A Bountiful Harvest

"The frak is that?!" Under normal circumstances, Phex might have found it amusing that his companion's last words to him were nearly identical to those of their first sexual encounter. There are some things that not even a Hutt can laugh about, however, and the device on the table between them as one such object.

"That, " Phex started slowly, peering into the box in the vain hope that his lying eyes might be deceiving him. " is a thermal detonator wired to what looks like a chronotrigger." Phex's calm demeanor was far from one of courage or stoicism, but simply the result of shock impairing his ability to feel anything other than the hammering of his heart within his chest.

Fight-or-flight reflex kicked in, though the human instinct was a moot point. You cannot fight an explosive device, after all.

"Run!" Screamed the man, scrambling from his chair in his rush to follow his own advise.

Four years ago, only adrenaline would've carried Phex past the dwelling's threshold, but commuting to work and a companion with nymphomaniac appetites had transformed the man into a fairly athletic specimen. Cassandra, however, didn't benefit as much from allowing him to do the heavy lifting in both career and bedroom.

Phex hurled himself onto the speeder-bike he bought Cassie for their anniversary, a ruby model that she regarded with a lustful pride. Without a glance behind him, Phex slammed the throttle just as the blast consumed his home. Clumsily riding the momentum, he managed to avoid the worst of the conclusive blast.

Wide eyed with shock, Phex formed too dark conclusions as he watched the remnants of years of expenses smolder. The first was that the blast would attract attention, and the second was that he alone escaped the death trap.

The glasses rattled, the tables skitters across the sticky tiles, and the lights overhead flickered in the Cantina. Nik Woverius Rillians saw none of this, when the very first vibration of potential danger coursed its way up his (Some would say spineless) back he had screamed "EARTHQUAKE!" and dove under the table. He remained there long after the tremor has subsided and only took his hands away from his head when he sensed a ruckus and movement around him.

"What's going on?" He enquired, cautiously picking his way from under the table making very sure that the ceiling wouldn't collapse and a broken support beam definitely would not impale him horribly.

"A house just exploded up the street." One of the barflies slurred. "Aftershock nearly took oot mah ale!"

"And you drunk fucks are just standing around gawking!?" Nik spat and ran out the doorway into the street. It was roughly about half a second later that the speeder bike and he became very familiar.

This isn't happening. This isn't happening. Empty words, and Phex knew it. Cassie was dead, and it was always his fault. It was supposed to be easy credits; no one was supposed to get hurt. He was going to kill that damn grifter if he ever saw him again. Okay, maybe he was going to get someone else to do it - the guy had a lightsaber after all.

"Jedi, my ass." Phex muttered through gritted teeth, grimacing through the headache that suddenly spiked. "and I'm an ionite nippled Wookie callgirl." The man muttered darkly, his words lost as the wind ravaged his simple tunic and the lanes blurred by. The nerf herding bantha bedding bastard was operating out of the cantina down the street the night he marked Phex. If he was still there, then Phex could get his credits back and pay the Rodian holding back the curtain on this little holo-drama.

Too much power for you. Cassandra used to scowl when he told her that, then she would laugh and speed off in defiance. It may not have been too much power for her, the Tarisan tart that she was, but it was damn sure too much power for Phex in his nervous state. Especially when the throttle seemed to be operating independently of its rider.

"Oh Sith shit." It dawned on Phex several precious seconds too late that his would be assassins would be more thorough then a simple exploding package. The Rodian had even made a veiled threat about Cassandra under the guise of commenting on the speeder bike. Memory is treacherous bitch, Phex concluded with dark fatalism as he laid the vehicle on its side to minimize the damage while the cantina grew larger far too rapidly for his liking.

Clinging to the pride of his dearly departed, Phex made several silent prayers, threats and curses as he skidded across the pavement in a spectacular shower of sparks. He felt a minute thump of impact and suddenly found someone else intimately close to him before a louder, final thump announced the ride was over.

"Any survivors?"

