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Coming out of hyperspace, the blue and green gem flashed a few quick glints as the angle of the ship's approach made the sunlight appear as if it was dancing across the edges of the planet's atmosphere. Inside the hijacked YT-2400, the Traitor's Gambit, Durose slowly made his way to the cockpit as he felt the ship lunge out of hyperspace and begin to drift. This is it. Let’s get this over with already. Hitting the comms, Ro contacted Dhon as he entered atmo. The unkept Cathar had Ro’s face but a dirty, roughly trimmed mane and two braided strands of mane hair that extended down from his chin on each side. He was what some might call an outdoorsman or what others might consider “wild.” Dhon sneered as he spoke to Ro over the comms. “I’m where we agreed upon, Ro. This better be worth my time! I dropped a hunt for you. And it was a good hunt. No. A great hunt!” Ro rolled his eyes. He sighed before replying. “It’s always a great hunt, Dhon. Did you bring what I asked?” “I even dug the plot.” Those words caught Ro by surprise. He angrily glared at Dhon. “You have no right--” “Save it, Watcher! You have no right! This is my domain! Cathar is mine. And here you are handing out blood bonds and oaths and all this willy nilly and expecting all us to respect them? But I have no right?” “I’m not getting into this with you right now,” Ro roared back. “You know exactly what I mean, you--” The transmission abruptly cut out before Ro could finish his sentence. The response didn’t surprise him coming from Dhon. It still irritated him all the same. But to be fair, Dhon didn’t probably deserve to be the subject of Ro’s ire. It was just easier to ignore the pain he was feeling right now by finding someone or something to be mad at instead. Planet-side, Roshan carried the body to the ancestral burial pit of his home city. Located at the base of the massive city-tree, Dhon stood there casually waiting. He began ribbing Ro the moment he was within earshot. “So this is what all the fuss was about? Kind of ugly if you ask me.” Ro glared at Dhon as reached the edge of the hole and he held the body over it. Staring down into the darkness, he said a few traditional Cathar blessings and retold stories of this Rose’s deeds, both honorable and dishonorable. Then dropping the body into the pit, he finished with another final blessing. “May your soul be blessed with rest and become one with the Circle of the Force and the city-tree of our ancestors. May your physical body and your remaining life force provide this tree and the generations of Cathar to come the strength to live their life in the manner that you once did. Our bond has been fulfilled but you will not been forgotten.” "So says we all." Cutting his hand, Ro allowed some of his blood to drip down towards the body below. Then nodding to Dhon, the two of them began to fill back in the 2 meter hole with dirt. “Was she really worth all that?” “She was my Soo’Gah’Wee,” Ro growled. “So yes, Dhon. Yes! She deserved every bit of this ceremony and probably better than she got, too!” Dhon laughed, “Your ritual blessings are a little rusty, bud. That ending was especially rough.” “Thanks.” “I’m just saying,” Dhon shrugged as he shoveled another pile of dirt into the burial pit. “It was pretty sappy, too, bud. But if she was your Soo’Gah’Wee then she must have earned it. We may not be totally alike, but I like to think that we both know what something like that means to Dhonarr and to us.” “Yeah,” Ro replies with a somber note as his eyes drop down towards the pit. “It was a mistake, bud. Humans are too soft and squishy for us. Especially to waste your time mating with.” “We weren’t... we didn’t.” “Ha! Sure you didn’t, bud? I seen the way you look at her even now. I might spend most of my time in the Vast Veldt but I wasn’t cloned yesterday, Ro.” “I’m done with this conversation.” Nodding, Dhon and Ro continued shoveling in silence. When they were done, the two proceeded to head back towards the ship. “So, Watcher. I’ve waited long enough. Are we going to talk about this offer of yours or what? I didn’t cut short a great hunt just to meet up with you, help you bury some human female, and shoot the breeze.” Standing at the ramp of the Traitor’s Gambit, Ro finally replied, “I have a deal to offer you. I know you’ve been left behind to watch over, mum. But I need a favor.” “What kind of favor,” Dhon responded as he eyed him skeptically. “I need a co-pilot to Nar Shadda and then delivery of a helmet to its owner on Tatooine.” “Oh? And what’s in it for me?” “Do this and this ship and its droid are yours.” “What’s the catch?” Dhon frowned. “I’ll have to get a new registry for the ship.” “From