Stranded in dangerous territory, Omega and Crosshair must work together.
Tropes:
- Aggressive Negotiations: Crosshair "negotiates" with the kid outside the bar by implicitly threatening him, getting him to haggle down to 5,000 credits. Omega agrees to the payment as they have enough to spare.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Mann runs an animal trafficking operation that he implies consists of animals and pets he snatches up from the populace of his town.
- Bait the Dog: For a moment, Captain Mann seems like he'll be a good sport about losing to Omega. Then he takes 10,000 credits as an illegal gambling fee, steals Batcher, and sells her out to Hemlock while also demanding the rest of the credits she won.
- Batman Gambit: Captain Mann sneakily stole Batcher knowing that Omega will come looking for her just so he can get his credits back.
- Big Damn Reunion: Meeting again for the first time in at least six months, Hunter and Wrecker have a very emotional reunion with Omega. The pair's reunion with Crosshair proves a good deal more frosty, however, given the latter's past actions.
- Blatant Lies: Nala Se claims to find Omega and Crosshair's escape "surprising", that the test results discovered by Emerie were a "false positive", and that she only sees Omega as an "aberration"; Hemlock doesn't believe a word she says, implying that if he should recover Omega and find through a retest that her initial test results were not in fact a false positive, Nala Se's usefulness might come to a very swift end.
- Call-Back:
- One of the animals in Mann's animal trafficking operation are Void Striders from Abafar.
- Once again, Chain Codes are brought up as the only legal means to get off world. Unfortunately, chain codes will identify Omega if she registers for one, she doesn't know how to forge chain codes and Tech isn't around to do it, so she and Crosshair have to resort to bribing the ticketmaster an exorbitant amount instead.
- Omega once again utilizes her hustling and gambling skills to earn some fast cash, just as she did in “Common Ground”, and she ends up getting unnecessary attention with her skills just like before, except this time it gets her in serious trouble.
- Omega summons Hunter and Wrecker for their rendezvous at the same planetoid that they met up with Hera and Gobie in "Devil's Deal".
- Call-Forward:
- One of the animals captured by Mann's smuggling ring is a Porg, the very creature that Cikatro Vizago would try to make money off of years later.
- An implied one; the tentacles that emerge from one of Mann's containers, and the implication that he was horribly and painfully Eaten Alive in his Sound-Only Death make it quite plausible that he was consumed by a Rathtar, the same sort of beast that Han Solo and Chewbacca will be trafficking decades later.
- Coming in Hot: The damage the Rho-class transport shuttle sustained in the previous episode forces Omega to drop out of hyperspace at the nearest planet and crash as gently as possible. Fortunately, the planet is inhabited and Crosshair locates a settlement before the scanners go offline.
- Determinator: Dr. Hemlock is all too determined to get Omega back and orders the getaway shuttle tracked. Fortunately, Crosshair was smart enough to remind Omega to ditch their shuttle.
- Dirty Cop: Captain Mann takes kickbacks, enforces laws against gambling only when he loses, and seems to be in the animal smuggling business.
- Dramatic Irony: Considering how long Crosshair was in Mount Tantiss, he believes his former teammates might not be alive. What he doesn’t realize is that Tech is the only one who didn’t make it.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Hemlock admits that he previously had no idea why Nala Se kept Omega around, and now that he knows about her elevated M-count, assumes that this was the reason, not any emotional attachment she might have had to the young clone. Nala Se runs with it in trying to spin a cover story.
- Escaped Animal Rampage: Omega released all the animals to create enough confusion and keep the TK Stormtroopers occupied while she and Crosshair steal a ship to escape. However, it wasn’t enough to prevent the few surviving troopers from calling Dr. Hemlock.
- Fat Bastard: Captain Mann is a chubby Imperial who's as corrupt as you'd expect an Imperial to be.
- Foreshadowing: As they prepare to rescue Batcher, Omega suggests freeing all of the imprisoned animals; Crosshair tells her not to push it, as he only barely agreed to help save Batcher. When things go south, Omega ends up releasing all of the animals anyway, both to free them and to create chaos for her and Crosshair to exploit as they escape.
- Good Is Not Soft: Omega prefers not to use force where she doesn't have to, but when Mann has her and Crosshair cornered, she doesn't have a problem doing things Crosshair's way.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Captain Mann gets his Karmic Death when he is pulled into an open container by some emerging tentacles for a Sound-Only Death with the details left to the viewer's imagination.
- Guile Hero: Not wanting to hurt anyone unnecessarily, Omega opts for negotiation and cleverness over Crosshair's more blunt suggestions. If Captain Mann hadn't walked into the bar when he did, the duo might have been able to bribe their way off of Lau without having to fire a shot.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: If you lose a game to Captain Mann, you lose, obviously. If you win a game with Captain Mann, he will demand you pay an exorbitant fine for gambling since it’s illegal for everybody but him. And even if you lost, you still have to pay the fine.
