A Walk On The Wild Side

[Aela Talith]

Aela rushed through the darkned back alleys, wind smacking against her face and rain splattering against her clothing.

Heavy breaths caused her chest to rise and fall, her arms held tightly at her side, her hand clutching her lightsaber tightly. Her eyes scanned through the city streets, watching, looking as darkness cut into corners and seeped out into the light. She came to a stop, heavy breaths falling from her lips as she tried to find her query.

A curse escaped her as she realized he was gone.

The wind pushed up against her cloak, causing it to snap loudly within the wind. A small shiver raced up her spine, followed quickly by goosebumps. The loud thrum of her lightsaber suddenly ceased as the bright pink blade winked out of existence.

For the past twenty minutes she had been chasing down a Rodian Smuggler. The man had ties to The Hutt Cartel, slavers to be more exact. Supposedly he was known for smuggling the drugs that the slavers used to keep their victims sedated. Aela had hoped to capture him in order to get information about where the Slavers kept their victims, from there the Covenant could have freed them.

Yet the man had been fast, faster than she had expected.

He had known the streets and alleyways better than her, and that had let him get away. “Kark.”

She said quietly, as though she were hiding the curse from ever watchful parents. Slowly she began to move again, eyes watchful, the force trying to sense everything around her.

 

[Adder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTsU6WRqprg​

There was no rush to her steps, no hurry to the pace of her stride as she followed the tracks of her frantic prey. The smuggler had been her target for weeks; a weak link in their slaving operation, for the rodian liked to blow his hard-earned credits on hookers and booze, a combination that had seen even men of greater resolve crumble.

Seeing as her target couldn't demonstrate resolve and self-discipline to save his life, Adder had encountered no such troubles while shadowing the criminal, and assembling a whole picture out of the bits and pieces he let slip during his inebriated escapades proved to be rather simple, in the end.

The end, as it turned out, was a portentiously dark and stormy night, and were the woman less focused on her query and more on her looming surroundings — beyond that which immediately impacted her hunt — she might have made a mental remark or two about the clichéd setting.

As it was, however, the redhead did no such thing, mainly because she was too busy glaring angrily at a pink beam smeared into magenta streaks by the cold raindrops falling from above. Whoever it was, they were either oddly fond of carrying about neon sticks, or — far more likely — had a penchant for moving things with their mind and spewing righteous wisdom.

Green eyes narrowed further, but she was still hidden from sight by a portion of a sign that had broken off from its parent board and now hung on thin durasteel wires, swaying with the wind. She still had the advantage.

What she didn't have, regrettably, was her prey.

"Dammit," she muttered harshly under her breath, pressing herself flush against the rough façade of the wall behind her when the owner of the pink beam — now extinguished, Adder noted — moved forward and past her position.

With a quick glance to a smaller street to the side, the woman made a split-second decision and darted across the small expanse of open space separating her from the mouth of the alley, where she promptly exploited the cheap construction work to aid her in the ascent to the rooftops.

She was going to be soaking wet either way, so it really didn't matter just how fast it happened.

Now to find that rodian.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Her lips thinned.

She could feel herself getting colder and colder. Really she should have been wearing warmer clothes, but this world wasn't usually freezing. The storm had rolled in quite suddenly and without warning, the slashing rains and the gale force winds weren't exactly a usual thing here. The force was a good buffer against temperatures, but even that wasn't enough to cut out the causes of hypothermia. She had to find the Rodian fast, or risk ending up with blue fingers.

Sadly, as she moved down the alley that option became more and more likely. The force came to her sometimes, told her of events that would transpire, but she wasn't by any means a sensory Jedi. One of her friends could sense individual mice in a maze, Aela could barely sense a Sith Lord from the next room over. It simply wasn't in her talents, and with the Rodian sneaking about on his home turf she found that things were getting more and more complex.

"Jedi!"

Her head snapped to the side as someone called out to her.

