The others went inside — Almec and Satine handling the bulk of the negotiation — while Kurt and Obi-Wan sat off to the side, kicking each other under the table.
Obi-Wan, clearly, was looking for payback for the night before.
Qui-Gon caught the small commotion between them and found himself quietly grateful for it — this was the closest either of them had looked to actual children their age since he’d arrived.
The Republic’s grip on the Outer Rim kept slipping, war spreading further with each passing year, and even the Jedi Order’s own conduct these days had started to feel subtly off to him.
But if they could find the Chosen One and bring balance to the Force, none of that would matter for long.
The negotiation wrapped up before long — three hundred thousand credits and formal acceptance of the Supercommando Codex in exchange for Jango Fett’s traditionalist forces joining the cause.
“Don’t forget Sundari’s other bounty hunters.
Mediocre as most of them are, there’s no shortage of them.
After that last strike, both of you — you and the Duchess — need to watch yourselves more carefully.” Jango offered one last piece of caution before he left.
“We’ll handle it.”
Jango nodded and boarded Slave I, lifting off out of Sundari.
“Cousin, leave the bounty hunters to me.
Give me twenty days, and I’ll have them cleared out of Sundari entirely.” Kurt volunteered for the job himself.
“It’s yours, then.”
“I’ll come too.
It’s my responsibility as much as his.” Obi-Wan offered to join.
Before long, a full campaign to hunt down bounty hunters was underway.
In a small bar in northern Sundari, the front door sat shut, and inside a mix of aliens and Mandalorians gathered — a small Death Watch outpost in disguise.
A knock came at the door.
Knock knock knock.
“Open up.
Sundari police.
We’ve had reports of illegal activity here.” Kurt kept knocking, and when nothing answered, kicked the door and slapped a sticky charge onto the frame.
Inside, weapons came out fast, everyone bracing for a breakout — and then smoke flooded the room, technicians having quietly redirected the vents outside while pumping in cover fire.
As the crowd surged toward the exit, a wall of flame swallowed the front of the room whole.
“Evening, everyone.” Obi-Wan’s blue saber flared to life in the smoke.
Those still capable of fighting turned their weapons on him and bolted for the exit — only to be kicked straight back inside by Kurt, who swept a crowd of them off their feet with the Force and charged in, both pistols blazing.
A few quick thinkers tried an unconventional route, blasting a hole in the side wall and firing up their jetpacks to fly clear — only for screams to cut through the smoke almost instantly.
Three Viking mechs stood guard just outside, waiting for exactly that.
“Stun mode.
Kill if you have to, but nobody gets out.” Kurt shouted into the smoke, his Westar-35s never stopping.
“Understood.” Obi-Wan dropped his defensive stance entirely, going aggressive, his saber carving through the smoke with real ferocity — a hand severed here, a pistol sliced clean in half there, with every swing.
Kurt, meanwhile, holstered both pistols in favor of drilling his forms, drawing his beskar sword instead.
Smoke choked the whole bar, visibility dropping to almost nothing.
The air filled with coughing, shouting, the shriek of blaster fire tearing through smoke, and — cutting through it all — the hiss of a lightsaber slicing through something solid, off in Obi-Wan’s direction.
Kurt stood near the doorway, broken door-frame debris crunching underfoot, having just kicked two would-be escapees back inside.
Shapes moved through the haze, his thermal display a chaotic mess of jumping red-yellow shapes — five or six of them at least, rattled by the smoke and the noise from Obi-Wan’s side, weapons swinging wildly in every direction.
Kurt spread the fingers of his left hand and shoved, hard, at the nearest and most panicked shape.
This wasn’t Qui-Gon’s precise, effortless Force push.
What came out of Kurt was closer to an enraged bantha — every ounce of his will and the battlefield’s fury behind it, slamming forward.
“Ugh—!” A dull crack of breaking bone.
The figure shot backward like a cannonball, smashing into a rack of bottles behind the bar in a deafening cascade of shattering glass, then went still — just the drip of spilled liquor and the tinkle of falling shards left behind.
One down.
The noise made him a target instantly.
“The door!
Get the bastard at the door!” someone screamed through the smoke, voice raw from coughing.
