An Unorthodox Interview

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut


Ord Mantell.

An old Zeltron sat in his ship, landed in spaceport in Worlport, thinking deeply to himself. He was a mercenary, a man with a life of violence, something very rare for his kind. Zeltrons were known for the hedonistic natures, and if one's race was based solely upon stereotypes, then Crol H'hurut was probably the furthest thing from a Zeltron. Where his people were happy, pleasure, and thrill seeking, Crol was grief stricken, angry, and violence seeking. His heart was worn on his face, as he said, the negative emotions within him consuming his very personality.

He told himself these days that he was not a good man.

He truly believed it, and one has no reason to believe otherwise. Suddenly, Crol decided it was time to get up, apparently bored of being bored. He had a bounty to seek after all, and although he was a Mercenary, when he was "off duty", he needed to find something to challenge him in the meantime, so bounty hunting was a perfect fit.

It was the only thing, he said, that could keep him from thinking or feeling, neither things he much liked doing. This actually wouldn't stop him from doing this of course, given that his mind was simply too strong to ignore his powerful thoughts, and his heart too large to ignore his provocative emotions.

His target was located in a small fortress near the Ten Mile Plateau, guarded by an overgrown gang. The gang leader, or ganglord or whatever he was calling himself, needed to go. Apparently he had done quite a bit of crime, not just on Ord Mantell, but in many quadrants of the galaxy. Unfortunately for him, he was none too powerful, but what he could consolidate, he brought it here to his "stronghold" after his bounty. It was around 5,000, with an additional 500 if handed over to Ord Mantellian authorities first, given the recent troubles he had caused.

He wasn't sure on the name, Srubf? Srobf? Strofb? Crol didn't give a kark.

Marching around in his durasteel light armor, with his Dresselian Slugthrower strapped on his back, and an unconscionable amount of bullets on his person. His lightsaber also, was present on his person, but strapped to the barrel of his rifle. A good rifle had always been his prefered weapon, although the lightsaber was powerful, and he had the requirements to wield it, he had never been very good at using weapons that didn't have a barrel. As such, after its acquirement, he hardly spent a single day before the thing was rather carelessly strapped to the end of his gun. It wasn't like he was going to use it for its intended function anyway, and certainly put a good first impression of his abilities, even if he had never seen a sith up close...

Although boy, he wish he could have... there was a deep seated hatred within his heart, and one often got the impression it was directed at the Sith, though he has never explained to anyone why.

Crol was not very good at making friends.

Looking through his iron sights, Crol observed some outside guards from cover, approximately 100 meters away.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam

Ord Mantell.

Triam Akovin sat aboard the Junk'd Up Ship, in front of a work bench, soldering away at some random piece of technological scrap. As she did this, she thought about the planet she was currently landing on. She had her droid, one she bought from the ACA, currently without a name or much of an interesting personality, pilot and land her ship while she was conducting her busy work with ol' Rigsy, a much more personable droid.

"Are you sure want to solder over that master, I'm pretty sure you're going to break that complicated circuit you're constructing." The incredibly large and stationary assembly line commented as a long arm with a photoreceptor hovered over her shoulder.

"I'm fine Rigsy, I know what I'm doing." Triam continued to solder her thing, and just moments after soldered too far and broke the circuit. Exasperated she set the thing down and started to get up.

"I told y-" Triam put a finger up.

"Don't finish that sentence, or I'm going to disassemble, and update you to version 33.0." Ever one to possess the snark. The droid stayed quiet, but Triam swore she heard it chuckling. It's personality matrix was all mixed up from the numerous droids she smashed together to make him, making his programming fairly eccentric, but very effective at repeating engineering tasks nonetheless.

As Triam looked over the shoulder of the silent sniper droid, she observed her craft finally on its final descent to the planet below.

She stepped out in full gear, and brought along "Mr. Follow", a name she just made up now to mock the sniper droid following her. It was holding her Verpine Sniper Rifle, with the Clusterkark scope on it. Once again, the droid had been made decent with a cloak and an Ayden Cater-style hat. There were probably better ways of hiding the droid, but she didn't care, she wasn't actually hiding it, simply indicating that this droid was hers personally and she wasn't some armed delegate from the ACA or something.