It was a man, sitting against a dumpster. His form was disheveled, his clothes were a wreck and a ruin, rags really. He looked as though he had been homeless for quite some time. Aela approached him, slowly, keeping a tight grip on her lightsaber. "Yes?"

Her voice was barely a whisper when it came through the torrential rain.
"He went into the Warrens."

The man spat on the floor, distinctly away from Aela. She perked her eyebrows almost immediately, more confused than anything else. It was obvious that the man was referring to the Rodian, but why would he be helping her?

"No good bastard owes me twenty creds."

Ah, that explained it. Of course it could be a trap...her lips thinned and with her free hand she dug into her pocket, from it she pulled a credit chit and tossed it towards the man. It didn't matter if it was a trap, if the Rodian had gone to the Warrens, then thats where Aela would go. With a nod she ran off towards the south, heading into the slums.

 

[Adder]

It was a curious experience, following a Jedi across the rooftops of a shanty town while the sky was doing its very best to imitate the atmosphere of Kamino, and Adder came close to slipping and unceremoniously dying from a broken neck in some unnamed town on a hole of a planet.

Chuckling inwardly at the thought, the ex-cop glanced down at the display on her forearm, wiping away at the few aggressive raindrops as they sought to obscure the location of the wiking red dot on the screen. After seeing where her target had gone into hiding, her inner chuckle dissolved into a pained groan.

There were few things that could top the amalgam of terror and excitement that was tracking one's prey though their own territory; doubly so when said territory was a veritable labyrinth, rife with secret passages and perilous traps born of destitute masonry falling victim to time. Adder had lived through that ordeal many times over now, and though her heart hammered slightly less than the first time, the woman was terribly, terribly aware of just how quickly it could all go wrong.

What if the rodian had retreated into the Warrens because he had a band of fellow outlaws lying in wait, to spring their ambush upon his hound?

Hounds, she corrected as she watched the drenched Jedi linger near one of the many homeless littering the streets of the backwater metropolis, presumably to utter some empty words of encouragement.

Adder's eyebrows climbed her cool forehead as her unwitting companion fell in pursuit once more, unmistakably homing for the slums where the smuggler had taken refuge.

So much for solo work, the redhead gave up with a sigh and promptly rose from her crouching position at the edge of a weeping roof, the sound of her boots against the duracrete drowned out by the drumming of rain against the earth.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

She moved faster than before. Aela didn't have time anymore. The slavers had just taken an entire village from Ryloth, had kidnapped them right from their own homes. The Covenant had received word of that three days after it had happened. That's three days that those Twi'leks had been in captivity. She shivered at that thought, the rain running slick against her skin now.

The Rodian was a link.

She had to capture him, interrogate him and find out where the slavers were hidden. Aela knew that they weren't on this world, but nearby. If she could get the coordinates she could find them and free them, it was only a matter of getting the man.

Her feet fell into puddle after puddle, splashing and soaking her further as she crossed into the warrens. It was a shanty tone, thin metal sheeting, duraplast, and ripped carboard seemed to cover every window and wall. Graffiti lined the streets, homeless lay against dark alleyways, and the entire place was nearly pitch black. As she ran into the slums her heart began to thump faster, a sense of danger falling in on her mind. Her fingers tightened on the lightsaber as she slowly came to a stop to catch her bearings.

A crowd began to form behind her.

She noticed it slowly at first. One, then two, then three. They gathered slowly, cutting off her retreat.

 

[Adder]

Her breathing quickened, and another string of profanity left her lips as she nearly lost her footing upon a rain-slickened sheet of metal that someone had used to patch up a leaking roof. Cursing her inattentiveness, the woman snuck deeper into the shanty town as best as she could, her left hand inching closer and closer to the her trusty westar the deeper she breached into the dangerous territory.

Her gut had never led her astray before, and that night was no different; only a second after she'd decided to pull out her blaster, Adder could hear a hoarse voice float from below, and stopped in her tracks immediately as soon as she managed to translate the crude dialect.

