Darkness in the desert(buggie)

[Master Buggie]

His concentration focused totally upon the cloaked and armored sentient, Buggie rose from the bench and joined the flow of foot traffic several paces behind the presence he had picked up on. It was a delicate balance to be on the move so far behind the armored sentient and still dull his senses to the point where he could not detect Buggie's presence. He had not picked up on any suspicion through the Force, but no doubt the sentient he was pursuing would detect him if he slipped up.

Buggie intuitively tapped his utility belt, making sure he had a tracking device within one of the back pouches. If the sentient he was pursuing was this far into the spaceport, it was logical that he would be heading for a ship. There was no way that Buggie could isolate his target in this busy terminal, and beyond that, he would be challenged within a crowded docking bay where the armored sentient would have the advantage of rushing aboard a ship.

Just as Buggie thought he saw the armored sentient's attention turn to a silver starship barely in view in the distance, a filthy Kubaz heading against the flow of foot traffic bumped into Buggie, breaking his concentration and his line of sight for only a moment. Quickly, Buggie attempted to regain his focus, but he knew it was too late. If his quarry had any level of training, he would have detected Buggie's considerable presence and his previous influence over him.

The next questions through Buggie's mind weighed the most likely outcomes; would the sentient he was pursuing run? Or would he choose to engage Buggie in a swarm of innocent bystanders in exchange for the hostile invasion of his senses?

[Neive Undant]

It was just a moment.

Just a moment, he felt the presence behind him... a Jedi was nearby. Why hadn't he noticed before? Was the Jedi using a force mask? No... that was why Prazutis' sight didn't see as far as usual. He had assumed it was from the population, but now it made sense...
The Jedi dimmed his senses.
Without missing a step, Prazutis continued towards his ship, keeping his pace. He thought for a moment... if this was a jedi master, why couldn't Prazutis stop and fight it? Kill it and take its crystal, like he had wanted to do in the first place?
However, with the planetary defenses, and being so far into alliance territory, it would be mere moments before he was found by the Alliance on his way back to imperial space and captured. It was too risky. However, somewhere like Cato Neimoida...

He stepped up to the cockpit of his ship, the couple of pit droids that stood nearby walking off and carrying their fuel pipe with them that they had used to refuel his ship. He sighed as the glass of the cockpit closed, his ship preparing to leave the planet. He only had one more stop...
And if the Jedi followed, he wouldn't hesitate to destroy it.

[Master Buggie]

The sentient that Buggie pursued didn't miss a step. He continued forward as if nothing had happened, as coolly and calmly as before. To Buggie, it was a breath of relief, but his pursuit didn't stop. The armored sentient veered away to enter the docking bay with the silver ship, and Buggie casually crossed the stream of foot traffic and placed himself at one of the clay benches on the other side. With a vantage point somewhat obstructed by the flow of sentients crossing his view, Buggie could make out his target entering the cockpit of his ship.

Reaching now within his belt pouch, Buggie produced a tracking device. Checking it to make sure that it was functional, Buggie verified that it was a shielded model, resistant to the pulses of electrical energy that sometimes deactivated other cheaper model tracking devices if the target opted to cycle their shields.

Keeping the device within his palm, Buggie waited for the ship to rise off of its repulsorlifts. When he detected the right moment, Buggie pushed through the foot traffic to the edge of the docking bay. As the ship maneuvered itself higher, Buggie felt that the pilot's vantage point was obstructed enough for him to rush forward, pushing a couple of pit droids out of the way in the process as he heaved the tracking device up at the ship's hull. The disc sliced through the air in an arc, finally latching itself to the belly of the ship.

With that done, Buggie knew he could only pursue the armored man if he got to his own ship quickly. He hurried out of the docking bay and rushed toward the one where his own ship was berthed.

