Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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As Forgiving As I Am (Death's Hand)

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Death's Hand"]

The holocomm beeped, and she knew. What started as a premonition blossomed into a full-scale awareness of the reason she felt unsettled: a precognitive hint of how she would feel in a few seconds or minutes.

She took the call anyway, because paradox wasn't something she played around with, not since Rave Merrill erased herself from this timeline. It was Kalaaa, the Ishi Tib second officer of the Chimaera. She'd served with Kalaa since the Sith Empire days and before: the Ishi Tib had been with Engel since the beginning, originally as engineering chief.

The details poured in and she took them like a stone, searching for the cold of the void. Freezing out her grief, crystallizing a cold rage.

Shore leave on Dasid Anya, trade hub of lampreyish Lugubraa and insectoid Killiks, was about as safe as you could get. Engel, bless his old bones, had tried one of the legendary three-dimensional mazes, the ones where gravity changed direction at random. And something had found him in the maze.

Something with a lightsabre.

Dasid Anya was a world of something like eighty billion. Granted, most of them were nonhumanoid, but the planet was a nexus of commerce and transport in the most known of the Unknown Regions. It was perilously easy for an assassin to get lost in the crowd. Tracking efforts had turned up nothing.

Kalaaa, now acting captain of the Chimaera, voiced a warning: that Engel's death had been a signal to Ashin, bait most likely. She was, of course, going anyway.
 
"Are you going to kill me?"

The voice wasn't frightened, in fact it was rather calm. In the dimly lit room, the only sound was the rain outside. Howling winds managed to still be heard despite the sound proof technology reserved for such high rise rooms. Sadness etched the old man's face. Years of surviving impossible situations and working with such high-profile individuals. Rain drops masked the sound of him hitting the panic button, but he knew the power had been cut. Panic left his face as he peered across the room. "I asked if you were going to kill me." The shadows moved, and the man showed himself.

If what appeared could even be called a man.

Standing nearly two meters tall, light reflected off of him in various points. The captain counted at least three blaster weapons, a long rifle wrapped across his back, and what appeared to be thermal detonators. Combat boots and dark pants were held up by several belts, most curiously an ornate lightsaber hilt hung st his belt. A leather vest covered one arm, while the other was revealed as a mechanical construct. Faint sounds of motors could be heard as it nervously moved. Trying to make eye contact, he noticed the man's visage was covered in goggles and a mask of some sort.

The assassin simply reached down to his belt, and pulled out a BIT-Woebringer. Raising it up in on hand, he aimed and fired with no hesitation. The captain dropped as if an invisible weight had been dropped on him. Burnt blood had splattered slightly, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the room.

"Leave a trail, she will come." The voice on the ear piece went silent, and he bolstered his weapon. The man drew his lightsaber, and pressed the activation plate.

Snap-Hiss!

There was work to do.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Death's Hand"]

She tried to tell herself that Farnabas Engel, once an infochant and guerrilla, later the Chimaera's longtime captain, had probably died well. In the end, though, there weren't many ways to die well. Die for a good cause, to save someone else maybe -- sure. But regardless of cause or motive, when you died, there wasn't a whole lot of dignity to it. She'd died once, under controlled circumstances -- her control, and Hauntruss' -- and even that had been a maelstrom of metaphysical indignities.

Some people were blasé about death, as if its hand could never touch them, or as if it was kid-leather-gloved and perfectly manicured, an optional assistant on one's journey to a fashionable destination. As if Chaos itself was optional, and death only a transition to another nubile twenty-three-year-old body. As if there weren't consequences to taking another form and casting a soul into the void.

Such people failed to understand, by and large, that eluding death once or twice or a dozen times did not make them immortal. If that was the case, Palpatine and Set Harth and Darth Plagueis and the Sith Emperor would still have been around. But the indestructible attitudes of the young could not be alloyed except through the kind of harsh experience that Ashin rather enjoyed dishing out -- in part because she liked humbling people, and in part because she disliked how such practices and attitudes devalued life and death.