This shit was getting old, was all Nik thought as the wayward speeder took his legs away from him and he found himself face to face, travelling backwards at 60mph, with the driver. This wasn't exactly the type of situation where a handshake was expected in greeting and to be perfectly honest he was sure at least one of shins was shattered. If it weren't for the sheer shock factor of the whole experience he might have screamed or at least whimpered but all he could do was raise his eyebrows in mild bewilderment.

The hit and slide came to an abrupt halt and Nik found his secure position suddenly less secure, and he was rolling backwards into the outer wall of the Cantina, past drunken gawkers, still with drinks in hand.

"Well, guess that's that." He heard one say and the group returned to the smoky innards of the drinking den.

"Mother frakker..." Nik groaned, trying without success to stop the world from spinning. "Barely..." The Corellian responded.

"I'll take that, thanks." Phex mutterd absently as he confiscated the nearest drink of the grasp of a traumatized patron after having extracted himself from what could have been an awkward tangle and downed its contents without hesitation. The luckless man choked briefly on an unidentified fruit before managing to force down the offending object.

"Get... a... manlier drink." Phex coughed with difficulty before automatically snatching another drunk from yet another drunkard whose impaired reflexes prevented them from learning the lesson of the previous theft.

"Here, you look like you need this." Surprisingly enough, Phex fared better than the man he bowled over with Cassie's bike. Clinging to the bike like a pirate embracing the galaxy's last alcoholic beverage had kept the damage of the slide isolated to his legs. While his knees felt like they had been put through more than a Twi'Lek on Nar Shaddaa after the Battle of Yavin festival, he would live to run another day. His stance was shaky, but he figured he would probably walk more capably than most of present company.

"The...bike, I...it wasn't my fault. Tampered. Trying to kill me. You could use this." Phex offered the stolen drink despite its owner's protests, though he knew full well it would go nowhere toward making amends for running the man over.

"Is there a Jedi here?" Called out Phex, stumbling away from the trail of destruction that was hinting at what could potentially be a very long day. "You might want...want to move - they like blowing stuff up." He added in a casual aside to the stranger with whom he been so inseparable from mere moments before.

Nik reached up with a trembling hand and took the drink from his accidental assailants hand. Whatever words the man was speaking were lost to the receding shock of the last forty seconds and quite frankly they could wait another twenty until he had drained every last drop of whatever lay inside the glass.

He upturned the glass greedily, got half of it down his gullet before he caught the taste of the liquid and spluttered the other half between his legs. "I dunno whats worse, that you ran me over or that you made me drink piss-ass cider..." Nik groaned, before gingerly getting to his feet.

"I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that" Nik motioned towards the burning embers in the distance. "used to be your house?"

There were beings in cloaks; there were grizzled old men; there was even a bloke or two in robes. There was no sign, however, of the old bastard that was clothed in both cloak and robe. Aside from offending any sense of fashion, the man would've had to been from an arctic planet to avoid simply melting in such an overdressed state in this climate. What had added to his Jedi-like visage the last time Phex frequented this establishment now only belatedly tipped off Phex that the man was shady.

"He's not here." Phex muttered to himself, silently adding a few choice curses. Now that the shock of their sudden arrival was wearing off, Phex could see hands slowly gravitating toward what he could only optimistically assume were concealed weapons. If he survived this ordeal he would need hours and hours of therapy, preferrably administered by a skilled Exodeenian with generous amounts of lubrication. Frell, he'd settle for a Chironian at the rate current events were progressing. His lack of fortune forbade him from even considering humanoid company.

"It was." Phex confirmed absently, barely taking in the man's words. He needed a plan, and he needed one fast. If he didn't pay Bilbo, he was a dead man. Getting that amount of credits that quickly would be impossible by legal means. Underworld routes would take him full circle and simply trade one foe for another. "And, unless I can get ten thousand credits, they're only getting started."

Bilbo would have agents in the cantina, of course. He really didn't have time to stand around talking or thinking. He needed to move fast, but which direction? Off-planet seemed like a good idea.

"I need to get offworld."

