Private An Unexpected Transmission

[Amea Virou]

The silence, relative as it was, had gone from unbearable to terrifying. No matter how much reassurance that Amea had tried to find there was little more of it to find. Runi was silent because she was dead. She was dead, she was detached, severed from this plane of existence and forced to struggle in the next. But that did not explain Loske’s recent silence. Something about it didn’t feel right, and yet it felt as reasonable as any other soldier's sudden silence.

Life was fragile and death was terrifying when you had something to lose. Loske was the only connection that Amea had to her past that she truly knew, and beyond that she was a very important friend. To crawl through the mud of her own dark thoughts like this felt beneath her, but Amea had ask and she had to know.

The terminal in her hand flicked to life as she entered the details of Maynard Treicolt . The message was simple:

“Why is Loske not answering my calls?”​

 

[Maynard Treicolt]

It was a few minutes after sending the message that any sign of life from Maynard's end emitted at all. The notification revealing that he'd viewed her message stayed idle on the screen for a few moments before eventually a notification pinged from the other end.

"Not anything I wanna talk about on the net. I can be at Loske's old place whenever if you talk more." ​

Was all Maynard could muster in reply. He was stuck on Coruscant anyway following the Alliance's second excursion into Ziost. Left with nothing but waning leads on the lady of the hour herself, Amea's inquiry came at a good time. He'd spoken with her remarkably sparsely given how close she was to Loske, a person they'd both held a deep love for in their own ways. But Maynard had found himself sparse to most anyone in recent days, be it the obligations he'd held to the Alliance...or just the want to be alone. Without his love at his side and his closest friends stuck running the same rat race he was without little time to spare themselves, most of the time the only person left to rely on, was himself.

He stood outside of her door. He could only remember a few occasions where he'd actually had visited this place. Not long after they'd ever let the other know of their true feelings for one another, The Renegade became their base of operations pretty quickly. Standing here only made him more forlorn for what was missing. He, for many reasons, did not have the access codes to let himself in and waited for Amea's arrival.

Soon as she came around, he looked in her direction. She might've been able to spell the nature of Loske's silence immediately given his expression. Disheveled, drained. Not a man in high spirits. He offered a nod as the best greeting he could muster.

"Hey. Didn't realize you'd been out of the loop of things...that's my mistake." Failing to protect Loske as it was, he was quick to strike himself first for the shortcoming.

"Everything been alright otherwise?" He thought to ask, it'd been awhile since they'd talked without the common, mutual friend to ever bridge the connection. At least, from the deliberation and the somewhat contained composure she might assume immediately that nothing was direly fatal concerning her.

Amea Virou​

 

[Amea Virou]

Not over the net? The rock in Amea’s stomach turned into a boulder. Still, if anyone had answers it would be Maynard.

“See you there in a few days.”​

It had taken a lot to convince Evelyn to grant her the chance to head off alone for this one, but it was something Amea needed to do. The coded token flipped around between each of her fingers, landed in the palm of her hand where her thumb stroked back and forth along its surface before the cycle repeated. She had cleaned up for this, wore part of the repertoire she had bought after she had lost just about everything on Dantooine.

The rest was lost a few weeks later. Everything except Evelyn, and Hoshi.

“No.” She said and placed the token to the keypad to open up the doors. The apartment that Maynard might have expected wasn’t quite there anymore. In its place was a black-gold facade of Art Deco that hid the old behind the new. She had gotten Loske’s blessing back when she had made the moves. It felt like a long time ago now.

She tried to keep the humor up, tried to keep the nerves under wraps.

“I don’t— I just—” She stammered for a moment, her lip quivering as she tried to not say it. “Is she dead?”

Amea closed her eyes in preparation for the tidal wave of emotion she expected to drown under.

 

[Maynard Treicolt]

He was all but expecting that to be the first question. Not like he did anything to quell the concern from the jump. Regardless, he was quick to jump to explanation.

“No...no, She’s still alive- it’s complicated.” Maynard started. It was a bit of an arcane topic to explanation, certainly made only more difficult by Maynard’s faded yet humble dialect. He continued.

“But she’s not...her right now. Something else, Sithspawn took control, on Ziost. A parasite...she’s still in there, I know, I can feel it...but she’s not in control, not now.” Maynard struggled to explain, not that it was any simple task to begin with but alas he made the attempt.

“I- I wasn’t there...to stop it, to protect her from it. I don’t even know if there’s anything I could’ve done...or if I can even...pull her out of it but- that’s about all I can really explain to it- I’m sorry.” It twisted a dagger in his gut to iterate the horrid circumstances and it certainly drew a solemn expression and inflection to his gaze and at the very least, vindicated the visible weariness.

