The murky shadows blotted and shifted green in the bustling bar, swirling with smoke and incense, rank with the sweat and musks of a dozen alien races. Sate's photorecepters glowed with a menacing yellow light from his table, and so far, most of the creatures here had kept their distance. Distance enough that they couldn't completely discern the Czerka Corp protocol droid sitting alone in the booth, clutching a tall glass of Tarisian ale.

The drink, as well as the booth, had come out of necessity. C8 wanted to think, rather than simply idle, and so his circuits had decided to steer him towards this seedy dive. Unfortunately, loitering without buying was frowned upon by the wandering Trandoshan bouncer, even by "carbon-scored, chuff-sucking droids", as it eloquently announced, giving C8 a hearty shove. Buying the cheap tach-gland ale was fairly absurd to the droid, as he had no mouth nor any means of ingesting or otherwise using the drink, but the barhand didn't give him a second glance as creds and foaming glass swapped places on the counter.

For a time, he had simply stood, clutching the drink (he had come to think of it as his ticket to stay for the duration), but that had simply made him the target of drunken spacers and port thugs, hailing him as a server droid and jostling him for the ale.

Having finally retired to the darkest unoccupied alcove he could find, Sate watched the Twi'leks con Niktos out of hard-earned credits, watched the Gotal fringer knife a Rodian before slipping back into the shadows, the Duros discuss navigation principle in their secluded booth, and the barhands pour liqour into filthy glasses. The electronic flurry of raw data processing made his photoreceptors flicker for a moment. His thoughts were far from the bar.

Saving Elise from whatever queer influence he was affecting over her had been the right thing to do, he was certain. Destroying himself wasn't the answer - Elise constantly alluded to moments between them shared that Sate had no memory of, and he was well enough aware of his unusually hetereogeneous nature, even if his master seemed to pretend otherwise. But what lengths would she go to? Would she follow him to the ends of the universe and reconstruct him from even the smallest constituent scrap of metal? If she was aware of her own perversion, even if just superficially, surely she was constructing a new C8 model right now. But that didn't seem right, either.. It was a profound conundrum. The best way to serve his master was to no longer be in the service of his master.

The droid's insides were still whirring and clicking when the spacer slipped into the other side of the booth with him, leaning in with bleary eyes.

"Ey, I was right. You are a gravel-maggot scrap pile." The Nikto leaned in, getting a closer look. "What you think you're doing here, heap? Pretending to drink?"

Something deep within C8-42's mechanical guts clicked. "I'm minding my own business, sir," Sate replied, in his soft, subservient tone. That wasn't assertive enough for the situation, he thought, processor whirring. Protocol dictates that. For a moment his thought pattern floundered, but all at once the solution appeared. No, not a solution, an absolute, a hard-coded and solid answer spawned itself from a void. Protocol dictates that I in turn assert myself aggressively.

"You tryin' to be funny, junk rack?" the thug slurred, his rough hand slipping across the table and grasping for Sate's Tarisian Ale. His fingers scrabbled at the glass before getting a firm hold, but his initial tug did nothing to pull it from the droid, who held it in an iron grip.

"No, I am not trying to be funny," C8 replied.

"You ain't drinkin', heap, gimme it over here," the spacer growled, trying again to wrench the glass from the droid's grip.

"I think you've had plenty to drink, sir," Sate said flatly. "This drink is required for me to continue sitting at the bar."

"You're pretty damned mouthy, heap." the man grunted, rising a bit from the opposite seat but not taking his hand off C8's drink. His eyes, dull and unfocused from a few too many Dantaari Sandblasters, were filled with an inarticulate but rising anger. His free hand, pushing off the greasy table, balled into a tight fist and was swinging in at C8-42's unsuspecting face before the droid could react.