Watcher to thief?” Dhon laughed. “The Link going bankrupt under your watchful leadership?” “The Link and Coruscant are gone.” Dhon had a witty response already ready to come out but Ro’s words caused him to pause. He gave Ro a confused look before responding. “What do you mean gone?” “Like dead and gone. Destroyed. Massacred,” Ro replied angrily. “Like while you were out here playing wildness tracker billions of people were being murdered by crazed fanatics who believed they were some sort of second coming of the Mandalorian savages of old.” “Wow. You don’t say,” Dhon comments rather casually. “I would have never guessed that. So your cash cow kinda went belly up then?” “You are missing the point, Dhon. Do we have a deal or not?” Dhon laughed. He then patted Ro on the shoulder as he stepped onto the ramp and past Ro. “Whatever you say, bud. But after I fulfill my end of the deal, whatever I do with this ship is my business.” “Deal.” Dhon turns back and smiles, “Then we have ourselves a plan, bud. Times a wastin’. We got a den of scum and villainy to visit.” ((Off to Nar Shadda)) _________ &

The last two days had been hard for Ro to properly describe. Perhaps “nightmare” was the most apt word for it all. He had made long journeys before but none quite like this. After their little skirmish, Ro had passed out with Rose's warm corpse in his arms. When he awoke, her body was little warmer than room temperature and it had already begun to stiffen, frozen in a moment of time long since passed. The smell of death was all around him. But it felt like moving would only acknowledge what he already knew was true about Rose, so instead he just laid there in silent meditation for what felt like hours. When the smell of death and fecal matter became no longer bearable, Durose finally began to stir. Freeing himself from Rose was a bit haunting. He could almost swear that he saw the hints of a smile frozen on her lifeless face. But it may have been his mind playing tricks on him. Moving her aside, Durose went to work dragging the other bodies towards the nearest airlock. The work wasn’t particularly hard but his spirit wasn’t in it. This whole thing had turned out to be a big mess. Or rather, a terrible tragedy. After dealing with the other corpses, Ro returned to Rose’s body and carefully lifted it up and carried it into the Fresher Suite. He removed what was left of his tattered shirt and went about meticulously washing the body from head to toe. The stomach would also need to be properly gutted and sewn back up to as best as reasonably possible in its condition. He could tell that the tense muscle fibers had already begun to breakdown as he carefully went through the procedure. As unpleasant as it all was, it was necessary. Once he was satisfied with the level of detail and care taken in preparing the body, Durose gave it a final scrub down and left the corpse in there to dry while he began to explore the ship. There wasn’t much value to be found on the ship to be honest. But the Mon Calamari had two items of note. In his collection of personal items, Durose happened upon some robes and a lightsaber that seemed to suggest that the man was once a Jedi. What he had done to end up with this less than reputable crew was beyond Ro, but this realization made it that much more fortuitous that they had caught his group by surprise and Rose had used that split second to blast him right between the eyes. He clearly couldn’t have been that high ranking or versed in the Force but the fact that he had a lightsaber of his own must have at least meant something. Beyond that, Ro found a light repeating blaster and a holdout pistol and a variety of knickknacks, datapads, comm units, and random trinkets. The Jawa also had a rather expensive collection of repair and hacking tools which Ro used to hack the ship’s database and rewrite certain codes and information. Of course, he realized that he would need a clean registration if he intended to keep this ship. But he knew a few people on Nar Shadda that could be relied on for that. He just needed the right items to trade. And judging from the crew of this ship, what he needed was already here. He just had to figure out where they had installed the smuggling compartments. In the meantime, he decided to visit the captain’s quarters. That was where he found their droid. A TDL Nanny droid with the designation NAN-3, Ro had no idea what to make of the bolt restrained metal contraption. To be completely honest, Ro had failed to realize that this model of bot even existed. It made sense that something like this would. He had just never ran into one quite like this. Inside the room, Ro found the caller to command the bot. The feminine bot informed