There are certain phrases Nik had trained himself to look out for "They're only getting started" after an explosion at the homestead was one of them. The brown eyes regarded the man for a moment while he considered how best to word "Well, good luck with that." before he made off on his toes in any direction that wasn't near Phex.

The Gods, Life, fate, destiny or whatever you wished to call it, had other plans; such as unzipping and raining on his parade. From the cantina two thugs did thuggishly push their way through what remained of the on lookers and without a by your leave, drew on them.

Nik was no crack shot but with nerves coiled to the point of breaking he was one of the quickest draws around and his survival instinct gave him an uncanny perception when it came to threats to his cowardly person. The Dagger Combat Pistol, a slug thrower, was in his hand before his higher brain had time to register. That was all the provocation the gunmen needed.

"Get the bastard Bilbo's after!" The mountain of a human commanded as he squeezed off a shot at Nik who was a mere blur of cowardice. The large dumpster would only suffice for so long. He needed out of here, sharpish!

For the briefest moments of uncharacteristic courage, Phex silently scoffed in the face of danger. There's only two of them, he reckoned daringly. Then his usual terror of a death most violent and painful returned, and it brought his arithmetic skills in tow. There's only one of me, he realized with the frank admission that he had about as much of a chance of beating the two brutes as he did of winning a lightsaber battle with his penis. All in all, though, he preferred being shot over graphic dismemberment. A glass half full kind of guy, Phex was.

Chivalrous , Phex was not, and women made as good meat shields as as the next guy. Frell, they had even more padding for blaster bolts to burn threw in certain areas. And so hardheaded...Phex shook off his desperate rationalization and continued to cower behind the screaming woman as he frisked her for weapons and dragged her toward the massive gaping maul in the building that was a door prior to his grand entrance.

His search yielded only the nearly full bottle she must have been holding for someone with a craving for manly liquor, judging by the smell of it. Phex took a deep drought to calm his shrieking banshees of his nerves and hurled the bottle at the nearest thug. Sapphire eyes misted in regret for only a moment before Phex blinked away his remorse in the heat of the resulting explosion that followed when the brute fired in some combination of idiocy and instinct at the glass missile.

Phex hesitated at the wounded threshold. He couldn't leave the guy in the dumpster behind, not like this. The guy might have credits or a ride; he definitely couldn't leave him behind.

Phex bent down to retrieve a lightly smoking fragment of the speeder bike that lay at his feet. The man snarled in annoyance as the metal singed his flesh and hurled the scrap at his attackers.

"Come on!" Phex yelled, barely noting the words Red Queen now burned into his palm.

Nik wasn't even going to bother aiming, he simply took his weapon and held it above his head with the barrel over the top of the dumpster and pointed in his attackers general direction before he let off a few rounds.

This was just fantastic, a truly amazing end to a quiet night in the Cantina. It always went this way for Rillians, nothing was ever boring or mundane or NOT life threatening. It had gotten to the stage that getting up in the middle of the night to take a piss filled him with terror in case such an innocuous act might send him on a Galactic wide diamond heist with dread pirates and Hutt crime lords on his arse from Corellia to Yavin IV.

The sudden scuffle of feet so close by almost cost Phex the top of his head as the Corellian brought his gun the bear upon him. Thankfully Nik was not so skilled a gunman that he would bother to count how many rounds were left in his weapon as he fired and so all the partially singed, semi-tipsy and utterly homeless sentient received was a very annoying click when Nik's trigger finger reacted.

"Good plan!" Nik replied, his vocal cords straining not to reach notes only small sound-wave hunting mammals and canines could detect. He got to his feet and with a glance at the gunmen trying to reorganize themselves after the chunk of charred crimson metal collided with them did something he was exceptionally adept at: Made good his escape. "It was nice knowing you if you fall behind!" His boots pounded the side walk like black blurs, his legs taking long and nimble strides before he hung a sharp left down an alleyway between a pawn shop and a grocery store and then without slowing leapt onto the top of a crate and then vaulted over a high chain link fence.