Scooting over to the edge of the roof she was perched upon, the ex-cop released the safety as she peered through the thick courtain of cold, heavy raindrops. Someone must have angered the weather gods that night, and a few years previous, Adder would've had a hard time discerning the outlines of the would-be perpetrators; tonight, it wasn't so.

As she squeezed her right eye shut, the redhead finally adjusted her artificial eyesight, allowing a wry smile to wrench control of her lips as she counted the figures below. Six. A group still small enough that she could take them out alone, but not before one or two would reach her unwitting accomplice in the hunt for the rodian.

The woman pondered for a moment; the other's identity as a Jedi was still unconfirmed, and if that assumption proved wrong, Adder could find herself in above her head.

Better safe than sorry, she reminded herself firmly as their apparent leader repeated his unsavory request in that same perverted Twi'Leki, giving herself a mental pat on the back for investing in a quality blaster as she took aim in the downpour.

"Kark off," she finally spoke, willing to compromise her stealth to split their attention and give the other opportunity to act. She only hoped the presumed Jedi was quick enough on her feet, or they would both end up facing more trouble than the ordeal was worth.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Aela had turned to face the group, bright orange eyes scanning them.

Most of them wore rags, two or three wore simple blast vests. All of them carried a weapon of some sort, a blaster, a vibroknife, two or three even had a grenade strapped to their belt. Her lips thinned as she confronted them, hand tightening on her lightsaber hilt as she watched them move towards her.

This wasn't a gang of random street thugs, this wasn't a mugging.

They had planned this.

It really had been a trap. Somehow she wasn't surprised. Her thumb floated over the switch on her lightsaber, the digit pressing down as torrential rain pressed against her cloak and wind cut into her hood. One of the men spoke, his words lost in the torrential downpour that crossed the distance between them. A silent curse passed her lips as she realized she'd have to fight them all on her own, without killing any of them. The Twi'lek leader spoke again, his huttese broken and gnashed.

Then another voice called out in the storm.

Aela's head whipped upwards, hood flying from her face as a gust of wind caught it. Orange eyes locked on to the woman that had spoken and in that moment one of the thugs saw his opportunity. A Duros male let out a roar, screaming at the top of his lungs at charging at Aela with a screeching vibro-blade.

 

[Adder]

Oh, well. She tried.

Adder squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, never stopping to admire her handiwork as the charging duros collapsed along with another human that had followed in his footsteps, their warcries dissolving into pitiful screaming as they clutched to what remained of their knees, their firearms forgotten on the ground.

There was no time to appreciate the grace with which the pink blade on her right descended upon the thugs, busy as she was diving to the side in an effort to avoid the wild spray of bolts that one of the trigger-happy bandits had so generously shot in her direction.

A small grunt was forced out of her chest on impact, and the former cop resigned to adding another blossoming bruise to the boquet she still owned from her excursion to a dingy bar a few nights ago. Thankful for the small reprieve as she lay on her stomach on a cold, cold roof in the middle of nowhere, Adder chuckled mirthlessly through her teeth and took a few deep breaths to try and calm her thundering heart.

This wasn't what she'd had in mind for tonight, but things never seemed to go her way. Whatever plans she wrought, reality would trample right over them and dash them to the four winds, leaving her to pick up the pieces.

In a sardonic twist of fate, that was what Adder was really, really good at.

"I said kark off, pigface!" she shouted at the top of her lungs to be heard over the peal of thunder overhead, grimacing as she fired a series of shots at the thick hide of a gamorrean.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Her lightsaber snapped into life in an instant. She didn't make a move to attack, didn't make a move to stop the man from reaching her instead she watched as they fell to the ground screaming. Her mouth gaped, but before she could say or do anything the scene moved on.

In an instant things seemed to unfold, and the thugs made their move.

