Mix’a’lot
Jigunna, Hutta

As I stepped off the shuttle, my hand dropped to the holdout gun on my waist. So this was Hutta? This was the legendary Hutt homeworld? What an utter ********. I simply couldn’t understand what exactly motivated the Empire to make a full Intelligence operation on Hutta. I mean, I was a rookie, but still…

I looked down at the holo-map I had been given of Hutta. It was frustratingly incomplete, not even covering the whole area of the town. All it had was the location of a cantina called the ‘Poison Pit’. Delightful. I walked into what appeared to be the main sitting area. As I stepped into what I thought to be the indicated room for my briefing, a large Nikto, a bald old man, and a girl with cybernetics across one side of her face all simultaneously glared at me so hard I cringed.

“Uhm,” I started intelligently, “Wrong room, I guess.”

As I stepped backwards, I bumped into a rather tall person walking into the room with a rather long-barreled pistol aimed at my blue-skinned face. I twisted his hand towards the ceiling, slipped my shiv out of the armored cuff of my glove, and jammed the blade hard enough under his helmet to send it flying across the room, and saw that my assailant was not a he, but a she. A grinning, beautiful, red-haired young woman who looked like she was trying not to laugh.

“Well, blue boy,” the woman purred, still grinning widely, “It’s not nice to walk into a girl’s room uninvited.”
The old man put his face in his hands, and the cyborg girl rolled her eyes. The Nikto simply contorted his face into what might’ve passed for a bawdy grin, if not for the orange scales all over his face.
“Well,” I replied, “It’s not nice to shoot a guy in the face when he does. It’s also not nice to block the door when that same guy is in fact trying to leave the girl’s room in question.”

“Oh,” the woman replied, with mock disappointment, “You’re leaving already? But I was going to have so much fun with you.”
“Ah,” I replied, “I don’t believe we have the same definition of ‘fun’. Therefore, I bid you adieu.”

And I promptly ran the hell out of the room. As I walked into the room that was where I was supposed to go, I aimed my frequency scrambler at the room’s private holocom to hide my communications with Intelligence.

“This is Mix’a’lot to Keeper,” I began the transmission, “Come in, Keeper.”

“This is Keeper to Hutta,” an old, balding, man with a rather cold expression appeared from the holoprojector, “Hello, agent.”

“Hullo, Keeper,” I replied, “So, I have you to thank for these accommodations?”

“Don’t get cute, Agent. You’re there on a mission. With any luck, you won’t even see the Pit again.”
“Good. Now, what am I doing here?”

“Your assignment is to get close to Nem’ro the Hutt. You will be undercover as the famous Red Blade. His reputation alone should allow you to be accepted into the Hutt’s court. We have an inside man – named Jeelg. He’s assigned to help you set up your cover, and give you any background information you need on the Red Blade. Also, you should lose the accent. The man himself is decidedly not imperial.”

“After you make contact with Jeelg, you will return here and await further orders. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Keeper out.”

Now, I was surprised to see Jeelg’s little base-camp/house on the rather unhelpful holomap. Of course, the holomap didn’t count on the enemy mobsters running around Jigunna. Of course, I was annoyed beyond any sense of proportion when the Arcona operative told me that I had to go find the gifts he had provided for me to give to the Hutt. Not exactly fair to the poor man, but I had had about enough of the bloody street gangs on this planet. I stepped back outside, walked across the street through the piles of morons shooting at each other, put up my force-field in the doorway of the house the apparent thieves, shot all the gangsters in the room through the head, and walked right in to take the box that held the gifts.

I walked back to Jeelg, and showed him the gifts, then I asked, “What do I do now?”

Jeelg replied, <You’ve got to offer those as tribute to the Hutt. You should make contact with Keeper. He wanted a status report>

“Thank you.”

As I walked back into the Poison Pit, I was stopped by an odd succession of people: An extremely tall man in a combat vest, a small astromech, and a skinny woman with Sith-like tattoos. The large man gave me some sob story about Nem’ro being a filthy, ruthless gangster who took advantage of him and his brother. I could believe that he’d want to leave this ********, but I didn’t believe his bit about his brother being completely innocent. Nobody who worked for a Hutt could ever be totally innocent. Maybe relatively innocent, but sure as hell nottotally innocent.

The small astromech beeped at me, and pulled up a hologram of a Hutt. It was, in fact, a relatively handsome and thin Hutt, as opposed to others of its species, but it was still a Hutt. The hologram began its message in Huttese, <This is Nem’ro, rightful lord and master of Jigunna. I am angered by the incursions of the liar Faath’ra into my rightful territory. They must stop. I am willing to reward anyone who is willing to kill the intruding street captains. Chase them out of my city.>
I asked the droid, “How do I know I’ll actually get paid for my trouble?”

The droid just squeaked a happy affirmative. I sighed and was about to continue to my room in the cantina when the woman stopped me. She said something vaguely about her son being gifted in the Force, blah, blah, blah. I asked her what she’d be willing to pay. She said ‘everything she had’, which I didn’t trust. People with any kind of money don’t hang out in dives like the Poison Pit. But, whatever, I needed the cash.

As I walked past the room where I had met the redhead and her team, I heard a young woman shout, “No! Damn it, damn it, damn it.” I walked in to see what happened, only to see the two women from before standing over the bodies of the old man and the orange Nikto. Of course, I immediately started to analyze the death wounds, which were a multitude of holes as if they two of them had gone up against somebody wielding a scattergun. Or somebody with really bad aim.

Of course, my attentiveness only stretched so far around the bodies, and the redhead once again had her long-barreled gun at my temple.

“Did you do this, Agent?” the beautiful woman with the gun inquired angrily, “DID YOU? Was this a little cleanup job to cover up whatever we know about the Empire? If it was, then you failed. She’s still here, and I’m the girl with the gun.”

This wasn’t totally fair to me. How did she even know I was an agent, let alone an agent of the Empire? I simply replied, “It’s not. I swear, it’s not. I shoot people, but only when they give me cause to shoot them.”

“You know, I would believe you,” she replied, relaxing slightly, “If I didn’t know that you, Agent Mix’a’lot are assigned to Hutta at the moment, and that you were transferred from the Chiss Ascendancy specifically for this assignment.”

“Ah,” I understood now. The girl with the cybernetics must’ve been some sort of a slicing genius. I had underestimated her before, “Your girl there is a very good slicer. You’re right, I am on assignment here. In fact, I’m on an assignment in Nem’ro’s palace. I assume you’re the one gunning for the Great Hunt sponsorship.”

The girl still off to the side suddenly pulled a gun from her pocket, “How do you know about the Hunt? HOW?”

“You seriously think that fifty or so ships landing on Kaas with falsified documents and the large number of speeders going to the Mandalorian Enclave is somehow inconspicuous?” I replied, with a grin slowly returning to my face, “Is the sudden death of a prospective Hunt team also inconspicuous? In the middle of Jigunna?”

“When you put it that way…”

“Also, if I was a hunter looking to kark up my competition, would I really be posing as somebody as well-known as the Red Blade?”

“Wait,” the smaller girl said, as she continued to search my face for a lie, “We should check the security recording. It should have footage of their deaths.”

“Play it, Mako” the redhead replied over her shoulder, “I wanna see who my next piece of target practice is gonna be.”