Private Almost Enough to Trust

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Kinley Pryse doesn't cheat fate. She shuffles it and decides when the game ends.
​

The neon never slept on Nar Shaddaa, it only blinked, like it knew too much and dared you to notice.

Kinley Pryse moved through the crowd like she owned the duracrete under her boots. Leather jacket scuffed just enough to look earned, blaster riding low at her hip, chin high, full swagger, no apologies. The kind of walk that told bouncers not to bother and told predators to pick an easier meal. She didn't trust anyone who smiled too easily down here. In her line of work, trust was a liability, a slow poison you swallowed because you were tired of watching your back.

And she was very, very tired.

The bar was a dive even by Nar Shaddaa standards, low ceiling, stained transparisteel, and music that rattled the bones instead of entertaining them. Kinley scanned the room out of habit: exits first, then hands, then faces. No immediate threats. A few hopeful idiots. A few professionals who clocked her and immediately decided she wasn't worth the trouble.

Good instincts.

She slid into a booth near the back, one that gave her a clear view of the door and just enough shadow to disappear into if she needed to. The table was sticky. The air smelled like spice, ozone, and old regrets. Perfect.

Flint would hate this place. That thought almost made her smile. Her jaw tightened instead. Flint didn't just hate places, he hated disobedience. He hated distance. And lately, he took it out her father. The image came unbidden: her father on Ord Mantell, hands shaking as he tried to joke through the pain, the blood crusted along the side of his head where an ear used to be.

That had been the moment Kinley stopped pretending she could manage this alone. Relocating her father was the right move. It was also a death sentence if done wrong. Flint would be watching the assisted living home, watching her, waiting for the smallest slip. One mistake and this wouldn't end with a missing ear.

Which was why she was here.

Asking for help.

The word still tasted wrong.

Kinley leaned back, draping one arm over the booth seat, posture relaxed, eyes sharp. She ordered a drink she didn't plan to finish and let the minutes pass. She hated being early, but she hated being followed more.

Acier Moonbound wasn't here yet.

She didn't know Acier well. That was the problem, and the solution. An old acquaintance, a handful of shared moments, nothing solid enough to be leveraged. And yet… something about Acier had lodged itself in Kinley's instincts, that quiet internal voice she'd learned to obey or bleed.

Trust, as much as she was capable of it.

Her fingers tapped once against the table. Then stilled. Kinley lifted her glass of non-alcoholic beer, caught her reflection in the murky surface, hard eyes, crooked smile, a woman who looked like she always had the upper hand.

The door slid open with a hiss.

She didn't look up right away.

Swagger intact. Nerves locked down. Decision made.

Whatever happened next, Kinley Pryse wasn't backing out now.

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Nar Shaddaa

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes| Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Nar Shaddaa had a way of overstaying its welcome. He'd been here more in the last few weeks than he cared to admit. That fact alone irritated him.

Ace moved through the lower promenade, neon bled through the street, and music thudded through walls it had no business penetrating.

Kinley Pryse's message replayed in his mind as he crossed a street without breaking stride. Her, of all people. They weren't close. They'd met twice. Once on Corellia, another life, another version of himself. And again on Naboo, during the masquerade. That second meeting still made heat creep up his neck if he thought about it too long. Devin Virell had been there. Kinley too. Front-row seats to his first heartbreak.

He exhaled through his nose and pushed the memory aside. For Kinley Pryse to reach out to him out of the blue, there were only a few possibilities. None of them casual. None of them good. Whatever she wanted, it wasn't small. He knew that much about her at least.

Regardless of the reason. Meeting her beat the alternative. Anything did. Another day in the Covenant, playing the acolyte. Or worse, another whispered rumor passed through the underlevels about Windrun's so-called assassin. The "Jedi Vigilante of Nar Shaddaa." He'd heard that one twice now, spun just vague enough to be useful and just dramatic enough to stick.

Ace hated how Arris had shaped the narrative. Took a handful of necessary violence and turned it into a local myth.

He reached the bar Kinley had named and paused just long enough to feel the hum of it through the door. Low ceiling. Loud music. Bad lighting. The kind of place people went when they didn't want the wrong kind of attention.

The door hissed open as he stepped inside and his eyes adjusted quickly, scanning out of habit. All the exits, the hands, the faces. Then they settled on the familiar silhouette near the back. The hat did most of the work. At least Pryse gave herself a recognizable wardrobe.

He crossed the room without rushing, stopping at her table and taking a seat opposite her. Then he spoke, voice low over the thudding music.