She walked through the city, fully armed, and by fully armed, she meant FULLY ARMED. There was no way she was going to start storming a castle, if she didn't have literally every single piece of gear she ever designed. Using a speeder-bike, she found her way to the fortress within 400 meters. Mr. Follow aimed the sniper rifle at the main entrance where guards were out patrolling, Triam with her vision hook up to the HUD system that the droid was interfacing with. None of the Remotes were released quite yet, as they were only making initial observations.

"Looks pretty easy to me Mr., better release the drones though, get us full 360 degree coverage on the situation to point out oddities I can't see right now." She ordered Mr. Follow, although he didn't move, since the Remotes were in her pack, their transmitters relaying the information currently being collected by their photoreceptors while in her pack, slowly rising out and taking in the landscape through eight visuals. They started to fan out at the command of the droid, who had superior interfacing and mechanical control abilities than she, a human, inherently did.

A few minutes later, something was spotted, that wasn't ordinary. A bald red man donning durasteel and a slugthrower was pointing his weapon at the main entrance, with an unseemly number of bullets weighing him down and...

"A lightsaber..." This was a surprise to her, but she merely smirked. He didn't look like he was paying attention to her droid, so she commanded it to fire on his back.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut...

The guards seemed fairly basic, but beyond that, Crol had little clue on exactly what it is he would do to barge his way into the fortress. It was likely to be more heavily guarded the deeper he went in. Of course, his particular set of abilities could only be amplified in closed rooms, similar to the shockwave of a grenade inside a building as opposed to out in the open. Still though, there was only so much he had going for him in terms of ability, even one slip up could spell out failure for the entire mission... and possibly worse fates.

Though on a personal level, Crol did not feel that there was a worse fate than what he had to live with.

However, something began to tingle on the back of his neck. Something was... amiss. His eyes unfocused from his aim down the Dresselian weapon, and darted around his surroundings, not exactly pinpointing precisely what was bothering him. Everything at a glance appeared normal, but there was something distinctly wrong about his situation.

Then it hit him. Crol had began to shift instantly as the charged shot was unleashed from behind him, but his precognition was too weak to have avoided the stun shot that suddenly numbed his arm. Outraged, the Zeltron swung his weapon arm outwards with two fingers outstretched from its grip on the rifle, which sent surrounding stony debris flying at extreme velocities towards the unknown target. They had gotten far too close to his person, and thus wouldn't receive the honor of Crol's aim; he was "firing" blind in the hopes of hitting something, in others spraying and praying.. The tiny droid remote was instantly shredded apart by a few of the projectiles, falling to the ground in a sparking scrap heap that fruitlessly attempted to continue its observations before powering down totally as its power cell leaked its fluids.

Breathing heavily from the panic, Crol disregarded the tiny droid and sprinted to a new set of cover several meters more away from the fortress. With only one currently functioning arm it made it difficult to hold his rifle, but not impossible. Very quickly afterwards his eyes searched the horizons for abnormalities, putting his rifle's iron sights out into the distance... allowing his minds eye to travel down the barrel like a speeding bullet, giving him the ability to sense things much farther out than what he could see on his own, or indeed sense without the psychological assistance of a long barreled weapon. It wasn't long before something shiny was discovered... several shiny things in fact, one of them being a speederbike, another a droid, and the other, presumably, a woman.

Not willing to take a chance with this person, Crol decided right away that this person must be an enemy, and pulled the trigger on his rifle.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam Akovin...

Triam monitored the droid as it fired, and found that almost immediately after, the stun shot had either missed or only had a partial hit. The light blaster on the remote was none too powerful, so she wasn't surprised. However, she did see through the eyes of her sniper droids scope looking down on the red man, and noticed the employment of basic stones being turned into blurs, that somehow destroyed the droid.

