First Reply Cartel City, a Carnage of Chaos.

[GhostKey]

Planet: Echelon
District 29: Cartel City
Speederway 772X
Night, Clear Skies.

"It's a mother-fraking warzone out here!" A GNN newscraft swept through the chaos, its holo-drones streaming the firefight across billions of feeds, harvesting images for advertising revenue.

Among the glittering casinos, underworld clubs, and cartel towers, Hutt Cartel enforcers traded fire with Nanofreak biomod gangers along a highway: Speederway 772X lighting up into volleys of slug rounds, blaster streaks, and chaotic smoke. Trandoshans, Duros, and Rodians hunkered behind duracrete barriers and landspeeders, returning sporadic shots at a gang so color-burned they lit up their own, living graffiti marked in biobone mods.

In the middle of the carnage lurched a large, heavy, armored cartel hovertruck, locked down and dead in the street, ion-static crackling along its side. Inside, a metric ton of credit-chits and data-tags ready for 'redistribution' across the sector. The gunfire was bad, but the lack of security response was no surprise. Cartel City was massive, the fourth biggest urban center on Echelon, and more importantly, Hutt-owned. Echosec corporate security only showed when the Hutts decided they should, or the pressure got too much to ignore.

What was surprising was how the Nanofreaks had found this shipment at all.

Shots ricocheted near his head. Where was Ghostkey? Inside the damned truck. That was the job. Slip in, sneak out on a runner ship, clone the data-tags, slot in the fakes clean. Save thousands from debt-chains and skim a tidy fortune from families funding the risk.

"Great plan. In and out easy. No static," the slicer-kid muttered, peering through one of the truck's tiny side-windows, just as a speeder outside went up, its fuel cells going critical in a blue-white cloud.

"Now what?" he sighed, scanning the cramped interior of the truck.

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

Dankaia Virkenn pressed her palm to the cold glass, the city lights jittering in fractured reflections across her skin like a broken data stream. Thirty floors below, neon arteries pulsed in erratic surges, their usual algorithmic rhythm replaced by something feral, uncontrolled. Sirens cut through the evening haze, first one, then a dozen, rising into a synthetic wail that reverberated up the steel spine of the hotel. She watched the crowd surge like corrupted code, people scattering in every possible direction as autonomous traffic pods locked in place, their hazard beacons strobing a frantic red. Somewhere out there, something had slipped beyond the system's ability to contain.

A flash: white, sharp, surgical, split the avenue, followed by the unmistakable tremor of an overloaded capacitor exploding. The power grid buckled in response, whole blocks flickering in and out, their holographic billboards sputtering through ghost images of luxury ads and emergency alerts. Dankaia leaned closer, heart syncing to the chaos below as drones began to swarm, their formation tight, predatory, hunting for a target the public feeds hadn't identified yet. Whatever was happening, it wasn't random, and it wasn't over. She felt it in the static creeping along, the kind of static that only came when hidden systems were waking up.

Dankaia Virkenn snatched the hilt from the bedside table, its weight familiar, comforting in the way only dangerous things could be. The brushed-steel cylinder hummed faintly to her touch, internal capacitors warming like a predator inhaling before the strike. She clipped it to her belt with a sharp click that resonated through the dim room, then strode toward the door as emergency strobes bled red across the hallway carpet. The hotel's security feed flickered on her wrist display, static, distortion, then a glimpse of riot drones firing stun rounds into a crowd that was no longer running but fighting back. Whatever had sparked the chaos was accelerating.

The moment she stepped outside, the city's heat slammed into her like a blast furnace of ozone, panic, and burning circuitry. Pedestrians tore past her, their faces washed in the pallid glow of malfunctioning street holograms. Surveillance quadcopters buzzed overhead, their searchlights carving frantic arcs through the smoke that curled from a toppled transit pod. Dankaia moved against the flow, her boots pounding a steady rhythm on the fractured pavement as she reached for the hilt at her side. The chaos sharpened her focus, narrowing her world to angles, exits, threats. If the system had lost control, then the streets needed someone who hadn't.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine

 

[GhostKey]

GNN hot on the expanding scene with all the subtlety of a Hutt in a ballroom dance.

"Good evening, GNN viewers. We're coming to you live from Cartel City, where a crowd has gathered outside Boots-n-Hoofs Hyperwear, one of the district's premier 'HoloFit street court outlets. Yes… yes, I'm seeing this correctly… oh my stars, that does appear to be an ignition event. Citizens are burning down the store." With all that artificial cheer only corporate GNN anchors could carry with them during an urban collapse.

"Worry not, Echosec security units are already on-site, look at that efficiency! Arriving in record time to ensure public safety and restore our market stability. I'm certain they'll have the situation fully contained momentarily!" The feed buzzed to static and cut out to black as a liberated durasteel-tipped boot clanged off the drone's camera.

A riot at the exact moment a Cartel shipment was being hijacked, all too suspicious, and nowhere near contained...

…Meanwhile, back on Highway 772X

"Null-for-brains," Ghostkey hissed between breaths as he took a bag of data-chits into his backpack. One glance at the stacked credit-chits made him roll his eyes. No way he could haul both and still make it out alive. Frak it.

Blasterfire hammered against both sides of the armored truck, turning the hull into a percussion drum burning with bright holes. A Rodian broke cover to sprint toward the vehicle, only to drop halfway there from a shot. On the opposite side, one of the Nanofreaks volted forward, cradling something that blinked green, right up until someone shot the charge out of his hand.

The explosion hit like a truck on a truck. The entire outside bucked, metal ringing like a new migraine. Ghostkey slapped the side of his head, trying to remember where he was. But a break. Just enough. He took the opening like a sign from a forcegod he didn't believe in. Hammering the door release. The back doors swung open with all the subtlety of a drunken Gammorean, which is exactly when an actual Gammorean appeared, snorting, towering high, and already mid-swing!

Ghostkey dropped under the axe, the blade catching sparks from the duracrete beside his head. He rolled right into the handle, forcing the enforcer off-balance, and drove a boot upward into its groin. A squealing collapse followed. Making it just two steps before the next shots came in, one shattering a display panel beside him, the second forcing him into a survivor's dive beneath a ruined landspeeder. He snuck to curl behind the chassis, clutching his bag of chits, breathing in blaster fumes and fear.

With a roar a Trandoshan on the far side apparently decided everything within its line of sight needed to die. His blaster rifle rasped a continuous stream of fire, barrel glowing from the heat. The landspeeder above Ghostkey shook under the barrage, each bolt punching new holes through metal and synthglass.

Then things flipped. Literally.

A Nanofreak razzler detonated under the pavement, an EMP ripple shocked outwards, kicking the Trandoshan off his feet and slamming him backward over a duracrete barrier. Their advance rushed forward, a riot wave of neon-graffiti bonemods and spiked augments blazing like a wild feral lightshow. For the moment, the freaks had the upper hand. But this was Cartel territory. Momentum stayed with those who paid. The Hutts would not be happy.

Ghostkey shut his eyes when footsteps crunched closer on broken glass. Out of the truck, into the hutt pit.

Dankaia Virkenn

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

Dankaia moved through the smoke-blurred plaza with the precision of a system diagnostic cutting through corrupted code. The rioters surged in chaotic waves, shouting, shoving, driven by a panic that felt too synchronized to be natural. Instead of drawing her weapon, she extended her senses, letting the Force map the turbulence around her like a shifting probability field. With a controlled flick of her wrist, invisible pressure unspooled outward, halting a group of agitators just before they crashed into a barricade. Bodies froze mid-lunge, suspended in a firm but gentle stasis, their momentum dissipating as if absorbed by soft shock absorbers. She guided them back onto their feet, redirecting their energy toward stillness rather than conflict.

As she stepped deeper into the crowd, she sent precise pulses through the Force, disarming a thrown bottle here, diffusing a brewing fistfight there, each action executed with the nonlethal efficiency of a covert security protocol. Yet beneath the surface noise, something wasn't right. The emotional signature of the masses felt scrambled, as though an external signal was spiking their instincts with synthetic agitation. Dankaia narrowed her eyes, letting the Force layer thermal patterns, heart rates, and neural tremors into a coherent readout. Somewhere in this riot was a root cause, a transmitter, a manipulator, a presence, a puppeteer, twisting the crowd's fear into frenzy. And she intended to isolate it before the unrest metastasized into real violence.

The impact hit her like a compressed shock round, glass exploding against the back of her skull, liquid splattering across her collar as the bottle shattered. For a split second, her vision pixelated, the edges of the world fragmenting into sharp packets of light and noise. She staggered forward, kinetic reflexes catching her before she fully dropped, and the crowd's roar dimmed beneath a deeper, older pulse rising inside her. The familiar burn ignited in her veins; predatory, chemical, a seduction disguised as instinct. Her vampiric fangs pressed against her teeth from the inside, an involuntary twitch betraying the part of her she kept under lock and biometric key. Someone had struck her. Someone had drawn blood. And that whispering part of her nature wanted to answer with terminal force.

She exhaled through clenched teeth, forcing the world to resolve back into clarity. The rioter who'd hit her stood frozen, horror blooming across their face as they realized what they'd done. The predator in her read that fear like a signature, a beacon begging to be followed. But Dankaia slammed a mental firewall into place, her moral code anchoring her through the rising haze. She reached out, not to crush but to restrain, pinning the attacker to the ground with a controlled push of the Force. Her pulse steadied in increments, the desire to kill receding like a corrupted subroutine finally overwritten. "Not today," she murmured under her breath, wiping broken glass from her hair. "I won't let you drag me down to that level."

