Private Are We Blind? Deploy The Garrison!

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

The crimson winds screamed like flayed throats across the basins of Sevarcos II, clawing at the blackened spires of the Eviscerant Yards. Floodlights cut narrow wounds into the storm, silver and violet streaks that illuminated towers belching iridescent smoke, conveyors rattling with crates of volatile spice, and the skeletal silhouettes of mercenary watchtowers. Here, industry was not progress; it was domination. Every shriek of a droid drill and every crack of a guard's baton testified to the same truth: this place was owned, and that ownership had a name.

Darth Virelia.

She stood at the highest landing platform of the Calis Central Overseer Tower, her armored silhouette haloed in the sulfurous glare of refinery fire. The mask turned slowly, surveying the hellscape below like a goddess appraising her altar. Her House's altar. Her fortune, her inheritance, her triumph. The mines might have been cut into the bones of Sevarcos by desperate laborers and digger-droids, but the wealth they bled into the galaxy flowed first through her hands, her ledgers, her will.

The Overseer Tower itself was a monolith of brutalist intent—obsidian angles, blast-shielded windows, and comm relays thrust skyward like spears in defiance of the planet's constant storms. It was fortress, counting-house, and throne all at once. And today it was stage.

"Productivity has increased seven-point-two percent since last quarter, my Lady," droned the overseer AI, its voice filtered through a drone escort at her shoulder. "Refinery yield at Crucible Ridge remains stable. Section B reports eighty-three percent labor survivability."

The masked woman tilted her head slightly, and even that delicate motion felt deliberate. Calculated. The sort of grace that made hardened soldiers swallow against a dryness in their throats. "Eighty-three percent." The words were velvet-wrapped steel. "Do you know what I hear, darling machine?"

"Compliance, my Lady?"

"I hear waste."

Her gloved hand drifted across the guard-rail, fingertips dragging lines through the dust gathered there. Beneath the mask, a smile cut sharp and indulgent. "Spice veins care nothing for sentiment. Laborers are flesh, replaceable. Each corpse enriches me as much as each survivor—sometimes more, if I am creative. Waste," she repeated, "is the only crime. And you will ensure there are no crimes at my Yards."

Below, floodlights revealed the Spiral Cut, a pit vast enough to drown a city. Heavy digger-droids crawled its slopes like iron beetles, burrowing into veins of glittering spice that shimmered with lethal beauty. Beyond it, Crucible Ridge Refinery belched its smoke, churning out crystalline sticks and powder under mercenary guard. To most, it was hell incarnate. To Virelia, it was elegance. The order of her dominion carved into a world of chaos.

But sometimes, chaos likes to remind the galaxy why it's in charge.

 

[Aris Noble]

He'd been following a trail of Spice since meeting Rheyla Tann all that time ago. The package she had, the scent, it was something he'd become too familiar with. The wrong dock, passing an alley near the lower levels of a city, a slum. It bothered him how much more he'd noticed in his time with the Hidden Path. People were turning to all the wrong things in their desperation.

So Aris decided to do something about it.

The refinery was his main target. The harder it was to get Spice, the less it'd be spread. Supply and demand. There were other problems that would crop up, but- this was the best solution in the short term so he could focus on the long. He walked around the outside, keeping hidden despite his larger side. Being able to hear the patrols and machinery of droids and sentries from quite the distance away made it easy to avoid.

Cameras would see him, but he moved fast enough to confuse where exactly he'd be once he did get inside. His form flickered once e neared one of the larger refineries. Alarms blared now that he was in proper sight, but it wasn't going to stop him now. He raised a fist, and punched the vessel of gases before it erupted in flame in quite the cacophony of an explosion.

Fire should've consumed him, but heat and flame were Aris now. He idly shook out his fist as he stepped from the burning embers, his eyes shimmering gold and green as his state of being flickered between man and fire.

He was going to destroy this whole facility if he could.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

The tower shuddered as the refinery vessel went up—a deep, obscene percussion that rattled glass and bone. For an instant, even the storm outside seemed to hold its breath.

Virelia did not.

"Overseer." she said, voice smooth, unhurried—only the faintest tremor of delight beneath the silk. "Hard seal Crucible Ridge. Argon-flood the ruptured arrays; vent the surplus to the leeward canyons. Cauterion Wall to alert—pattern Nine. Any fire that moves against us, teach it manners."