This caused a slight frown from Triam, as it reminded her of her fairly brief encounter and duel with on particular practitioner of a similar ability: Mikhail Shorn. She had observed its use through videos, though thankfully never had to deal with it personally. This seemed to be a more mild form of it though, thankfully... nothing as extreme as the infamous Thronebreaker, but dangerous and similar all the same. It looked like the move had been done out of simple surprise that anything was behind him, so it confirmed her suspicion that his precognitive skills were not exactly top notch, although present.

It appeared he ran behind cover immediately after, so it appeared that the slugthrower wasn't simply an addition to his arsenal like other dubiously equipped Jedi, but a legitimate necessity, and he was no stranger to a fire fight. Swiftly, she saw as the Dresselian Rifle peaked over the cover with that black Zeltron eye lined up in her direction. He was hundreds of meters away, and figured that although the rifle could reach this distance, she doubted that the Zeltron would be so accurate without first taking a considerable amount of time to line up a shot that would hit. She figured her droids processor would be far faster than any organic algorithm could figure. Ducking under cover, she let the droid fire for her.

"Open f-" She didn't get a chance to finish that sentence as a hard concussive force smashed into her breast plate, causing instant bruising and a momentary loss of breath as the bullet plonked off her Ultrachrome armor.

"...shoot, dammit!" How did that happen?! I'm behind cover! She said and thought as she coughed a bit. He aimed that shot way too fast, and how did it hit my chest with my back facing him?

Mr. Follow immediately sent down a heavy slug down range, and Triam saw through her HUD it exploded a chunk through the targets cover, but he remained behind it so far unscathed. Also seen in her HUD, she could see that the two of them firing on each other had tripped a few alarms over in the Fortress, given the relatively proximity of her red friend. The guards outside were now entering the building and closing it with big heavy blast doors. In all likelihood, turrets on the roofs would start to appear, but for now the only thing she had to worry about was how she was going to take down this karker.

She pulled out her blaster rifle, and decided she was going to return fire. She cut off her HUDS link to her Clusterkark System, and left those duties to Mr. Follow. Her rifle practically jumped over cover, and started to unload full auto system down range.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut...

For Crol, time seemed to momentarily slow down, seeing the muzzle flash go off from the end of his barrel, the super-heated gases preceded a small spiraling pellet propelled by, and pushed away by the expelled gas as it moved at supersonic speeds; the shock-wave of its exit disturbing the air around it and causing that specific tunnel inherent with slugthrowers and their projectiles.

In this moment of seeming pause, his mind's eye reached out to the crawling bullet and began to wrap his invisible influence around it, enveloping it in a protective cushioning of his control, and as it latched on time began to gradually speed up again as his mind began to race along with the speeding bullet. He was used to this by now of course, having used the technique for so long.

Once upon a time he could only faintly catch the bullets from his gun with subtle influence, but only really capable of influencing subsonic low velocity rounds with any reasonable control. Now however, his mind had become a well oiled machine, only really good at repeating the same actions it always had, without much room for serious improvement or improvisation. He was getting old after all, new tricks weren't exactly his thing after having done exactly one or two things his entire life. Which was also why his control over the projectile, despite no where near being a master of the force, was so graceful. Devoting so much time to so few skills meant that those skills were amplified, even if his other techniques were quite literally, bantha crap.

In the space of a thought, Crol had arrived at Triam's location, or at least, his influence around the bullet was. Sometimes, he had a habit of simply picturing himself as the bullet out of the gun, given that all his focus was directed towards the singular object, it was a hard habit to break... though not really necessary for him to. It held no ill consequence, and in a way, made it easier to imagine physically moving the bullet around as if it was merely an extension of yourself. So when he approached a target, that just moments ago ducked as he pulled the trigger, it gave him the advantage of perceiving where the target had gone, and adjust the course as needed... in this case fairly dramatically.