The explosion rolled across the district like a low-frequency detonation from a malfunctioning reactor; deep, concussive, and unmistakably close. Dankaia's head snapped toward the direction of the 772X highway, her senses sharpening as the shockwave rattled windowpanes and sent a tremor through the already fractured crowd. For an instant, the rioter she'd pinned hesitated, waiting for her judgment. But her focus was already elsewhere, trying to parse the data from the blast: chemical? structural? deliberate? She released the Force hold without looking back, letting the attacker scramble to their feet and vanish into the confusion like a corrupted process terminating itself. The riot noise thinned beneath the new alarm, a different kind of urgency threading through the cityscape.

She wiped the last shard of glass from her collar, pulse syncing to the distant echoes of sirens deploying along the highway corridor. Part of her wanted to pivot, to cull the riot before it metastasized again; clean, controlled, predictable work. But another part, the one attuned to disruption and hidden motives, felt the pull of the 772X. Someone else's business, someone else's crisis, yet the explosion carried a signature she couldn't ignore. Dankaia narrowed her eyes toward the horizon, weighing her options with the cool detachment of someone deciding which system failure to prioritize. Do I intervene…or let the city solve its own mess? Today, she wasn't entirely sure which choice aligned with her code, or which one aligned with the darker instincts still simmering beneath it. But she had to make a decision, ill or not.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb

 

[GhostKey]

Rioting noise rolled closer, shattering glass, synthetic screams, and the crowd pillaging storefronts; setting volatile plasma canisters to explode like improvised sunbursts of growing stars. A voice rose above the chaos, processed through vox-filters and dripping in fantasism.

"Great people of Cartel City! The Ascension begins! No more living under Hutt chains, embrace the Data-Way! Information is the pulse of existence, and experience is the only truth. Become the experience embodied! Free the data!"

The Preacher stood elevated on a toppled transport crate, robes of fiberoptic cloth carrying codestreams, his skin tattooed with circuit-scripture weaving down his throat to emphasize his words. A crown of neural ports lit like a halo of inverted starlight, amplifying his force signature oddly; every motion he made sent ripples of holographic grid-speak glyphs across the air, a 'cybernated' techmonk.

Ghostkey counted the footsteps closing in.

"Three… two… one..."

He rolled out.

And was immediately hauled upright by a Nanofreak hand, glowing like he'd been dipped in radioactive paint. The ganger's skin shone, pulsing in neon veins, biobone colors crawling with living graffiti.

A thunderstrike explosion ripped the entire ground floor off a nearby tower. The structure folded downward, collapsing through its own levels like a detonated house of cards. The Nanofreak's grip slackened as every head turned toward the new disaster, a Hutt casino imploding beside the speederway.

Ghostkey twisted free and bolted.

Glass crunched under his boots as he skidded over a landspeeder hood, stray bolts whizzing over his head. A Freak's ocular implant blinked alive, locking onto the signature coming from his pack.

That was it.

Three, no four of the neon gang moved off in pursuit, sprinting after him through the growing riot. Echosec had fully joined the melee, shields up, stunbatons crackled, waves of flashbangs and neuro gas canisters arcing up into the mob. The chaos shifted Ghostkey straight toward the Preachers.

"Datalines will free your soul, cut your leash and rewrite your fate!" the techmonk punctuated the violence. Ghostkey nearly slammed into an Echosec officer, ducking right, and dipped past a baton coming at him, then sprinted toward a narrow alley.

Walls too high for a jump. Knuckles cracked behind him. A razzler rod buzzed to life, sparking neon static, while a heavy durasteel bar tapped the ground to get his attention.

"Woooo… gave us a chase, street-runt." One of the freaks showed a metal string of teeth, glowing hot in his cybernetic jaw.
"Vek'shan nali'mar, runt, your code terminates here"
Ghostkey went for a door... locked. Tried another... deadbolt shut. His breath fogged the air up as he turned back toward the gang closing in.

He had no idea he was holding what the riot was about, raw data, identities, debts, lives. Keys that could free thousands, collapse markets, or crown a new digital prophet. On Echelon, data wasn't only currency; it was destiny. And right now, destiny was hiding in a pack on Ghostkey's back, throwing off signatures loud enough that anyone with skill, the Force, tech, or otherwise, might feel it like a beacon calling loud through the chaos.

Only question was, who was getting it.

Dankaia Virkenn

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

The loudspeakers crackled to life with a grainy burst of static, a distortion that vibrated through the broken ferrocrete around Dankaia Virkenn like a digital omen. Then the voice hit: amped, manic, shimmering with the brittle confidence of someone who believed themselves a prophet. "Great people of Cartel City! The Ascension begins! No more living under Hutt chains, embrace the Data-Way! Information is the pulse of existence, and experience is the only truth. Become the experience embodied! Free the data!"

The words boomed from a dozen directions at once, ricocheting between the smoke-warped towers and abandoned holoscreens, slicing through the metallic haze with cultish precision. Dankaia froze mid-step, every predatory sense sharpening to a needlepoint. She could feel the city itself listening, buildings wired with forgotten circuits, drones twitching in the rafters, the digital undead of a fallen infrastructure stirring at the sound of their new gospel.