Still, it would have been nice to apply such methods to Farn Engel. Perhaps before her severing, and if she'd gotten to Dasid Anya more quickly...but that was the price of specialization. She could stop a turbolaser bombardment with her mind, and duel most Masters into the dirt. She couldn't save lives in really any other way.

The Vagrant's Pride touched down at the phenomenally busy multilevel spaceport closest to the incident. She emerged on a Silk-made speeder bike, red and silver, the kind with a forward double-vane like a chisel blade. Without contacting anyone -- she'd made her calls en route -- she headed for the place where Engel had been taken.
 
Kill boxes, it was all about the kill boxes.

Normally a trained assassin would find a nice, quiet alley. Preferably, it would have minimal exits, and they would be covered. If an alley wasn't suitable, a place far away from authorities. If one had half a brain, they would cut all communication. If it was a force user, a ysalarmi would be in play, as would bolters or other non-laser weapons. Any assassin worth his salt would have kill teams, with snipers stationed far away if they were truly hunting a force user.

He was only after a former Sith Empress.

Everything about this was off, it was just plain wrong. A roof overlooking the planet's largest shopping center wasn't a good choice, a glass roof at that. Thousand of individuals of all races moved in the sea of bodies. Some where searching for the trendy diner, others were looking for clothing or the next great electronic toy they needed. Hover cars and starships flew above, dotting the bright sky. There were no teams, and certainly no kill boxes.

Just a man standing next to a dead body.

The assassin rested his hands on his pistols as he looked through his mask. The homing signal would bring his prey to him. He simply stood in the sterile, glass ceiling. Below a few people screamed as they saw the dead body completely dismembered. A sick pile had been made of its remnants, with the head resting on top.

His employer had told him to do that, so he had.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Death's Hand"]

There were traps and then there were beacons. Messages that couldn't be ignored. Messages that, while tacit, spoke clearly nonetheless. A message like this said only one thing, nuanced but still ignited.

There's someone waiting for you, someone we believe can take you down even if you're enraged. We know you know that someone of that sort is waiting. We don't care about collateral damage or a clean capture. Your only hope of finding us is to engage with this person rather than spooking him or her.

That was the message that came through on Ashin's holocomm, visually, as her speeder bike approached. And to all those layers of subtext she could safely add another:

We butchered your friend because of your sins.

The speeder bike accelerated up a beflowered slope and took a long, helical jump. The spinning bike skidded across the glass roof as Ashin - unarmored - leaped off nearby with a snap-hiss that spoke volumes.
 
It viewed her approach on the bike intently, her power surging through the Force. Whatever connection the assassin had with the field of energy would be considered strange to others. There was no rage or malice that fueled the man in black, nor was he at peace. Whatever mind was left simply did as it was told, and used whatever means were necessary to accomplish orders. It didn't let the Force guide him, nor did he bend it to his means. It simply did what had to be done.

Today, it was needed to kill [member="Ashin Varanin"]

Tendrils of focus and consciousness extended outwards, forming a sphere of influence around his location. Her rage, and even a bit of grief could be felt. Fear crept up from below him, but he never glanced downward as the citizens below watched in horror. Instead, it simply relaxed it's spirit as every muscle tensed in anticipation. Years of training that couldn't consciously be remembered took over as his boots spread and his knees bent. It's mind emptied of any thought, as the speeder bike crashed and his target landed with an ignited lightsaber.

A single thought crept into the assassin's mind as it allowed the anger from Ashin to seep into him.

He got excited, he loved combat.

Reaching behind his belt, ignoring the blasters on his hip, he pulled out a most interesting lightsaber hilt. The black leather of his glove and the silver of his robotic arm clashed the matte black and the gold, electrum plated panels. Exquisite craftsmanship was on display on ever centimeter of the hilt in its hand. An elegant weapon in the hands of something out of a nightmare.

Snap-Hiss!

The amethyst blade sprung life, the smell of ozone flooding it's nose. Echoes of his footfall accelerated as it started sprinting cover the distance towards her. Dust trailed in is wake as he finally brought the blade up in a two handed grip before flying into an unpredictable flurry of strikes. First just as his right foot hit the ground, a left two handed slash from right to left at her left elbow. Then the blade went high over his left shoulder and undercut right towards her right hip in a windmill type motion. The staccato pattern continued, his blade a blur, as he came into his element. With each strike, his feet constantly moved forward as his blade resembled lilac fire reigning in the former Empress.

