I'll Always Come Back [Domino]

[Razelle Breuner]

Station Six Orbit, Black Sun Space
A light freighter, the Bloodhound, on a scheduled docking approach was probably the least conspicuous thing in the galaxy. Granted, it was slightly less more notable in a place as paranoid as Black Sun space, but the Bloodhound was known around Station Six. Captain Laressa was one of the most reliable small-time shipping vessels that docked with the station, bringing by fresh shipments of spice once every galactic month. No one asked where she got it, and she never asked what they did with it. It was the way the underworld worked.

This time she was smuggling in a person. Payment in advance, and all she had to do was make sure that the ship got inside the docking bay. Again, no questions asked. It was an easy job, and it didn't seem nearly risky enough...so Laressa had negotiated for double the price that the woman opened negotiations on. The fact that her passenger still didn't argue it much was a dead ringer for something foul going on. The captain readily planned to betray the living crap out of her the first chance she got, sell her to the station authorities, and cackle her way into retirement with her double payment.

As she neared the docking bay, Laressa kept smiling calmly as the crackle of the intercom. <"Bloodhound, this is Station Six. Your IFF responder checks out. Submit your docking password.">

Laressa hit a few buttons. "Already sending, Station Six." This was smooth. Clean. Just the way she liked it. It was the perfect payday and she could finally get herself a nice apartment on Coruscant, maybe with a balcony or even a pool. No complications. She even enjoyed the feeling of the ship lurching as it got caught in the station's tractor beam.

<"Code confirmed. Welcome back, Bloodhound.">

"Good to be back." She sent back through the intercom, but it really wasn't necessary. She'd already been accepted in, and her boys in the back were already getting everything ready to offload. Now all she had to do was secure her passenger, and her future was looking quite bright indeed. Idly, she reached down to place her hand on her blaster-

There was very suddenly something cold, hard, and metal against the back of her neck. "One more move and I leave you burning on the deck."

Laressa smiled and lifted her hand a little, away from the gun. "Heh. Guess you caught me." The rough woman shrugged, her other hand lifting into the air parallel the first. "Ah well, what can you do? Boys." She hesitated for several seconds, as if waiting for something. Eventually, her brow furrowed. "Bo-"

"Don't bother," came her passenger's voice again, cold as ice behind her. "I'll leave you to ponder in your final seconds in this galaxy whether I killed them or simply beat them into unconsciousness." Laressa's blood went as frigid as the voice in her ears. Had she made a mistake here? Well, obviously, but was it a mistake that actually made a difference? Or was this woman going to kill them all and take their spice anyway?

"Listen, you don't have to-" She started, but was just as quickly interrupted again.

"Just shut up. Nothing you do or say is going to change anything right now." Force, that woman's tone was like liquid death. And her hand on that blaster had to be nigh-robotic to be so calm in this kind of situation. "We both know I've already decided the outcome of this. You really should've just taken the money."

---

When the Bloodhound came to a jolting stop in one of the many docking bays of Station Six, there wasn't an upright body on-board. Scanners from docking control noted three very unconscious humans and a whole lot of spice. Still, it was a smuggler's ship. There was probably something hiding in one of the scan-proof compartments...

By the time the docking bay security team had moved in to check the ship out and lock it down, Raz had already engaged the refueling procedure and was crawling beside the pipe.
@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

Needless to say, security was going all out at the first sign of trouble. This was their first chance to redeem themselves after the fiasco the jedi had made of them during their 'escape' from the station, their first real test. A test they'd failed spectacularly. When the crew of the Bloodhound were scanned to be dead or unconscious, alarms sounded, the newly repaired station went into lock down, and presser fields snapped to against the freighter's hull in-case it exploded. Troops were called in, both organic and robotic to secure the ship and investigate it while more critical sections of the station had extra guards rushed to them. This was their chance to redeem themselves and prove themselves capable. Possibly their last chance.