Then the ground lurched beneath her boots as another round of explosions tore through the outskirt; percussive, concussive, rolling like seismic tremors through the neon dust. More shards of glass rained down from an overhead walkway, tinkling like artificial rain as the shockwave pressed against her like a violent exhale from the city's underbelly. Dankaia's nostrils flared; she could taste heated carbon, ionized metal, and something else, fear leaking from the streets in invisible chemical threads.

Whatever Ascension these zealots thought they were initiating, it had already crossed into open war. And in the static-laced quiet that followed, she knew one thing: Cartel City was shifting into a new frequency, and she would have to decide very quickly whether she was tuning in or tearing the signal apart.

Dankaia let the prophet's voice fade into the static like background noise, a digital mantra that could wait. Her eyes tracked the rising column of smoke curling against the neon sky, a signal as clear and urgent as any distress beacon. She moved with calculated precision, limbs fluid, every step measured against the chaos unfolding around her. Shattered crates and overturned speeder bikes littered the streets, the remnants of panic left behind by those who had underestimated the city's lawless volatility.

Looters emerged from the smoke like scavenger drones, their grips on scavenged weaponry betraying their intent. Dankaia intercepted them with seamless efficiency, her movements a choreography of controlled force. A swing of her forearm, a step to the side, and a reinforced knuckle slammed into a jaw with enough precision to incapacitate without permanent harm. Another would-be thief lunged at her, and a flick of her wrist sent him sprawling into a pile of molten debris. Every action was methodical, almost clinical, yet infused with a sharp, personal morality, one that refused to allow death when a lesson would suffice. She was a predator among predators, but she hunted with a purpose beyond survival: to protect, to prevent the chaos from consuming the innocent before it consumed itself

Then it hit, sudden and insistent, like a wire tugging at her spine: the pull through the Force, unfamiliar and electric. Her internal sensors screamed; this was not the echo of fear, not the residual signatures of desperation; it was something new, an unknown broadcasting signal riding the currents of the Force itself. She staggered, blinked against the neon haze, and instinctively oriented toward the source, feeling the tug grow stronger with each step.

Whoever, or whatever, was transmitting, it was deliberate, invasive, and precise, slicing through the psychic clutter like a scalpel. Dankaia's breath caught, the moment suspended between action and awareness, as she realized the city's pulse was no longer just physical or digital, it was something reaching through the Force, and she was squarely in the path.

She rounded a charred corner of a high-rise, the echo of her boots swallowed by the fractured concrete and buzzing holo-ads. Ahead, a lone figure stood under the flickering glow of a broken overhead holosign, on the verge of being encircled by a gang of thugs whose silhouettes swayed with murderous intent. Makeshift weapons gleamed in the smoke, metallic edges catching fragmented light like hungry eyes. "Not very sporting to pick on someone when they're outnumbered," her voice sliced through the hazy air, calm but sharp. "Now me? I love being outnumbered." In the same heartbeat, her lightsaber flared to life, an orange blade with illuminated black veins running down the sides hummed with lethal precision.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb

 

[GhostKey]

District 29 - Cartel City
Street Alley
Tag: Dankaia Virkenn

"Fancy lightstick," the nearest Freak tried to play it off like it didn't bother him. His cheekbones flared up a molten orange, biobone mods glowing like echelon warpaint. "Look real pretty when I pull it outta yer." He swung a jagged, scavenged slab of metal at Dankaia Virkenn 's head.

Another Freak's arms split open at the forearms, cyberware extruding like segmented durachrome scorpion-pincers. He scraped the charged blades together with a grinding of metal, shrrrk shhrrrrrk, before diving at her in a freak-like frenzy, trying to carve her apart.

Behind them, the third was a giant even for a ganger, more illegal cybernetics across his arms than anyone should realistically survive. He slammed fist to palm, sounding more like metal bricks colliding. Palm-stunners jolted along his knuckles, crackling with a murder-boxer's current. He had a firearm holstered, but those arms were the real weapon.

While the three swarmed her, Ghostkey moved on the fourth.

He grabbed a discarded metal pipe and slammed it across Metal-Jaw's head. The Freak staggered, razzler crackling violently as he spun it back around. The swing tore a small chunk out of the alley wall. Ghost ducked low and grabbed for the staff, but took a knee to the gut that doubled him over with a cough.

The freak's next swing hit home.

Voltage tore up Ghost's arm, his scrap-tier cybernetics burning red, sparks bursting from exposed metal seams. Static wound through his head. The razzler, a shock staff tweaked by someone who enjoyed cruelty, sent enough current through him to launch him backward into the slick puddles pooling in the alley.

The Freak lunged after him, metal jaws clicking like a hydraulic press. He snapped once, twice, on the third, Ghost jammed a slicer-probe between the metal teeth mid bite.

"Choke on it, neon-breath."

The Freak bit down, and the probe shorted, discharging a surge back up into his jaw implants. Sparks blew out across his face. His metal-Jaw spasmed, the Freak went rigid, and toppled sideways in a sizzling static heap. Not dead, rebooting like a broken server.

Rolling up to his elbows, he stood on wobbly legs, pack clutched to his chest. Ahead, orange blade, black-veined, like a warning from the data-gods again.

"Hey," he wiped the grime off his arm, pushing damp hair out of his eyes. "Is this thanks or?"
"Am I next?" He looked at the unconscious freak on the ground, wondering what to do about him. The burn on his arm stung like hell.

Outside the march of Echosec against the rioters intensified; the end of the alley looked like the lifeday season in Green District's city-sized malls, packed so tight with bodies it defied reason or sense.

OOC: All NPCs free to use in any way.

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

She rolled her shoulders once, slow and deliberate, her gaze having swept over the clustered silhouettes with the precision of a targeting algorithm. Their stances told her everything: weight pitched forward in the impatient ones, shoulders locked tight in the nervous ones, and in the center, the leader whose relaxed posture was a lie wrapped in swagger. Dankaia cataloged each tic, each breath, each shift of balance, feeding them into the quiet engine of her mind where instinct and calculation merged. The air hummed with potential violence, a voltage she could practically taste.

Their formation was sloppy, aggressive but uncoordinated, confidence built on numbers instead of discipline. Good. That gave her angles. Her thoughts sliced through possibilities like code compiling at speed: who would move first, who would panic, who would break. Every flicker of motion sketched a map of vulnerabilities across the scene. By the time she inhaled her next breath, the plan was already forming, clean, efficient, and lethal if needed. All that remained was choosing the perfect moment to ignite it.

Then it went down.

The slab of metal tore through the air with a howl, a brutal projectile meant to split her skull. Dankaia didn't flinch. She reached out with the Force; sharp, decisive, almost surgical and the world seemed to glitch around her as the metal froze inches from her face. Energy rippled across her arm like static traveling through a circuit.

With a twist of her wrist, she inverted the momentum and hurled the slab back toward its sender. It struck the man with the augmented fists square in the chest, folding him in half and launching him backward. He hit the building's wall with a bone-shattering crunch, spiderweb cracks blooming behind him.

Before the echoes faded, Dankaia was already moving. Her vampiric speed ignited like a second heartbeat; silent, predatory, absolute. The world blurred into streaks of neon and shadow as she lunged toward the man with the arm blades. Steel flashed in frantic arcs, each one met by her lightsaber with surgical precision. His slashes carved sparks through the air, but Dankaia parried every strike, reading the angles before his muscles even fired. Her movements were economical, cold, almost beautiful in their efficiency.

She pivoted behind him in a tight spiral, her white braids whipping across the side of his head, and with a single push of the Force she displaced him just enough to clear her line, then launched herself forward. The man who had thrown the metal slab, his attention on the young teenage male, looked up just in time to see her closing in, a blur resolving into a fist crackling with lethal intent. Dankaia's punch connected with his nose in a wet, decisive impact, snapping his head back and dropping him like a corrupted file wiped clean from a system.

Dankaia sensed the incoming strike before the air even shifted, a spike of murderous intent cutting through the chaos like a corrupted data packet. She spun on her heel, lightsaber re-igniting with a hiss that split the dark, its blade intercepting the charged arm blades in a burst of ozone and sparks. The impact rattled through the alley, tech meeting plasma in a violent standoff of humming pressure. She held the block with effortless precision, eyes sliding past the attacker to the young man she'd just saved.

"These friends of yours always this welcoming," she asked, voice edged with dry sarcasm, "or do they only bring out the electrified cutlery for special occasions?"

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb

 

[GhostKey]

District 29 - Cartel City
Street Alley
Dankaia Virkenn

"Thanks for the save." A firm grin set into his jawline, doing better than some of the jaws around here!

The stranger carved through the Freaks like synth-glass through bantha-butter, the alley a strobing display of metal on slick duracrete and the crackle of charged tech. Ghostkey rolled his electro-burned arm and winced in pain.

"Yeah, even for Cartel City," he muttered, "these guys need a mood adjuster. Maybe mod an attitude patch. What'da say jawbones?"

Ghostkey blinked at the chaos, Dankaia's blade locking against charged metal, Two of the freaks scrambling back to their feet. Metal-Jaw hauled himself upright with a glitching growl. Instinct took over: Ghost moved back-to-back with the stranger, hoping she wasn't about to run that glowing blade through his spine.

The first Freak, jaw cracked, cheeks pulsing neon orange, stepped up behind blades-for-arms, facing Dankaia. Now wielding a spinning vibrocleaver, its oscillation whining like a bone-saw about to make unhappy memories.

"Yer gonna regret that, glowstick." He spat.

On the other side of them, the equally jaw-challenged Metal-Mouth jabbed a finger at Ghost, his augments static-sparking as he drew a blister torch, a perpetually burning metal pipe.