Aela stood as she always did, waiting for her opponents to come to her. Blaster bolts soared through the storming rain, bouncing off of her pink blade and flying into the walls and back towards their origin. One of the thugs dropped to the floor, his shin searing with pain as his own blaster betrayed him. Aela bit her tongue as the first man came at her, his vibro-blade swinging down towards her legs. She bit off a curse and then swung herself around, moving with liquid grace to dodge the edge of the blade before stepping into the man.

Her off hand shot forward and pulled with the force, wrenching the mans wrist into her grasp and interjecting her arm beneath his elbow. A loud snap resounded through the rain, followed quickly by the screeching clang of a vibro-blade onto the floor. A second later Aela twisted into the man, slamming her elbow into his gut and wrenching him onto the floor before releasing him and bouncing another blaster bolt back towards a second thug.

This time she advanced, albeit slowly.

 

[Adder]

Pigface, as it turned out, was annoyingly resistant to blaster bolts.

Adder was forced to duck to and fro, utilizing rolling and dashing tactics in hopes of dodging the shots whizzing past her, all the while doing her best to down the opponents below.

Some had, as expected, focused on the Jedi, seeing as a glowstick was always — and probably always will be — perceived as the greater threat, and it was that assumption that gave the ex-cop enough maneuvering room to keep her hide intact and her shots coming.

It was only due to copious experience that her hand didn't shake much despite the less than favorable circumstances and the rain, and though some bolts dissipated harmlessly into the colorless mud with a wet, useless sizzle, most of them still found their targets, distracted as they were by the pink lightsaber dancing deftly in the hands of the other.

A rare grin curled her lips as she exploited their lack of focus, firing off another couple of shots before retreating back to safety.

Wrong.

In the wake of her success, the redhead had grown complacent and forgotten about the gamorrean; pigface wasn't nearly as stupid as his appearance suggested, and it was only due to her trusty intuition that Adder managed to avoid becoming a bloody smear of meat and bone on that shaky roof. As soon as she was back on her feet, the woman reached out with her right arm in a flash, viciously delivering a series of accelerated blows to a spot already visited by one of her blaster bolts a few minutes previous.

With a pained grunt, pigface finally collapsed at her feet, releasing his axe from lax fingers.

Adder let out a long, shuddering breath, then ran the fingers of her free hand through her rain-straightened hair. At least it wasn't in her face for once. Silver lining, and all that.

"You alright?" she called out through the unfaltering sounds of drumming raindrops, slowly moving over to the edge of her roof with caution in her step.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

The lightsaber blade winked out of life again, the last searing drops of rain evaporating into a wisp of smoke. For a moment she didn't do anything, she just stood among the moaning and groaning thugs, frowning down at one of them as he blubbered something in a language that she couldn't quite understand. Her lips thinned, and her glance cast upwards towards the roof tops where that voice had come from. Half a second later a woman appeared, her hair soaked and her clothes equally wet.

"I'm fine." Aela called out through the storm, bright orange eyes settling on the female as she tried to figure out who exactly she was.

Another trap?

No, the Rodian hadn't seemed clever enough to set a trap within a trap. Either the woman was here to genuinely help her, or she was simply a bystander. Aela doubted that it was the latter, there weren't many people within the Warrens that would help others, especially against the local gang. She pondered for a moment more, then looked back up at the woman.

"Thank you for the help." It didn't hurt to be polite. "What are you doing up there?"

It also didn't hurt to ask questions.

Her parents hadn't raised her to be an idiot, and even now her thumb rested on the activation switch for her lightsaber. If this woman was friendly, then she wouldn't try anything, if she wasn't then Aela would be ready for her. She only had a little time left, and she had to resolve whatever this was quickly.

 

[Adder]

Her left hand, still clutching the westar a bit harder than strictly necessary, finally relaxed a bit, but Adder had to consciously remind herself no tot holster it. The woman never averted her piercing green eyes from twin rings of fire staring right back at her through the veil of water pouring down from the torn skies. The gaze that met hers was equally wary as it was weary, and the expression looked so familiar from all the times she'd seen it in the mirror that even the incessant rain could not obscure its nature.