In her quarters, Domino looked up from the book she'd been reading at the intrusion alarm. Was someone here to kill her or was it a false alarm? Fingering her bookmark into place while looking to an innocuous cabinet she could just barely make out through the curtained doorway to the tiny adjoining room. Yes, better to remain on the safe side of things. Tossing the classic aside, she went to her personal armory and began to prepare.
@[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

It took less than twenty seconds for Razelle to crawl along the fuel line far enough to hit a full-sized maintenance shaft. This was a damn lucky thing, considering that every second climbing on a pipe full of combustible liquid was another second closer to death. She could hear the lockdown above her, but no sane security force locked down utility tunnels if they wanted their space station to not spontaneously combust during a lockdown protocol. This, unfortunately, also meant that the security on the exits would be much tighter.

Well, "unfortunately." Truth be told, Raz was looking forward to it.

She crawled beside a few mouse droids on her way to...well, anywhere really. First exit on the next floor down. Raz did a quick Sherlock scan of the duct she was in and, beyond the grate, the defenses she could see with diamond eyes. Three visible guards, another one audible but not visible from her angle. Might be hanging out around the corner or wall of the room. None of them were trained on her vent; they had more important things to guard. Security post? Possibly. She'd have to bust through and cause a proper commotion. Tie a flashbang to one of the mouse droids? Sounded like a good plan.

Grabbing the next droid that passed her by, Raz set the timer on her grenade to five seconds and yanked a wire under the droid's chassis, sending it spinning out of control into the adjacent room. She didn't waste a lot of time crawling after it, either, averting her eyes just in time to avoid the flash. She came out of the vent with a roll, landing in front of the nearest armed guard she could find.

Five, not four. All with blasters. Fortunately, Raz didn't have to disarm them all. With two quick strikes to the closest guard's elbows, she followed with a violent yank at his blaster rifle, flipped the setting to stun as she drove its butt into his forehead, then turned and squeezed off several stun blasts. Each was accurate, but each one pulled at her instincts. Stunners were one of her conditioned triggers, and it was only with remarkable willpower that she could resist the urge to freak out and kill everything in sight in a mad blitz to run away to safety.

Five seconds later, there were five very unconscious bodies in the...security command center. Sieglinde got to work immediately, locking the door as she fired a much less stun-setting bolt at the visible security cameras. She was sealed in with several disabled guards, and had access to computer security for a decent stretch of this section of the station. Or at least...she would, when she managed to coax the computers to warm up to her.

Raz ripped a security keycard from one of the unconscious guards and took a seat at the console. Sliding the card through the reader, she danced her fingers across the keyboard and through two more screens of data before she got a full facility map and override codes for the lockdown at a level that the specific guard she'd picked (a captain, probably, but she didn't have time to check) was cleared for. Good catch. Now to "cover her tracks." Two more screaming red bolts ended the computer terminal's life. Dropping her confiscated rifle by the man she'd taken it from, Raz returned to her vents as she pulled up her new map on her databracer and started plotting her course.

'Can't hide from me, blueberry.'
@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

Domino stared at the unconscious men long and hard before glancing at the destroyed computer, really what was it with midget people and the vents? Those things were tiny, barely even a foot across at their widest. Shed have to install bars in them, proper ones like you'd find on a jail cell for a Wookie. Bowing her armored head, she extended her senses outward, until she found, her heart stopped. It couldn't be, her knees suddenly felt weak, it was. A hand encased in a crushgaunt gripped the door frame where she'd torn the disabled barrier from her way. No one knew to emulate that life, unless she were captured and tortured, or had the Kaminoens resurrected another? Perhaps reselling the best army they'd ever made, not likely without her finding out, or was this a test of their control? What if it was Raz? What if it wasn't? Hundreds of emotions and thoughts flitted through her head, but two stood out rather prominently. One, that whoever this was hadn't come openly and wasn't friendly. Two, that she was very very pissed.