"You still back there?" He called out, if he didn't get a response all the better.

All it took was the thought of an on foot pursuit, and a stitch nearly rendered immobile. Not particularly fond or accustomed to pain, Phex suspected the agony in his side was comparable only to trying to birth a bull rancor from his abdomen. It was certainly too much to run with, at any rate. He was more of a sprinter - not so much a marathon man.

The late model speeder parked nearby looked more his speed.

Once upon a time, two weeks by standard time in fact, Phex was a law abiding citizen. Well, there was that instance on Taris with the call girl, but it had been a stressful week. Nonetheless, it was not in the man's nature to steal. It wasn't a moral standard that prevented Phex - his moral compass had no needle - but a lack of experience and skill combined with paralyzing fear that he'd end up suffering a severe case of rug burn delivered by a Wookie on Star's End.

So it was a very fortunate and welcome change of pace for the conscience deprived fugitive that the ignition code was taped quite visibly to the dash in the vehicle in question. The slight head start his unwillingly partner crime had mattered little once the engine began purring and Phex took to the air. Hoping against hope that the bastard that had tried to shoot him would decide that made them even and further rescue would warrant a generous reward of a monetary nature, Phex fought took to the air and remained hovering above the unknown man.

"All aboard." And should the man decide to toss his wallet in first, well that would certainly simplify things.

A sudden feeling of dread filled Nik when he heard the roar of a speeder engine grow rapidly closer. If those bastards had transport no amount of leg-power would matter. They were fucked.

"All aboard!" Nik heard and looked upwards to see the underside of the speeder and Phexs face peering down at him. There was an odd moment where he wasn't sure whether you yell "You horrible CUNT!" or "You glorious man!" before promptly tonguing him. Regardless he snagged the feet rests of the bike and with muscles earned through decades of deft rooftop evasions clawed his way onto the seat beside his savoir.

"I don't like you," Nik yelled over the whirr of the engine. "Just remember that!"

"They always say that until I pay them." Phex responded in kind, cleverly hiding the irreparable damage done to his esteem under the coy cloak of not-giving-a-flying-frak-because-he-was-trying-not-to-die. So he would have to cancel the friendship bracelets he had time to order while everyone and their disease infested sibling tried to kill him in increasingly unoriginal ways.

"But if you feel that strongly about it: go tell it to those guys. I'll wait here." Okay, so maybe Phex was slightly offended. There were few things men could go through without forming some sort of a bond, and this was one of the few that didn't result in lockjaw or suspect rashes. "These guys are local; we need a ship."

If Phex's closet admirer didn't know how to get them in a ship, they were frakked in more ways than a Bith could count. They didn't have enough fuel cells to continue wandering aimlessly and his pursuers would eventually find transport of their own.

As if cued by that happy thought, Phex saw a speeder bike rapidly approaching them. The overgrown tank that wasn't driving leveled his blaster pistol - which looked comically small in his beastly grasp - and a strange defiance washed over Phex. He was not going to be shot by a man riding bitch, that just wasn't happening.

Jakob often enjoyed his time on other worlds, especially with his recent new take on the joys of being alive, etc. Not to say he was being a hippy about it and saying 'love all thy brotherly beings'. Nope, he was living nearly exactly the way he used to, just with less depression! Finally, he could enjoy his drinks!

Now, when you're half way through some local ale and the entire area shakes, you tend to take notice. When some daft loon shouted 'earthquake', Jakob choked down a scoff and went over to look at the lovely mushroom cloud formed from the explosives. It was a small mushroom, but still glorious. It wasn't until a moment after he finished admiring good use of explosives that he spotted Pilot McNoship run out right into the path of an oncoming speederbike.
Rather than the usual of laughing hysterically upon impact, Jakob hopped out to make sure nobody died. That was quite the hit, after all. As per the usual jokester, though, when the driver reached out for a drink, Jakob handed over the girliest drink within the area and promptly ensured it reached the grasping hand of alcoholic need.

