I'm A Big Deal

[Onley Xiangu]

Shezi was prone to symbolism, a woman like to find portent in the bottom of her teacup or meaning in the strewn guts of another streetrat who’d been foolish enough to try and steal from her. But no matter how hard she pressed herself, she couldn’t find something to represent how she felt about her being. Who was Shezi? Who would she be?

It was with the same seeming aimlessness that she found herself in Wild Space. She’d heard the stretch of stars was home to outlaws, neutrals – those with skill protecting their slice of the Galaxy without lines to make things black and white. They’d been rumors, whispers; the true intentions of the Fringe were perhaps ambiguous to even the galaxy at large, let alone the filtered information that made it all the way down to the Shezi on the streets of some gutter planet. She’d heard of the concept of warring groups but had always given it little thought – her corner, hocking her ability to read symbols and guess with great accuracy the future from a customer’s dreams or blood, seemed far more important. But she’d been restless. And the Fringe had sounded right. Regardless, she’d found her way to the capital city on the semi-industrial planet of Annaj with relative ease. From there she’d searched out anybody she could who might point her in the right direction for contacting said shadowy organization.

Inevitably she’d instead found herself somewhere she shouldn’t be, slipping her tiny frame right behind an admittedly lax guard who turned his back just as he was going to insure the door had locked. She’d thought she’d been quiet but maybe they had other means of surveillance – that seemed the most likely as soon as she found out the cavernous units she’d been poking around in belonged to the very organization she was looking to get in contact with. After she’d been caught they’d left her in some room off to the side, telling her someone would be in to question her. Was it her fault she’d been holding a very expensive, very dangerous, very rare, and very important weapon the Fringe had just gotten a hold of? She didn’t think so. It just looked like it’d blow someone to pieces, the only fact that interested her. In retrospect it probably looked really bad, but she didn’t care. She’d been in tighter jams.

She’d found a broken droid to try and reassemble while she waited, pressing a finger to the shiny knob on what appeared to be its face. The entire thing folded in on itself, making an awful noise and clattering around, off-balance. “Fok, kak!” she swore loudly in her affected patois, kicking the thing to shut it up.

[member="Jared Ovmar"]​

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Shezi Khoza"]

In many ways magic wasn’t anything mystical, the tendency of rituals and incantations was nothing more than the act of focusing one’s will to the All of the Universe and channeling it through your body, your tools or a plethora of other mediums that existed or could exist in our little world. Which is to say that in general, magics could be explained, could be reasoned and dissected back to its inner-workings until you are left with the barebone variant.

But where was the fun in that? Let the Jedi have their ‘execute Force Push’, and the Sith their ‘I cast Force Insanity.’, we are in a different world now, a more interesting world that held many possibilities. Beasts of untold virtue that could make even the hardest, toughest sonabitch weep tears of joy, that was the one spectrum, the other was the abomination of the dark that would make you weep tears… not of joy, if you can imagine it.

What I am trying to say is, basically. I have been around a lot. See, most folks these days they focus on the material plane, the credits, whores and cigars, the booze, dreadnaughts and planets. Generally just all the pebbles you would ever dream about, and it hadn’t been any different for me- suppose… it still ain’t all that different to me. Though I have moved on these days, souls. That’s the new game of the year.

Ask my friend Carach… heh.

He knows what it’s all about.

Anyway, I haven’t been part of the Fringe for many a year, hell, years plural. Ages, turning in and out into eons, and returning back to millenia. Yeah, I know it’s kinda confusing when you put it like that.

But the first thing a gal’s gotta learn… well… time’s relative, shet like that. Trust me, I know what I am talking about.

So like I said before, I hadn’t been part of the Fringe for a long while, nothing more than spiritual support here and there, but I am back now. Kinda. Shet’s hit the fan and most of the guys are busy with other things to extinguish the flames, so I am gonna see if I can try to fix this crap. Might have some fun, might burn myself out once again, first thing I hear when I sign back into the Net?

Girl, in her early twenties, little petite thing. About 4’8’’ maybe a bit taller than that, weighs nothing, talks in weird slang. She somehow managed to walk into one of the sanctums, grabbed hold of a relic. Yeah. That relic. Rhandian design. She is being held in one of the rooms now.

Now that… is my girl. Didn’t even know her and I already liked the spunk that was written all around that report and the general look of her.

The room was slowly starting to turn from her perspective, subtle shifts in the underlying currents, dark shadows creeping up around her. Let’s see how much spunk there is really.

 

[Onley Xiangu]

Shezi understood that she had the Force. It came to her most naturally as something most would consider a prophetic, though in her case it was more like voodoo. She was well-known in the circles she ran in to paint herself in symbols, things that ‘felt right’, things that meant something perhaps only to her. She took them very seriously. If nothing else it lent to the mysticism her customers always seemed so enthralled by.