"Acknowledged. Hostile signature registering as… anomalous."

"Anomalous," she repeated, amused. "How intimate."

She turned from the observation pane, and the armor turned with her: Tyrant's Embrace—sinuous, merciless, sovereign. Liquid obsidian frozen into a predator's geometry. The breastplate's crystalline heart pulsed once against her sternum, violet rhythm quickening as alarms folded into a single, hungry tone. Her helm's six slanted eyes came alive in the smoke-haze, insectile facets sampling heat and motion. The cape's layered synthweave whispered as it fell, filaments twitching like sleeping vipers tasting the air.

Shock lived inside her as a precise, pleasurable voltage—transmuted instantly into calculus. This was a strike at her. Intolerable. Delicious.

"Lock Section B," she added, already walking. "No traffic in or out. If anyone tries to be a hero, break both the hero and the attempt. Patch me to all unit leaders."

"Channel open."

Her tone cooled to steel. "This is Darth Virelia. Hold positions and contain. I will remove the problem."

Doors peeled before her like petals. Elevators begged. She denied them, taking the service spine instead—narrow, hot, its ribs of durasteel thudding to her tread. She preferred to smell the burning, to count the errors, to remind the Yards that their mistress was not an accounting line but a woman with hands enough to close around a throat. Heat surged through the corridors—alive, roaming—and the armor drank it, the runes along her flanks humming in low, predatory pleasure.

"Track the hostile," she said. "I want paths, not guesses."

"Vectoring from the outer tanks toward Crucible Ridge main. Patrols cut off by thermal shears."

"Then they're cut off by me."

She descended into the transit artery: a long, grated catwalk spanning black depth and slashing light. Far ahead, flames licked up in sheets, breathing like an animal. The Yards groaned; the Spiral Cut answered with a cavernous, angry echo. She rolled one wrist; her gauntlet's talons clicked once, delicate as a promise.

Whoever had come to burn her house would find the house wore fangs.

 

[Aris Noble]

They were moving away. Aris's expression tightened some as he looked around, listening as the heartbeats that had been closing in seemed to change their mind. Orders, perhaps? The refinery was advanced, but surely these were just criminals without the experience of fighting Jedi, let alone an oddity like him.

He didn't pursue, not yet. Calculations were already running through his head on how to do the most damage now without over exposing himself. Footsteps, not heartbeats, caught his attention. Someone was approaching, who's heart he couldn't hear. Machine, perhaps? Or armored. His eyes shifted, watching where they would appear from.

Zaiya Ceti wasn't going to be happy that he'd dove this far into a situation that turned out to be something much more than the basic spice peddling he'd assumed it for.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

The alarms made a cathedral of the refinery—long, rising notes that trembled the bones of the catwalks and the teeth of the towers. Heat rolled down the transit spine in animal breaths. Virelia stepped into it and the world bent to make room.

Tyrant's Embrace drank the firelight, every plane of liquid obsidian turning the inferno into a slow, obedient sheen. Six violet facets in the helm mapped vortexes of flame, eddies of pressure, the quiver of air where something unnatural burned like a man pretending to be a star. The crystalline node at her sternum pulsed once, and the runes along her flanks answered—subaudible, predatory.

The cape's hidden filaments stirred. A dozen threads uncoiled and stiffened, forming a narrow crescent that sheered off embers as they blew toward her, redirecting heat like a hand turning a face. No footfall echoed. Mag-soles whispered. The refinery's ribcage thrummed; her approach did not.

Behind and above, hunter-drones slid into a high, silent orbit—triangles of shadow, optics shuttered to pin-pricks. A clenched fist, held just low enough to be contemptuous, sent them fanning to the perimeter. A second, open-palmed gesture caged the corridor in invisible pressure: a slow crush that damped the run of the fire, made the flames hunker and lick instead of leap. Not extinguished—collared.

She passed a ruptured conduit hissing vapor; the plume parted around her as if embarrassed to touch. Talons clicked once—elegant, surgical—then extended a hair farther, each tip bright with a needle's glimmer. A small panel on her vambrace unfolded with insectile grace; sigils woke, rotated, locked. The armor's heart beat again. The heat thickened to intimacy.

No heartbeat for the intruder to count. Only the soft machine-hum of sovereign death, and the low pressure of a will too heavy for air to carry without sagging.

