An alter to rival Whitechapel

[Pravus Zambrano]

​

Coruscant, Undercity

Near Midnight

The lurching figure moved through the underdwelling, stone steps leading into the subterranean stone chasm. The sound was a mixture of hard soled shoes against cobble and the dragging of cloth against damp surfaces, riffling with every smooth transition and crack. Occasionally, the vibrant cloth would catch against jagged chips and fray the edges of the garment. A fact that went entirely unnoticed for the man that was entranced amidst his own pacing. In his hands rested a briefcase, quickly displayed and laid open upon the wooden mantle. It creaked and wobbled against the weight as the sound of a muffled whimper escaped a dark corner. He paid it no mind as he ran his fingers gingerly over bottles and instruments and a clasped book. Torches against the wall flickered with orange flames, dancing in toe with their own shadows, as he clicked the book open and lifted it read the first pages.

"Chapter 1: The Alchemists circle and the Law of Equivalent Exchange." Leering over his own shoulder, towards the corner, he smiled from ear to ear. "How exciting!"

Closing the book, he picked up his own journal and grabbed a torch from the wall. The dancing light followed him as he dragged a stool across the stone, hopping with every crack, until the corner and it's inhabitant came into view. Sitting the stool down, he perched like a vulture gazing down upon carrion. Ruffling through the feathers on his shoulder, he pulled out a quill pen and licked the tip. "Hmm, dry."

Leaning forward, he stabbed the thigh of his captive to the sound of another muffled whimper. The light revealed a uniform, a belt that should have held equipment, and a shiny badge across the breast. Leaning back, Pravus smiled as he opened the book. "There, that's much better. Now..." He scanned the page to the next empty spot. "I need name, age, weight, height." Shrugging jovially, he smiled towards the officer. "The usual."

He returned another whimper, blood running down from the bruised forehead where Pravus had hit him. Pravus nodded, heavy with revelation, as he leaned forward and ripped the tape from the mans mouth. Sharpened nails flicked at the tacky substance, doing his best to remove it without touching any more than he had to.

"You're the butcher?"

Pravus paused and leaned forward, rubbing the tape on the mans leg. "That's no name I've ever heard of. Now..." He looked the man in his fearful eyes, wet with tears just ready to drop. "Name. Age. Weight. Height."

"We thought you were in another sector of the undercity. How did you throw the scent like that?"
"Ahh, scent is very important isn't it?!?" He stood up, rummaging through the mans pockets.
"What are you doing?" Exhaustion kept the man gentle, for the time being.
"Looking for your wallet, of course."

Pulling out the item, along with a half crushed holopad, he placed it on the stool before replacing the tape over the officers mouth to the sound of more whimpers. Simply music to his ears. Pulling out the identification card and badge information, he walked back over to the table and scribbled some notes. And then he held up the broken data pad to torch light.

"What...what is this?!" He turned to the now darkened corner, showing the half broken datapad and the warrant for his own arrest. The bounty didn't bother him. The title of butcher didn't bother him. The insult ran far deeper. He illustrated with his other hand, showcasing the image of himself. "My nose isn't that big! Not by a long shot! ARGH!" Throwing the datapad to the ground, it shattered into thousands of fragments of glass, still encased by a metal frame. Approaching the captive with an accusing finger, he paused as he heard the sniffling escape the tape. Pausing, he drew long fingernails through his hair as he turned with the journal in hand. "I'm going out for groceries. Stay!"

Slamming the heavy basement door behind him, darkness over came the room as the torches blew out. And the last things the officer would hear were the distant sounds of footsteps. Up and up.

[member="Aeron Zambrano"]​

 

[Aeron Zambrano]

She had that strange sensation, something like detachment common to sudden whirlwind changes. Nothing felt all that real to her, though maybe that was more because Coruscant felt like an ideal rather than an actual place to her. She’d always imagined it as something wild and uncontrolled, a million billion lives caught up in their own pell-mell race indifferent to the imperative of others. And down below in its murky underworld that wasn’t untrue. It was just the planet’s surface that left her feeling robotic, a grey woman on a grey world with grey advertisements blaring mindless propaganda – the Sith machine laid large at the center of the galaxy for all to see and fear.

The lower levels however, seemed to match her impression of the planet still. Down there she was red again, surrounded by people of all different colors and persuasions, blinding by the flickering neons hustling their way out of the shadows. Of course the homeless scrambled deeper in to their boxes when the occasional obvious Sith strolled by, but lawlessness was still the game this far down where it was less obvious to see. Whenever she wasn’t called to lessons or trying to further herself within that same machine, she found herself down in the dark with those who seemed to care little for the titans struggling over power above their heads. Survival was their most pressing concern.