[Neive Undant]

None the wiser about the attachment that made its way to his ship, Prazutis kept his ship going up, clearing the walls of the spaceport before he took off, going up towards the atmosphere, and away from the planet.
Prazutis looked at his ship's main computer, plugging in the coordinates for Cato Neimoida. While the computer found the fastest hyperspace route there, he kept his ship going, towards the planet's orbit and out of the planet's gravitational pull.

While his ship moved quickly, Prazutis thought to himself... who was this Jedi who had been able to so easily dim Prazutis' senses within the force, who had been so close without being detected? Had it been a master? Or just another knight who saw Prazutis as only a minor threat, even with the artifact he now held?
Either way, it had better keep to its own business, Prazutis thought to himself... less it be crushed by the inquisitor.

[Master Buggie]

Time was now of the essence and Buggie pushed through as many pedestrians as necessary to make it back to his ship. The fuel lines were still connected when he got there, but he shouted at the pit droids to the point where they hastily unhooked the lines from his starship and cleared the area. Having run up the boarding ramp, Buggie practically leapfrogged the pilot's seat and made his six digits dance across the shipboard controls. Plugging in a datachip to the main console, Buggie set the ship's navigation system to the task of honing in on the tracking device.

It wasn't long before he had powered up repulsorlifts on his own vessel and pushed away from the Mos Espa spaceport, up into the atmosphere of Tatooine. Wherever this chase ended, it would not be on the desert planet.

[Neive Undant]

The targeting computer of Prazutis' aggressor confirmed the path from Tattooine to Cato Neimoida as he passed through the orbital field of the sandy outer rim planet. He waited a moment for his hyperdrive to prepare before he set the jump, only a few seconds before his ship shot into hyperspace to travel to his next destination.
Once he reached Cato, he thought to himself, he would have to make sure that his ship wasn't being tracked. From what he saw on approach to the ship, there were no devices, but when he left Neimoida he would have to give his aggressor a full once over. However, as he had left the planet, the jedi's presence had faded from his sight. So either he had taken his time to get his ship out, or he had gotten away... or he was being tracked, and the Jedi was taking his time. In any case, he had to be sure it wasn't the latter once he reached his stop on the way back to imperial space.
As he finished the thought, his hyperdrive engaged, and away he shot, halfway across the galaxy...

[Master Buggie]

***Colonies Regions, Quellor Sector***
***Cato Neimoidia System, N-11***
***Cato Neimoidia, Upper Atmosphere***

The dogged pursuit of this dark presence led Buggie halfway across the galaxy, from Tatooine to Nelvaan west along the Triellus Trade Route to Llanic, where his quarry hopped along the Llanic Spice Run northbound to Mon Gazza. It was here that Buggie would typically make his move, but the sentient he was after either had the foresight to drop out of hyperspace early and recalculate, or by chance missed a checkpoint that Buggie had been forced to stop at. Either way, the homing beacon reported that the ship had traveled along the Corellian Run up to the Denon system, which was known as a junction point between the Corellian Run and the Hydian Way. Buggie's vessel, having proven itself faster, seemed to make up time at that point, as Denon was a required stopover due to the heavy traffic that moved through the system.

The sentient that Buggie was pursuing seemed to fly with purpose into the navigation lane headed to the Hydian Way, where it traveled northbound again to the Exodeen system, before sliding over eastbound along the Nanth'ri Route for a short ways. There, it stopped in the Quellor system, where the sentient jumped galactic north to its final destination, Cato Neimoidia.

Buggie had made good time in his pursuit, but some time ago, he had lost the ship to visual scanners to the planet's persistent fog. Buggie relied on his ship's sensors to lead him down to the last known location of the ship he was pursuing, but he couldn't help but fight the sense of unease that came with traveling in the dense environment, as if a rock arch would reach up out of the murk and tear off a stabilizer on his ship. Worse yet, the dark sentient could get a jump on him at any moment if he were crafty enough to have waited for Buggie to pursue. As Buggie honed in on the nearest landing pad to the last known trajectory of the homing beacon, he prepared himself for a break in the fog. There was no telling what he might find as he descended closer to visible altitude.