A shattered bulkhead framed her view into Crucible Ridge's service bay: slag-slick flooring, torn cables sparking like veins, a plume of flame guttering against baffles that hadn't existed a heartbeat ago. Beyond it—motion.

She did not break stride. She simply altered the room around her as she crossed it: gravity a fraction steeper beneath his feet, heat drawn off the ceiling in languid streams to spiral around her forearms, the fire's language translated into something that would listen.

At twenty paces, she finally spoke—voice velvet over a wire.

"Kneel."

 

[Aris Noble]

"That would explain it."

Aris stared down the suit of armor that approached. He could hear nothing, nothing but a gentle hum that he was certain was the internal components of the suit to keep the wearer safe. It was going to make things that much more difficult, but they weren't alone in hiding their face. The helmet Zaiya had made for him wrapped around his face, it's red eyes glowing amidst the fire now that he was certain his nose wasn't going to be of any use.

This wasn't a gang operation. It was something far more, perhaps even Sith.

Metal shimmered down his wrist, alien and foreign and yet part of him all the same. A blade, a sword or at least an approximation yet no less dull. He stood to his full height as the fire around him flickered, as he seemed to flicker with it. The Forge had dubbed him the god of Fire and Destruction. He would make sure it was used properly, even if it was a lie.

"I do not kneel. Why is someone of such clear influence toying with such simple poisons?"

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

She stopped at the edge of the bay, heat drawing a soft spiral around her like a tame cyclone. The six violet lenses in her mask tilted a fraction.

"That's fine," she said, voice even. "Postures bore me. Results don't."

He was taller at full height. Impressive. The fire clung to him like a creed. She let the flames keep their shape, then bled the excess heat off the ceiling baffles so nothing flashed behind him. A courtesy and a demonstration.

"You're wrong about 'simple poisons,'" she went on. "Spice is many things. Pain relief in field triage. Focus for pilots. Leverage for governors. Yes, a vice. But not simple. Break a refinery and you don't end the trade—you raise the price. You shift the suffering to people who can't afford a cleaner supply. You make room for cutters who lace it with rotgut and ammonia. Demand doesn't kneel because you punch a tank."

She took a step, slow, unhurried. The cape's hidden filaments lifted a stray ember and folded it out of her path, almost tenderly.

"You didn't come to butcher workers," she said. "You hit equipment. You avoided patrol routes. You waited to see who would actually come. So you're not a fool, and you're not a savage. Good. Talk to me like you're not."

A fingertip grazed a sigil on her vambrace. The floor's gravity climbed a hair under his boots—barely enough to notice, more a suggestion than a shove.

"I have killed people for less." she said plainly. "So you can either leave with your dignity intact and your identity hidden." She nodded toward the bulkheads that hid crews behind them. "Or we can end this little spark here and now."

 

[Aris Noble]

"It's very simple for me, I'm afraid."

He motioned his head towards the machine he'd already destroyed. The spice he'd already burned. That wasn't on a whim. None of this had been on a whim. The blade came up, the dust that it was made of seeming to shift and pulse like it was alive. It followed Aris's intent. As if a limb, so in a way, very much alive.

"I can't fix every problem, but I won't ignore one I've found. That will include you, as I'm sure you have no intention of stepping away yourself. The question that remains now is how much will I destroy before you do drive me out?"

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

Virelia regarded the blade, and the man who bore it, with a poise so steady it bordered on disarming. The violet facets of her mask caught the firelight and fractured it, as though she had six different ways of seeing him all at once. When she finally spoke, her tone was level, warm even—though the weight beneath it left no room for illusion.

"You're principled," she observed. "That's rarer than spice itself. And infinitely more dangerous."

Her hands rested at her sides, talons curled but not raised, as though she needed nothing but her presence to stand against him. "I believe you when you say you don't act on whims. I believe you when you say you cannot ignore a problem. That makes you honest. But honesty cuts both ways."

She took another step closer, slow and deliberate. The air around her shifted—gravity nudging, heat flowing toward her rather than away, the fire's allegiance subtly bending as though curious which sovereign to serve.

"You already destroyed a vessel, and here I am. Do you imagine you frighten me with the question of how much more you'll burn? Fire is a child. I have spent my life coaxing it into engines, into furnaces, into weapons that could crack the skin of planets. You can make it devour a machine." A pause, her voice softer, nearly intimate. "I can make it sing."