Turning from the room she followed the vent down the corridor coming up behind the intruder, she didn't wait for another vent or to come alongside the signature, she just grabbed onto it through the force and and ripped whoever it was that dared along the fifty meters of corridor to the shaft's terminus, a now mostly empty barracks. She didn't wait for someone to remove the last grating either, she just slammed the person into, and through, it. There was no flourish when she activated her saber though her slice through the infiltrator's stolen blaster may have looked like one. It almost seemed nostalgic, Raz on her back, held down by the force while Domino menaced her with a saber. "I feel as though I've faced a similar situation before, only this time I don't have the same will to let you live." She looked the Raven over studying her carefully (was it her?) before abruptly continuing. "I also know everything you do before you do it, so think on that before going for your other blaster, or the knives, or one of your grenades. And while your thinking, tell me why you came here."
@[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

There was probably some kind of poetry in winding up in the same situation as the first day they'd met, hundreds of years ago. Some kind of unfathomable beauty, poignance, or meaning to it. None of that crossed Sieglinde's mind at the moment. She was being threatened, and she was in a position of disadvantage. You don't back a dog into a corner and growl at it if you expect to be friends. Her eyes stayed dilated and diamond, her gaze not moving an inch from the faceplate of the armored thing in front of her.

Some part of her understood that the situation that was being referred to at this particular moment was something that only Domino would know. "You have exactly zero seconds to get that thing out of my face before I remind you why I always win when we spar."

Her eyes finally moved, though just to flick around seemingly at random. 'Joints whir. Power armor. Thick enough to render K'tara useless. Leaves...' Raz took a deep breath and closed her eyes, sinking into that place of peace one tried to maintain with the higher levels of Teräs Käsi. For her, it was less calm, and much more frenzy. Rage. Fury. Animalistic ferality that defied logic or reason. Instinct alone. Her mind shut itself off from the world. None of those emotion shields like she'd used back on Endelaan; just cold silence.

With a quick kick upwards, she fought through any telekinetic control with nothing but sheer willpower. Teräs Käsi strikes combined with K'tara pressure point training made a single hit infinitely more dangerous. Razelle's intent was to disarm, rather than shatter every single bone in Domino's wrist through her armor joint. ART-03, on the other hand, would have taken that as a wonderful bonus. She used the momentum of the kick to flip back onto her hands and, a handspring later, onto her feet, landing in an anticipatory stance.

Her mind was sealed, her dilated eyes watched every movement her enemy (There was a name somewhere in there...Domino?) made. And as she stood, she gauged every single weakness, every flaw, every joint. The part of her consciousness that was analyzing the fight estimated that she could disable this obstacle in about sixteen movements, four strikes. The part that was fleeing for life wanted desperately to check for exits. And the part, somewhere deep inside, that realized that Domino was probably in that tin can was quite worried about how much damage she might have actually done to her wrist.
@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

When it came it came fast, just what Domino had come to expect from her Razelle or any clone of her. If Domino hadn't been watching for it she might just have succeeded in breaking her wrist. As it was Domino dropped her saber, the blade deactivated as soon as it left her hand, and instead of the wrist Domino cupped her hand and took the kick in her armored palm. Still ached like heck though. From there she shifted into her own ancient stance. Coup De Vistes had practically disappeared from the galaxy during her long sleep, but that suited Domino just fine. Now there were only two that would recognize it, be able to anticipate its moves, and the one other was facing her now.

Carefully she circled, a twitch of the fingers on her forward hand sent her loose saber skittering across the floor to the feet of the watching Lotus. Picking her moment when she was ready, Domino launched a lightning fast burst of open-handed flurries at the clone's arms, attempting to do to the human with her armored crushgaunts what she had tried to do to her, only spread out over targets of opportunity and never going in past the elbow where she'd be vulnerable to a grab.
@[member="Razelle Breuner"]