Private First Mistake

[Darth Virelia]

"One spark is all it takes."

Tag - Kinley Pryse



The hideout was not so much built as excavated—scraped from the bone marrow of Nar Shaddaa's rotting underlayers like a cyst left to fester and thrive. Old access tunnels, decommissioned droid warrens, forgotten smuggler chutes—they all converged here in a kind of architectural confession, a place where the world above denied knowledge of what dwelled below. Fungal lichen clung to broken masonry like frostbite, faintly bioluminescent in hues of sickly green and starved blue. Condensation dripped in erratic rhythms from exposed coolant pipes overhead. Somewhere far off, something metal screamed in protest. It was not a place that welcomed comfort. It devoured it.

Which was precisely why Serina Calis chose it.

She did not sit. There was no chair, no throne. Only a sloped segment of ferrocrete wall behind her, stained by smoke and age, and a wide stretch of open space before her—lit faintly by a single violet glowrod recessed into the rusting ceiling. It bathed her figure in a moody chiaroscuro, casting a long, hungry silhouette behind her like some pagan statue awaiting its next sacrifice.

Tyrant's Embrace devoured what little light remained.

She stood unmoving in its obsidian grip, a figure of feminine cruelty forged in elegance and entropy. The six insectile eyes of her helm flickered in minute calibrations, watching, scanning, parsing movement that hadn't yet arrived. The violet heart at her sternum beat faintly, the runes etched across her ribcage glowing in time with her slow, measured breaths. Somewhere within that frame, a woman still existed—but she was buried beneath layered dominion, reshaped into a blade of purpose.

And she was waiting.

Kinley Pryse.

Serina spoke the name in her mind like an invocation—each syllable tasting of lower-hive filth and ambition. Not Force-sensitive. Not powerful. But still dangerous, in the way that parasites were dangerous. In the way that rats brought plague.

A spice-runner. A smuggler. A petty queen in a criminal hive that swarmed with ten thousand others. But unlike most of them, Kin had caught Serina's eye. She had a reputation for keeping deals. For surviving betrayals. For slithering through every grasping hand that reached to crush her. That alone made her useful. But Serina wasn't here for a partner. She was here for a lever. Kin was the kind of woman who made a mistake just once—because she didn't survive it a second time. And Serina had every intention of making herself Kin's first mistake.

Still, she'd paid well.

A small fortune of credits, hardwired into the Black Sun's own shadow-accounting networks and laundered twice through shell companies that didn't know they were hers. A love letter wrapped in zeros. And Kin had answered—of course she had. Greed was a siren song no criminal could ignore.

The letter Serina had sent had been written on synthpaper laced with mild pheromonal triggers—nothing overt, just enough to make the reader feel curious, compliant, compelled. The ink had been alchemically treated to resist scanners and burst into flame if tampered with. Her coordinates encoded in poetry. The signature was a violet wax seal pressed with a ring that didn't exist in any Sith archive but which meant death if copied.

She hadn't signed it with her name. She hadn't needed to.

A sound.

A rustle of gravel.

The faintest echo of footfalls.

Serina's head turned slowly, the six violet eyes tracking the entrance to the hideout. Her cape shifted behind her, durafiber tendrils whispering faintly as they unfurled an inch—like serpents disturbed in their nest.

The shadows yawned.

And then—

There.

A silhouette. Human. Slender. Hooded.

Kinley Pryse.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Of course I'm unarmed. Except for charm, wit, and extremely questionable morals​

Kinley Pryse stepped out of the dark like she owned it.

She didn't slink or sneak. She strolled, like the place had invited her in for caf and a lie. The hem of her coat whispered over damp stone, frayed from years of hard exits and harder landings. Grease-stained bantha-hide, stitched with smuggled thread, armored at the joints with worn duraplast. She kept one gloved hand inside the coat where the pistol sat snug in its chest holster, but the other hung loose, casual, dangerous. Like everything about her.

Her face emerged from the shadow by degrees. Sharp jaw, tan skin kissed by Nar's perpetual twilight, lips curled in the barest curve of a smirk that didn't reach her eyes. The eyes, they were flat, dark pools that didn't reflect. You didn't make it long in Black Sun by letting your thoughts surface. Kinley had made it longer than most.