A small sigh escaped her chest as she held the woman's gaze, torn between answering truthfully and lying to preserve what remained of her cover. She'd been burned before, and by people she could rightfully place more trust in than a stranger on an abandoned street. Seemingly hunting the same person could be little more than an elaborate ruse; that, or the other could be pursuing the rodian for entirely different reasons.

Adder wanted to rub her temples and will away the building headache, but she couldn't afford such luxury, not here with incapacitated thugs scattered about them. Unknown or not, the weird chick with orange eyes didn't appear hostile at the moment, while the outlaws were a known entity that would doubtless make another attempt on her life if she lingered too long.

"Tracking a slaver bastard," she replied curtly and hopped down from her perch, landing in the sludge of refuse and soil with a wet splat. Her brow furrowed as she noted a few new stains on her pants, but this was hardly the time or the place to worry about the state of her wardrobe.

In a gesture of goodwill, the redhead put her weapon away first, approaching the Jedi with her hands clearly visible by her sides.

"Two is better than one, right?"


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Would she trust the woman?

Her mother would. Kira Talith was the type of woman that took people at their word no matter their appearance or past. She was the type that if you never wronged her would be your best friend for life, but betray her once and it was all over. Aela's father on the other hand was different. He was a cynic, a pessimist of the highest order. He likely would have taken this woman, handcuffed her and left her for the local authorities with the rest of the thugs.

Well, that wasn't strictly true, from the way mother had always told it Aela's father had more been the type to simply kill everyone and sort out the details of what he needed later. Of course, she had never seen that side of her father, but that didn't mean that it didn't exist.

Aela let out a sigh, deciding to once again fall to the more moral half of her parentage. Her posture relax, back straightening and her thumb slowly sliding off of the activation switch for her lightsaber. A free hand pushed cold, soaked hair out of her face and pulled her hood above her head, blocking some of the rain as she wearily watched the woman approach. "He's a smuggler."

She corrected the woman, though she wasn't quite sure why.

"His contacts are the slavers." It was an important distinction, if only because if the Rodian had been a slaver himself this all would've been much simpler.

 

[Adder]

Her step faltered for a moment, eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly at the Jedi, but then she decided that it wasn't worth arguing over, and that they'd gain nothing by standing in the rain.

"Guilty by association," she replied without looking at the cloaked figure to her left again, eagerly starting off in the direction of the red dot patiently winking on her map.

Far as she could tell, the slaver/smuggler hadn't moved much since she'd last checked. Another possibility was that the rodian had finally discovered the tracker she'd placed on him, and if that turned out to be the case, they were both karked.

The Warrens were a great place to disappear — one of the best, in fact — topped perhaps only by Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant, though the latter's viability as a hiding place had diminished greatly since the One Sith had wrenched control from the Republic; but at least she'd known the streets of her homeworld, as winding and many as they were.

Here, Adder was naught but a passing visitor, and even then she hadn't spent all that much time in the Warrens, pupulated as they were by various underworld types; she didn't trust herself enough to keep her blaster holstered if she stuck around for more than a hour at a time.

"I'm pretty sure he has ties to the Cartel," she muttered after a few minutes of fast jogging through mud — goodbye, pants — sparing a quick glance to her unlikely companion. "So he probably has even more friends where he's hiding."

"Ideas?"

Her question, while genuine, was two-fold; while Adder knew full well how to handle urban warfare, being an ex-copper and all, the redhead was much more interested in ascertaining whether the orange-eyed girl was really a Jedi or not. Far as she knew, the Order had always been peacekeepers, and what business would a peacekeeper have with long shoot-outs against entrenched opponents?


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

For a moment Aela didn't say anything. The woman had put away her weapons, and although she hardly felt secure, it was a gesture that she could appreciate. Slowly Aela replaced the lightsaber on her hip, folding it into her cloak and letting it hang snuggly against her leg. The weapon was about the only thing in this galaxy that she cared about, it had been her fathers.

