First Reply Lifeday, Neo Echelon Style. A firestorm of friendship.

[GhostKey]

Planet: Echelon
City: Neo Echelon
District 11: Mega Habs - Lower Levels.
Apartment Block A66B-9x
Afternoon, Raining.

Happy Holidays in the Mega Habs.

​

"That's the package. Nobody saw me," Ghostkey said with a grin way too sharp for his own good.

"Nice work, kid," the Corellian cut back, taking a long drag on his cigarra, its embers burning out like a dying engine. "See, life day does exist." Got a few dry chuckles from the outcast streetrunners.

This was Ghostkey's big break. A job on his own that didn't end in a citywide riot. Hopefully without glowing freaks trying to electrocute his insides.

Two gangs stood across from each other in a gutted apartment floor, lights flickering on and off over budget duracrete, showing a few tables, some signs of gang life. The windows held a full view of the dense mega-hab towers outside, endless neon alleyways, stacked lives trying to get by, and down low smog that could choke you.

Khaganti warrior-smiths, Atrisian, disciplined, with glyphs burning across their armor like angry spirits, stood opposite a local triad outfit trying to claw its way up into major-league crime. Their leader, a larger-than-life Corellian who believed his attitude and ambition counted as armor, had scraped together a small crowd of hopefuls from the undernet ads: freelancers, burnouts, people with guts, debts, or nothing left to lose. Typical Echelon streetrunner hires.

The Corellian unlocked the package and passed it to the Atrisians. They examined the contents with their slow, ritual-like care, songsteel blades on their backs gleaming, and tattoos marking their Khagnati affiliation; one or two were dressed like corporate executives or rich enough to imitate it.

"What's in it?" Ghost whispered, leaning over just enough to tempt fate. A few heads turned his way, either curious themselves or annoyed he'd ask.
"You don't want to know, kid." The Corellian folded his arms, smoke drifting off him like he was burning the place down one breath at a time.

Ghost's gaze drifted westward. Something low... too smooth to be traffic, now vibrating the wall. Two shuttles descended past the windows, floodlights sending harsh beams across the room.

There was no warning.

The windows crystallised inward with a shattered wail. Blasterfire and slugthrower rounds ripped into the apartment at a thousand-rounds-a-minute, shredding into walls, bodies, anything that wasn't durasteel-reinforced, and even that struggled to stand.

"Huh. Well… that's not good."

Ghostkey threw himself behind a divider, sparks spraying over him as a third rival-gang, SecNet troops, armoured like budget paramilitary, poured fire through the broken apartment, turning the room into a meat grinder of ricochets and groaning metal. Through the haze, inside, he could see a frightened Corellian child looking out of a ruined doorway.

 

[Darth Keres]

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[]

​

Location: Neo Echelon
Objective: Retrieve Stolen Item
Tag: GhostKey

The abandoned factory building had become a cathedral of ruin, its stone walls slick with a dark baptism that caught the moonlight in trembling, silvered streaks. Six bodies lay strewn like discarded prayers, their limbs bent at impossible angles, faces frozen in the last whispered syllable of terror. The air was thick with the metallic tang of death, curling through the narrow passage as though it too were a living thing, unwilling to leave its feast.

The gang leader, center stage and surrounded by four Silencers, guardians carved from silence itself, their forms unmoving, their faces smooth and pitiless as grave markers freshly set. Darth Keres stepped forward, her presence draining the last remnants of warmth from the night, and her voice coiled through the hush like a velvet noose. "This is the last time I am going to inquire," she murmured, each word steeped in quiet menace. "Tell me where is the stolen item?"

The leader's bravado crumbled into a brittle whisper as he spoke, eyes darting like trapped insects within their sockets. "I only heard the rumors, lady," he rasped, voice trembling upon the stale air, "that a rival gang now clutches something of great value, that is all I know. The gang's turf is east of here and if I might be so bold to announce, some of their leadership is housed inside a red colored apartment complex."

Darth Keres inclined her head in a slow, deliberate gesture, the faintest curve of satisfaction touching her lips. "You have my gratitude for your candor," she said softly, before turning her gaze toward one of the Silencers and adding in a tone as cold as the grave, "see that he does not trouble this world any longer."

Darth Keres and her four Silencers left the factory, emerging from the unseen choking veil of fog like specters summoned from an unquiet grave, their forms unraveling from the darkness one by one. The street beneath their feet groaned with age, cracked pavement weeping stagnant water that reflected their silhouettes in warped, trembling fragments. No streetlights dared to burn in their presence; even the night itself seemed to recoil, folding inward as if repelled by the absence of mercy that followed in their wake.

In the short, distant horizon loomed the apartment complex, a monolithic slab of concrete rising against the sky like a neglected mausoleum for the living. Its windows were blind, some blacked out, others boarded with security measures, and a handful dimly aglow with the feverish flicker of those who still haunted its interior. Unused fire escapes clung to its outer ribs like skeletal fingers, and the wind threaded through them, producing a thin, mournful cry as if the building warned all who dared to approach.

They crossed its threshold without ceremony, the warped doors parting with a long, aching groan that echoed through the hollow corridors beyond. The air inside was thick with desperation and a faint undertone of fear long soaked into the walls. Few souls lingered to impede them; those who glimpsed their passing shrank into doorways or shadows, offering little resistance, as if the structure itself understood that some presences were not meant to be defied.

Darth Keres paused, her senses threading through the building's hollow bones, and her gaze lifted toward the trembling ceiling as a dull thud reverberated above. "Do you hear it?" she whispered, a dark certainty lacing her voice, "That restless clamoring...it's where the item now hides."

Darth Keres and her four Silencers reached the top of the stairwell, where flickering light and sharp echoes betrayed a frantic exchange of blaster fire beyond a haze of smoke, and from a cracked doorway nearby a small, wide-eyed child stared out, frozen between terror and curiosity. Her lip curled in a faint, chilling mockery as she inclined her head toward him and murmured, "Such tender eyes were never meant to bear witness to so much unnecessary violence. This world has been most unkind in showing it to you so soon." She moved toward the lone child, placing a hand on the kid's shoulder and ushering the young boy back into the sanctity of his apartment.

Darth Keres then raised a single, languid hand, and at that silent signal her four Silencers unfurled into motion, each one angling toward a chosen presence within the chaos, their intentions precise and mercilessly calm. "Select your marks," she breathed, her voice barely more than a silken thread wound with doom, "and silence the disturbance." Then she moved forward, gliding through the smoke and scattered ruin as though the carnage itself bent away from her, drawn irresistibly toward the room from which the greatest fury, and most telling sounds. now surged.

​

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Melee Weapons​
  • XIII​
• Armor​
  • Robe​
• Accessories​
  • k​
• Ship​
  • Taciturnitas​
• Personal Guards​
  • Silencers​

 

[GhostKey]

Planet: Echelon
City: Neo Echelon
District 11: Mega Habs – Lower Levels
Apartment Block A66B-9x
Tag: Darth Keres

Thoughts crashed in fast. How did anyone track me? Then darker: I got everyone killed. Then panic: now what the hell do I do?!

He hunkered down behind his divider, as glass and scrap metal fell around him like poison rain. Ricochets of slugs and blasterfire spoke their language of death to the room, sparking off falling duracrete like angry little fireflies. Those with enough durachrome or armor plating stood their ground and fired back, trading hits; the smarter ones drew themselves behind pillars; the unlucky ones just... folded down where they stood.

A Cigarra rolled free, still smoldering, as the large correlian slumped down against a metal table, holding his gut with both hands. "Get outta here… kid," he coughed, pointing weakly toward the metal case lying a few feet away, as if he could will it to slide over. His hand swiped for his fading cigarra but he wasn't going to make it. Ghost crawled over through the chaos and grabbed it, placing it between the dying man's fingers. The Corellian drew in a long, shaky drag, life distilling in his glazing eyes.
"Well… look at that…"
His hand dropped. And so did the last of him.

"Die easy, old slicer," Ghost respected him, more a streetborn farewell than anything, the kind you give someone who didn't shake at the end. But the cold shiver he felt was not just from the dying man.

Ghostkey peeked up, just in time to see apartment doors opening and the nothing coming in. It was hard to tell if anything existed in the empty doorway, just the feeling that danger was near.

"What in the neon-soaked hells is happening?!" Ghost hissed in disbelief.

One of the Khagnati warriors nearing escape, an Atrisian, sword raised and honor ablaze, looked left and right, not knowing what he was fighting. His songsteel blade sang through the air, chopping through smoke. A streetrunner or two opened up with scattergun slugs at nothing or something; the two shuttles out the window didn't care who they painted red, raining fire indiscriminately through the collapsing windows at the entire room.

Raising his sonic blaster, Ghost snapped off concussive rounds toward the empty doorway, then pivoted back to blind-fire at the shuttles. Every streetrunner on Echelon knew this moment, where any step could end it. The second SecNet shuttle swung in his direction, its side assault door open, and the gunners inside turned his entire wall into swiss cheese. Glass powdered to vapor and panels detonated into pieces. Every surface lit up around him, his crawl slowing to almost a stop, suppressed into the ground.

Ghost flattened himself to the floor, scrambling forward on elbows and knees, edging toward the case. If he could just make it, get his hands on that damn thing, maybe he'd still walk out with a name. With a break. Anything!

The first SecNet shuttle was already closing in on what was left of the shattered wall, a gaping cut in the tower, with smog from the city below moving inward like a weather cloud. The paramilitary-looking gang on the first shuttle were seconds from docking, braced rifles, boots ready to step through the ruin as they cut down the closest young streetrunners.

Deadly Silencers.
Honorable Swordsmiths.
Streetrunners bleeding on duracrete.
And a SecNet boots about to make footfall.

A heavy cake of trouble ready to mix.

 

[Darth Keres]

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[]

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Location: Neo Echelon
Objective: Retrieve Stolen Item
Tag: GhostKey


In the hush before impact, the air itself seemed to curdle as the Silencers poured through the splintered metal doorway, their forms cloaked in draping shadow, faces pale as grave-wax. The room recoiled at their arrival and the Artisans' delicate instruments rang like funeral bells as steel clashed against plasma. The gang turned with feral surprise, blades flashing and firearms roaring to life, each report echoing through like shots fired inside a crypt. Red light streaked the dark; smoke coiled like a living thing around the combatants, and the polished floor greedily drank what it was given.

Outnumbered and consumed by the chaos they themselves had summoned, two Silencers were ensnared at the heart of the tempest. Crossfire between the gang and SecNet shuttles tore the darkness open, striking indiscriminately; flesh and bone shattered in crimson bloom, cloaks snapping and burning as their bodies collapsed like marionettes whose strings had been severed. One fell, swallowed by smoke and shadow, while the other staggered forward, reaching for his enemy's throat before a final barrage struck him down.

Darth Keres crossed the threshold as though the shadows themselves parted for her, and in an instant her gaze fell upon the fallen, the two Silencers sprawled upon the cold floor, their cloaks torn, their stillness a cruel mockery of sleep. They had been as children to her, molded by her hand, shielded by her will, and the sight of their broken forms set something ancient and terrible stirring within her chest.

The air seemed to shrink away as her anger swelled, a silent, gathering storm. Slowly, she raised her head, and her eyes ignited, twin infernos dragged from the deepest pit of some forsaken hell, fixing upon every soul in the chamber, those locked in savage combat and those huddled in trembling survival alike, binding them all beneath the unbearable weight of her fury, as if judgment itself had taken mortal form and come to stand among them.

Darth Keres lifted her hand, and the world obeyed with a dreadful grace. Beyond the fractured windows, the SecNet shuttle in progress of landing security forces shuddered midair, seized by an invisible grip that bent its trajectory like a fate rewritten in ash. With a slow, almost ceremonial motion, she cast it aside. It struck the neighboring structure in a bloom of fire and ruin, the night coughing out smoke as stone and metal folded inward upon themselves, the sound of it a cathedral bell rung for the damned.

In the room itself, two gang members, locked in desperate struggle with the remaining Silencers, stiffened as if time itself had tightened around their throats; a silent crack echoed through the chaos, and they collapsed, their Fate lines snapped by an unseen hand.

From the smoke and haze bloomed her blade: translucent white, an unholy pallor luminous against the soot-stained air, within it, vague shapes writhed, spectral silhouettes turning and churning as though trapped within frozen agony; while her eyes, still blazing with hellborn fire, fixed upon the scattered case and the figure dragging himself toward it. Step by slow, deliberate step, she advanced deeper into the room, the whisper of her robes and the faint, mournful hum of the blade silencing all else.

Through the choking smoke and howling gunfire, a brave yet ruinously foolish Artisan called out to her, voice trembling but proud, "Come then, dark queen of shadows, and test your wrath against a heart that still dares to beat." Darth Keres halted at the audacious challenge, a slow, unsettling smile curving her lips as her gaze briefly caressed the boy still clawing his way toward the case, and then, with terrible, regal poise, she turned upon her heel to face the fool who had dared summon the storm.

​

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Melee Weapons​
  • XIII​
• Armor​
  • Robe​
• Accessories​
  • k​
• Ship​
  • Taciturnitas​
• Personal Guards​
  • Silencers​

 

[GhostKey]

Shadows parted. New blood and bone splattered the duracrete, and Echelon, that hungry, merciless star drank deep, demanding its nightly sacrifice. Ghost crawled through the suppression fire, the weight of Keres raw, uncontained fury pushing his chin closer to the floor, crushing him beneath the heavy, metallic taste of fatal inevitability.

Leave that fatalism to us old timers, Varo Jhicaro had once told him.
Too young to die, or too stupid to understand he could.

Ghost dragged himself forward one inch at a time, elbows slipping through blood and shattered metal, over spent casings and half-melted blaster cells. Each scrape felt like pressing his knees into molten lead.

Streetrunners and gangsters toppled under the new horror ripping into the blood-soaked room. Outside, the first shuttle spiraled down like a broken dura-bound bird, slamming into the tower opposite. The shockwave blasted windows out across eight levels. SecNet were the kind of cleanup EchoSec used when things needed to disappear but tonight they'd made a far louder mess to clean.

The second shuttle whirled in place, scanning to reason the impossible drop, like its sensors were glitching, before committing again. It directed hard toward the breach, floodlights bathing light through the smoke. Three SecNet paramilitaries leapt in, keeping tight to cover, searchlights hunting for the case amongst overturned rubble.

Ghost snatched it, dragging it toward his chest.
One of the paramilitary sights lined up with him, rifle barrel pointed straight down.

Ghost went still... played corpse, the oldest trick in the gutter playbook.
He risked a glance upward, and froze at the sight of Darth Keres locked in a dance of songsteel and shadow with the brave Atrisian swordsmith.

Instinct found its place. Ghost twisted and fired two fast shots up into the SecNet frakker's chest plate.

He bolted hard, getting maybe five feet, before the next barrage ate air and dura, chewing the floor around his boots. He threw himself behind a pillar, lungs burning hot, pistol shaking in his young hand. In front of him: a nightmare silhouette battling a Khagnati swordsmith. Behind him: SecNet sweeping inward like a tightening algorithm looking for a result or payday.

Ghost rolled one of Trix's homemade smoke canisters; spinning behind him, miracle of all miracles, the thing didn't misfire. It burst upward in a neon chemical bloom, swallowing the world behind in glitch-pink smog.

He sprinted for the door...
...straight into an elbow.

Darth Keres

 

[Darth Keres]

​

[]

​

Location: Neo Echelon
Objective: Retrieve Stolen Item
Tag: GhostKey

In the smoke-choked room, where flaking murals wept from the walls and broken glass twisted like petrified jagged teeth in the windows, