Private Lessons In Accidental Defenestrations on Nar Shaddaa

[Arris Windrun]

Ashbone

There was blood all over the floor that smeared away into a trail of red footprints. They stopped at the window, smashed, only to continue three stories down and into the alley.

Arris had tasked Ashbone with killing the guy - a middling pitboss who got by on deep connections with the lower gangs. She stayed behind in the hallway, close enough to observe, far enough not to interfere. Hell, the timing was perfect, too. The guy was a viewscreen addict, consuming his holosoaps as always. Some unlicensed adaptation of a Lady Velvet piece, apparently.

There was blood all over the floor - and it belonged to a survivor on the run. Surprisingly spry and durable.

The cyborg turned away from the window and approached the acolyte. "Well, no point in chasing him. He'll either bleed out, crash into a clinic, or call a friend."

She knew better than to be impatient about it. The rush, the quick fix; it was easy to fall into. Experience taught Arris long ago that the best approach to a botched job was to wait and see. If you were smart and a little bit lucky, your target would open up a new avenue as they let panic do their planning for them. Though - not that she'd admit it - it was a difficult instinct to form, for it meant accepting the vulnerability that came with inaction in moments like these.

"What do you think we should do?" She lit a cigarette and blew a cloud towards the dark-haired acolyte, then passed it over.

Ash would realize by now that Arris didn't smoke anything clean.

 

[Ashbone]

Arris Windrun

She grabbed for the cigarette with the desperation of someone who could become an addict with ease. Her hands had already been shaking, bloody, but Ashbone did not bother to even wipe her fingers from the sludgy crimson liquid sliding down her palms.

Already the cigarette was between her teeth and Ash dragged on it as if her life depended on it.

The hands slowed down their shaking and Bone nodded to Windrun in thanks.

"We... I..." She licked her lips as she reluctantly parted with the death stick, even as its chemicals burned through her veins and steadied her. Eyes widening, even though this was not the first time.

"I have carved into him, Master." Ashbone muttered in a hushed but hurried tone. "It was just as you said, watching his silly moving pictures, he didn't realize I was there until my nails were through his shoulder."

She frowned then.

"I wanted to paint with him. But he ran away. I can still feel him though?" A hopeful tone as Ashbone inquisitively looked at the death stick clenched between the cyborg's teeth.

"Can I go after him, please? I didn't finish painting yet, it will be such a wonderful scene, I promise."

Hand clutching her chest as she looked at the cyborg.

Even this young the K'Paur towered over people. But her frame was gangly and bone rather than solid meat or grace.

It didn't stop Ashbone from claiming many victims before Arris had found her in an alleyway, happily painting away with the bloody entrails of a recently deceased individual on the streets of Nar Shaddaa.

Ashbone was almost certain they were in the same neighborhood even now.

There was an itch to go look at her old paintings. But... That would be later, after this recent artistic project was complete.

 

[Arris Windrun]

She was a little surprised to see Ash take it so quickly, to consume it like medicine, even though this wasn't the first time.

And then there it was:

"I have carved into him, Master."

Anyone else - Neriah? Kirie? She hated such deference. It made her sick to her stomach, and in a way with Ash it did too, but there was something different about it. Arris stopped herself from correcting it. She never acknowledged it, never asked for it, but never stopped it. It felt different with this one.

"Not yet," she answered curtly. "If you run after him now, then the whole plan goes to shit."

The Dark Horse was very particular that these targeted killings needed to look professional, but honestly? With Ash? She wondered if the serial killer route would serve her narrative better. All the best lies were built from the most honest details. And that is what Arris saw, at first, when she met the young woman - a killer, a freak, a loser; someone like her... in a fucked up sense of it all.

Arris took another puff. She saw the way Ashbone needed it.

She looked ready to offer it again, but then pulled back a moment too soon. "How can you still feel him?" She inquired.

Was this the kind of perception that Adekos spoke of to her? A notion in the fabric of the Living Force? Or the psychosis of a broken girl?

Arris walked back over to the window and peered out again. There was already a small crowd gathering at the end of the alley.

"Let's head downstairs."

Without waiting, she left the apartment and made her way down until they exited on the stoop.

 

[Ashbone]

"Not yet," she answered curtly. "If you run after him now, then the whole plan goes to shit."

From the back of Ashbone's throat came a keening sound, almost a light growl, as instinct fought against discipline. Arris would have found Ash to be surprisingly disciplined in her madness. The seemingly broken mind of the apprentice remarkably flexible. She wished to pounce, but not on the cyborg in front of her.

Arris smelled wrong.

If Ash dug her fingers into her belly she would not have found warm flesh or ink-like liquid.

Bad, bad, bad. This is not a painting worth drawing, she would make her skin crawl.

"Okay, Master." Ashbone suddenly piped up, happy enough, even as those large red eyes watched the death stick move back and forth. Between sweet release of her lungs before Arris took it away from her, out of reach. She didn't seem to mind. Only licking her lips as she followed her downstairs, eyes swiveling back and forth.

Even as she violently inhaled, trying to get some of the smoke coming out of the death stick in front of her.

"I don't understand the question, Master." Sing-song voice as she trailed behind her. Watching the people around the corner, gawking up at the broken window through which the soap opera viewer escaped.

"Do you not smell him? It is in the air..." Dreamy as those wide red eyes looked up at the trail. "Mother always said... Mark your toys, dear, do not make a mess!" The tone had shifted for a moment, a bit low, the quality changing as Ashbone mimicked her mother. "She is dead now, she won't mind a mess anymore."

Happy enough as her fingers laced in and out of themselves behind her back.

"I can mark things simply by cutting them with my nails. Can't you, Master? It is a simple trick, really, I can teach you if you'd like to keep track of your toys."

That is how it often went with Ashbone. She would not know how to lift a pebble with her mind, a technique that belonged to even the simplest Padawan or Apprentice. But then would casually claim to know something as complex as a Blood Trail ritual that belonged to the Dathomiri Witches, which was odd enough, because as far as Arris could tell Ashbone wasn't even from Dathomir.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Ashbone

"I can't smell," Arris said.

It wasn't entirely true. Her implants did collect and make sense of the same compounds, but they didn't translate into a sensation for her. Data for the chip, not pleasure - or foulness - for the soul.

She wondered if perhaps that answer disappointed Ashbone. But it was a fleeting curiosity, and never made its way out as a question.

The acolyte's ramblings were background noise too, as the cyborg considered their next move. She doubted he would bleed out - not after surviving Ashbone and the fall; not to mention sprinting off.

Arris looked down at her fingers, then showed them to Ashbone. "I don't have any nails, see?" She made a point of swinging the hand that held the death stick.

Then, she finally handed the smoke back to her. "You can have the rest of it," though there wasn't much left.

Interestingly, Arris had encountered someone with a similar ability: Velok. Though at the time, she only recognized it as strange alien behavior... not some arcane tracking technique.

She continued down the street, following the trail of bloody footprints, though they began to fade past a certain point. When he stopped bleeding so profusely, or when he noticed and cleaned his feet. If Ashbone had the means to track him further, then that is exactly what needed to happen. Arris stopped and turned with a grin.

"Well, let's find him then, yeah? Oh - but don't hurt him. We just need to know where he is and what he plans to do. Unless you corner him in some back alley, we need to keep our distance."