She didn't bow. She didn't kneel. She stopped just shy of the violet light's reach and tilted her head, appraising Serina Calis like she might a tricked-out speeder with a hidden detonator.

She flicked something small and metal from her coat pocket, a stim, a datachip, hard to tell in the gloom. It bounced once on the ferrocrete floor, catching the violet light, then spun to a stop between them.

She was here because of Flint, the Vigo who owned her soul and called the shots for her. Otherwise she wouldn’t be caught dead dealing with a Sith. But Flint gave her little option.

Her gaze flicked to Serina's helm, those six burning eyes. Creepy. She stepped forward one more pace. Close now. Almost under the light, and adjusted her hat.

“Got your letter.”

A simple greeting, straight to business. The sooner she got this done the sooner she got Flint off her back.

Darth Virelia

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Darth Virelia]

"One spark is all it takes."

Tag - Kinley Pryse



The stim or datachip—or whatever it truly was—clinked to a stop at Serina's feet like a toy laid before an altar. She didn't look down. She didn't need to. Her mind was already dissecting Kinley's approach, recording gait, weight distribution, the subtle tension in her dominant arm, the habitual placement of her off-hand. A thousand data points, fed into the silent calculus of violence and intent. Nothing escaped her.

Kinley Pryse had walked into this nest like she owned the dark.

Cute.

The violet glowrod above gave her just enough illumination to stand as a woman and a warning—obsidian armor catching the light in subtle fractures, like a blade kissed with fire. Tyrant's Embrace made no sound as Serina moved. No hiss of servos. No clank of plates. It simply shifted around her, adjusting as if it too was alive, listening. The slow tilt of her helm was reptilian, amused. The kind of amusement that made the air colder, not warmer.

A woman who had seen wars, Kinley wore the detachment of someone who'd bartered her soul for survival more than once. But Serina had made her name by buying such women wholesale—and burning the contract.

She stepped forward once. Just once. The shift was minute, but the effect was total.

Now Kinley stood fully in the light.

Now the eyes could see her.

Not just the six faceted orbs of the helm, but the deeper perception within—the one that dissected persona from person, hunted the fracture lines in a soul like veins in a gemstone. Kinley wore her bravado like armor, but Serina didn't need to pierce it.

She only needed to warm it.

One gloved hand rose—not in threat, not in greeting. A slow, almost sensual gesture, the back of her fingers tracing a half-arc through the air, like a sculptor admiring unfinished stone.

"I find myself curious," Serina said, voice velvet poured over knives, "how a woman so practiced in escape managed to wander willingly into a place with only one exit."

She didn't wait for an answer. That wasn't the point.

Instead, she turned her back.

A gesture of confidence. Of control. Of dominance.

Not that she expected Kinley to strike—though it would've been delicious if she tried. No. This was something else entirely. A statement.

She walked a slow half-circle across the chamber, trailing fingers along the smoke-stained ferrocrete, her touch deliberate. Every movement was slow, graceful, as if the very air had to bow out of her way. The violet light pulsed once with her breath, casting momentary shadows like wings.

"Your Vigo sent you, yes. But he didn't send your spine. That still belongs to you. For now."

She paused, letting the words sink in—not as a threat, but as a truth left unsaid too long.

"This city eats loyalty. Nar Shaddaa devours queens, syndicates, false gods. The only thing that survives here is leverage."

Another slow pivot—face turned to Kinley once more, helm's gaze holding steady. Beneath it, a smile that never touched skin.

She stepped closer. This time, inside Kinley's comfort radius. Not reckless. Surgical. She loomed without looming, invaded without touching. The scent of something alchemical and exotic—spice, blood, ozone—hung faintly around her, sharpened by cold metal and old incense.

"I'm offering you a chance to matter."

The final line came quiet, almost intimate.

There was no seduction in her voice—only certainty. The kind that couldn't be faked. It wasn't a plea. It was a gravitational pull, the slow and inexorable draw of someone who didn't make deals because they wanted to—but because they were the deal.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Hey, if they wanted a hero, they should've hired one​

The Force users always had to make everything a damn production. Ceremonies, robes, cryptic speeches, it was like they couldn't function without a fog machine and a spotlight. Kinley, on the other hand, was a boots-on-the-ground, backwater pilot who preferred denim to drama. She didn't need a song and dance to start a job.

