Adwynyth and Vette crossed the threshold of the Tomb of Naga Sadow side by side, as the young Sith yelled, "Yeah yeah, I'll find his body" over her shoulder at the coward outside. "Whiner."

"How is she a whiner? She just knows she'll die if she comes in here. I'm not sure we won't die in here."

Adwynyth brandished the slave collar control in her hand, scowling at the Twi'lek. She almost hadn't shut up since the Academy, and the young acolyte was already growing tired of her voice.

"What? You gonna shock me again?" challenged Vette.

Adwynyth scowled and put it away. "Nah. I hate those things. I had one on me once for a costume party and somebody rigged it to go off without a remote. No fun. Just try not to piss me off at every turn, eh?"

"Sorry...I guess being in jail and being tortured by a jailer that stupid makes a girl grumpy. Look out!" she screamed and drew both blasters.

Adwynyth didn't even look, hacking off the attackers' heads before they could even bring their blades to bear. "Why did they put you in jail, anyway?" she asked without missing a beat.

The Twi'lek just stared, blasters still pointed where the would-be assailants had fallen. "How did you...?"

"Hello! Sith, remember? I could feel their rage and presence before you even said anything. But we were having a conversation. Ooo, I think that's the body the whiny girl was talking about." She leaned down to examine the remains. "Yup...one ex-Sith. Pitiful...didn't even make it past the first room."

Vette finally recovered and put her blasters away. "Are you really gonna take that body with us and deposit it on the floor in front of his father?"

"Hell no. The head will have to be enough.*" She severed it expertly and sealed it in an airtight flexiplast bag she'd thought to bring. "See? No muss, no fuss." She tossed it in the Twi'lek's backpack.

"Wow. Killed two people and chopped a head off a corpse, and not a drop of blood on you. How do you do it?"

The Sith smiled. "Practice. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, and I had only one set of clothes for school most of the time. So, I had to make sure not to get stains or rips in them."

"Kinda wasted effort, though, with that dingy bleh-looking armor. All grey and red, just like all the other Sith armor in the galaxy. Why can't Sith wear something pretty? Then you'd have a reason to stay clean."

"That's so impractical. How would I protect myself in battle?"

"Has anyone ever touched your armor with a weapon yet? Or even a blaster bolt?"

"Well, no...not since my first few lightsaber lessons." Adwynyth blushed at such a boastful statement, but it was true.

The Twi'lek looked smug. "There you go. You could wear a clown suit and not have to care."

"Or...something pretty..."

Vette's voice broke her train of thought. "Hey, there's the first lock. I thought this looked familiar..."

* It's always seemed stupid to me that you're supposed to haul an entire corpse around with you until you get around to dropping at on the floor outside the Dark Council chambers. Puh-lease. So I decided Adwynyth found it to be stupid, too.

"My lord, I--"

"Shut up!" The pillow impacted with Quinn's head before he even finished hearing the invective.

"My lord?" Quinn looked to where Adwynyth was watching, and saw the lounge's main holo tuned to a Huttball match.

"I said shut up. My Nerf-herders are playing the Behemoths. Opening game of the season." The Sith shoved another handful of Mantellian kettle corn into her mouth and chewed viciously. "And they're not maintaining their lead. Come on, you morons!" Another pillow went flying at (and through) the holo.

Vette was laying upside-down, her head nearly on the floor and her feet draped over the back of the couch. "The Nerf-herders just haven't been the same since they scared off their last coach."

Quinn surprised everyone by speaking up. "Well, the threat to rip his throat out did seem quite literal. Hazards of a Sith owner, I would assume."

Adwynyth and Vette just stared at him, astonished.

"I do follow the game, although I haven't been able to watch since that debacle on Belsavis. Calling it a completed pass when only the receiver's hand survives the fire-pit--"

"Shut up! We've got the ball!" Quinn noticed, for the first time, that the Sith was wearing a bedraggled sweatshirt emblazoned with the Nerfherders' colors and logo. It was about four sizes too large for her, and judging from her bare legs, it might be the only thing she was wearing. Quinn felt as if the thermostat had jumped a few degrees. "CARRY THE BALL, YOU &*& &!%#(# %!&!"