Or maybe it was the eyes – bottomless, pitch-black, all-seeing.

Even still, she had no idea how to use the mystical current of energy she’d been gifted with the ability to wield other than its most rudimentary skill set. She could lift things – wobbly, with a lot of concentration – and push if she got mad enough, and read people’s futures with a high degree of success. But she had no way to truly counteract whatever was happening to her now. She assumed it was some devil-magic (as she called her own ability, and those of other force-sensitives) simply because most of the time the floor didn’t start sliding underneath her, nor did the shadows come out to play no matter how often she begged them. The visuals were something like dropping in to a trip, warning of impending change. It was all subtle but she was on edge – she couldn’t be blamed, thrown in to a room as if she were some common criminal come to steal what obviously meant a lot to them. (She conveniently omitted that had she known ahead of time, she would have gotten out with that thing before they’d even known she was there.)

So she did what any decent street urchin worth their salt would do in the face of the unknown: find a weapon before the threat got too close. Relentlessly stomping the haphazardly constructed droid she’d been playing with, Shezi broke off a sharp piece of metal from its casing and turned the lightly hallucinogenic room around her. “Aye, come out muddakarker! You wanna fight let’s do it like men! Julle so bang?!”

[member="Jared Ovmar"]​

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Shezi Khoza"]

Quite a bit it seemed.

In my experience there were a couple of people, some locked down when they were presented with a threat, others were runners- prime example would be Ardik in that regard. But then, then there were the rare few that managed to make something outta themselves on the streets.

The movers and shakers that didn’t freeze up when a threat presented itself, entrepreneurs of magics that stood their ground when their territories were being assaulted by the forces of evil.

With evil being everything that was against them, of course.

A laugh echoed across the room, it cascaded from one wall to another and in the progress it magnified itself.

‘Like men, my dear?’ the voice- my voice, would ask.

Truth to be told I never was one for fair fights, not even when those fights were in my favor already. It’s the same as poor old Carach during the invasion of Kashyyyk, when this little padawan walked up to him and challenged him to a duel.

Fight me! If you dare! Prove that you are the man you claim you are… or are you too afraid that you might actually lose?!

I might be paraphrasing here a bit.

The point was, Carach had learned his lessons well. As a Sith Lord you learn that the battlefield holds no honor, no beautiful glory for those that were worthy and as a man you learn that every moment of your life is a battlefield in the metaphorical sense of the word.

The voice almost smiled, if you could believe it.

‘What gave you the impression I was a man.’​

And she would get the distinct feeling that the voice was not talking about the gender definition, but about something… else.

 

[Onley Xiangu]

She froze when she heard the voice in her head, unsure whether she should be angry, scared, or intrigued. She didn’t scare easily and a corporeal threat hadn’t presented itself yet so she settled on angry and intrigued. She would give it a nod though. In all honesty she didn’t think much about something as unimportant as gender when she had access to truth and magic. But she guessed he – it? – was right.

The implication that he was nothing and everything – not man, nor woman, but something else entirely – nearly made her shiver.

“Well, I ain’t no man either but doesn’t mean we can’t fight like ‘em. Face to face, see?” she said, spinning the sharp little piece of machinery between deft fingers. Clearly she’d squared off like this many times, an old hand at ripping apart competition. There was still no sign of her invisible opponent but his presence saturated the room. It felt unlike anything she’d come across in her work.

Attempting to draw whoever it was from hiding, she flexed some of her devil-magic. It was rudimentary at best, attempting to push back against the shadows with her own. In essence she was trying to wrest control, to see the dark shudder under her influence instead of the strangers. In any case he might feel her attempt and realize what she might do given the chance.

[member="Jared Ovmar"]​

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Shezi Khoza"]

And the darkness did shudder against her push, perhaps Ovmar could have stopped that little shift in power. But he had never been a fan of total and utter control, regulating every portion and inch of his machinations- tiring, exhausting and simply so utter inefficient, no that was a thing he had never done.

This only shifted within the framework of his literal force usage, but while she was busy focusing on pushing away some of his attention… the Lord of the Fringe played his own, meagre, hand.

As she pushed back, she would suddenly feel an unbearable heat rising up from the metal she was holding right now.

‘You will soon learn that…’ the Sith Lord paused for a moment, scratching his chin and pondering for a while, before continuing incorporeally. ‘I do not concern myself with trivial matters as ‘like a man’, ‘fighting fair’ or even ‘face to face’.’

A sigh permeated through the room.

‘There is one thing that matters at the end of a fight and that is being the last one standing. Do you understand?’