Vaapad had returned.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Death's Hand"]

There was a danger here, a very serious danger, that she would overcommit and lose her mental balance. Lose her center. That was the point of a trap like this; you couldn't avoid it when fighting near the dismembered corpse of a man you'd trusted for a quarter of a century. All her mantras, all her measuredness, were a fading memory.

Because for the first time outside of training, or since fighting Moridin, and maybe more than she ever had before, Ashin accepted the cost and gave herself to the fight. Entirely. No holding back for the sake of art or propriety or fairness or honor; no long game to exhaust her enemy. All or nothing -- stark words.

The first strike met her blade just above the emitter, jarring her with its force. The assassin was bigger, stronger, and probably younger than her, and that cybernetic arm gave his strike some heft. It also led her to choose a more mobile stance than some, weight distributed evenly on the balls of her feet, feet moderately wide apart, right foot forward but not excessively so. That didn't give her much support against the impetus of a strike like that, so she bled off the shove into a sidestep.

A sidestep that kept her balance, but made his follow-up strike that much quicker. She let go with her left and dipped her blade, her arm turning out and hardening. The violet blade met yellow a handspan from her blade emitter, right on the forte where leverage wouldn't hurt too bad. Every strike could be a block, and every block was a strike; she hit the incoming blade without compromise. Too much of that and she wouldn't have a wrist left.

She stepped in with her left and lashed out with her free hand. Force shields, Force Weapon, Force protection -- those three, melded into one, were her specialty, as instinctive to her as breathing. She snapped a Force-empowered ridge-hand strike at his right temple, too high for him to get his shoulder up to block, not with that arm across his body, committed to that two-handed grip.

And if he ducked, well, she'd snap a chop into his forehead. Maybe stun him, maybe break the skin and bloody up those pretty lenses. That might, and probably would, fit into her moment of opportunity. Vaapad wasn't the only thing that could move fast.
 
Efficiency met aggression, both unmatched in their ferocity. Vaapad was all ferocity, aggression that was fueled by your opponent. Every strike was offense, defense was secondary. There were no parries, only changes in tempo. True masters could make their blade appear as many, truly becoming one with the Force and letting the superconducting loop truly work. Speed and power were just the results of the work that one did on the inside, showing the true mastery of self. Few could manage the physical movements, even fewer could pull off the mental side that was so rigorous.

Like hell, the road to Vaapad was littered with good intentions.

Shii-cho was simplicity in it’s purest form. Everything about it was designed to be as simplistic as possible to allow the user time to learn and master the movements. Each stance was designed with any body type in mind, the form essentially worked for all species that were bipedal. Younglings first learned the form upon getting to use a training saber, it was the first step on the long journey that many took on the path of learning the lightsaber. Few ever adopted the form as anything more than a warm up or practice for their next form of choice. Even the classic masters of the older days of the order never touched the form.

[member="Ashin Varanin"] was an exception, and her simplicity was matching the assassin’s ferocity.

Every change in tempo was met with the correct block. Leverage met power head on, and economy of motion met the aggression. Sure, they both wanted this fight, but this was the cure if Vaapad was the sickness. A dull throbbing was hitting the assassin, as if memories of the past were trying to burn their way to the forefront with each and every strike. They weren’t allowed to come to fruition, it was too busy trying to kill it’s target. Well, until an elbow came screaming in. It’s weight was in a poor spot, and there was no move at this moment. Instead, it relaxed and let the force of the impact carry it away.

CRACK!!

It’s momentum carried the warrior into a forward roll away from the combat. Quickly rising to it’s full height, it removed the shattered lenses from the mask. Blood was freely flowing from it’s face, though most of the visage was hidden. Holding it’s blade in one hand, it kept a casual stance as it’s hand of flesh extended towards her. The glass floor below trembled, then shattered as it exerted it’s will on it and crushed it. The former Empress was left with nothing to stand on.
 

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