Three conversations and a tapdancer later, there was a firefight. Despite this being the perfect opportunity to show off his new WESTARs, Jakob left well enough alone and watched the chaos ensue. When the dynamically dopey duo exited stage backwards, Jakob followed along at a reasonable distance, then couldn't help but meet his palm forcibly to his forehead as Flyboy started running and they other guy grabbed another speeder.

Based on observation, Jakob didn't trust the other guy with speederbikes. At any rate, with the chase taking on a high-speed motif, Jakob slid a hand over his armband's sensor and his own speederbike, only a one-seater, and hopped on with an unecessary flourish. He kicked in the throttle and laid after the couple. He spotted the clown of a driver with a tiny little gun and burst out laughing, nearly falling off of his speeder. He regained his composure, then decided that the fun shouldn't stop with some brute. He kicked in the speed on his speeder and slipped out one of his blasters.

With unecessary flair, Jakob sped up a conveniently placed palette that made a ramp and launched over the two in front of him, lashing out a small volley of shots from his pistol, destabilizing the big guy's speeder and sending it careening into a nearby wall in a totally realistic explosion. Jakob landed a few meters away and slid to a stop at the mouth of an alley, waving to the two he'd just probably saved from certain doom.

"Sup guys?" he called out so casually, as if chases and explosions werre just another daily occurrence. Like eating.

All retorts were stalled when Nik spotted not only their pursuers but something far more deadly. The resulting explosion was only the exclamation point to the calm shattering new arrival and as they sped up to the end of the alleyway Nik's face split into a grin.

"Jak!" He yelled with joy before hefting his pistol and lobbing it at his head. "If you stop I will bite your ear off!" He snarled at Phex before stomping his foot down on top of the throttle pedal, mashing it and his unlikely companions foot to the floor.

"I warned you, you rouge bastard!" Rillians yelled with a maniacal glee to his voice as the speeder accelerated rapidly, the only way out of the alley being through Jakob.

In all fairness, Jakob deserved it. If anything, this new maniacal behavior was the result of brain trauma caused by their last meeting. Since he knew there were no bullets to shoot him with, Jakob took the gun to the head, then caught it after it bounced.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck" he groaned, the pistol leaving quite the nice red mark across his forehead.

Now trying to run him over was something entirely different, and it was never agreed upon. Since the beeline course was laid, Nik making sure of that with his breakneck speed, Jakob slid him and his speeder as close to the alley wall as possible, which left them within uncomfortably close touching distance whilst Crazy Wingless Man and his new friend whizzed past Jakob.

He hoped they could slow down in time not to hit the building in front of them.

Just what I need, ex-drama. Caught in what appeared to be the lover's quarrel of a very unstable and sexually frustrating relationship, Phex wondered in that instant if he ever again would know the sweet sweet comfortable for a moment's safety. Torn between keeping his ear and avoiding becoming a foul smelling pile of mush, Phex chose the all-or-nothing route. He was rather attached to his ear, after all.

That plan shifted once Nik's old lady dodged, and rendered the quickie divorce technique moot and void.

At this point Phex allowed himself the liberty, after approximately one millionth of a second's thought, to disregard any threat to his ear in favor of avoiding an intimate meeting with what appeared to be a very frigid wall. The business man killed the ignition and worked the brake like it charged by the hour, determined to avoid meeting the wall at all costs.

Phex's life flashed before his eyes in an animated sequence of amoral business practices, questionable women and alcohol and he made a sudden resolution. If he survived this frakking night, he was going to be the guy who called the shots. He had had enough of being the one shot at.

Whatever madness had taken root in Rillians upon Jaks arrival was just as quick to exit via the back door when the building made itself evident. Nik relented, drawing his foot back like he'd just been informed Phex had a fungal infection.

"TURNTURNTURNTURRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!" He yelled, his knuckles white as he braced against the dashboard. He drew a feverish glance at the drivers foot attacking the brakes like they were going out of fashion and on instinct he lurched for the wheel. One hand pulled it to the left and the speeder began to slide side on, its speed was decreasing but not at the rate he and his bowels would have liked.

