Public B L A C K L I S T

[Shego Striga]

"Beautiful Minds Are Always Persecuted~"

Cassian Abrantes ​

The rain-slicked streets of DENON glowed with sickly neon—signs advertising miracle cures, gambling halls, and body augments pulsed like open wounds in the dark. Shego limped through it all with her cane clicking against cracked duracrete, the dark briefcase weighing heavier with each failed meeting. Credits had once flowed easily enough, corporations eager to wring brilliance out of her mind like juice from a fruit. But after her detainment, after the fire and the fallout...no one wanted to touch her now. Not without assurances she could no longer provide.

Her respirator hissed as she twisted a dial, trying to steady her breathing. The metallic tang of her own blood was still sharp on her tongue. She braced herself against a wall, shoulders trembling, then forced herself back upright. Weakness was a luxury she couldn't afford in a city like Denon. Especially not with enforcers prowling the streets like carrion birds.

A patrol skimmer hummed overhead, its floodlight sweeping the avenue in long, clinical arcs. She ducked instinctively into the shadow of a half-dead vendor stall, watching as armored figures stalked the main thoroughfare with rifles slung low. They were looking for someone.

Probably wasn't her though.

She clutched the case tighter and pushed herself into a side alley. The stink hit her first—garbage fermenting in puddles of chemical runoff—but it was better than a stun-baton cracking her ribs. She stumbled on, cane tapping out a grim rhythm. The alley narrowed, funneled her deeper into the underbelly of Denon.

When she looked up, the glow of a massive holo-projector dominated the skyline. The governmental district loomed with all its sterile arrogance, the projector cycling through propaganda and alerts in bright white lettering. Shego's heart lurched as the reel shifted.

Breaking News.

Her own face blinked into existence on the display. Pale skin. Black hair plastered from rain. The faint gleam of her painted lips. The name printed below in bold letters burned into her brain:

SHEGO STRIGA.

She froze. There was something grotesque about it. Seeing herself up there, framed and dissected like an animal. Every tick of the projector felt like a knife cutting away her anonymity. Her chest tightened, her mask wheezing in sync with her pulse.

Any sightings were to be reported immediately to the authorities. Rewards pending. Detainment considered highly dangerous.

The crowd barely paid attention, but she could feel eyes on her. Or maybe it was paranoia finally catching up. Either way, bile rose in her throat. If a bounty dropped, she wouldn't just be dodging corporate hounds and law enforcement. Every two-credit hunter in the Mid Rim would start sniffing for her trail.

Shego swallowed the panic down and forced her legs to move.

One step.
Another.
Always forward.

She didn't have the luxury of freezing here like prey under a spotlight. Not on Denon. Not when the galaxy already had its jaws closing in.

She needed credits. She needed transport. She needed to disappear before her name stopped being a whisper in back alleys and became blood sprayed across bounty pucks.

And that meant making a deal tonight. With someone. Anyone.

Even if the price cut deeper than she could afford.

 

[Ayumi Pallopides]

Shego Striga

Denon was changing. Dominique Vexx had helped with a lot of things and they were improving it district by district, level by level of the world from the highest down to the surface of the planet. Where they dug into bunkers and new areas. The hospital district was a beautiful example as its skyline was coming into view... the hovering district designed to triage patients who were not as serious medical cases. Ayumi was able to see much of it coming together. Like the other districts as the Ascendency reforms were being worked on and implemented. Resource stations across the planet set up, reconstructor droids rebuilding sections with self repairing and stronger. Their tourism and commerce was getting bolstered which along with new regular check ups here meant profits for the board were improving. The stronger workers able to make more compared to the sickly that made few and the dead who made none. SHe was able to touch down at the large open air port when her transport landed. Coming from Upcity had been a better trip then many other times. "Oh it is beautiful." She said it while stepping off onto the white metal walkways forming the streets. The sounds of construction biot breaking down debris, dirt and trash."

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

T-37X StarRacer
HH Armor

Tags: Shego Striga | Cassian Abrantes | Ayumi Pallopides | Open ​

Lysander had been in the city for two days; sleep came in snippets, sips snatched shady hostels, and occasionally daring to chance a forgotten tunnel. The city's heartbeat pulsed wildly, different from when he’d first arrived, and in sync with his own: rapid and erratic.

Nestled between his knees purred a sleek, modified ion engine poised on two synthrubber wheels. It was compact, deadly accurate, and built for lightning reflexes. Matte black fairings seemed to drink the neon glow, swallowing it whole until it cascaded over the curves.

He leaned into the machine like a seasoned racer, not a trace of hesitation, body low. Muscles coiled, his torso grazing the fuel tank, knee tracking just above the duracrete as if night itself dared him to come closer.