[Neive Undant]

"Humbarine... Make my way there after here to make sure I'm not being followed once more..." Prazutis thought to himself as he approached the landing pad nearest to the coordinates he was given by the crime lord with whom he had spoken. He slowly sat his ship down, stepping out of his cockpit once it had opened.
He looked over his ship as he stepped down, a quick once-over of it before noticing a small discrepancy...
Outstretching his hand, the metal device detached from the underside of his ship and flew quickly into his cybernetic hand, before he crushed the device within his metallic palm. A tracking device, he thought to himself...
So he was definitely being followed.

He stepped away from his ship, pulling the hood of his cloak over his helmet once more and looking over the datapad he held. The coordinates for the drop point weren't far of a walk, but he still wondered what was held within. Fiddling with the pad a moment, it seemed to be encrypted. he narrowed his eyes before shaking his head, putting it away once more. It was most likely a trivial material that mattered not to the empire... However, if he was to give it up so easily, why had it been hidden near a Sith holocron, he wondered?
He approached the coordinates, a shipping post was nearby, but the exact coordinates were for a small building nearby... A hooded figure leaning on the wall beside the entrance.
Looking at Prazutis, he spoke, his black skin mostly hidden by his brown robes.
"You the guy Dowery sent?" The man spoke, his red eyes piercing through the iron helmet that masked Prazutis' face.
"I am." He bluntly spoke, taking out the datapad.
The man stood and put his hand out before Prazutis pulled it away.
"First.. you're going to tell me what is on this. And why is it so important to be held in such a dark place."

[Master Buggie]

Buggie's ship slowly passed over a series of landing pads while on repulsorlifts when the signal to the tracking device suddenly went out. Cursing, Buggie touched down at the nearest available pad and rushed out on foot, barely registering the need to toss the droid that tended to the pad the required toll. He was blind as far as technology was concerned, and to visual search, the fog hampered any advantage his powerful eyes might offer. The outfit that the armored man wore was still fresh in Buggie's memory after the pursuit from Tatooine, but in the mist, everyone appeared formless at a distance.

Buggie's senses were honed to the dark essence that the sentient carried on his person, though, and that was how he'd finally corner his quarry. Buggie patted the holster on his lower hip, checking to make sure his blaster was still present before setting off. Someone clad in that amount of armor was not to be trifled with without a weapon for defense.

At this point, Buggie made no effort to mask his presence. He wanted to feel how the sentient he was pursuing would react. There was no hiding the dark essence that trailed the sentient from someone of Buggie's training. The armored sentient was nearly within grasp after a trans-galactic chase, and Buggie wanted to let him know it.

[Neive Undant]

Feeling the presence of the Jedi, Prazutis narrowed his eyes. The jedi was no longer passively observing, watching from a distance... he was active, moving to finish the chase he had engaged in. Prazutis didn't have much time.
"Tell me, now!" He spoke to the man, before finally getting a response.
"Alright, alright... it's for an old weapon the republic used against the sith... something big, but I swear, that's all I know!" He looked urgently at the datapad.
After contemplating a moment, he finally gave the man the datapad.
"Fine... We'll talk later, then."
As the man took it hurriedly, Prazutis took out a small tracker of his own, his left hand guiding the tracker through the air into his bag once the datapad was in.
"Good day." He blankly said, before feeling the presence upon him. Needing a quick escape before he was seen through the heavy fog, he looked up to the low hanging rooftops and quickly propelled himself, the force sending almost an explosion of energy through his legs as he jumped, landing on the roof and running back along the rooftops towards his ship once more. His lightsaber quickly came into his cybernetic right hand as he ran, not igniting but if he was to be cornered, he would have it on hand. Now, he needed to think about a worst-case scenario. It would most likely be, he would have to fight the Jedi, and GA security would go on alert, trapping him on the planet. To avoid this happening, he needed to slow the Jedi down, if not stop him for a moment to give Prazutis time to leave. However, how could he do so without causing more of an uproar?