It took him four days to reach his destination.

The third moon orbiting Deneb was small and unassuming, nothing visible on the surface but craggy craters and moon dust, and he sort of understood why the inhabitants of the planet had chosen it to keep the treasure safe in. No one expected a vault to be hanging out under the surface of a planet’s smallest moon - they expected it to be in a city, where there were plenty of people to guard it. Enzo spent two full days in his ship, cloaked at a distance and surveying. He figured out the guard rotation - six guards into the underground vault every six hours, six guards out - and kept an eye out for any surface security. There didn’t seem to be any at first, nothing that his scanners could pick up and nothing he could see with his naked eye either. The second guard rotation, though, was when he noticed it; their careful steps he’d mistaken for some weird ritualistic walk at first, one - two - zig - one two-turn - one-two - zig. By the second rotation, he’d figured out that they were stepping around mines, probably following a map of their locations on their masks’ holo-displays. He paid special attention to the path the guards walked on the next rotation and entered the path into his own mask’s system.

Day three rolled around and it was time. He was proud of himself for his patience, honestly, something he wasn’t known for even when speaking about him in the most generous terms. The ship handled like a dream, silent as the grave in cloaked mode - not silent as the black of space, because Enzo had never in his life experienced anything that silent - as he planted her down in the center of a crater as close to the vault’s entrance as he dared to get. He wondered why they hadn’t stolen more of these ships, because they were dead useful. As he disembarked he made a mental note to point out to Kade how great it would be to have a few more - maybe if he was a good boy for long enough he could have one of his own. That’d be a dream. The crater wasn’t so deep that he had to risk alerting the guards to his presence by using a grappling hook, so he shimmied up the sides, muscles straining, and when he reached the top wedged himself between two boulders to wait for the next guard rotation.

Right on cue, a small ship bearing its six guards touched down just outside the minefield, and he watched them pick their way carefully across. Enzo thought as he watched the old guards filter out that their job looked boring as hell. Not for the first time, he felt deep appreciation for the fact that Kade had raised him as he had. He could have just dropped him off at an orphanage on a random planet after he’d found him, but he hadn’t. He’d taken him on instead and saved Enzo from a mundane life like one of these fuckers, who had to do the same damn thing every single day, wash, rinse, repeat until they died of stagnation.

He waited ten standard minutes after the old guards had taken off before he pulled up the glowing red display on his mask and began the arduous dance of making his way to the vault’s entrance. Whatever kind of mines there were, his scanners didn’t pick up a single one even at point blank range. He absolutely did not want to consider what kind of damage they could probably do to him if he managed to step on one. Just the thought sent a chill skittering up and down his spine. He remembered once, when he was fifteen or sixteen, he had been with Kade’s crew on a small retrieval mission and they’d run across a hidden minefield. One of the dimmer blaster rounds in the barrel had dashed across the surface towards their objective, unheeding of Kade’s warning, and kaboom! Enzo had still been picking literal pieces of skin out of his hair six hours after.

When he finally did reach the entrance, all in one piece thank you very much, he made sure his blasters were hidden by the long dark coat he’d put on for just this purpose. He dug around in his pocket for a minute, felt the reassuring hardness of the disk he had stored in there, and took a deep breath before stepping inside.

The guards jerked in surprise when they saw him, only one man half-raising his weapon, glancing at each other like what the fuck is going on here? He used their confusion to his advantage, retracting his mask when his display told him the vault was safe to breathe in. He held up his hands so that they could see his empty palms but not the disk he had clutched between his pointer and middle finger. Kade had insisted that card tricks were useless for a mercenary to know, but Enzo had always known they’d come in handy and the little flat metal triangle that was only visible from his vantage point proved it.

“Hey guys, uh, look, this is awkward,” Enzo said, rubbing the back of his neck with the hand not holding the disk until one of the guards aimed his weapon at him and he hastily threw the hand back up. He laughed, self-deprecating. “My dad’s going to kill me, man. I’m trying to get to Deneb, but I ran out of fuel. Can you believe it? I wasn’t supposed to take the ship, but I heard about this bar…”

“Stay where you are!” One of the guards, the one who had half-raised his weapon when Enzo walked in, barked. The blaster whirred to life as the barrel was aimed at Enzo’s chest.

“Whoa, hey, okay buddy. Easy there. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble!”

One of the other guards leaned in to whisper at the guy who had shouted, pressing a gloved hand to the top of the blaster rifle and pushing it down so it was aimed at Enzo’s crotch instead - which, not much better. “He’s a kid, man, calm the fuck down. Just make him leave.”

The blaster tilted further down as the angry - and arguably smartest - guard turned to reply to his cohort and Enzo smirked, sensing his opportunity. When the metal triangle hit the dirt, four of the six guards fell to the ground, bodies crackling with electricity. Enzo wasted no time, releasing the visor of his mask and pulling out his blaster. He took one of the remaining two guards out right away - non-deadly force, okay, he wasn’t a monster - but the second one, the one who had suspected him, struck his weapon out of his hand before he could raise it again. Thinking quickly, Enzo dashed towards the wall and jumped at it, using the moon’s lesser gravity to his advantage and propelling himself into a backflip. He planted his feet right into the center of the guard’s chest, narrowly avoiding the shot aimed at him. Two good kicks to the face with his heavy boots and the last guard was knocked out cold.