"Long time, no see, Pryse." There was an edge of dry amusement. Very faint. "Guess you didn't reach out just 'cause you wanted to see me."

Now there was a lace of sarcasm in the acolyte's tone.

Kinley Pryse ​

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Kinley Pryse is the baddest b!tch by miles​

Kinley didn't look up right away when the chair scraped across the floor. She heard it, felt it, really, the way she always did when someone entered her orbit, but she finished her sip first, slow and deliberate, buying herself a heartbeat.

Then she turned.

Acier Moonbound slid into the seat like a man who'd learned not to hesitate, not to ask permission. That part was familiar. What wasn't was everything else.

Her smirk stalled just a fraction.

The light was wrong. Gone, really. The easy spark she remembered, the half-dare, half-joke glint in his eyes, had been replaced with something harder, sharper. Like glass that had been broken and set back together poorly. He looked thinner around the edges, not in body so much as spirit, and the way his shoulders sat told her he slept with one ear open now.

That put her on edge fast.

Kinley leaned back, crossing one boot over the other, posture relaxed even as her mind quietly recalibrated threat assessments.

"Well," she said lightly, eyes roaming his face without apology, "either Nar Shaddaa's lighting has gotten crueler, or you've been through hell since the last time I saw you."

A pause. Intentional.

"You look like someone who learned some very expensive lessons." Her gaze sharpened, playful tone thinning just enough to show steel underneath. "The kind that change a person."

She tilted her head, studying him now the way she studied a marked deck, careful, suspicious, alert for tricks. Right on time, the bartender came over with the drinks she'd specified needed to be delivered the second her party joined her. Every move was calculated, every style point accounted for. Style, flair, and bravado was what had kept Kinley Pryse alive so long... but looking across the table, she had to wonder what was keeping him alive now.

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Nar Shaddaa

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes| Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

The Force shifted the moment he settled in. A tightening in the air around Kinley, like a held breath that hadn't realized it was being held yet. Ace felt it the same way he felt pressure changes before a storm: instinctive, background, impossible to ignore. He didn't react to it. Didn't acknowledge it. Just let it register and pass.

He listened while she spoke. To the way she circled him with her words, light on the surface, careful underneath. The assessment wasn't wrong, all things considered.

Since the last time she'd seen him, he'd lost an arm on the Death Star III. Faced off against his father. He'd falsely sworn himself into the Covenant, and done things... necessary things... that would have cracked someone less practiced at carrying weight.

She called them expensive lessons. She wasn't wrong there either. Ace's jaw tightened, muscles flexing once before he caught it. His gaze slipped sideways, breaking from hers, settling somewhere unimportant as he answered.

"More or less." His words were flat.

Silence followed, stretching thin between them, filled with the thrum of music and the clink of glass. In it, Ace studied her. Kinley looked… maintained. Carefully so. The swagger was still there, but it sat on her differently now, like a jacket worn because it was expected, not because it felt right. The bravado had edges that didn't quite line up anymore, polish laid over fatigue. The Force around her wasn't sharp, but it was strained... tension held together by habit and willpower. Worse for wear, then. In a way she hadn't admitted yet.

Ace's eyes returned to her at last. "I could say the same for you, Pryse."

He didn't press it. Didn't ask why. They'd never worked that way. Whatever was broken, they let the other decide when to show the cracks. He leaned back slightly, shoulders settling, voice calm as he cut to the point.

"So. What am I here for?"

Kinley Pryse​

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Kinley Pryse doesn't do threats. She does outcomes​

Kinley didn't answer right away.

She lifted her glass, slow and deliberate, giving herself a moment. The air around her shifted, not sharper, not louder, just steadier. Like she'd finally chosen which way to lean. When her eyes returned to his, the swagger was still there, but refined now. Stripped of excess. Honest, if not kind.

"I've got a situation," she said at last, "that requires a very specific kind of person. The sort I don't run into often around here."

She slipped the toothpick from her mouth, peeled it free of its plastic, and set it back between her teeth with a soft click. Then she leaned into the booth, one arm draped casually over the seat, posture loose in a way that could fool anyone. Her eyes never left his.

The silence stretched. Deliberate. Measured. Kinley weighed the risk the way she weighed everything, without flinching, without rushing. She didn't trust easily, and she preferred to handle her own messes. But this one… this one might benefit from someone who could see beyond the obvious. Someone who understood pressure, and consequence, and when to keep their mouth shut.

If she could trust anyone, it was Acier.

She just hoped she wasn't wrong.

"I have a contact that needs moving," she said quietly. "No noise. No witnesses. Nobody can know it happened at all."



Acier Moonbound

A Smooth Criminal