This Sith in front of her? Totally leaning into the creepy aesthetic. Pale skin, slow movements, voice like she'd been practicing in front of a mirror. Theatrics turned up to eleven. Kinley had seen spiceheads with more self-awareness.

"Listen, lady," Kinley cut in, arms folded. "I appreciate the show, but I'm not here for the vibes. You paid good credits to get me out here, so just tell me what you want. Let's skip the smoke and mirrors."

She glanced around the dimly lit chamber, the air thick with incense or maybe just bad taste. Whatever this was, it didn't feel like a spice deal, though, ironically, she did have a few bricks of glitterstim stashed in her hold.

Not that she was going to mention that. Not yet.

Darth Virelia

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Darth Virelia]

"One spark is all it takes."

Tag - Kinley Pryse



The shift, when it came, was total.

Gone was the towering stillness, the serpentine gestures, the drama of calculated presence. Serina Calis—Darth Virelia—straightened her posture, helm tilting ever so slightly as if something had clicked into place behind those six glimmering eyes. The Force around her didn't wane; it simply stilled. Composure replaced spectacle. Precision replaced poetry. What remained was a woman who had stood at the helm of warships and black operations alike, who had brokered a dozen wars from the shadows and walked away richer every time.

This was the version Kinley Pryse had asked for.

The one who didn't need a spotlight—because she was the storm behind the curtain.

A quiet click echoed in the chamber as Virelia raised one hand, palm out, fingers spread—not in gesture, but command. A moment later, the walls responded.

A recessed panel hissed open behind her, revealing a narrow holoprojector embedded into the ferrocrete. It activated without touch. No flourish. No ceremony. Just data.

The light it cast was cold blue now, contrasting the violet hue above. A three-dimensional projection formed in silence—schematics, outlines, star maps. Nar Shaddaa. Corellian Run. Smuggler routes threaded through with familiar notations to someone in Kinley's trade. Trade volume tags. Cargo codes. Ship IDs. Most of them blacked out.

One designation remained visible:

"VSX-19 — Project: VESPER"

"Two transports," Virelia said. "Both stolen. Three weeks apart. One from the Vinsoth yards, one from my people on Halm."

Her voice was clean now—razor-sharp, businesslike. All the silk stripped away, replaced with durasteel.

"Each shipment carried prototype components I intend to get back. I need someone who can run quietly. Untraceable. Not just on the street, but through syndicate traffic. You'll find who took them, where they landed, and what hands they passed through on the way."

A subtle beat.

"You'll deliver the names. Not the goods. Not the wreckage. The names."

She let that settle.

The holomap updated. Red paths bloomed from the Core outward. Some crossed spice lanes, others ducked through backwater routes known only to smugglers and nav droids too stubborn to die. These weren't police maps or military projections.

"You're not my hound," Virelia continued, stepping beside the projection. Her figure now cast across the map like an eclipsed star. "You're a predator. You'll be paid accordingly."

Another gesture. From her belt, she produced a small black coin—not real currency, but something older. Etched with a triangular insignia and ringed with Sith glyphs. She flicked it between her fingers once, then tossed it underhand.

It landed beside Kinley's boot.

If she picked it up, she'd feel its weight—denser than it looked. No tech signature. Just a contact material—a kind of layered polymer used in high-security funds transfer chips. No name. No track. But keyed to Serina's vault. One of them, anyway.

"That coin buys you your fee," she said. "But only once you speak the names to me face-to-face. And only once."

No backup. No copying. A one-use deal. Smart, if a little theatrical.

She turned back to Kinley now, not looming, but level. Honest. The way one businesswoman looks at another when pretending there's not a knife in her boot.

"You get me what I want," she said, final line clear, clipped, and cold, "and I'll make sure no one in this system touches your ship without my permission."

The holomap shut down with a flicker. The silence returned.

But it was different now.

