There's a city smell on Atton's ship too - metal and pollution and dirt, just slightly. The navcomputer, in the centre of the lounge where they emerge from the bar, indicates via holographic display that they're on Coruscant.

Atton closes the door behind them and heads towards the training area, talking over his shoulder as he goes. "There's bottles of water on the counter if you want to bring one along. Hydration is important, I hear."

Atton takes Guppy out onto the surface of Kazic III, into a large settlement the centre of which seems to be almost completely taken up by a festival. Which means merchants lining every street with stalls, tents for fortune-tellers, a performance going on at one end of the city centre (it appears to be the story of a particularly bloody war, represented with physical theatre by some very athletic dancers) and a stage at the other end which is currently not being used, judging by the burly men socialising and posturing at each other on it.

Atton's dressed up warm, because even though it's the warm season, it's still Kazic III, which makes it about as cold as a Scottish winter.

The ring on Atton's ship looks like it's undergone a renovation of sorts - though the faint smell of ozone in the air suggests this was probably not out of choice on Atton's part. Atton leads Fett in.

"So, what should we set the prize money at this time?" Atton asks, fiddling about with a console by the lockers. "My opening bid is twenty-five thousand credits."

Atton is in the gym, in a grey tank top and shorts, wailing on a punching bag with considerable vehemence.

The vehemence most likely isn't really anger, per se - more just enthusiasm combined with another sort of frustration stemming from being away from the bar for several months.

Either way, he's been there long enough that he's literally dripping with sweat: His hair is stuck flat to his head, his clothes are soaked through and clinging to him, it's flying off in droplets every time he makes a sharp movement.

"Okay," Atton says, holding the door open for Kale. "We're going to have to stay with my brother until I find us a place of our own. Shouldn't be more than a few days."

The door leads out onto a rectangular white room with a dozen tiers, and large windows looking out on a dark green landscape with a glowing purple sky.

There aren't any people around, currently. It's practically a ghost outpost.

As soon as Will let him into Nottingham, Atton gave him a quick thanks, told him he'd be back by the next morning (morning after that at the very latest) and Force-sped off to London.

Once there, he sought out Much. Not exactly a difficult task - he'd been there often enough to know where and when the group of fighters Much was a part of met to fight.

(It crossed his mind that he might be a bit madder than usual: Much had beaten him three times, and while his pragmatic mind said it might be time to stop trying, his competitive mind said to keep going.)

So, he headed to where Much and the other fighters usually were, keeping an eye out for them.

Atton has carted a little table and some moving targets out by the lake, and is testing out some of his newly designed weapons.

Most of them are swords of some kind, by the looks of it, but there's two high-tech pistols and what looks like an upgraded version of his vibrodisk.

He's also got a lamp set up. The lake area is dark at night.

Currently, he's got what looks like a sheathed katana in his hand - black metal, mostly, or black cloth. He's tapping some keys on the sheath, though, rather than attacking with it.

There's not really any such thing as a morning on Kazic III, but if there was, now would be it. There are people starting to mill around the village, setting up market stalls, and off on a higher cliff, guards running through training.

There's something approaching breakfast (some kind of mostly tasteless porridge) being made in the Tae household, but Jaq is conspicuously absent.

Kazic III doesn't have a day or a night - the sky constantly glows with shifting patterns of warm, pleasant colours. It does have a generally accepted time when most people are asleep, though, and now is it.

There are still guards, though. They keep around the edge of the settlement, and occasionally give slightly wary glances towards the green flashes off in the distance. They're probably nothing: Some quirk in the atmosphere or something similar, but they could be the signs of a distant battle.

Their attention isn't really caught until shapes start shifting in the trees, mostly silent and not quite visible. One guard murmurs something to another and heads off into the forest, gun hefted high to shoot anything suspicious looking.

He returns a moment later, with spots of red around his mouth, but looking chirpy enough.
"Just an animal," brightly, to his companion, setting a hand on his back and steering him towards the forest. "Come check if there are any more."

As they walk, he reaches up to wipe at something warm leaking down from his eyes. His hand comes away red, and he wipes it on his furs as the two vanish off into the forest.

There's a sharp, strangled scream, and then they return, both smiling merrily, dabbing rapidly reddening pieces of cloth at their eyes.

-----

In the Tae household, things are a lot less bloody, but very loud for this time of the not-evening. The old, heavily armed woman who Guppy, Teja and Kate met earlier is milling about, trying to keep control of four unruly children. One of them, a young boy, is rushing around making starfighter noises, while Lyman has hopped up on a stool to laboriously stir a vat of some kind of stew, and a young girl holds two makeshift dolls of cloth and wood in each hand.

She's keeping close to Guppy, Teja and Kate. The show is clearly for their benefit.

"'I shall defeat you, Anabellizzastein!'" She squeaks in the voice of one doll, a greying, one-eyed cloth thing with bright pink hair. The other doll, hairless and extravagantly dressed in scraps of fur, replies (in a much deeper voice): "'It's too late, Chieftain Ranalin! I have already unleashed my monster!'"

Jaq is staring out the window, brow furrowed. He is hit in the head by a large, reddish cloth doll tossed at him by his sister.

"Jaq!" The young girl calls. "I need you to come and play the monster!"

"In a minute."


The old woman settles down near Teja, Kate and Guppy, propping a gun up against her chair.
"It's crowded here, but we manage to get by."

I bring you the vaguest of all planning posts, because I'm pretty content to just wing it, for the most part.

But, here is at least a vague outline to work with. Big spaces between lines are to seperate one thread from another.:

- Teja, Guppy and Kate arrive!
- At some point, they get taken to the town, probably by tiny!Atton.

- In the night, Fiendish Outerdimensional Creatures stealthily burrow their way inside some people to use as fleshy puppets.

- The next day, shenanigans in town. Some people acting strangely.

- Fiendish Outerdimensional Creatures attack! Kate, Guppy, and Teja head to the portal to go through and close it.
- Return to Milliways.

I have no idea what Atton will be doing, during this time. He might be thrown somewhere else on the same planet in the same time, and join up with them near the end.