Several bolts tore through the haze toward him, red streaks converging from different angles.
Kurt didn’t dodge — didn’t have time to.
Behind his visor his jaw locked, and Qui-Gon’s basic teachings flashed through his mind: feel the flow.
Anticipate the path.
He caught the faint disturbance each bolt left tearing through the air, and for a fraction of a second, time seemed to stretch.
His body moved faster than conscious thought — his left foot planted hard, both hands closing around the beskar sword, and it carved a brutal, powerful arc from low-left to high-right.
Clang!
Clang-clang!
Metal shrieked against metal.
Sparks burst briefly through the smoke.
The first bolt.
The second.
The third.
All three deflected by the sheer weight and reach of a single sweeping strike.
The blade came away scorched and dented where the bolts had struck, the impact numbing his wrist, his palm aching.
He staggered back two steps before finding his footing again.
Damn, this thing’s heavy, Kurt thought bitterly — nothing like a lightsaber, that much was certain.
But he didn’t stop.
Riding the momentum of the deflection, he surged forward, hips twisting into the turn, the sword swinging back down in a vicious arc from high-right to low-left, aiming for a red shape in the smoke who’d just fired and was a half-second slow to reset.
Fwsh.
Beskar’s terrible weight and edge, driven by that speed and force, sheared straight through a layer of light armor fiber, then muscle, then bone.
A short, ragged scream cut off almost as soon as it started — on the thermal display, the figure’s upper body folded sideways at the waist.
Two down.
Whatever discipline the remaining bounty hunters had left came apart entirely.
He caught sight of a shape leveling a weapon at him, sidestepped, and swept the beskar blade horizontally at the arm holding it.
Crack!
Bone snapping, metal scraping as the weapon went flying, the man dropping with a scream.
Another shape lunged in from the side, swinging a thermal axe.
Kurt didn’t even turn — his left arm snapped backward, the Force surging out crude and blunt again, an invisible hand slamming across the man’s face.
Crack!
The visor shattered audibly, and the man went flying into the wall.
Kurt didn’t slow, pressing straight for his next target — someone crouched behind a derelict jukebox, fumbling to reload a grenade launcher.
He raised the beskar sword high overhead, swinging down with everything he had, like an axe splitting stone.
BOOM.
The jukebox and the unlucky man behind it came apart together — sparking scrap metal on one side, two ragged halves of a body on the other.
Kurt leaned on the sword, breathing hard.
On his thermal display, only two or three red shapes remained standing in the bar, retreating in a full panic, fear having entirely overtaken whatever fight they’d had left.
The hum of Obi-Wan’s saber had gone quiet on the other side of the room.
“Surrender.” Kurt’s voice cut through his visor, echoing through the dead silence of the ruined bar.
The words had barely left him when his body jerked sideways on reflex.
Fwsh!
A treacherous bolt streaked past his helmet, burying itself in the wall behind him.
It was the man he’d slammed into the wall earlier — not dead after all, dragging himself up for one last desperate shot.
“I gave you the chance to walk away.
Guess that’s asking too much.” A cold light flickered in Kurt’s eyes.
He didn’t lift the sword again.
His left hand, hanging loose at his side, rose slowly, fingers curling inward.
This wasn’t a push.
This wasn’t sensing.
This was the Force turned into something cold, deliberate, and lethal.
“Gh— khh—” The struggling Death Watch trooper’s body seized rigid, both hands clawing at his own throat as though an invisible fist were crushing his windpipe and spine from the inside out.
His feet left the ground, kicking uselessly at nothing, an awful choking rattle tearing from his throat.
A few seconds later, his body went slack entirely, and didn’t move again.
Kurt lowered his hand slowly.
Blood dripped thick off the tip of the beskar sword.
He surveyed the bar — a slaughterhouse now, the smoke thick with the smell of blood, scorched metal, and death.
He shook the blood off the blade and turned, boots pressing through pooled blood, walking toward the door.
“Another outpost down,” he said into his comm, voice flat, carrying nothing but the exhaustion that came after a fight like that.
“That was a bit much, even for you.”
“Didn’t see your saber stop either.”