In order to make the full curve, Crol had to first slow the bullet and press down on the nose and on the butt in opposite directions. Ordinarily this would cause the bullet to tumble away and fail to reach the target, except that there was no air pressure in the way of the bullet that would cause it to warp, given his influence, and in addition to its increasing speed as it came directly down on top of his target, it crushed against her armor and bounced off. Time resumed at its normal pace, and Crol ducked under his cover, just as a much bigger slug round blasted through the stone protecting him, spraying him with debris. Momentarily, Crol stayed ducked as he recognized the tripped systems in the fortress, growling slightly in irritation. He was about to get up when a heavy volley of blaster fire pinned him down into the position... or at least that is what an ordinary person would think.

He was not ordinary.

Pointing his rifle upwards without poking it outwards, Crol regained his concentration, preparing his influence to catch the bullet at the end of his gun prior to firing, and squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. He kept firing, and each time he used his abilities to guide the bullets over his cover in the direction of the volley. It wasn't likely to hit any thing, but it would surely spook them into cover, which is right where he wanted them. Another huge sniper bolt blasted into the other side of cover, and the blaster volley predictably dissipated.

He decided he had enough of this, pulled out a hand grenade, and gave it a hypervelocity "toss" at the sniper nest. Almost instantly, a grenade was deeply lodged into the mound they had been firing from with a few seconds left on the timer.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam Akovin...

Watching as her target quickly fell behind cover, it took Triam completely by surprise when bullets continued to whiz by her. She saw the muzzle flash over the mound, but rather than being fired upwards, somehow the rounds remained aimed at her position.

However, unlike before, it did not seem quite as supernaturally accurate. It was at this point that she deducted that this was a skill based around telekinesis, given her research on Mikhail Shorn, this character seemed to require visual sight of the target to guide the projectiles where he wanted them.

So she made the quick decision that she was going to start changing her position... but she would leave Mr. Follow behind. After all, a dog needed to learn when to heel... even if that dog was actually a humanoid droid with a stalker complex.

Using her silent repulsorpack, she stayed low to the ground as she glided farther away from the fortress and around the flank of her target. At the same time she indicated to Mr. Follow to guide three of her drones to make a very obvious approach towards the target, in order to draw his attention away from her. Meanwhile, Mr. Follow would dutifully fire its weapon at his cover, and she would make her slow silent approach.

It would take a while, taking a few breaks here and there to walk in order to avoid attention, but this was the quickest she could get her job done.

Then of course, the man popped his head out of cover for no more than a second, a flash sped impreceptibly across the horizon before he went back under. Triam wasn't sure what was going on, until a massive explosion detonated over by Mr. Follow. The shockwave rippled through the earth and sent up debris in every direction at crippling speeds, causing rock to fall on Mr. Follow, though it appeared he was okay. It wasn't like he was as fragile as an organic, and would die by the shockwave. Quickly, she took cover of her own, already fairly close to her target, but not so close as to draw attention to herself. She did this to take the time to check up on the droid remotes and whether or not they were still being directed by Mr. Follow, as an assessment of his current functionality. It appeared everything was good, although Mr. Follow's view seemed to be obscured.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol Hu'hurut...

Crol's face remained neutral as he waited for the explosion, his ears were perked out listening for any signs that they might have survived, such as blaster fire for instance. To his surprise however, no return fire seemed to come. He waited another second, two, three. Five seconds went by and only now did he pop his head out over cover to see what was going on, but only saw a charred conglomerate of detonated earth. Something though, still didn't feel right.

Suddenly, something alerted him there was something behind him, her turned ready to blast them to hell but their triggers were too quick. One blue circular blast came racing towards him, and Crol jumped out of the way, then suddenly, there was a second one and it fired. Once again he leaped underneath the shot, and quickly grasped the first drone with the force. He brought his arm down, flattening the floating orb into a broken sheet of slag. The other droid was about to fire, but before this happened, he grasped it, and telekinetically nudged in such a way as to avoid the blasterfire, before he spotted the third droid. Using the droid he had in his grasp, he quickly plotted a rough course and sent the droid on a hypervelocity collision course with the other droid remote.