Without another thought she stepped over one of the thugs that the woman had earlier shot, moving him out of the way and wandering towards the man that had first spoken to her.

He was a Twi'lek, though his Lekku were gnarled and cut. That was unusual, even for gangsters. What many people in the galaxy didn't know about Twi'leks was that their brains were partially contained in their lekku, more than that they were also...well for lack of a better term sexual organs. Much like female breasts on most humanoids actually. Having damaged lekku was an oddity among the Twi'lek, and it surprised her that this mans would be damaged.

With a surprising show of strength Aela grasped him by the lapels, wrenching him up and pulling him against the wall.

The thug gurgled something in huttese, though there was a mix of basic pulled into his speech. A moan of pain wracked through his teeth as Aela pressed him to sit up, her hand focusing in front of his face. For a brief moment she concentrated, then let out a deep breath. "You will tell me where the Rodian went."

Her hand waved slightly, and the Twi'lek stared at her dumbfounded. Another moment passed, and Aela repeated what she said.

"You will tell me where the Rodian went." This time the man spoke. He garbled words in Huttese, then spoke in galactic basic. Aela caught most of it, nodding slightly then standing up from her odd crouch as the man suddenly passed out, tired from his exertions.

 

[Adder]

It was a good thing, really, that she'd glanced to check if the girl was still following, because it became apparent that she wasn't. Really, now. Was that truly necessary?

Adder let out another exasperated sigh, fishing for a metal box in her front pocket as she watched the unconfirmed Jedi do her space magicks on the whining leader of the pack. Without the option to tell the other what to do, the redhead bit her tongue to suppress a remark, her focus shifting momentarily as her search was met with success. Another moment passed as the ex-cop deftly stuck a cigarette between her lips and lit it, drawing in a deep, satisfied lungful of the toxic smoke.

For the few things she did possess, the woman liked to invest in quality, and that was the only reason why the stick of finely rolled Huttese tobacco — oh, the irony! — didn't sizzle out the second it was introducted to the tempestous weather. Periodically, Adder sneaked a peek at the display on her right forearm, checking on her query, but the rodian's position remained unchanged for all intents and purposes.

She tapped her boot impatiently a few times, straining her ears to discern the mangled Twi'Leki pouring from the half-conscious thug, the horrible dialect further compounded by his slurred speech.

"Let's go," she finally gave in, speaking firmly over the drumming raindrops.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

She gave a curt nod.

There wasn't any hesitation in the way she moved, no stopping. Almost as soon as the Twi'lek confirmed where the Rodian was Aela turned and broke out into a sprint. She had wasted enough time fighting street thugs, enough time being lost. Those slaves had been captured for three days, three days in squalor, misery, and likely starvation. She would be damned if another minute passed where they had to remain in captivity.

She didn't pay attention if the woman followed her, though she assumed she would.

Her sprint took her deeper and deeper into the warrens. The buildings around her quickly began to look more and more disheveled. The paint had peeled off, there were literal chunks of wall simply missing from some, and it seemed that the homeless increased more and more. Weariness entered her heart, and she realized what the Rodian had done. The man had hidden himself purposefully this deep within the Warrens. He had placed himself within the sick, within the tired and the poor.

He had known security forces wouldn't dig this deep, and if they did they would find difficulty wading through the muck and human refuse.

As Aela came to a stop she began to feel anger well inside of her. Her head shook to the side, her eyes locking on what appeared to be the front gate of a small compound. Two guards stood outside of it, another pair wandered atop the roof and in the half broken window she could see another guard pass on by.

It wasn't just a hideout, it was a compound.

 

[Adder]

It seemed that the orange girl only had two modes; idle and 120%. On a normal day, Adder would be glad for someone so competent to find their way to her side, but it wasn't a normal day; it was an underwhelming, disappointing, and wet finish to weeks of careful stalking and planning, and she was growing tired of it.