Nobody noticed the furniture rumbling, but even Vette was shocked at the language. "Wow...you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

"And ate her heart, yes," Adwynyth tossed back. At Vette's shocked look: "I'm kidding! Sheesh...become a Sith and people think you're a monst--oh wait, I never told you I was kidding when I told those carbonite hijackers on Dromund Kaas..."

"GOAL!" yelled Quinn, startling everyone.

"DAMMIT! And I missed it! Get out, Quinn!" Another pillow flew his way, and he suspected it was Force-assisted.

"But, my lord..."

"OUT!" This time it was an overstuffed chair, which Quinn just managed to avoid before it impacted with the opposite wall and splintered. He wasn't seen outside the bridge for the rest of the game.

Vette stood, hands on hips, and laughed at Adwynyth. "I told you it'd happen someday." The Twi'lek produced a holoimager seemingly out of nowhere and snapped an image before her friend could stop her.

"Hey!" The Sith grabbed at the mass of white material and covered her bare chest. "No fair!"

"All's fair in love, war, and winning bets. Quinnie-poo* would never pay me otherwise."

"He probably won't pay you just for calling him that." The well-dressed force of destruction grimaced. "Look at this. Did that last gangster really have to grab my dress as he fell?"

"Well, you did step in too close on that last strike just to monologue at him. Serves you right. And I get 500 credits."

"You're the one who encouraged me to be more dramatic. It's your fault."

"I know, right? I love making my own bets come out my way." Vette pulled out a roll of mynock tape** and turned Adwynyth around. "Hold still."

"Tape? Well, I guess it's better than nothing. Did you two really bet that I'd end up naked on the field of battle?"

Vette laughed as she started to patch together the back of the elegant white dress with some not-so-elegant bright blue strips of tape. "No, I bet that. Quinn bet that you were too professional and too much of a lady to--" She squeezed her eyes shut. "Dammit!"

"What?" Adwynyth's face was the picture of innocence.

"Captain Protocol bet me a thousand that I'd spill the terms..." She cast a well-practiced eye at her friend. "You knew, didn't you?"

"He promised to split the profits with me if I goaded you into it. It was surprisingly easy."

"I hate you!"

"No you don't, sis. You love me, and you know it." The human blew her Twi'lek companion a kiss.

"Ask me after dinner, which you're buying, by the way."

"Oh no. It's your turn." Actually, it had been for some time. Vette had plenty of money, thanks to Adwynyth's "equal split" policy with whichever of her crew went on a mission with her. But she still loved to get out of paying. Old habit from growing up with a pirate crew, probably.

"Not after you just cost me 500 credits."

"I don't recall interrogating you with drugs or anything."

"It's that Sithy way of yours. Sorcery or something." The Twi'lek waved her hands like a wizard and raised an eyebrow menacingly. "Ooga-booga!"

"Wait, Quinn really said I was too much of a lady?"

"Oh no...not this again."

"Well, he does have those dreamy blue eyes..." Adwynyth's gaze went a little far-off and her smile got a little wider.

"Now I know I'm going to be sick." They wandered into the cantina, ignoring the stares at the bedraggled and taped-together high-society dress worn by the human.

The door to the shuttle opened, and Adwynyth, garbed formally as always, walked out beside Captain Quinn. "So, you think Pierce is the best choice?"

Pierce and Jaesa disembarked right after as Quinn answered. "Definitely, my lord. As much as we disagree on matters of protocol, Lieutenant Pierce is extremely knowledgeable and skilled in the use of demolitions. I have the utmost confidence in his abilities."

The larger man looked shocked. "Thank you...sir." For once, he offered the honorific without any irony or sarcasm. "I'll do my best, milord." Of course, that meant he had to bite back the witty retort he always had prepared whenever the uptight Imperial was around.

Jaesa nudged him in the ribs gently. "See? He can be decent...once in a while." Quinn looked back at that, but not coldly. He and Jaesa managed to get along quite well, considering, and he actually allowed her to tease him gently from time to time.

Adwynyth wasn't quite as surprised as the rest of her crew at that realization, though. The man was tight to the point of squeaking when he walked, but he wasn't a complete idiot. He couldn't rise to the rank of Captain, much less serve a Moff, without picking up some skill in managing people. He simply chose not to use it most of the time.