A feeling of being over run quickly came over him. This felt like a distraction. With hairs tingling all over, he grasped his rifle tighter and as he turned activated his saber-bayonet. He quickly swung a diagonal arc behind, just as a silver plated, brown cloaked figure appeared over cover about to fire its blaster. He sliced it clean in half, and then fired with his rifle at point blank range. There wasn't any time of course, to aim it, though he was betting he didn't need to.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam Akovin...

"Argh!" Triam yelped as the bullet smashed into her shoulder plate, after the molten slag of her blaster rifle fell to the ground. He certainly had speed, despite his age, but she had preparation, ingenuity, intelligence, and simply better gear. Usinger her left arm, she punched out towards the Zeltron's face. He tried to block it by slicing her arm off, but quickly realized the futility of it. The bayonet struck her armor, and although it began to heat up it had already gotten past to the point where she could just punch right through him.

He stumbled back a step, and Triam rolled the shoulder that got hit, feeling the immediate bruising and the numbness from the impact. She wouldn't be able to use it very well, but probably well enough. Lifting up her arm to fire a dart, the red man charged back at her and rifle butted her chest, sending her backwards. After that he swung his blade back forward and tried to impale her. The residual energy from the lightsaber sparking as it skidded across her armor (currently being heated up) was absorbed by her underlay. Taking advantage of this, despite her gaze, she brought her cortosis guarded hand across her body, quickly deactivating the lightsaber before it could melt any of her armor.

In the moment of surprise, Triam was able to catch him off guard, and unleashed a barrage of taser darts.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut...

Impossible! Crol thought as his lightsaber practically slid off of the figures armor. A metal plated fist quickly collided with his face, and he fell backwards in a daze. As he stepped back, he noticed a moment of weakness in the shoulder, probably from his bullet fire. As they raised its punching hand again, there was nothing good to come of that, and without thinking was already roaring loudly as he charged straight for them with the butt of his rifle outwards and prepared to slam directly into their chest. This knocked them back now and they coughed quickly as if short of breath as one would hope, and then he came down without thinking with the instinct to impale her, stabbing his lightsaber into her armor, observing the flying sparks and the heating plates.

It was then that he discovered the weakness inherent in the armor: heat, and time. That meant all he had to do to melt through the armor was to use his lightsaber on any segment for an extended period of time... quite the exceptionally difficult task really. He kept charging though, hoping that he could imbalance his target and keep the pressure of his blade on the softening plate until the target could be extinguished through armor failure.

Suddenly his opponent's limper arm moved in the path of the blade and he heard an unfamiliar type of hiss, the short circuity of his lightsaber, causing his weapon no longer met with resistance to be torqued past his target leaving his head exposed as his muscles powered through resistance that was no longer there.

Damn! He called out in his mind, he tried to recover as quickly as possible, looking up ready to fire again, that was until his vision got very blurry, and he could no longer quite feel what was going on, other than that there was a lot of pain. This wasn't his first rodeo however, and the key to the taser was that it worked best on the inexperienced, people who have never been electrocuted before.

He had some experience with that before.

He was on the ground but only for a moment... his hand was still death-clutching his rifle, but his mind couldn't even hope to concentrate... there was no way he was going to even think about using the force for this crap. No, instead he just charged right at the figure like an animal.

Except they side stepped, and he slammed into a rock.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut and Triam Akovin...

His eyes opened to the end of a blaster barrel and a silhouette.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead." The voice was feminine, and kind of blurry, if that made any sense. He must have hit the rock harder than he remembered. "Get up." She said to him. After he quite clumsily crashed into his own cover while under the tasers, Triam congratulated herself on once again humiliating the kark out yet another force user. She had been impressed however, in his ability to resist her tasers, not something she hadn't seen before, but it wasn't something one saw often. Typically, most people haven't been tased, and it works pretty well.

If she hadn't been so full of youth, she might not have been able to dodge him, turning the tide of the fight. He sworn by it he could have, if he wasn't so old.

