OOM.

One week after the end of Atton and Aeryn's holiday.

“... I mean, what closet actually, y’know, leads into a closet?” Atton hissed to the bartender. “... Alright, all of them do, generally, but that isn’t the point!”
“Is this whole closet rant one of these new fangled allegories, kiddo?” The bartender asked slowly. “You hear all sorts of things about closets these days.”

Atton glared.

”No,” He snapped. “It isn’t. And I’m thirty-fracking-one years old, I’m hardly a ‘kiddo.’ And where’s that drink? I asked for it an hour ago.”
“Ten minutes, actually,” The bartender replied, washing a glass carefully. “And we don’t serve alcoholic beverages at this hour.”

Atton blinked, staring at the bartender in something approaching disbelief.
“Come again? You’re the seediest bar in the roughest, dirtiest, crime-infested area of the lowest level of Coruscant,” Atton said. “And you don’t sell drinks late at night?”

The bartender bristled.
“People were complaining that alcoholic beverages sold after dark - ...”
”After dark? There’s no sunlight on this level!”
“That alcoholic beverages sold after dark,” The barman continued. “Lead to particularly nasty brawls. Now, I’m hoping to get a more upmarket place, maybe on the fifth level, one that sells bags of crisps, and I won’t get that if I let ragamuffins run amok in my bar.”

Atton banged his head against the bar.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Here, you can have a blue milk, on the house.”
“Thanks.” Atton almost spat. He opened his mouth to make an insult about the bartender’s parentage and closed it again as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt a faint heat against the side of his face.

The glass shattered as it was slid across to him, smoke rising from the shards. Atton sprang to his feet, turning in the direction that the blaster shot had come from.

There were voices outside the cantina.
“Alright, the sniper stuffed it up,” He heard somebody to call. “Let loose with it, guys.”

Atton dropped down onto his stomach as a dozen blaster bolts shot through the thin, dirty windows, and another dozen and another dozen. Atton saw the bartender crumple to the ground, along with all the patrons who hadn’t gotten down quickly enough.

The blaster fire stopped as suddenly as it started. Atton faintly heard something metal clatter to the ground, and a long hiss. Atton looked round as a cloud of grey, choking smoke filled the room. Clapping a hand over his mouth, he kicked open a nearby door and barged through into the back room, out of the reach of the smoke.

Through the Force, he felt heat against his back as he sensed people following him. A few moments later, he heard the clank of their boots, getting louder and louder.

Atton kicked open another door, igniting his lightsaber and welding it to the wall as he slammed it closed.

He wasn’t even as far as the next door before it was blown open, sending fragments of metal everywhere. Atton pushed open the next door, stumbling out into the dusty back alley of the cantina, where a speeder was parked.

Atton leapt in, started it up and shot upwards.

OOM2.

Atton landed the speeder rather haphazardly on the edge of the building he had landed his ship on. Stepping out of the speeder, he sprinted over to the ship.

The ramp pulled up with a mechanical clanking and a hiss. Atton stopped abruptly. The ship hovered, turning and blasting off into the distance. Atton just stood there, completely nonplussed.

“What the frack?” He cursed slightly, stopping when he felt a prickling on the back of his neck, and a burning hot wind on his back, and the faint idea that there was something wrong. At the corners of his mind, he felt a niggling urge to stay just where he was and not look round.

He tightened his defences and turned, looking straight at the mask of the Dark Jedi he had met at the temple, not too long ago.

“Ah,” Atton gritted his teeth. “You.” A second later, the Dark Jedi swung his hand, hurling Atton backwards with the Force. Atton landed on the edge, toppled and fell, grabbing hold of the side of the building as the Dark Jedi approached, igniting his lightsaber.

Atton closed his eyes and propelled himself upwards, his lightsaber snapping to life.

OOM3

Atton leant on the scaffolding of the garage, completely silent, lest the Dark Jedi hear him. In the week and a half since his ship was stolen, he had been attacked in a variety of ways. The result was an interesting, if somewhat grotesque collection of bruises and rapidly patched up wounds and a good deal of irritatingly scratchy stubble.

Atton hated the scratchyness more, personally.

Atton knew he should have been tired. He had barely slept, his body was on the verge of going ‘frack it, just die already’ and through some bizarrely horrific coincidence, he had been stuck in more corridors with ominously flickering lights than ever before.

It hadn’t occured to him to be tired until then.

Atton looked over at the rope. He looked at his hands - covered in blood, and for a moment, he had the horrified thought that he had just been in a torture chamber. The clinical mindset of a murderer surfaced, and he tentatively touched one of his palms. The blood was warm, and coming from his own palms, where the flesh had chafed away from climbing up the hanging cable.

Ah, that was good then.

Atton grasped the cable again, ignoring the pain and pulling himself up it again.

He felt something below him, something wrong, and looked down. The Dark Jedi hadn’t seen him yet, standing directly below the cable. Atton tried not to breath too loudly and waited.

The Dark Jedi’s head snapped round so that he was staring straight up at Atton. The cable swung, from side to side and Atton could see it fraying just above him.

He pulled himself up it, fast as he could, refusing to look down or notice the rope swinging round faster and faster. The rope snapped. Atton was already off it and on the last level of scaffolding, just above a hole in the roof.

Atton clambered up through the hole, crawling along the roof and taking a deep breath, struggling to his feet.

He felt a gloved hand rest on his shoulder and turn him round, the other hand grasping his throat. Atton stared at the Dark Jedi’s mask as he coldly cut off Atton’s air supply.

There was a flicker of power from Atton, sending the Dark Jedi skidding backwards.

Atton could almost see the Dark Jedi sneer under his mask as he paced around Atton.

“You’re tired,” It was the first time Atton had heard the Dark Jedi speak, and instead of it being a sibilant hiss as he had expected, it was a fairly normal voice. Young male, slightly musical sounding, Alderaanian accent. “You’re injured. And I have already bested you once, twice, three times, Jedi? Do not try and escape, or push me back, simply ... give in. It’s much more peaceful, that way. You don’t go out kicking and screaming.”

“Maybe I want to go out kicking and screaming.” Atton said weakly.

“I don’t think so. I think you just want to lay down and die. I think that’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“You really should have become a psychiatrist. You have the language, mannerisms and the tendancy to hunt people down and kill them in horrific ways mastered completely.”

“Cute. Your heart isn’t in it, though.”

He was right, and Atton knew it, his heart wasn’t in it. It was a habitual defiance.

“This is your last chance, Jedi.”
“Oh, shut up and die.” Atton didn’t even think about the words before they left his mouth.

The Dark Jedi nodded, igniting his lightsaber with a flourish. Atton did the same. The Dark Jedi lunged.

The battle was short and brutal. Atton staggered back, fending off blows from the Dark Jedi. Within two minutes, Atton was at the edge, and in a quick swing, the Dark Jedi neatly cut the lightsaber in two, the top part of it tumbling down into the depths of Coruscant.

Atton tossed aside the usely remains of the lightsaber, eyeing the blade the Dark Jedi had pointed at his forehead.

“Sorry,” Atton sighed, closing his eyes. “You aren’t going to get me that easily.” He leant back, falling off the edge of the building.