“I’m doing everything I can to try and find her...save her, She’s-.” Everything. That was what he wanted to say but the word died in his throat as he could only feel himself all but sink again.

“I need her back...”

Amea Virou​

 

[Amea Virou]

Maynard Treicolt

No. No, she was still alive. Amea let out a weak sigh of relief and instinctively began to reach for a nearby bottle and two of the nearby glasses. She blew once in her own glass and poured herself something before sliding the expensive whiskey bottle and other glass over to Maynard. It was mid-day but who gave a womp rat’s osik at this point?

“They just take, don’t they?” Amea asked and swirled the contents in their glass. “I’ve tried to be a good girl. I’ve tried to keep that little voice in my head silent.” She muttered and downed her shot straight. “Vengeance is a fool’s game, vengeance gets you dead.”

“They took my best friend from me.” She looked over at Treicolt. “Runi Verin. Killed by the Eternal Empress in vengeance for us killing her husband. I told myself, if I let myself fall into this pit I would lose so much more than just Runi.”

“And yet, here I am.” She grabbed the bottle and poured up another drink. “I am lucky to have Evelyn or I would have gone off the deep end by now. I’ve tasted murderous revenge before and all it got me was locked in a routine of finding a target, murdering a target, moving on, and it all repeated until I either reached the end or died.”

The bottle shifted back to Maynard again.

“But if Loske ain’t dead, then she is redeemable. If this… Parasite, is nothing more than a parasite, then we can also find the cure.” Amea nodded and placed a compassionate hand on Maynard’s shoulder. “I am not going to pretend that one’s going to be easy, but given my resources I should at the very least be able to give us a good headstart.”

“I have seen how she talks about you, I can see how much she means to you.” Amea squeezed her hand to ground Maynard in reality again, just in case he had decided to disappear into his head. She certainly would have. “You two would have done the same for me, and that means the world to know.”

“What information do you have on this so far? Let’s start by compiling our facts into something more concrete.”

 

[Maynard Treicolt]

Maynard drank, but he'd waned off any hard liquor since leaving his lone, spacer days behind. Only ever indulging in the drink when the function called for it. Mainly under jovial circumstances, wanting not to associate the vice with a crutch, a means to pull him out of a rut in hard times. That's what would lead to addiction and of course, making the already bad, much much worse.

Regardless, he downed his glass in a single draw of the liquor before setting it down with a thud, pouring another round for himself once the bottle came available to him. Amea wanted to vent, seemingly. Couldn't blame her, it'd been dire straits for most everyone he'd known. That was what war did, especially a war like this. His gaze when empty, unfocused for a second as they continued until a hand when on his shoulder and she demanded his attention again.

"There isn't much...this other 'thing', the parasite is just fighting her for control...and winning. I spoke to her, a couple times. She's still in there, but struggling. Djorn Bline was the first to encounter the parasite, mangled his arm, amputated. And he's no slouch in combat himself...so if that's what its capable of...yeah." Maynard trailed off, sipping from the second shot of whiskey.

"All I know is its linked to Raaf, wherever she goes...that thing isn't far behind. And she goes where the S-IMPs go. Just gotta follow the money as they say." He'd attempted this in the Atrivis Sector, Operation Stranglehold. All that manifested from that strike deep into enemy lines concurrent with the New Imperial offensive in the Pentastar Campaign was more dead Wolves.

"Ryv tried to contact her...through the Force...didn't go all too well for him either. Just gotta draw some blood and let the sharks come, I guess." Maynard suggested, finishing the rest of his glass.

"Believe me...it's less than I want to work with either, but its all I got." He admits.

Amea Virou​

 

[Amea Virou]

Maynard Treicolt

It was all a shoddy attempt to hide her own problems. Always one with a goal to push for, a goal to tunnelvision in on as she ignored her own well-being. If she came across as unusually clear minded on the matter it was simply because she felt as if she had to be. That clear-mindedness was difficult to maintain when you had silence and thoughts to keep you company.

Her hand reached for the bottle to pull it back with the force before she looked down at her glass. The buzz was kicking in, another shot so soon would numb just a bit too much. She waved her hand to indicate she changed her mind before the glass found the bar again.

“So,” She slowly nodded and began to pace back and forth. “It’s dangerous up close. Straight up took the hand of this Djarin Blithe, and it rejected Ryv Karis’ attempts to contact Loske directly.”

“Meaning we need range, and we need to somehow distract it long enough for us to be able to reach Loske.” Amea was probably not saying anything that was all that new to Maynard. “What about that thing?”

“Is there anything we know about the so-called Sithspawn?” Amea scratched her head and continued to pace back and forth. “Any inherent weaknesses or soft spots?”