"Who the feth are you?" Crol said, holding his head like he had a really bad hangover (the more likely, he was probably concussed), and tried to roll over to get on his back. Triam decided she didn't have time for this, so she grabbed him with her mechanical hand by the back collar of his armor and hoisted him up.

"I'm your damn mother, now get your fat ass up!" The fortress goons didn't like their little shoot out very much and where starting to take a real notice in their presence... all set up on full alert. She was able to pull him around a bit, but Crol may have purposely given her a bit of a tough time. It was nice to know at least, he was the muscle of the two. He sat down on a rock facing away from the fortress.

"Alright fine, I'm gunna say this one: I'm a badass that just beat you up, stay here so you don't get killed, and stay out of my way." She started to leave, but Crol was too quick, strong, and stubborn to let her leave without giving him some real answers. His thick hand reached out locked onto her gloved nimble hand... the one attached to her weak arm. A quick intake of breathe as he dragged her down, and she brought her blaster up to his shoulder.

"Ya lookin' to take that bounty wi'out me? I was 'ere first." Though still a little dazed, the Zeltron still had one more card up his sleeve he knew that most humans couldn't resist. In a moment, Triam, while under his grip looked at the old red face as her nose perked up to the most enticing smell she could think of. Something... suddenly seemed enchanting about the rugged features of the alien, and it embarrassed her incredibly to find herself blushing. She tried to tug her arm out but to no avail, and she sort of forgot about the desire to shoot him.

"Let go of me or I'll-" She shook her head, "Let go of me!"

Crol really didn't like doing this. It was a last resort option, and it made him sick that he felt the need to leave it. If it was a man, he might not have minded it too much, but he had always a soft spot for women. This... manipulation... it felt sickening. In all honesty, it felt like he was raping her, and he hated that. He hated the entire ordeal that this power presented to him, but he used it anyway. His reasoning?

He was never meant to be a good man anyway.

"I'll let go of ya, if ya let me come along." There was a moment's hesitation

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut...

"Fine. Whatever. Step out of line and I'll kick your ass again..." She said, very clearly in utter embarrassment, despite him being incapable of seeing her facial features. He released her, and got up to his feet. As his head rose above her as his spine aligned in a proper military posture, giving him an imposing impression. Such features may be amplified for her, given the pheromones he was exuding, though even under the influence her mind remained alert and objective-based. Her decisions could not be swayed by simple distractions like physical attraction... illusion or otherwise. This much he could deduct from her. Blaster fire then started to rain down on their position from turrets on top of the fortress.

"...we've already made a mess of things as it is." She finished her sentence. Suddenly, she jumped out in the open and charged, seemingly empty handed. It was pretty clear to Crol that this woman was whole shades of crazy he had never seen before. Gruffly, he grunted as he rang out to follow her. No sense in losing sight of her now.

The woman didn't seem to care about the blaster bolts so much, being able to out dodge most of them, probably with the assistance of her repulsor pack or something. Other times the blaster bolts hit her, and all she did was grunt softly, seeming mostly unperturbed by them despite the apparent lightness of her armor. Crol though was very worried, his armor wasn't even really refined. He was essentially wearing durasteel, which wasn't exactly a super-material like his impromptu partner was wearing.

Nonetheless, he had a job to do. Grabbing a handful of bullets out of his various clattering pouches, Crol without stopping, chucked them at the turrets like he was chucking a hand grenade, and sent those bullets on hypervelocity courses all around his targets. He was essentially creating suppressive fire, not expecting to actually damage anyone (though it could happen). In a sense, Crol was like a limited ammunition machine gun, he fired quite a lot of bullets (or just random rubble), but only in limited numbers at the same time. This wasn't exactly true though, since when he launched the bullets from his hands, they weren't being rifled, and were being accelerate at any odd angle, thus as a result the bullets in his hands turned into long ranged shrapnel; with this in mind, he was more like a shrapnel grenade that exploded in only one direction without any sort of shockwave. Regardless however, of his functions, his tactic worked in the intended way. smashing into the fortress walls and turrets, and even snagging a guy and injuring him in the leg. It caused the fire to halt momentarily as they took cover from the possibility of a continued barrage.