Vette bounced down the ramp, all limbs and lekku, skipping merrily around and between everyone. "I don't care about Captain Starchy-Drawers here, I'm just glad we're almost done with all this serious stuff so we can go shopping on Nar--"

Just then a dozen muffled shots rang out from various directions. They had walked right into an ambush.

Jaesa went down right away, and Vette could see a small item sticking out of her neck as she fell: tranquilizer dart. Not good. That meant whoever was behind this wanted them alive, and it probably wouldn't be that pleasant of a time thereafter. Already being in somewhat random motion, she was able to duck under the shuttle's ramp. The Twi'lek saw Pierce and Quinn go down next. Adwynyth, for her part, deflected the first six darts sent her way, then stayed conscious through the next ten, Force-pushing one assailant out of a tree, Force-choking another to death without even seeing him, and decapitating another with a thrown saber. Unfortunately for them all, that wasn't even a decent-sized chunk of the group now bearing down on them.

And Vette was now the only one conscious and able to act. "Bantha poo!" she swore silently. Hunters and mercs of all descriptions started easing their way out from behind cover, still not trusting the Sith Lord to be fully helpless. They apparently didn't notice or weren't concerned about one missing red Twi'lek. Vette would have loved to say she was filled with determination, but in truth she nearly wet herself with fear, and only the thought of her surrogate sister, not to mention her, being tortured moved her into action.

Silently pulling both pistols, she took aim at two different targets, aiming for the heads, and blew them clean off, dead-center. "A useless display of vanity" is how Quinn described it when he saw her practicing that trick with melons, but Vette knew it'd come in handy someday.

Lunging for Pierce's unconscious form, which was the closest to her, she grabbed his belt and retreated back behind the ramp, which was apparently the only angle they didn't have covered. Along with the belt had come about a dozen thermal detonators, overkill according to Quinn. That comment always drew a smirk from Pierce. "There's no such thing as overkill," he would always say.

Vette knew that her skill at de-pantsing Pierce when he wasn't looking was good for more than just amusement. Another second, and her arm would have been right in the path of a venomous red blaster bolt.

"We know you're behind there!" one of the mercs called. "Come out with your hands up!"

The thief and former grave-robber struggled to remember how to activate the device. Maybe she could create a diversion and drag the others back on the shuttle. She poked here...nothing. Poked there...ooh, a click. Twisted that...AHA! A green light. She was looking for something else to prod when the green light turned yellow and started flashing faster and faster. "CRAP!" She threw it toward where the voice had come from, and a half-second later, everything went white and shook for a second.

She risked a look from behind the ramp. While she was still met with a couple blaster bolts and tranq darts flying by her head, there were clearly fewer people than before.

"Maybe she doesn't speak Basic," she heard one of the remaining mercs say to one of his partners. "Try Huttese."

They yelled basically the same thing as before, but in Huttese. Vette, always good at picking up languages, yelled back the most vile Cathar curse she could think of. She could almost feel the momentary confusion, and decided to take advantage by throwing another thermal detonator. A brief yelp when it landed, and then laughing. "She forgot to arm it!" They tossed it back under the shuttle, still unarmed. "Wanna try again?" They started to walk toward the ramp, clearly no longer taking her seriously.

But Vette was no longer beneath the shuttle. She had taken advantage of the few seconds' chaos to leap behind a huge rock formation, then climb up and around it, circumnavigating the motley group that was left. She got her first look at the blood, guts, and twisted armor from her first throw and resolved to buck up for now and puke later. She popped up behind the group, well out of easy blaster range, and nonetheless bulls-eyed the unarmed thermal detonator, setting it off in their midst. It took out half of the rest of the group, leaving only four very surprised and wounded mercs in a momentary daze. The borrowed shuttle was a wreck, but the ramp had shielded the effects from Adwynyth and the rest of the crew.

The Twi'lek knew she was out of tricks, as she'd left Pierce's belt of surprises under the ramp, so she charged out of cover and straight toward the remaining would-be bounty hunters. She dodged a blaster bolt narrowly and blasted its source between the eyes. The Twi'lek right next to him went down with a blaster butt to the head. Vette used the falling men as cover to shoot the kneecaps of a very angry-looking and patchy-armored Nikto, and then leaped up and kicked the last one, a clean-cut human of no more than 18, right between the legs. Nope, no armor there. He went down like a sack of grain.