Left hand feather‑light on the clutch, right hand on the throttle, he was in his element, fingers dancing with ghostly finesse. As the turn opened into a straightaway, his wrist dropped like lead. Lysander twisted the throttle until the engine’s whine tore through the air. For the teen, it wasn't just noise; it was a symphony.

Every gear shift sang; the growl, the howl, the subtle clicks, all blending into mechanical poetry.

Denon's arteries were a combination of skybridges and traffic lanes, motion constantly flowing in all directions. Even so, with a city of millions moving at once, the two‑wheeled machine served well to make him a ghost, especially since his Force signature was cloaked.

To most observers, he was probably nothing more than another thrill seeker in the rain drenched streets.

The armor he adorned passed for bikewear, and a beige tactical bag gripped his back, leaving him perfectly balanced, as though he were unwilling to part with speed or agility.

On the dash, a slicer module was whirring. It fed off Denon's dense comms grid, tracking commlink pings and datapad logins efficiently. The signal was strong now, and his HUD bloomed with intercept routes.

Soon, something else came into view. Amid the propaganda, the lone holo-image bred a touch of curiosity. A smirk graced his lips under the helmet.That was until his gaze snapped back to the road, focusing on the hunt that had brought him here.

His own target was small in stature, but the bounty didn’t care about size. Credits spoke louder than everything else lately. Dead or alive, the humanoid he was after carried a price he could not ignore.

Lately, he had grown to realize that annihilating the target outright was so much simpler.

Neon bled across his visor. The bike’s ion engine scream blended with the city’s chaos. No speeder or swoop could match this adrenaline fueled, deadly dance through the city’s veins, not at this velocity.

He leaned forward, chest touching the tank, RPMs climbing hungrily. A tease, really, for a curse slipped from his lips as the HUD flickered, warning of movement ahead. Without braking, he eased off the throttle; the ion engine’s drag slowed him.

Armored figures lined the sidewalks; patrol swoops swept the lanes. Too many eyes, too many rifles for his taste. If he had to guess, he knew exactly who they were looking for. This game of cat and mouse had just become more difficult.

 

[Eaton Waters]

Eaton had gotten a taste. A little smash and grab on the command ship of Ashin Varanin gave him something to aspire to. His sister was still pushing, and he was finally trying to relent. He wanted to see what he could do with those powers. But he didn't want to fall into any aspect of the Force that worried more on dogma and religiosity, and be more pragmatic. He was a racer, he was a thief. And this could only make it better.

It was why he took his ship to Denon, after all. The world played host to so many that he knew there had to be something. Specifically from a shop that he heard of. One Jennifer Blanchard used to create tools that helped a Forcer deal with technology. An old Mechu Deru specialist, is what Brooke called it.

He relented and started carrying the slingshot his sister gave him. A few slugs that when they hit friction cast an unnatural fog into the area. He was ready to get moving.

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Denon
Shego Striga Lysander von Ascania Ayumi Pallopides Eaton Waters​

Eyes were demanded on this place, and Cassian had given his word. There was a contact he was to meet, someone on Denon that wasn't supposed to be. He smirked at the thought because that could've been thousands of people. Denon was a place of opportunity, truth, he had learned much from it when he visited Dominique here.

But then he saw her.

She moved like someone fighting her own body, each step leaning too heavily, each breath rasping through a mask. The case she carried caught his eye first: clutched so tightly it was as though it were the only thing keeping her upright. He followed her into the alley on instinct, staying to the shadows as the skimmer's floodlight burned across the street behind him.

When her face appeared on the holoprojector above—stark, pale, lips painted in defiance—the name came with it.
Shego Striga.

Cassian's jaw tightened. He had heard that name before, in committee whispers, in intelligence briefings traded like contraband. Dangerous. Unstable. Brilliant. And now wanted.

He could have walked away. Should have, perhaps. But there was something about the way she froze under the glow of her own likeness, shoulders drawn, the mask wheezing like a wounded animal, that struck him. Not pity. Never that. But recognition. This was what it looked like when a person was consumed by the machinery of power, chewed up until all that remained was the husk still trying, against all reason, to stand.

The air reeked of chemical runoff and rain-rotted trash. He drew closer, boots silent against the muck, hand brushing the hilt of the dagger hidden in his cloak. If he announced himself, she might panic. If he let her slip away, he might lose the only chance tonight to understand what game Denon was truly playing.

Cassian exhaled, the breath sharp in his chest, and stepped into the faint circle of flickering light between them.

"Madam Striga," he said quietly, Naboo lilt betraying him at once. "You walk with shadows on your back. Tell me, are they your own, or someone else's?"