Ghost swallowed. "Any pointers?" He asked Dankaia

It came out hopeful but half-womprat-in-the-headlights, a streetkid in over his head. He faced the flame torch, she faced the bladed duo.

"How 'bout I show you how to die, runt?" Metal-Mouth hissed, his biobone colors glowing an angry spectrum of reds.

The noise at the end of the alley climbed, preacher chants warping into noise, Echosec shouting, bootfalls crunching closer and closer. The tension built like a crash waiting to happen toward their alley.

Then it all happened at once...

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

"You're welcome," Dankaia said to the wide-eyed young man, a faint, wry calm threading her voice even as the air around them tightened with unseen power. With a sharp exhale and a precise flex of will, she drove the attacker with the blade-laced arms backward, an invisible surge hurling him away as if reality itself had rejected his presence. In one fluid motion, she and the boy shifted to stand back-to-back, her senses flaring as she measured every tremor in the space around them, every whisper of imminent strike.

"Pointers," the cybernetic Knight began, "is to not die."

Dankaia studied the two Freaks standing before her in the half-lit alleyway with a surgeon's stillness, her gaze tracing the way their modifications pulled their bodies slightly out of natural alignment, as if flesh itself had begun to protest the metal's occupation. The one with the vibrocleaver carried the weapon like an extension of a broken limb, its humming edge stuttering in an anxious rhythm that agitated the debris at his feet. Beside him, the man with blades for arms twitched with barely contained impatience, each metallic appendage catching stray light and throwing it back in splintered fragments, a jagged halo that betrayed every tremor of anticipation beneath his feral grin.

Around them the very air seemed to distort, saturated with static and unspoken threat, yet Dankaia did not retreat. Instead, she tilted her head almost imperceptibly, reading the micro-adjustments of their stances, the minute shifts of weight and tension that revealed how they meant to strike. The Force threaded the moment into crystalline clarity, slowing the world into a sequence of probable futures, each glint of steel reflected in her mind before any blade had the chance to fall.

The two Freaks lunged as one, a discordant duet of steel and fury, the vibrocleaver carving a shrieking arc through the air while the blade-armed assailant darted in from the flank with a flurry of glinting edges. Their attack was raw, overcommitted, driven by instinct and augmentation rather than discipline, and yet terrifying in its speed. The alleyway erupted into a storm of noise and vibration, metal screaming against the strained silence of the building.

Dankaia met the onslaught like a dancer meeting familiar music. With minimal, almost languid movements, she turned each strike aside, redirecting force with the barest touch or a precise shift of her weight, her form flowing between their assaults as though their blades were little more than ripples in water. To them it must have seemed a cruel illusion; that she was everywhere and nowhere at once, a calm, deliberate presence gliding through their rage as if she were merely toying with them.

Dankaia's eyes flicked over her shoulder, sharp and calculating, as the young man pressed closer behind her. "Why are they so desperately after you," she asked, her voice low and edged with curiosity, "what exactly did you do to draw this much fury?"

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb

 

[GhostKey]

District 29 - Cartel City
Street Alley
Tag: Dankaia Virkenn

"Not die. Good call. I'll keep it in mind." He smirked, full of young bravado and bad decisions.

Metal-Jaw jabbed his burner stick straight for Ghost's chest. Ghost twisted sideways and smashed him with his good elbow, just like his old man taught except… that metal jaw was basically like hitting a brick. "Kiddin' me. Bad idea. Bad idea." He almost fractured his arm on the Freak's head.

Both staggered. The Freak swept the burner across Ghost's hand. Ghost yelped high and shook his fingers out like he'd grabbed a cooking pot off a malfunctioning burner.

Why were they after him?
"Beats me," he grunted, ducking a wild swing. "Guy can't walk down an alley without gettin'...."

Metal-Jaw headbutted him. Full on. Ghost saw star constellations he didn't believe in.

"Are you for frakking real!?" He grappled with the Freak's arms, torch blazing way too close to his throat. Heat kissed his neck, another second and he'd be a roasted runt ready to serve. He knew Dankaia probably wasn't buying a word of it, so he tried again:

"Swear I'm just mindin' my own biz, saw the protest, free the dataway!, I'm like yeah sure, rights for comm-jackers, whatever, and these neon clowns just snap." He cut himself off before he ranted. Too much backstory for almost dying. Too many lies to keep straight.

"Alright!" He slammed his metal new sickle-gifted metal toecap down on the Freak's foot hard. While Metal-Jaw howled, Ghost gripped the torch-hand up in both of his, smashed it against the wall until the burner dropped out with a sputter. He took a few rib shots, rolled with the punches, came up under the Freak's guard…

…and then Metal-Jaw grabbed him from behind in a chokehold. The backpack saved his windpipe from snapping; gave him just enough space to drive elbows backward… hard, fast survival… until the Freak's grip faltered.

Why are they so desperately after you
"Street runt's got our pack," Metal-Jaw spat.

"Lies. Bought this thing two years ago.. look, I even labeled it."
To be fair, he had… well… everywhere, looked like a walking sketchbook.
But the contents…

"Don't get cute. Give me that pack." Metal-Jaw jabbed a finger toward Ghost's skull… turning it into a fist halfway there.

Ghost choked out, "You don't own streetchit, glowhead, I'm just a better thief."
He ducked the punch, shoved forward, and drove his foot into Metal-Jaw's knee… once, twice… until it cracked and the freak stumbled back.

Ghost spun around, rubbing the scorch on his neck with a smug grin only someone too young to die or care could pull off.

The alley was about to get boxed in… either by EchoSec or rioters.
Their Options: low.
Their Time: running out.
And the balance?
Yeah, Dankaia Virkenn held that in her hands.

"Let these guys get a thousand datatags? Thousand more nobodies the system chews up and sells out by the hour?" His voice spat fire, real and raw. A thousand lifetime contracts didn't mean much against the mountain on Echelon, but they meant somethin' to him.

"What's it gonna be?" Ghost choked to breathe free again.
Metal-Jaw didn't wait. He lunged for the unconscious freak's dropped blaster.

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

Dankaia flared the Force through her veins like a surge of living circuitry, sweeping Blades For Arms and Mr. Vibrocleaver off their feet in a spiraling arc of invisible power, their bodies screaming as they skidded across the throne of stone beneath them. The air crackled around her cybernetic silhouette, her gaze sharp as a data-spike piercing corrupted code. "You should rewrite your narrative," she said coolly to the young male, "because I can already sense the plot holes in your story."

With a flick of her wrist, Dankaia whispered through the Force and the blaster skidded across the stone floor, coming to rest perfectly in front of the wide-eyed young male as sparks danced like mischievous sprites around its barrel.

"Go on," she smirked nodding at the blaster, "and you can tell me the right version of your story later after we get out of this mess." Then she was off.

Dankaia's boot flashed upward in a blur of precision and shadow, cracking into Blades For Arms' jaw with a sickening snap that sent him sprawling unconscious across the deck, blood dripping from his wounded mouth.

Mr. Vibrocleaver, having lept to his feet, savagely swung, cleaving nothing but air as she flowed into a backflip, her form rotating in a halo of violet Force-light before she landed in a low, balanced stance a few meters away.

Glancing at the young male with a glint of dark humor in her eyes she said, "We definitely need a change of scenery."

Dankaia met Mr. Vibrocleaver's onslaught with fluid precision, parrying three brutal strikes as if she were redirecting corrupted data streams rather than steel, each deflection leaving a shimmer in the ion-thick air.

On the fourth beat she dropped her center of gravity, scything her leg through his stance and sweeping him clean off his feet, the impact driving the breath from his lungs in a harsh, useless gasp.

She straightened above him with a crooked smirk, the Force humming around her like amused static, "Unless you fancy this instead?" she said, her voice threaded with dry, electric hunger, toward the young male; holding back the monster inside.

Dankaia's gaze then shifted, tracking the trembling figure of the first Freak as he struggled to push himself upright, blood and grease threading down his broken nose in a crooked line. "We need to decide, and fast," she muttered to him, the Force tightening like a coiled wire, "because they're clearly not accepting their early exit."

In the background, mingled amongst the chanting, the blaring klaxons, and that dreadful voice, all coarse, all drained booming through the speaker system came the rising tides; a sound so torrent and powerful: SecNet was arriving...soon...with reinforcements.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb

 

[GhostKey]

District 29 - Cartel City
Street Alley
Tag: Dankaia Virkenn

Plot holes! How dare she.
Ghost cocked his sideways grin, adrenaline and ego both competing to pretend he wasn't terrified. He watched Dankaia backflip like it was a holo-ad for a martial arts sim, and for a second he forgot there were murder-freaks trying to ventilate his mood.

"Okay...yeah, well that was pretty kriffin' shiny," he muttered, just loud enough she could hear if she wanted to. He glanced toward the mouth of the alley. "We definitely need a scenery patch update. Like… retroactive."

"Wouldn't mind hittin' the Violetway, grab a synth-drink, maybe a bantha burger," he rambled nervously, "but nope... the universe says 'Green Tuesday Mall Rush.'" The end of the alley looked exactly like a can of bodies packed so tight you could barely breathe, much less grab a bargain.

While Dankaia knocked down Freaks like holopins at an AR-Arcade, Ghost scooped the blaster off the ground. Metal-Jaw lunged for him, too slow, he ate permacrete again instead. Ghost leveled the weapon. "Let's not do anything stu... anything else stupid." He pointed him toward the wall.

The Freak hesitated, jaw glowin' so hot his biomods stuttered to find an expression.

Ghost shook his head with an Amadis smirk. "Try it and I'll reboot your face right off your skull, neon-breath." Metal-Jaw glared... but the glow dimmed out to reality. He backed off with a growl of grrinding metal. Ghost scanned the high walls, dead ends, too high for him to make it. "Hey... can your saber crack that?" He pointed at a thick metal door sealed tight like a vault guarding memories to be made.