“Why do they always make it so easy?” Enzo mused out loud as he knelt down by the lock on the inner vault’s door and pressed his finger against the pad. He pressed a code into the arm of his suit and waited for it to do its work. In seconds the door was swinging open.

Kade had been telling him pretty much his whole life that he was too full of himself, that his conceit, his big head was going to be what got him killed. He’d been trying to beat into him that he should never assume the job was done, should be on his guard even when it seemed like he had taken out the target. As the door creaked open and a long, slimy, blue thing wrapped around his waist he had a split second to realize that, yeah, maybe Kade had been right about that.

“Fuck,” he wheezed as the thing cinched around his middle, dribbling green slime onto the dusty floor, and yanked him into the darkness beyond the door.

Teeth. Enzo had never seen so many teeth on one being, and he’d seen a lot of fucked up creatures in his near-nineteen years. The thing wrapped around him was slimy because it was a goddamn tongue, pulling him inescapably towards a set of razor-sharp, gnashing teeth, towards hot, acrid breath. If his hands weren’t strapped to his sides, legs plastered together, and if he weren’t rapidly losing the ability to breathe he might have found the creature to be kind of awesome. It was massive, he didn’t even have a scale to compare it too, and it was fluorescent. Fluorescent green teeth, fluorescent green slime dripping out of its jowls - its body was dark, but there were enough vibrant, glowing blue spots on its back to show Enzo that it looked like an amphibian of some kind.

But the teeth. A string of expletives spilled steadily out of Enzo’s mouth as he tried in vain to pull himself free. He tried to kick his legs, growled in frustration as his attempt to pull an arm out of its prison were met with no success.

“Shit, fuck, godsdamnit, you stupid motherfucker put me down!” he screeched as those teeth got so close that he knew for a fact there was no way he was surviving this encounter. As one last fuck you, he spit a big sticky glob of mucus into the thing’s eye when he was close enough to count the tiny spots like glowing blue freckles on its face. Then he closed his own eyes and hoped to shit that there was no hell out in this part of the galaxy because if there was he was definitely going there.

A sound like displaced air, a wet squelch, and then a yowling roar assaulted Enzo’s eardrums, but he didn’t have time to consider what might have happened before he was falling. If he’d had any breath left in him the impact from the ground would have knocked it out of him. He had no time to sit in shock, however, as the beast was screeching in pain and flailing its limbs, the lashing movements threatening to crush Enzo flat. He gasped out a strained breath and started trying to wiggle out of the now severed tongue, ignoring the screaming protest of his ribs and lungs.

“The hell do you think you’re doing here, moron?” a naggingly familiar voice hissed above him. Enzo heard a high-pitched animal sound, like a chitter, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of darkenss and fluorescent red blood spray across the dark room.

He renewed his struggle, but couldn’t seem to get good enough footing to get himself out of the still-dripping tongue. “Oh, you know, just taking a fucking vacation! The hell does it look like I’m doing?”

“Quit your damn squirming, kid,” the man grunted, and Enzo’s vision was filled with vibrant white and purple skin as Zarek Cando, of all people, leaned over him and started hacking at the tentacle with one of those wicked curved knives.

After what felt like an agonizing ten minutes of chopping but was in reality likely more like one, the offending appendage was weak enough that Enzo was able to tear his way out. His lungs screamed in protest as he took his first deep, shaky breath, but air had never tasted so good to him before. He ignored Cando’s outstretched hand and scrambled to his feet, slipping in oozing green slime tinted with blood and panting.

“Why are you here, Cando? This is my heist. Back the hell off!”

Cando laughed, sharp and deep in that way Enzo had to remind himself was not attractive. Was his every mission damned to be fucked up by running into this stupid asshole? Of course he had the shittiest luck in the galaxy and the outlaw among outlaws had to save his ass again on his first ever complete fuck up of a solo mission.

“Kid, there’s no claim on this heist. Way I see it, I just saved your idiot ass. You owe me. Once I take out this beasty, well, we’re just gonna have to part ways with you empty-handed.”

“Ha! Screw that, you big jackass. Have fun with the frog!”

Before Cando knew what had happened, Enzo had pulled on his Gift and was slipping out around the creature. He took care to muffle his wet footsteps even though the creature was too distracted with chasing Echo around to hear him. Enzo smirked as Cando let out a frustrated groan.

He was stopped halfway down the cavern, though, when he heard the pirate shout out in pain. Echo’s squeaking was abruptly cut off with a tiny heartbreaking yowl, and the beast roared wetly in what sounded suspiciously like triumph. Cursing himself for being such a godsdamned softie, Enzo turned around and hightailed it back to the fight. He thought briefly that he really should have hesitated more, but whatever he was no one had ever accused him of being heartless. The other man had saved him twice now - he couldn’t just let him die. 

As he rounded the corner he saw that the beast had wrapped what was left of its tongue, gushing blood absolutely everywhere, around Cando’s leg and was dangling him over its rows of glowing razor teeth. Echo was knocked out on the ground, and Enzo hoped the critter was still alive. He wondered as he pulled out the retractable short sword he carried in his boot and pressed a button, why Cando didn’t just pop out of the creature’s tentacle. The sword lit up with crackling electricity and Enzo told himself if he got out of this alive he’d ask. Then, steeling himself, he took a deep breath and launched himself at that mouth, shouting a battle cry he would adamantly deny for the rest of his life.