'Bombshell'
Fighting crime by neon light,
Righting wrongs by blaster fight,
Never running from a real fight,
She'll probably flirt while chasing you!
The rain came down in sheets thick enough to drown a lie.
Nar Shaddaa's skyline bled with bleak neon pinks, greens, and sickly yellows dripping across the puddled duracrete like oil slick dreams.
Down below, the alleys steamed, and the streets hummed with the soft menace of too many secrets and too few exits.
She moved through it all like a bad decision. Her coat was soaked, her boots were ruined, and the last decent cup of caf she'd seen had probably been a mirage.
A hunter by trade, though tonight she looked like she'd walked out of a romance holo halfway through the explosion scene.
The bounty was supposed to be easy; a skip with a weak trigger finger and a big mouth.
Instead, it had turned into a six-hour tour of Nar Shaddaa's worst ventilation shafts and its even worse noodle stands.
Overhead, a holosign buzzed "LIVE DANCING" before sputtering out in a shower of sparks,
as if the city itself couldn't commit to the bit anymore.
A speeder roared past, trailing exhaust and jazz from a decade no one remembered. Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed. No one looked up. Nar Shaddaa didn't do sympathy... it charged extra for that.
She stopped beneath a flickering streetlamp, water sliding down the curve of her blaster.
The trail had gone cold, the night had gone colder… and the only thing she could rely on was the glow of passing freighters.
Out here, the odds were bad, the pay was worse, and even the rain smelled secondhand, like someone else's hangover.
But for those who knew how to play the game, Nar Shaddaa always had one rule:
The house wins... but sometimes, so does the one holding the gun.