Not heavy with atmosphere—but with dealmaking tension. Like credits unspoken, waiting to be counted. Serina didn't offer trust. She offered control. Kinley Pryse, for all her cynicism, would understand the weight of that coin better than most.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

If I Have to Fall Well it Won't Be In Your Line​

The Sith dropped the theatrics with a sharp snap, so sudden it hit like whiplash. But the shift was welcome. Not that Kinley had any desire to share a drink with Darth Virelia, but at least now they were getting somewhere. Watching the woman shed her dramatic veneer and lay out the mission with icy precision was...impressive, in its own way.

Kinley caught the coin Virelia tossed her and turned it over in her palm. She'd never seen anything like it, but rarity usually meant credits, and a lot of them. The job itself sounded simple enough. Virelia wasn't after her belongings. She was after revenge. That might've made some people hesitate. But Kinley had sold her soul a long time ago. Getting into bed with the devil? Old habit.

"Done." She tipped her hat and pocketed the coin.


Darth Virelia

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Darth Virelia]

"One spark is all it takes."

Tag - Kinley Pryse



The word—"Done"—rang out like a pistol crack in a chapel.

Virelia didn't smile. She didn't blink. The silence that followed wasn't hesitation. It was observation. The kind of pause that let predators measure the tremor in a heartbeat. She watched Kinley tuck the coin away like it was just another payday, like she hadn't just accepted a leash wrapped in velvet and shadow.

That, in itself, was useful.

Confidence could be shaped. Indifference could be sharpened.

She stepped forward again—not abruptly, but with a gliding certainty, like a thought sliding into inevitability. The air seemed to tighten as she approached, thick with trace ions and the low hum of tension disguised as calm.

The cape dragged across the floor behind her like dying stars, their faint rasp the only sound between them now. The six violet eyes of her helm locked on Kinley's face, not like sensors, but like judgment. And behind them, the woman inside did what she always did—measured value.

Kinley Pryse hadn't flinched. Hadn't postured. She had made her decision without dramatics, and that, in Serina's eyes, was as close to nobility as anyone in this festering moon ever got.

So Virelia offered her reward the only way she knew how.

"You'll come with me."

She said it like gravity, not request. Not a command either. Just an axiom—truth wearing words.

Her hand moved again, slower this time, fingers tracing through the space between them like sculpting intention from air. A faint pulse of violet flickered at her chest, the runes etched into her armor stuttering in quiet rhythm with her breath. Somewhere, something metal groaned far above, as if Nar Shaddaa itself was listening.

"I want your eyes on the path, not just the destination," she continued, voice low, "and I don't trust secondhand maps."

The holoprojector flared back to life, but the data had changed. The starfield was gone. Now a new layout flickered into focus—interior schematics. Corridors. Chambers. A hangar tucked beneath a decommissioned spaceport. Old codes, all active. Each one marked in violet glyphs.

A ship.

Not flashy. Not a capital barge. A freighter, modified in strange ways—its signature scrambled at the molecular level, hull laced with unknown alloys. Stealth, but not subtle. Predatory.

At the center of the schematic: The Aterphage.

A monster in freighter's clothing.

"The Aterphage is docked twelve levels below," Virelia said, tone cool and pragmatic. "You'll be aboard within the hour. I want a route out of the Gordian Reach that the New Order doesn't track. You'll fly it. Or you'll show someone how."

She said it with such simplicity that it didn't fully register at first. Kinley Pryse hadn't just been hired.

Still, there was room. Always room.

A beat passed. The light cast the side of Virelia's helm in sharp profile, cold lines and smooth violence. When she moved again, it was subtle—just close enough to feel the chill radiating from her armor, the energy coiling beneath it like a buried storm.

"I don't waste what I pay for," she murmured. "And I don't let my investments walk out of sight until I've had a proper look at their teeth."

Another step. Close now. Within arm's length. A little too close for most people. Exactly close enough for someone like her.

"You'll find I'm an attentive employer," she added, the words laced with something warmer than professionalism—curiosity, indulgence, danger wrapped in silk. "So long as you don't lie to me. So long as you don't bore me."

And just like that, the performance was back—but only a sliver.

Just enough to remind Kinley what kind of flame she'd walked into.

Virelia turned at last, cape brushing Kinley's coat as she passed, trailing cold incense and ozone and something faintly metallic.

She paused once at the exit, not looking back.

But her final words carried just fine.

"Twelve levels. Forty-two minutes. Or I fly alone."