Then, he took up his rifle, and aimed up at a turret gunner that was actually getting up, and fired with only a small nudge or two from the force in that instance to make sure he landed the bullet squarely in the targets chest despite the wind that was picking up and the odd angle he was positioned in at that moment. The action wasn't quite as strong as his previous projectile guidance demonstrations, but this was because he was in the heat of battle, and his concentration was lessened to his current movement. It made using the force in such precise measures more difficult to accomplish. As the turret men started to get back up, Crol and Triam were at the front gates, and he was able to observe that Triam had quickly disarmed them, electrocuted them, and very much so drugged them out of this world. Though it didn't appear she had killed anyone yet. This struck him as odd.

"Stand back, and don't touch me." She barked at him, and Crol's frown deepened. What have I done now? He thought.

Suddenly, her helmet retracted back into her suits built in backpack, revealing the short spiked crazy golden hair of the genius woman. She pulled back some of her and took something metallic from her head, placing it in her belt. Her scarily intelligent brilliant blue eyes glanced at him briefly with a neutral face as she pulled out some other metallic device, and seemed to plug it back into her head. As her helmet banished away her stern face, a strange glow enveloped her. Before her, there was a key pad with a shield just below that seemed to have some sort of lever. He watched in amazement as her hand touched the shield, sending sparks and light everywhere as her hand seamlessly without pain passed through the shield without difficulty, and pulled down the lever. Immediately the shield deactivated and the blast door started to open up.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam Akovin...

"Duck!" A gruff voice called out as the door opened, and she dropped to the floor, still glowing. Her head turned to the side to find something like a dozen guards all lined up in front of the door, and suddenly with a grunt from Crol and a few whistling noises she saw about half of their chests and other extremities explode in bursts of blood. The others scattered as the wounded and dead fell to the ground. Suddenly, Crol stepped forward and shot a man getting up after ducking, before the Zeltron started to charge a group and sliced through two with his reactivated bayonet, before he rifle butted the last one in the face, causing him to crash into the wall behind him.

Most were wounded and down, but a few of them were certainly dead. Triam didn't like that so much, but they were going to kill her anyway, so she got over it fairly quickly.

However, his proficiency for crowds was overwhelmingly noted. All she did was duck and watch in awe as he took on twelve men at once. It baffled her, but he was by no means as impressive as the level of destruction she had seen in other force users. Still though... it was something impressive when one had that on one's own side in the flesh.

Then out of one of the corners, a man jumped out with a knife ready to stab her ally while his back was turned, and instinctively Triam propelled herself forward both with her leg muscles and her repulsor pack, arriving on top of the man through a tackle in almost an instant. She forgot about her Gatebreaker Node being active, and subsequently electrocuted the man from every portion of her body, through superconductive material.

He was dead as soon as they both hit the ground.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut...

Soon after, Crol stood among a pile of bodies... more or less anyway. There had been twelve men standing here, and now they were all fallen. However, a moment ago, it appeared he had missed one. Given that his other abilities in the force, including sensory ones not related to projectile guidance, it came as a legitimate surprise to him that someone was about to stab him from behind. He only had enough time to turn back and watch as the mysterious benefactor leap through the air and fry the knife wielding suspect. The Zeltrons eyes widened in surprised awe.

"Damn," He heard her call out, before the shimmering around her died away instantly after her getting up, "Killed him." She patted herself off, probably not wanting anything to stick to her as she got up, and also to brace herself from the intense rush of adrenaline. "Whoops." Then she looked towards Crol, and he shook his face to clear his head.

"Nicely done." He said gruffly. She shook her head in a disapproving manner and moved on. Apparently, she didn't like him too much, and who could blame her? He thought he was the most despicable being in the galaxy, short of the sith.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Triam Akovin two hours later after bagging the criminal....