Roshan that she was a member of the crew and belonged to the captain and crew as partial payment for a job that they had performed for another group. It had also been modified to function as a protocol droid and could speak Jawa and wookiee, among other languages. Ro could honestly care less at this point. He commanded the droid to begin clean up duty and scrub away all the blood, bacteria, fecal matter, and grime that had been left from all the fighting and killing. The droid was mortified to learn that the former crew was dead, but it otherwise followed Ro's orders (not that it could really disobey if it wanted to). Before he headed off to get some rest, however, Ro returned to the Fresher Suite with the Mon Cal’s jedi robe and dressed Rose’s body in it. No one was quite the right size for her and this oversize piece of attire was no exception but he didn't feel right just leaving her now clean corpse exposed and out in the open. He ordered the droid to not enter the suite for any reason and headed to the captain’s room to sleep. He wasn’t sure just how long he actually slept before jolting awake. He couldn’t quite remember his dream but he could still feel the ominous intensity that lingered from it. This is all wrong. All wrong. What have you done, Rose? What have we done? He found the morbid nature of this whole voyage rather unsettling. But there were important aspects that needed to be taken care of. As his Soo’Gah’Wee, she deserved a proper burial in the land of his ancestors. But he actually knew so little about her. If only there was some way that I could... Suddenly, the thought hit him like lightning streaking across a bleak winter nightscape. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought of it sooner! Her helmet! Using the Jawa’s tools and some of the items the ship had available, the former Watcher of the Link was able to create a makeshift display to allow him to see the information that was kept within Rose’s helmet without wearing it (something his head was too big to succeed at doing). Of course, what he found was way more than he bargained for. The first thing that he realized upon accessing her helmet was that it was linked to her funds account and had her Black Sun agent ID listed. He hadn’t realized that she was a member of the Black Sun before she joined the Mandalorians but undoubtedly this handsome sum of credits came from her time under their employment. What in the galaxy was she thinking just tossing this thing out!?!? If I hadn’t taken it, who knows who could have gotten access to all this stuff! But beyond the superficial, Ro found a treasure trove of personal data. There were holophotos of her parents and her as a little child, journal entries, and all sorts of information. He felt a bit rude snooping around but he wanted to make sure that he properly performed her burial rights based on the person this clone was. Not her deceased alter egos. Backtracking through her available information wasn’t a terrible complicated task but he found himself watching and reading entries that she had left behind with hints of horror and intrigue. She was a complex but troubled clone who had almost thrown away everything to join him on this fool’s errand. She had honored their bond. And her helmet belonged to her child or mate or next of kin. However, all he tracked down was a series of entries and expenditures pointing to a cloning facility on Tatooine. Heavy is the head that wears this helmet. But she deserves the right to know and choose its final rest place, whether on her head or in a pile of scrap. Headed to the cockpit, Ro decided to inform Dhon that he was on his way and wanted to meet at the tribal burial site for a funeral followed by a lucrative proposition. Finally satisfied with his message after a few trial versions, Ro sent it off. To his surprise, more time had passed than he realized. He would be dropping out of hyperspace in less than an hour. Returning to Rose’s body, he removed the necklace that he had given her way back when she had first defeated him in combat. He stared in silence at the edges of the triangle-shaped fossil. Then at the Cathar words engraved on it. 'To the victor,' indeed. Placing it back around her neck, Durose took a small knife and cut a lock of Rose’s hair before pocketing it. Her body had returned to being limp by this point. It would likely start smelling bad rather soon. If he was lucky, the worst of it would not begin until after she was well buried. But this morbid business was anybody’s guess at this point. Ro just wanted to be done with it already. He wanted to remember Rose how she was before they boarded their infernal ship. Not the discolored corpse that lay in front of him now. ___