She tilted her head, helm glimmering faintly violet. "And you know that. That's why you spoke of me as something you'll eventually have to destroy. You saw it as soon as I walked into your flame: I will not step aside. Not because of greed, not because of habit—but because I made this place inevitable. Burn a dozen towers, and the next dozen will rise. Burn a hundred, and I'll turn the ash into profit."

Another step, close enough now that her voice carried like a secret. "So here we are. You, with your principles. Me, with my inevitability. I don't hate you for it—I rather admire it. But admiration does not spare anyone from consequence."

Her hand lifted, talon glinting, not in threat but in a strange gesture of respect—like a toast.

"So destroy what you will. But understand: every second you remain, I learn more about you. And when I choose to drive you out, it won't be by force. It will be by making you irrelevant."

Her helm tilted, a final, velvet note. "Do you still wish to measure yourself against inevitability?"

 

[Aris Noble]

"Inevitability."

Aris paused at that line of thinking. It was visible in his eyes, he was calculating, deciding, planning, a drastic amount all at once. The conclusion was clear as he lowered his blade. Not in surrender, but preparation. "Then you are what needs to be destroyed." He was there in an instant, a flicker of movement beyond what should've been possible. Surprise was a good weapon to wield, and she was right that once she learned him, irrelevance was going to follow suit.

The blade came down in a heavy, overhead slash. Overwhelm quick, don't let up. She had to be destroyed for this to fail.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

The world split—white heat, descending steel, a thundercrack against obsidian.

Sparks skittered in a halo; plates screamed; her stride clipped half a pace as the Tyrant's Embrace drank the force and translated it into a deep, animal thrum at her core. The cape's hidden filaments snapped taut, redirecting a sheet of embers in a slow, predatory flare. Six violet lenses narrowed, facets re-focusing—interested.

"Good," she breathed.

Her left hand rose, palm canting slightly, fingers parting in a languid, almost intimate curl. Gravity bent around the gesture. Sound pulled long. The air thickened to syrup. Flame crawled instead of leapt—each spark a lazy planet caught in a new orbit. Force Slow unspooled like silk across the bay, motion still possible, yet dragged, choices stretching into frames.

Her right hand opened over the pulsing crystal node at her sternum. The runes along her flanks woke, a low, velveteen hum. Heat bled toward her in disciplined threads, snaking along her wrist and pooling in her palm as if remembering an old owner. Tutaminis gathered without fanfare—as she shaped the refinery's rage into a reservoir.

She stood in the storm she was making tame, violet gaze fixed on him, voice a soft invitation edged in knives.

"Again."

 

[Aris Noble]

Aris blinked slowly as he pressed forward. He wasn't as fast as he should've been, he realized much too late. The Force had been affecting him from the get go, where he couldn't feel it in the slightest. A frown settled behind his mask as the blade he'd made returned as the markings over his arms, blending with flesh as if it was flesh itself.

It was the other hand that came around as a follow-up to the first blow. Sluggish as he was, he punched faster than most Jedi could, and he did so again and again, aiming for blows at different parts of her body to see just where the cloak that had protected her would follow, even going so far as to punch past her as if she'd dodged, subtle and leading, to see if it would.

In that became the bout, once he was certain he couldn't hammer through her armor. Who would be figured out first, who would be solved. The first to solve would be the winner without a doubt.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

His feints read cleanly; the intent behind them cleaner.

One slipped past the cape. It drove into her side—hard, efficient. Plates groaned, the crystal at her sternum thrummed once, and she let the force of it roll through her hips rather than meet it head-on. Just adjustment.

"Noted."

Her left hand stayed open. Her right dropped, two talons kissing the grated floor.

Force Lightning.

Violet filaments ran out along the catwalk like quicksilver roots, climbing handrails, ladder rungs, crane cables, and the rims of spilled tool carts. Arcs stitched sideways rather than forward, mapping his angles—short, disciplined pulses that turned steel into a moving fence. If his footwork suggested "advance," the rail ahead crackled; if he feinted past her shoulder, a cable to that flank answered with a hiss of corona. No wild blasts. Just gates closing and opening in rhythm with his choices.

The cape answered too. Hidden tendrils stiffened, took a measured charge, and swept across the deck in a low, sizzling line—painting a boundary that bit at anything crossing it without throwing sparks high. Tutaminis in the other hand bled off stray heat.

She pivoted with him, inside his tempo, keeping the lightning lateral and the pressure constant.