And then she was gone.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

You've been hit by... you've been struck by...

Cross her once, and you'll never walk into a cantina without checking the corners again​

The theatrics were back, dialed down, sure, but still there. Just enough flash to keep the Sith's pride intact and Kinley's mouth shut. She figured it was some kind of test. Proof of skill, loyalty, commitment, whatever Sith were into these days. To her, it all smelled like a waste of time. And time? That cost credits.

She'd seen enough.

Kinley slipped out the way she came in, not even glancing at the charges she'd stashed on her way through. Just in case. She usually liked to leave her options open, especially the explosive kind. Nothing had gone boom yet, but with Kinley Pryse, the "yet" was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Back in the alley where her swoop bike was parked, she slid her goggles into place, straddled the seat, and kicked the engine to life. It purred like a hungry nexu.

Flying through the lower levels of Nar Shaddaa was like threading a needle in a war zone, tight lanes, heavy traffic, neon haze thick enough to chew. But it beat walking, and Kinley wasn't one for patience.

As long as she didn't run into any trouble.




Darth Virelia

A Smooth Criminal

 

[Darth Virelia]

"One spark is all it takes."

Tag - Kinley Pryse



The Aterphage was a ship that didn't just exist—it loomed. Angular, sleek, and repurposed from some forgotten class of blockade-runner, its hull was matte-black and violated every known transponder convention. Scorch marks laced its edges in neat, deliberate patterns—like scars earned rather than sustained. Its silhouette hunched in the subterranean hangar like a wolf curled in rest, but with fangs still bared. It didn't invite inspection. It dared it.

And beneath that leviathan shadow, Darth Virelia waited.

Not pacing.

Not leaning.

Waiting.

She stood at the base of the loading ramp, arms crossed behind her back, the faint hum of her armor's inner systems lost beneath the dull industrial drone of the hangar. The lighting here was harsh, flickering in places. Not by accident—Virelia had overridden the systems herself, ensuring the corridor to her ship felt like the prelude to a story most didn't finish. Psychological terrain, carefully cultivated. She had no interest in impressing Kinley Pryse with opulence. But presence? Presence mattered.

The six-eyed helm tracked motion before the swoop bike even entered the bay. She recognized the engine's purr before it crossed the threshold. Data—weight, speed, approach vector—was fed silently into her HUD. Kinley flew like she talked. Fast. Controlled. Just short of reckless.

Let her approach. Let her feel the gap close.

"You're punctual," she said, tone dry silk. "I admire that in mercenaries. It means they're still pretending to care."

A half-turn. Slow. Controlled.

She stepped to the side, clearing the path to the boarding ramp—but didn't gesture. No invitation. Just space, offered like a puzzle.

The hatch above hissed open.

Inside, the ship was dim. Cool. The lighting here was different—low-spectrum reds and deep violets, easy on the eyes after long hyperspace hauls. The corridor stretched forward in a gentle arc, wider than most freighters, with its walls lined not with cargo netting or haphazard mods, but clean inlays of alloy and matte carbon fiber. No clutter. No signs of crew. Just the hush of power flowing beneath the floor like blood.

A predator's artery.

"You didn't ask what was on the cargo ships," she said conversationally. No accusation. Just observation, offered like a blade on a velvet cloth. "Most people in your trade would've tried to price the job around the risk."

She stepped past Kinley to the top of the ramp, walking backwards into the corridor—still facing her, helm tilted as if in curiosity. Or amusement.

"Tell me, Kinley Pryse—" the name rolled off her tongue like a slow taste, "do you not care what you're chasing? Or do you just not want to owe me curiosity?"

There it was.

The pressure point, laid bare.

Not a challenge. Not quite. Just a gentle push against the place where most people bristled. Virelia wanted to hear the gears turn behind the smuggler's eyes and see whether they clicked into place—or jammed.

She stopped just inside the ship's common room. Spartan, with modular seating and a round holotable recessed into the floor. One seat occupied—hers. The rest unclaimed. A kettle hissed gently on a heating coil behind the galley divider, scenting the air with spiced chai and some root native to a planet long annexed by Sith.

The cape slithered to a stop as she turned and sat. She didn't remove her helm.

Didn't need to.