Well, at least she had her bounty. The man was all tied up and unconscious, his hair in a fray from electrocution, and if his eyes had been open, they'd be completely dilated. The two mercenaries made good work of the compound, rounding corners with shrapnel flying out of Crol's - that's his name she learned - hands, and tech flying from hers.

The fear the red man created in the other man, as he charged at them head long alongside her silver armored body, was extraordinary, and whenever his lightsaber lit up they all stepped back. Some of them even ran. In some ways, it made her sick, but in others perhaps there was an opportunity here that she was trying to turn a blind eye to simply because the alien was dark side.

Not sith she learned, but with a clear inner turmoil that fueled a rather murderous tenacity. However, as she cleared away the halls and approached their target, she found that he was a very useful ally... and the pair worked marvelously well... not something many people can say about Triam. She was fiercely independent and did her own thing. Maybe the reason the two worked so well is that they both realized this, recognized they were after the same thing and weren't enemies, and so left each other alone to do our own thing separately. However, what was amazing, is that the two of them were able to work in tangent with each others tactics, merely because they were both opportunists in combat, and both created large openings to fill in.

For a while now, she knew that droids like Mr. Follow had to be replaced with something... more. Droids were obedient and robust, but they lacked the tenacity and ambition she needed for a truly compatible combat partner. As they were dragging their target along together... it soon became clear that Crol was the answer to some of her problems.

For a moment she sniffed the air just to make sure he wasn't manipulating her or something, but was assured by the rank smell of the bounties crapped pants; she nodded in a weird disgusted approval, and hesitated before speaking.

"You know Crol, I thought you were just an ordinary lousy ass dark sided force loser," She started out, "It turns out you're just my type of ordinary lousy ass dark sided loser. We work together amazingly well, despite our differences, and despite your gruff exterior... you're almost tolerable as a whole. I think I'd be willing to split this bounty with you, but only if you agree to be my regular sparring partner." She said, not even trying to hide her inner contempt for the man... but it was a friendly contempt, not the sort of contempt that meant she wanted to kill him. There was a momentary pause between them, then she added something in quickly before he was able to respond.

"But if you don't want to be always my punching bag, I'll cut you a deal and hire you on to Akovin Stock Company."

 

[Cassus Akovin]

In the perspective of Crol H'hurut, after being offered a job...

Well this was certainly interesting. They had both stormed through the compound, and eliminated all targets at every turn, being able to stop and capture the target before he could even think about making an escape; now they had him bagged, tagged, and ready to go. Suddenly, a peculiar thing happened, as the woman carrying the other half of the man was put onto a repulsorlift offered by one of her droids that she had summoned upon mission completion, she started talking about how she valued his proficiency, despite disliking him strongly.

Then she offered him an official job.

The Zeltrons scowl deepened with a frown, as if taking notice of the unconscious man's foul stench only now. Despite the awe she inspired in him, it was reprehensible to think that he could be hired by someone who knowingly and openly admitted that they hated him. What was truly sour however, was that she hated him for all the wrong reasons: "lousy dark side loser" she had said. Without even knowing him, she allotted him with the rest of those genocidal maniacs in the One Sith.

Even still, her offer did not appear to be any small matter. Merely looking at her, and observing her combat technique, she had intelligently designed each and every component of her armor for specific functions... she was walking money. What was better however... she was walking adventure. With her, he could go anywhere, meet anyone, but most importantly... he could fight wars. Real wars, that mattered. He could win with someone like her by his side, he felt.

There was always that apprehension though, that is applied with strangers... and there was also that shame of losing. If he didn't accept her offer, he didn't get the bounty, supposedly. She already proved she could wrestle it off of him if he tried to take it from her. It wasn't wise, and he knew he earned that reward just as much as she did.

It was only fair then that he accepted his post, despite all the loathe he had for such subservience. It would be his goal then, to best everything she did, it was the only way to ensure that his freedom continued to be absolute and unhindered by obligation and loyalty.

Or perhaps, it was finally time to start talking to a friend he didn't have any more...

"Whatever..." He responded.

Triam seemed to shrug and keep going.

And Crol followed her lead.

FIN​