There was an irony in that train of thought as she passed by a scrolling holowall blaring garish advertisements interspersed with announcements. Its outer shielding was cracked and some of the screen where it had been hit hardest cycled between colors so rapidly it was like to give passersby a seizure, but nonetheless the warnings conveyed between mindless commercials were clear: something darker than usual was prowling the streets of Coruscant, random and seemingly a shadow itself. Certainly murder was par for the course on the ecumenopolis but whomever was plying their trade or enacting their sickness – or both – had a dramatic flair too brutal to be ignored as contracted or singular.

Still, Aeron had little use for some nameless bogeyman or the fear he might have instilled. She was bored and hungry and at least one of those things could be immediately cured.

She wasn’t so far down that the food would be of questionable quality, and therefore had no problem trading a few credits for something of unknown origin but cooked through and smelling delicious. Pinching the stick it was skewered on between two fingers, she ate slowly as she wound her way through a makeshift marketplace. It didn’t smell lovely, but everything smelled strong to her – she’d grown up knowing only the crisp, soundless, odorless blanket of constant snow.

“No, no – I’m telling you, I saw It. I saw something dragging a guy off in to an alley not even two hours ago. I ran like hell, I did,” insisted an older human man, wringing liver-spotted hands as he shared his apparent horror.

“Keep your mouth shut, old man. You probably just happened to see something you shouldn’t have, some idiot who pissed off the Sith getting what was coming to him,” answered a Rodian, his protruding mouth flopping up and down with each syllable.

“It wasn’t like that! This was…wrong. It felt like a monster,” the human insisted, hobbling away from the Rodian who looked at him with each panel of his compound eyes screaming disdain.

Aeron did not approach as they argued, but followed the older man slowly. She had a few questions for him.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]​

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

Up and up.

Six steps up, six steps down. The darkened pathway was slick. With what material, it was hard to say. The underbelly of Coruscant bled and expelled everything the upper echelons deemed unworthy. Blood, bile, excrement, sweat. The lacquer that polished the undercity, the glossy finish for which Pravus was so fond. With such a sickly and gleaming reflection, it made it all the easier to hide in plain sight. It was hard to look for the ugliness in others when it was so apparent in the mirror, staring back with promises of more. The sort of descent that was as perfunctory as it was necessary. Livestock moving into the barn, to avoid the sun, only to find comfort in the arms of the butcher hiding in the shade.

Hardened leather soles clicked against the eroded cobbles, ravine of black fungus tracing the edges of each stone. The light, what revolting yellow hue seemed all too appropriate for the darkened portions of world, casually traced his silhouette as he moved. Slowly applauding the stalker type movements of the predator, mid hunt, moving slow motion through his preferred terrain. Dark alleys, even darker thoroughfares, and the effect of numerous bystanders feeling far too indignant towards their oppressors to care about the ailments that surrounded them. To hunt in plain view, to pull victims from the comfort of numbers, it was the chase that made Pravus all the more hungry. But for now, there were even more important things.

His fingers moved through the air, like plucking debris from the dusty sky, as steam and aromas filled his nostrils.

"I'll take two of those. Four of those. And I'd like a half order of those. Please cook the meat rare."
"Even the fowl?"
"Foul? No, please save the foul meats for the peasants."

The vendor gave a raised eyebrow as Pravus stared down his nose at him. Rubbing his hands together, he waved the man on. "Well, I don't have all night."

The meat vendor had an interesting hat. Like a mushroom turned over on itself, crinkled along the stem, and flared out at the base. All while stained with rust from the collection of sweat along the rim, making an oddly wonderful transition from red to orange to yellow to beige. All within the span of an inch along the mans forehead. And when he nodded, he shifted across his sticky forehead, as he moved into the back to fill out the order. Leaning against the counter, Pravus turned and looked around.

He had made no effort to change his wardrobe or attempt to blend in. He had no time for that, not when art was just sitting in front of him, waiting to be painted. Or sculpted. Or cut from the bone. And like that, the order was fulfilled, the man coming back out with plastic bags and that same spicy aroma rising from the innards.

"That will be 42 credit-"

Pravus snapped out, grabbing the man by the throat. Thumb and middle finger, perfect pressure, and all the lights went out. Pulling him across the counter and through the window, Pravus threw the small human over his shoulder and skulked back into protection of broken street lamp bulbs and poor infrastructure. Just as he was prepared to head back to the inner sanctum of his domain, he caught the smell of something even more potent than his food.

A women. On the streets this late at night? He scratched his sharp chin, painfully absent the presence of hair, as a smile grew from ear to ear. Staying within the shadows, he walked slowly with the blatant finesse of the Vahl. Passing a cracked holonet screen, going on about an advertisement for a new cleaning contraption, he stopped in his tracks. Memories of cleaning up bloody stone with a sponge and bucket flashed before his eyes as his senses were stimulated by the notions of a robot that could do that for him. They way it hovered back and forth, a floating disk, the possibilities were endless. Shaking his head, he pocketed that idea for later, as he continued moving forward. In all his captivation, he had left the steaming pile of food on the counter top, just outside the vendor truck.