There was really only one thing for it- He assumed the crash position and rapidly introduced himself to every god he knew the name of.

Things went interestigly after he moved. Jakob was quickly the catalyst of both their salvation and their impending doom. He saved them from a clown of a blaster jockey just to send the couple careening into a wall. If he had a grappling hook, he'd save them two for two. Unfortunately, he was neither a cave explorer, ancient invader of places with high walls, or assassin. So he had no grappling hook.

All Jakob could do was watch the events unfold before his gaze. He hoped nobody important died, he was just getting to like this crowd.

"Frakkingfrellgorramitmotherofpalpatine-" Phex's exceptionally elegant commentary on the situation was cut off when the bucking bantha of a vehicle's sudden lurch sent it into a graceless spin that sent him tumbling. Mouth full of more blood than a fanged hooker, Phex lost his ability to speak as he choked on the metallic taste that overwhelmed him. Genius inspiration struck him like an unpaid Gamorrean pimp, minus the cracked skull, and it occurred to the businessman that he should be strapped in.

Had he thought of that brilliant ditty several seconds earlier, he might have had time to capitalize on his unrivaled enterprising instincts.

Instead the cracked skull made its late entry onto the scene when the rapidly slowing speeder was assisted in its deceleration by the uncomfortable embrace of the wall. The resulting crash wasn't severe enough to be fatal, but it was more than enough to hurt like a Rancor's massage. The way his tail bone hurt from being thrown from the vehicle, Phex imagined it wasn't too dissimilar from the sensation of a Rancor's mount. Through the haze of ebon and scarlet, Phex managed to cling to consciousness despite the searing agony in his head that felt as if a lightsaber had cleaved through his skull and laid little fiery eggs in his brain.

"There will be more coming. We need a plan, since they're after the lot of us now." Normally Phex's inclination in these kind of situations would be to adopt the social graces of the Talz with two men who had seemingly conspired to make his shitactular day worse, but he had to concede that his passenger had been suffering almost as much as he had. Plus, the guy had good taste in booze. In a galaxy gone mad, it was the little things that mattered.

They were in this together, for now at least, and he was hardly in any condition to handle this on his own. Now that he had decided his number one priority - himself - was okay, it occurred to him that he may have not have been the only one injured in the crash.

"Ey Boozy, you going to live long enough to drink again?"

"Fuck you, in-flight manual!" Was all Nik could think as the sheer velocity of their collision sent his head, resting snugly between his thighs, into the leg space in front of his seat. In a dignified manner befitting the Corellian his arse now stuck up in the air while he was making kissy faces to the grubby and mud-encrusted floor mats.

"That depends," He groaned freeing himself from the cosy little cubby hole he had found. "If you two arseholes are leaving the planet any time soon.." Was his final growl on the matter and then realised he felt little, if any pain. This gave him pause and made him reconsider his earlier denouncement of the tried and tested method of jamming ones head between ones legs when speed and gravity were not your friends.

"At some point," He said with a wince, climbing out of the crumpled speeder. "You're going to tell me why we're being shot at but we can do that while we're running!" Down the street the distinctive whine of speeder bikes reached their ears, it wouldn't be long until they were carbon scored and asking for mommy.

Jakob heard the whine of speeders approaching quickly. He pulled out his twin blasters and walked over to the crash site. He looked down both ways to see if anyone was immediately threatening before helping the two get to their feet. He looked in the speeder's little storage compartments for anything the more injured could use, then he found a little pack of synthflesh that could at least hopefully reduce the bleeding.

"Jak Raio" he introduced himself as he handed over the little pouch. The speeders were getting dangerously close now. "If you and Flyboy over there," he jabbed his thumb in Nik's direction, "want to scurry to somewhere safer, be my guest. You can take my bike if you're desperate. It'll be a little cramped." he warned, stepping to the side so the man he'd just handed the pack to could see that it was a once-seater, but two could fit if you really believed it could happen.

