into the driver's seat.

[myownface]

"That close, huh?" Yeah, Sparkle didn't need to be told twice, planting his ass down and grabbing onto anything stable on the speeder that he could get his hands on. "Great. Good. So, let's go, then!"

As much as Sparkle wanted to just sit around and chat, the sound of the Hutt's lackeys barking orders to one another was getting louder, and Sparkle was getting appropriately paranoid in turn.

[suitably_heroic]

Sadly, they couldn't just hit the pedal and go-- Atton reached down into a compartment and yanked out some electronics. Luckily, he had some experience with this (though he was trying not to think about the last time he'd ridden a speeder in a hurry on Nar Shaddaa) so it didn't take long.

The speeder pulled up into the air and zoomed off, at speeds that were probably a little too fast for it. "Okay, now we just need to get... to the other side of this moon, probably!"

[myownface]

"Oh! Great! That shouldn't be hard!"

When Sparkle was afraid for his life, he tended to say stupid and utterly untrue things like that, so sue him. But it beat screaming a lot? And looking over his shoulder really wasn't helping him calm down, since now this had gone from being a shootout to... yep. There they were, pulling out of the speeder lot behind them. A speeder chase. With blasters.

[suitably_heroic]

The sad thing was that it wasn't Atton's first speeder chase with blasters. Or his second. Or even his third. Though he was hoping at least this one wouldn't end him breaking out of some Hutt's prison again, because that hadn't been fun the first time.

... or the second.

"You still got your blaster on you?" Atton yelled.

A quick glance over his shoulder and he could tell there were some pretty angry specks behind them, kicking up the engines a notch. Sigh.

[myownface]

Sparkle had been really, really stupidly hoping that this wasn't going to come to that, but he was making a grudging reach for where his blaster was tucked away all the same.

"Yeah," he called back, swallowing and looking at the damn thing in his hands. "Pretty sure I can't manage that crotch shot from here, though."

[suitably_heroic]

"Just clip their speeders!" Atton yelled.

What? It was a better alternative than 'Just shoot them in the head!'.

[myownface]

"That is a slightly easier target," Sparkle called back, swallowing before taking aim. The little angry specks were becoming little angry guys on speeders, which was going to make this whole thing easier still.

Right? That was how it worked?

Sparkle hated everything.

[suitably_heroic]

"Did somebody's grandma design this speeder?!" Atton growled, hitting the pedal as hard as he could. "Okay, we're in luck, I sense just two teams of 'em. We should be able to handle two speeders, right?"

[myownface]

"I picked the fastest of the like three speeders I recognized," Sparkle protested, taking a few shots at the incoming speeders. "And two? Two's not so bad!"

No, two was still pretty terrible, considering they were much better shots than he was. But there was something to be said for false bravado, right?

[suitably_heroic]

False bravado was great! You could coast on that for quite a while!

Coast right into trouble, most of the time.

"Just got to cripple them and then we're home free," Atton agreed. Home free to limp back home and, at least in his case, an impending case of blue balls. Fantastic.

The speeders were starting to get close-- close enough you could just about identify the barrels of those blasters firing at them, now. "E chu ta! Okay, evasive maneuvers!"

[myownface]

"Evasive's good," Sparkle decided, because he was not in the mood to get himself shot today. "I'm a huge fan of evasive!"

He was pretty sure that guy he'd been ogling just winked at him before firing off another blaster shot their way. That was it; Sparkle was so not going to try to entice him into a back room or something the next time they met in a cantina somewhere. Jerk.

... Really hot blue jerk. Sparkle wrinkled his nose at him before shooting again, missing the guy's shoulder by... actually, not much. He'd be proud of that later, if they didn't die today.

"What constitutes evasive?"

[suitably_heroic]

"It means hold on," Atton snapped, slamming the wheel so the speeder shot abruptly to the left. "...Are you ogling that damn Chiss while he's shooting at us?!"

[myownface]

"No?"

That was a damn dirty lie. But not all of the pollen was out of Sparkle's system yet, and goddamn it, there had been flirting back there before the whole shooting thing, and Nar Shaddaa sucked. But it was hard to be terribly convincing when your top priority was 'not falling ass over tit off the speeder,' and Sparkle didn't much care either way because he knew Atton would know better, and look, he was shooting again! See him shooting again?

At the guy in the speeder with the Chiss, because they were close enough now that Sparkle could get a pretty clear shot while they shot past. There was a loud and unhappy noise from the other speeder that suggested that maybe Sparkle's aim wasn't completely shitty, either.

[suitably_heroic]

"Well, unless you've got some brilliant plan to distract him by taking your shirt off, stop!"

Look, complaining was just kind of what Atton did. You knew that.

"What'd I just hear? Did you get one?!"

[myownface]

"I... I think I did," Sparkle replied, and yes, he sounded just as bewildered about that as one might expect. He sat up a little and craned his head back to look. "I got one! Oh shit I got one."

This required emotions. Sparkle was processing. Still shooting as the second speeder figured out which way it was going and started giving chase again. But Hot Chiss was pulling his speeder over to kick his dead-weight companion off, which was going to stall him for another few moments.

... Not that long.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton let out an irritated grunt. "You know what," he said, "How about you take the wheel?!"

[myownface]

"Take the- I can't even drive a car!"

They were going to die. It was pretty official now, right? Like, their options were let Sparkle shoot at people or let him drive a speeder and there was no way this was going to end well for them either way.

[suitably_heroic]

"It's not that hard," Atton yelled, already crawling up and out of his seat. "Just hit the throttle and keep the thing pointing forward!"

[myownface]

Sparkle, probably wisely, decided not to ask which one was the throttle as he made a kind of desperate lunge for the controls to straighten out the speeder again.

Okay. Okay, he could do this. He was going to swear a lot, but the first thing he hit was apparently the throttle because they were speeding up, so that was good, right?

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..."

[suitably_heroic]

"Calm down, I've got this," Atton snapped.

And Sparkle hyperventilating wasn't going to help anybody.

Atton crawled up onto the back of the speeder. Okay, Sparkle's Chiss buddy was still lagging behind, but the other flunkies were right on their tail. He aimed and fired, landing several easy bolts dead in the center of the enemy speeder, which started smoking alarmingly.

A moment later, it plunged.