"Huh. I guess 'surprise tackle-hugging' Jaesa paid off, too."

The Nikto, the only one left conscious, stared amazed at Vette. "You did all that...in a slave-girl costume?!"

"Yup!" she smiled proudly right before kicking him in the face, rendering him unconscious.

She heard a single person applauding behind her and twirled, both pistols at the ready. But it was Quinn, still down and looking haggard, golf-clapping with a very polite expression on his face. "I am...sincerely impressed."

"I..." The Twi'lek tried to think of something witty to say and failed. She blushed deeper red and headed over to start checking the injured. "Thank you. That's pretty much every argument I've had with you about being 'dead weight'." She mocked Quinn's inflections with devastating accuracy as she delivered a shot of kolto to Adwynyth.

The Captain actually chuckled once. "Then I believe you won." He regained his imperious demeanor. "Not that I'll admit it to anyone..." Vette laughed and threw a kolto injector at him.

Maybe this serious stuff wasn't always so boring after all.

Yes. I did it. I did something....sympathetic to Quinn. Twice! I feel so...dirty.

Jaesa was poetry in motion. She had been trained by the strongest and deadliest of the Sith, the Emperor's Wrath herself. Beside her master, who had also grown to be a close friend, substitute big sister, and devastating Pazaak partner, she cut through their enemies, and those of the Empire, with ruthless efficiency. Her movements were purposeful, yet fluid; her decisions minimal, yet beautiful. She was at one with the Dark Side of the Force, and could do no wr--riiiiip "Emperor Dammit!'

Adwynyth looked over from where she was just putting the finishing touches on building an impressive pile of corpses and shook her head. "Not again! How do you do that, Jaesa?"

The younger woman finished off the last assailant one-handing her double-bladed lightsaber, using her other hand to try to cover herself as much as possible. "I don't know, Master! It's so...frustrating! I think I've conquered it, and it keeps coming back to haunt me!"

The Wrath skewered the last two of her own opponents with one well-placed thrust that penetrated completely through one Gormak's body and into the next, hitting both in the exact center of the heart. "That's three this week, though. I mean, it's not like slave-girl outfits are expensive or anything, but you're always vulnerable after it happens. If we were fighting real opponents," she paused to behead another assassin that came flying out of the bushes, "you might be in real trouble."

Jaesa picked up the remainder of her top. "And it's always right in the middle, between the breast cups. We've even tried reinforcing it with cortosis weave, durasteel supports, nanopolymer threads...and thank you for talking Cipher Nine into letting you have some of that prototype fabric from Intelligence. What do they use it for again?"

"She never would tell me, but she said something about someone named Vector and the Fingerlings going crazy for it. No idea what she was talking about. Is that a new band or something?"

"I haven't heard of them."

"Anyway, we've got to figure out what's happening. What did Quinn say when you mentioned filming your combat with a probe and analyzing it later?" Adwynyth pulled a spare sports bra out of her pack and handed it to Jaesa. She knew it would be too tight -- the girl had some serious equipment to cover, about which Adwynyth was more than a little jealous -- but it would do until they got back to the ship.

"It was quite strange, Master. Once I described why we wanted the analysis, he turned the most interesting shade of purple, choked out a few words I couldn't make out, and excused himself to the conference room. I think he locked the door, too."

The elder Sith didn't know what to make of that. "That is strange. And I've told you, you don't need to call me 'Master'."

"I know...old habits die hard, though." She stabbed one of the Gormak lying on the ground through the throat just as he was starting a lunge for one of them. "As do these creatures, apparently."

"Well, we'll see about getting those probes and Quinn's analysis. Even more so if it makes him turn purple and stammer. I love throwing him off balance. Part of the fun of marriage."

Jaesa started handing supplies back to the elder woman, noticing once again how dirty and grimy and ripped her dresses get in combat. At least they never split or fell off. "I've noticed. And I think he's catching on, too. He's rearranged his holo schedule around your bi-weekly 'naked distractions', as he called them."

Adwynyth looked up from packing the speeder for their trek back to the ship. "O-ho...we'll just see about that. He'll never see a Huttball match uninterrupted again."

"Is torture part of marriage?"

"It is in a Sith marriage. Especially to one as prim and proper and Malavai is."