- He's Back!: It's downplayed, but Crosshair's Improbable Aiming Skills are much better in this episode than they were in the one previous, when he and Omega were escaping Dr. Hemlock and his forces at Mount Tantiss and he got a case of Worf Had the Flu. Crosshair still has a brief twitch in his hand that he shakes off, but he does seem to be recovering.
- Honor Before Reason: After escaping Mount Tantiss, Omega wants to go back to rescue all of the clone prisoners and at least extract the coordinates to Tantiss, and when Batcher is taken by Captain Mann, she insists on rescuing her before trying to leave. Crosshair shoots down the former because they have no time to fix up the downed shuttle before the Empire investigates the crash, and reluctantly goes along with the latter because Omega refuses to abandon Batcher.
- Immediate Sequel: This episode picks up right where the last one left off, with the one shot that hit the stolen Rho-class transport shuttle before Hemlock called off pursuit causing problems for Omega and Crosshair as they try to flee.
- I Own This Town: Captain Mann brags as much when he has Omega and Crosshair cornered and is ready to rob them of their winnings and sell them out to Hemlock.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Crosshair points out that going after Batcher was a bad move and leaving sooner rather than later would have saved him and Omega a lot of trouble. However, this is ignoring the fact that Omega had a perfect opportunity to escape by herself in the previous episode and still went to get him. In response, Omega throws him the credits they made and goes after Batcher alone. It makes him change his mind.
- Karmic Death: Captain Mann is dragged to his demise by one of the animals he kept locked up to be sold offworld — likely a rathtar, if the emerging tentacles and the grisly Gory Discretion Shot and Sound-Only Death are any indications.
- Licked by the Dog: After he helps to rescue her from Mann, Batcher takes quite a liking to Crosshair, giving the surly clone a few good licks.
- Money Is Not Power: When Captain Mann demands Omega fork over 20,000 credits with the threat of handing her over to Dr. Hemlock, he suggests she’s better off doing so because her money wouldn’t help her if she gets captured by the doctor again. While an additional extra credits would help Dr. Hemlock, he’s not the kind of official who can be bought and has resources far in excess of that kind of bribe.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Hemlock shows how stressed and agitated he is at the loss of Omega in his conversation with Nala Se, being far more aggressive and hostile than he usually is.
- One-Man Army: Crosshair threatens to make short work of half the guards at the station before they even know what hit them. At the docks, he gets the chance to make good on that threat and nearly fulfills it verbatim.
- On the Money: Omega must procure no less than 30,000 credits to bribe the ticket agent to get off world. Omega manages to exceed that amount, but she ends up losing 10,000 to pay the gambling fine, then 5,000 ("negotiated" down by Crosshair from 10,000) for information on Batcher, leaving them with the exact amount needed to pay the bribe. Then, Captain Mann demands the rest of the 20,000 credits he lost to Omega after reporting them to Dr. Hemlock, since she won't need it. Tired of putting up with the captain's douchebag behavior, Omega decides to do things Crosshair's way; they manage to get off world and walk away with 30,000 credits.
- Out of Focus: Hunter and Wrecker only show up in the ending of the episode, while Echo still hasn't reappeared yet.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As a greedy, petty tyrant, Mann regularly gambles with the common citizens of the town. But once he’s done, whether he wins or loses, he demands they pay a fine for gambling since it’s illegal; all just a long-game scam to further pad his pockets.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Mann sure thinks he’s a huge, intimidating threat, but like Mokko before him, he’s only the former. Once Crosshair declares open warfare on him, he’s not much use in the ensuing firefight and ends up devoured by a monster for his troubles.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: As in the previous episode, Omega matches Crosshair quip for quip as they work together.
- Sore Loser: Captain Mann at first seems like he going to avert this, as after getting beat by Omega at the card game, his troops start closing in menacingly before he immediately calls them off. Then as Omega and Crosshair start to leave, Mann stops them and informs them that they need to pay the fine for illegal gambling, which he was also doing. Later, he steals Batcher and demands all his money back for her return, even though he is under orders (that he fully intends to comply with) to capture Omega and Crosshair anyways.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: As noted in Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, Hemlock can’t understand why Nala Se has a close attachment to Omega, due to him being a vile, inhuman bastard. When he claims that she only looked out for her because of her elevated M-count, Nala Se rolls with it and starts referring to Omega as "the clone" to help pretend that she doesn’t have any attachment to her, hopefully to try to fool Hemlock.
- Time for Plan B: When the plan to rescue Batcher goes south, Omega tells Crosshair that they'll have to try his methods. Cue a gunfight. Thankfully, this didn't even cost them an additional credit, so it was a good call.
- Would Hurt a Child: After the kid outside the cantina for demanded an unreasonable price for Batcher’s whereabouts, Crosshair was clearly thinking about throttling it out of him.