SecNet boots thundered closer... orders barking, the Hutt Cartel's patience clearly running past zero.

"Look, Metal-Jaw... wanna leave with them?" Ghost moved his chin toward the riot line. "Or leave with... uh... after us?!"
He wasn't about to walk beside the guy or have him breathing on his neck.

Metal-Jaw spat a glob of conducting fluid. "I ain't dyin' for your pack, runt. But I ain't dyin' with you either!" Ghost took that as a reluctant neutral, maybe i'll kill you later, yes.

He kicked the door twice with durasteel toe caps, and regretted it instantly the third time. Metal-Jaw tried cutting it with a razzler blade, only sparking uselessly against reinforced plating.

Up the alley, SecNet voices boomed out:

• Target Cluster!
• Breach team to front positions!
• Lights on. Clear that alley alley.

Blaster-carbines rose. Searchlights swept the cluttered alley like interrogator drones looking for targets. Ghost's heart rate jumped a few tiers. "Fast." He pressed a curious hand to the door. "Please." Dankaia Virkenn

Behind it was the defining notion of stillness and quiet. A single hum. Servers deep in a forgotten vault. Old code waking up to a history nobody remembered. As the approaching lights turned their way, ghost realised.

Whatever was behind this door , was something he couldn't explain. Something she might sense before he did.

He swallowed.
"…So… that's normal, right?" Right. Yeah. Definitely

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

​

Location: District 29
Tag: GhostKey

Dankaia's fist came down like a forged comet, knuckles flaring with the quiet fury of circuitry and bone aligned in perfect violence. The man beneath her looked up just once, eyes wide with the sudden recognition of his mistake, before her punch found its mark. The impact cracked through the air, a sharp metallic echo, and his body went limp, sagging back into the debris-strewn ground as if his strings had been severed by some unseen hand.

Her gaze slid sideways to the Freak, the one with the broken, blood-smeared nose, who froze beneath its weight. That single look was more than a threat; it was a promise etched in iron and shadow. Terror eclipsed whatever bravado he'd once worn, and he turned and fled, boots scrambling, vanishing into the tangled wreckage of the alleyway.

Dankaia watched him go, then muttered, her voice low and edged with static, "That solves that problem."

Dankaia's eyes traced the scarred metal door as the heavy, rhythmic boots of SecNet thugs thundered closer, their presence pulsing like a corrupted signal in the walls. Beside it, Metal-Jaw hammered at the panel with crude, sparking futility, his brute strength accomplishing little more than dented alloy and shrieking metal.

She tilted her head, smirked faintly, and murmured, "This needs a lady's touch," as her blade reignited with a hungry, luminous hiss.

Dankaia pressed the humming edge of her lightsaber to the metal and drew a glowing arc, the door surrendering in molten ribbons that dripped and hissed against the floor like liquid suns. The air turned thick, heavy with scorched alloy and ionized breath as she traced the widening cut, yet midway through the final stroke her hand stilled, blade hovering in mid-cycle.

Something stirred on the other side, no mere echo of machinery or shifting air, but a pulse, slow and deliberate, unfurling through the Force like a heart remembering how to beat. A presence, ancient and newly roused, brushed against her senses, and in that silent instant the door felt less like a barrier and more like a waiting skin. But she continued, her focus on escape first, the next problem in the queue.

As the last strip of metal fell backward with a shriek and a thunderous clang, Dankaia arched a brow at the dark opening and said, "You know, this might be a spectacularly bad idea." She tightened her grip on her saber, its glow painting the edges of the breach, and added dryly, "But considering the alternative."

Dankaia jerked her chin toward the opening, a silent directive sharpened by reason and instinct. Metal-Jaw lumbered forward, eager to prove the worth of his bulk, and she allowed it, better his shadow stretching ahead of her than coiled at her back. As he stepped through the jagged frame, and only when he was fully inside did she follow, crossing the threshold with the quiet precision of a ghost entering a machine.

The interior warped around her senses, an awkward geometry of bent hallways and sagging walls where light and shadow tangled like broken code. The air carried a faint, sour tang, old power and older silence, and every surface seemed to listen as she moved. But what unnerved her, was the fluctuations in the Force, as if someone or something was 'jamming' it.

She leaned slightly toward the young man at her side, her voice low but edged with warning. "Stay alert," she murmured. "There's something off about this place; and it's not just the sights and smells."

Somewhere deep in the 'building'...

Unseen lenses drank in their every movement as the trio advanced, each step translated into silent data through a lattice of flickering vid screens hidden in shadowed alcoves and behind fractured panels. Pale monitors hummed with their living images, Dankaia's steady stride, Metal-Jaw's hulking silhouette, the young man's persistent glances refracted through static and crimson-tinted code as if the building itself were dreaming them into existence. Somewhere beyond the walls, beyond the wires and dust, an unseen presence leaned closer to the glow, watching not just with eyes, but with intention.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Right Limb