He heard which direction the speeders were coming from and turned, tightening his grip on his blasters. "If you want to hang around for what'll be an... interesting show, you're welcome to do that, too. Either way I'll keep them busy until they're not a problem or I run away screaming." he grinned at the last comment, trying to play it off even though he knew that it was very much a possibility.
On a final, silent comment, he looked to Nik and flipped him the bird.

It was a moving speech, it really was. It moved Phex to the conclusion that he needed to get the hell away from the flighty cock-jockey. Or was he a cocky flight-jockey? Either way, his gung-ho attitude and apparent lack of self-preservation was counterproductive to Phex's surplus of self-preservation. His heroics may earn the Raio the alleged honor of going out with a bang, but Phex would rather the pleasure of going out with a different kind of bang - one involving three nude young women free of disease and morals - at the ripe age of one hundred. Failing that, kidney failure was a nice lifetime goal, one he would very much like to pursue.

"Have fun with all that." Phex muttered offhand as he applied the synthflesh to the gash in his forehead before his swollen brain had time to shrink enough to fall through the gap. A crimson lance flashed across his vision and the career man had to steady himself. A sapphire bolt followed, and it took Phex several moments to realize that this time it wasn't simply in his head. The ion blast splashed across the alley wall on the first attempt, but a second shot got the proffered bike squarely beneath the seat.

"I mean to say, now seems like a good time for a plan." Seeing as how his original plan of bailing to save himself had failed miserably, Phex found himself open to suggestions. "No man gets left behind, after all."

If anyone actually believed that, he had a Jedi prostitute to sell them. That thought brought a startling self-awareness to the amoral. There might actually be a Jedi he'd be brave enough to stab, by that logic. Maybe he wasn't such a coward, after all.

"I like his plan. He dies like a bad arse and we get to the starport" Nik was entirely too happy at the prospect of Jaks heroic death. "We'll be guzzling down whiskey and groping something female in an hour." The bolt of lazered death locked out any other choice in his mind. If he could get to his ship, he could out-fly and out-gun any fraker short of Han Solo (And a few thousand other seasoned combat pilots).

"Cheerio!" Rillians called back to Jak as he took off up the street, in the opposite direction to the speeder bikes.

Jakob was about to retort to the 'no man gets left behind' statement when a blaster bolt fried past his head, making him shift away from where it had once been. He looked to the place it singed the air, then to the speeders. An incredulous 'how dare you' face was plastered across his own, and he whistled out at the speeder jockeys.

"HEY! You assholes mind!? I'm trying to have a conversation here!" by now he was caught in the moment, and he pretty much ignored Nik's running away. If he hadn't, then old Jakky would have antagonized the poor pilot about how slow he ran.
The response, if you wanted to call it that, to Jak's outburst was simply another few shots, all of which proved that these men must have been the worst shots EVER. They made stormtroopers look like crack shots.

Jakob sighed and gave an apologetic look to Phex.
"Sorry these guys are your enemies. They're really sad." with that, he turned and let loose a few volleys of rapid-fire shots from his twin blasters. There may not have been much that Jakob was good at -- he could only really fly from point A to point B, the Force and Lightsaber thing was still being worked on, and when push came to shove he'd end up running away like Nik -- but he always stuck with the three things he knew he was good at: showing off, riding speederbikes, and throwing blaster shots from blaster pistols like they were automatic. It took practice; in fact, most of his sad life was spent learning how to do that.

Either bikes or riders were crumbling to the bolts being floored out upon them by Jakob, and so they called in backup. The sound of a speederbike behind all the others rang through the alley, and to Jakob's horror he saw a brute of a man wielding a chaingun, of all things. His eyes widened and his arms fell.

"Oh... hell, no." he muttered as his leg muscles screamed to run. He threw his pistols into their holsters and glanced over to Phex. "...Your fight now! Toodle-oo!" And with that, Jak was bolting down the alley AWAY from the guy with the giant automatic gun, and past Nik.

"Don't look back just run faster!" he called out as he passed Nik, then he skidded around the corner, nearly falling over, and ducked behind the wall.