One of the reasons she'd left her job behind was feeling helpless, feeling useless, and it was exactly this sentiment that threatened to dig its claws in her heart and paralyze her again.

Thankfully, the Jedi took off before anything of the like could come to pass, and the redhead gratefully focused on meandering through the thickening throng of people cluttering the streets. While the storm overhead seemed to be waning, the mud and trash were still very much present, and Adder swallowed curse after curse as she did her best to keep up with her companion. What she lacked in pure speed, the woman made up for in agility, weaving between rangy bodies with an almost preternatural sense of space. There were a few close calls where she'd almost lost her balance, but she'd always recovered in time to transfer her momentum into a leap or a sidestep.

Unlike the orange-eyes, Adder knew what to expect. She'd seen dozens of similar buildings, scattered all across the Warrens, and all seemed to follow the same pattern.

Without ever faltering in her step, the redhead brushed past the Jedi and off to the side, following the makeshift wall of the compound all the way to the back, where a seemingly unscalable wall of duracrete met her gaze. Undeterred, Adder continued, leaning as close as she could without drawing unwanted attention from a poorly-disguised guard some meters down the street. Her green eyes were wildly searching for the traitorous demarcation that would reveal to her where the ventilation shaft had been plastered over.

"Go deal with the guard while I get this off," she hissed at the Jedi under her breath, gesturing towards the man at the corner with a small tilt of her chin. She lit another cigarette to appear less odd while standing about on the same spot, leaning on the wall so that the hidden shaft was behind her, and then got to work.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

There was a long tradition in her family, that tradition held strongly for nearly three generations over more than five centuries. It had begun during the age of her Grandfather, a man that most people called a monster. Her father had continued it, and now his children followed in the exact same path, or at least Aela did.

That tradition was a simple one.

Take the direct approach.

As the redhead wandered down the alleyway Aela followed. As always she was silent, her eyes following the path of the woman until she pointed out the guard. The Talith's lips thinned, and her lightsaber was drawn from her belt. Her free hand came up, and her thumb triggered the switch on her lightsaber and the blade came to life with a loud snap-hiss. Immediately the guard turned, and within half a second his entire body was wrenched up, and then sideways into the wall.

The man fell like a rag-doll, slumping against the wall unconscious. In the next instant Aela stabbed her lightsaber into the thing duracrete, circling it around in one swift motion and carving a path for her to enter. The Stone slab was pushed back with the force, and quickly Aela pushed her way into the compound.

 

[Adder]

She was honestly too stunned to react to the brutish actions of the Jedi — no, scratch that, this girl was not a Jedi, not in a million years — staring at her almost comically as she first disposed of the guard, unceremoniously throwing him against a wall, and then summarily stabbed the wall Adder had been working on, stealthily.

The kark is your problem?!

She kept the remark internal for fear of being the next to meet the pointy end of her pink glowstick, still hanging back dumbfoundedly as the not-Jedi crawled into the duct.

Nothing. Not even an attempt at stealth! Just bludgeonging straight through, as if she alone could fight the whole compound. Karking crazy forcers.

With disbelief still etched into her face, Adder followed after the blonde, flicking out her cigarette as she replaced it with her westar again, muttering obscenities under her breath as she struggled to keep up with the one-track-mind in front of her. Sure, she could appreciate the dedication, but this wasn't a shoddily-run operation, as clearly indicated by the level of security posted around the perimeter. Things were obviously still capable of taking a turn for the worse.

Just karking great.

When they emerged from the abandoned duct, the two landed in a miraculously abandoned corridor, and Adder attempted to assert control of the situation once more, even though her chances seemed meager at best. Hope dies last, right?

"Tone it down a little, will you?"

Even though she phrased it as a question, the tone in which it was delivered made it seem more like a statement than anything else. She was here to find that piece of crap and wrench information out of him, not play the hero just to get shot in the back of the head.


[member="Aela Talith"]