 

[Aris Noble]

Lightning.

Aris's eyes narrowed further as he caught sight of the sparks around him. Trapping him, guiding him. She truly was toying with him at this point, letting her suit and the environment around control where and how they fight. Clever, if frustrating. The tell tale signs weren't their either. The rhythm of her heartbeat, the twitch of her muscles. They were hidden in that suit, that inevitability. The spark would come, but he couldn't predict where.

So he stopped trying to predict it.

He consumed it.

Another flash of lightning came, and this time Aris answered. Not as flesh, but fire in human form. The flickering of his skin became a full inferno, intangible as the sparks were absorbed into his flame, coursing blue through the red. A heartbeat, a step outside the rhythm. Unbound from skin and bone he was no longer slowed. The metal around him heated red, dripping and melting from the sudden surge of heat.

Then he struck.

He'd noticed it earlier, how her suit wasn't impervious to his blows. That her inevitability could bend. Could crack. Flame returned to flesh, his skin, his strength. The Forge had shaped him, but it was he who chose what shape it would remain. If the Forge wanted to deem him a god of destruction, then he would choose what it was he'd destroy.

The mask she wore, the inevitability that she had pressed so hard on, that her very armor represented, he'd shatter it. Even the inevitable could falter.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering."

Tags - Aris Noble

The strike landed.

Tyrant's Embrace groaned, violet veins in the plates spasming with sudden overload. Heat seared her flank; the crystal node at her sternum pulsed violently, throwing arcs across the breastplate as if the armor itself recoiled. She dropped to one knee, cape snapping like a living shadow.

For a breath, silence.

Then—ignition.

The runes along her armor flared, bleeding liquid violet into the air. From her gauntlets spilled fire, not wild but sculpted—curved into shapes like taloned beasts, serpents with jaws agape, their bodies flame and hunger given form. They slithered across the deck, semi-sentient, their eyes glowing violet as they circled him in tightening arcs. Each construct whispered like kindling given voice, hissing with purpose, waiting for her command.

Her helm tilted, slow, deliberate, the violet facets unblinking. She rose, the armor straightening as if nothing had touched it, though the scorched plates still smoked. The sovereign flame coiled at her side, loyal, eager, patient.

"You will burn well," she said quietly, respectful. Almost admiring.

Her hand flexed, and the fire-serpents lunged, not headlong but weaving, snapping, forcing space to collapse around him. She pressed forward, inevitability reforged—now not only armored, but crowned in living flame.

 

[Aris Noble]

Aris turned his gaze to the serpents. Flame, given form. Her armor didn't break, merely bent before taking his blow to create something else. The runes weren't just a shield, then? He'd have to ask his father more on the sequence he did catch in the brief flare up. The serpents coiled around him, trying to burn, constrict, contain.

They dissipated on contact. Aris hadn't turned into flame, he was fire.

Another punch came, snapping through one of the golden serpents as it faded. A heavy stomp came with it, but that was the real goal. Metal screeched and splintered under his step. It was little more than paper to his strength, and before his fist could connect he'd fallen right through the hole he'd made. She'd know now, without a doubt.

Retreat was the goal now. She'd learned too much, and he had too little to show for it in turn. This wasn't a place he could take down on his own.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Breaking and Entering." (OOC NOTE: already thought I posted this lol, sorry!)

Tags - Aris Noble

The bay groaned as metal gave way beneath him, a scream of tortured steel swallowed by the storm of fire. Virelia stood at the edge of the ruptured deck, violet serpents dissolving into sparks around her gauntlets. She did not pursue.

Instead, she watched. The void-like mask tilted down into the dark shaft where he vanished, six facets glimmering with cold patience. Her hand hovered over the railing, talons flexed as though she could still snatch him back with a single command. Yet she did not.

The serpents' remnants coiled back into her armor, absorbed into the glowing node at her sternum. The runes dimmed, one by one, leaving only the faint pulse of violet beneath the breastplate—steady, inevitable.

"He runs," she murmured, and though there was no contempt in the words, there was no mercy either. It was simply acknowledgment.

Then, softer, almost indulgent: "Good. Run. Learn the shape of inevitability before you dare it again."

She turned from the hole, cloak sweeping in liquid arcs, embers trailing behind like obedient courtiers. No alarms called her elsewhere, no shouts of panic—order had already bent back into her grip.

He would return. And when he did, she would be ready.