[member="Aeron Zambrano"]​

 

[Aeron Zambrano]

The old man proved largely unhelpful.

Wrong, he’d said. It looked sort of like a man, but it had hair all over and fourteen feet tall! It sounded like a monster in some sense. But Aeron always thought of a monster as something closer to herself - hiding in plain sight, the sort of thing one happily let in the door before realizing the error. She thought the answer might be somewhere between the two extremes of creature and shadow. Perhaps what prowled Coruscant was simply some rampant beast of small mind and base drive. But that would have surprised her. The information on the increasing killings was sketchy beyond a few scenes found through happenstance, mostly abandoned save for the things It left behind. But what she’d heard did not sound mindless - born from a mind that most could not even begin to understand, but a mind nonetheless.

She couldn’t understand it. Violence was a means to an end for her, something she didn’t spend time savoring or experimenting with. Everyone died; dirt on your face, eaten by worms, consigned to the flames and grateful it should happen that way. But she didn’t have to understand whomever left behind corpses changed, prodded until it ceased to be interesting. A death that unnatural was seductive, a chance to create that which the human brain usually repulsed by in primal terror - and thus, a killer was born.

Her musing took her this way and that, crossing the same path in different ways, cutting through alleys or along a street in a new direction, walking the endless maze of squares that seemed to have consumed Coruscant’s designers.

She’d gotten lost in her thoughts and as a consequence each pass made her more familiar with the streets in that portion of the city she’d chosen to explore. A half-hour’s worth of convincing herself she was stalking unseen prey had made her surroundings a character in her mental play - and she directed with an iron fist.

Unfolding from the tide of neon and shadow in the street, Aeron stepped towards the unassuming truck in to the light of its ghost-town insides shining from a small window - a living flame in red, red, red. Holding out one pale hand over the food left solitary on the counter, she let steam condense on the underside of her palm. Still warm. Not terribly unusual in the grand scheme of things, but upon further inspection Aeron could see no one in the confines of the truck. In fact, it was nearly as silent as the grave in her immediate surroundings. She wasn’t used to that feeling of paranoia, that if she turned her head right to find herself alone she would turn it left just to realize her bogeyman was right beside her.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]​

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

Night coiled around him, a sinister and seductive companion, as it worked side-by-side with each burdened step. The sounds of his feet muffled by the thickness of the underworld ambiance, his hushed breathing filtered by the buzz of lamp lights and the congregation of night time street dwellers, and the very image of his presence concealed by faulty neon lights and shuttering window covers - it all gave proof to the compliance of the evening. The ever rare movement of wind, through a constantly stagnant atmosphere, provided the clapping sound that revealed just the hint of light. Like watching the lurking figure in still frames, only to appear and disappear once more, all to the applause of wood smacking against stone.

It hadn't rained and it hardly ever did, though there was something to be said of this hellish place and its synthetic atmosphere. The wafting tones of sewage and filth, mixed delicately with urban petrichor, highlighted the convaluted sprawl and decay of this segment of the world. Foundation for the spires and towers above, it stood as testament to merely serving a purpose. And where the world had forgotten these things, these people, nature arrived just in time to deliver that hint of rotten mildew. Dirty laundry left to sit, forever damp in the still washer. But there was no need for fear. As God walked among them and gave them purpose: somewhere between strips of leather and the sharpened knife.

Pravus thought methodically as he found sight of the woman, the flash of auburn hair in the dark. Like a burning ember, serving as elegant ping pong ball between competitive buildings. Back and forth, back and forth. He watched while encumbered by a myriad of emotions, ranging from fascination to disgust. Wasteful time that was, she could be put to much better use, elevated far beyond walking divots and dents into the aging cobble. He inwardly moaned as she made another pass, long fingers clinging against brick and mortar only to just barely peer over. Large eyes of dark intent followed her and when the coast was clear, he continued the path behind her. Her scent, amidst all the decay of the Coruscant underworld, was like a trail of freshly laid bread crumbs.

And if he didn't know better, he would have thought they were walking in circles.

Coming to a stop just within the safety of another shadow, he watched quietly as she approached the food truck. Squinting his eyes, he bared his teeth and whispered to himself. "Damn it, my kebabs!" Just then, he felt the man shift on his shoulder and let out a grunt. Oh no. Pravus reached up and applied the same pressure to the pressure point, much to the lazy struggling of the man. But not quick enough, not to stop the specimen from kicking his shoe free and into the light, just before passing out once more.

Fighting the instinct to jump out and grab it, Pravus slowly backed away from the lights and continued to step back into the alley. But, for some reason, he couldn't get the sound of that shoe landing on the stone out of his head. Like a hollow echo, resonating endlessly into the night. A flutter of wings across the sky, moving further and further away. It was a particularly shiny shoe, he thought, taken a sudden appreciation for his captives sense of discipline and hygiene. But if his struggling had made Pravus, despite all attempts to conceal himself, then no sense of discipline would save him from a long and torturous end.

[member="Aeron Zambrano"]​

 

[Aeron Zambrano]

The smell of the forgotten food was making her hungry, but she was hesitant to take the leftovers. She had a strange and unshakable paranoia of poisoning, deliberate or accidental. If she followed the trail of its genesis back to the beginning she most likely would have blamed her Mother’s fearful hatred of her. Aeron had always believed her body was a temple, a house for something greater than herself, and therefore had come to believe others would try to attack her simply to defile it. This had translated to the thought that her mother - weak and cowardly and angry - would put something in her food to get rid of her instead of taking a more direct route. So from then one she’d sat in the kitchen whenever her Mother made food...watching, staring, making sure it was safe.

She was still sitting in the middle of the war between her stomach and brain when the light ‘thwack!’ of a shoe echoed above all other sounds.

Despite a smattering of fears of bodily harm, curiosity and purpose drove her to step closer, studying the shoe in passing (shiny, fairly new and clean, unusual this far down in the city) so as not to give whomever had tossed or lost it too large a headstart. There in the alley the sounds of the city at large were still loud, but muffled and seemingly much farther away than reality would insist.

It looked sort of like a man… And it did, though pressed and squeezed through some funhouse maze until it looked almost cartoonish. That was probably harsh as it was dark and shadows tended to exaggeration, but she doubted light would have made him handsome. He didn’t appear covered in hair, and nor was he fourteen feet tall though she could tell he towered over her even from the distance she kept from him. So somewhere in the middle it is. She was keenly aware of the physical difference as the stranger moved around with another man struggling on his shoulders, seemingly having some sort of deep thoughts. The white of one of the struggling man’s socks caught the light filtering in to the alley and Aeron’s eyes narrowed.

“Surely his kebabs aren’t that bad,” she said, surprising herself. She hated ‘humor’ and jokes. She had no use for them. She must have been more nervous than she’d thought.

[member="Pravus Zambrano"]​

 

[Pravus Zambrano]

To the attentive, his eyes appeared offset. Like two ceramic balls, cemented shallowly into the sockets and slightly off kilter, only to be exaggerated with a look up or a look down. For the interaction that took place, it was obviously the latter. Where demarcations might normally exist, instead sat large pools of black, constricting and dilating with focus. Like two mouths breathing heavily, opening and closing to suck in air, he focused on the woman, seemingly breathless. Or perhaps so full of breath, with every gasp of his nictitating pupils, that he needn't breath at all.

Simple silence followed the joke, as silent as the dark streets of Coruscant could be. It was true, the man was once struggling against his shoulder and would pay for the sins of tossing a shoe into the limelight. But for now, he was allowed the recourse and peace of loss of consciousness, as Pravus set out to stalk his pray. But how abrupt that hunt had been, how miserable his attempts were to remain hidden. It seemed that despite all of his notions of godhood, dogmatic as he was in such belief, the night was never truly his friend. He wondered if it had always been so.

"Truthfully..." He lifted fingers, slowly curling into a ball until there was nothing but a single index and sharpened nail. Long and paid in the direction just beyond the woman's shoulder. "I haven't tried the Kebabs yet..." An accusing finger turned upward, unfolding to cover his own mouth as his tried to stifle a giggle. But not even the four fingers could prevent the noise or the bob of his head. The other arm still wrapped around the sleeping vendor, Pravus shook himself free from his own sense of comedy. After all, not many would find his intent so humorous.

"I mean..." He gestured towards the buildings and the darkness. "We aren't exactly spoiled for choice, are we? Sometimes, we simply must make do." Somewhere along the topic, he realized he was talking both about the Kebabs and the rest of the world, particularly his inclination towards experiments. Coruscant hadn't seen the panic he was hoping for, not yet, and the ripe smell of fear hadn't yet stuck to the walls. Cleansed, if ever that word could be used in correlation to the Underworld, adequately described the feeling. The congregation of greed and anger suppressed the aroma of fear, like sewage over freshly baked pie. He could see it, could almost smell it, but the decay still took precedence.

"I fear I am far too biased now to judge...perhaps you could tell me." He stepped forward, grip tightening on the victim, as he looked towards the Kebabs. Another finger, this one far more lazy, pointed towards the stand and the food. "In earnest...Are the Kebabs really that bad?" A weightless joke, given implied gravity.

[member="Aeron Zambrano"]​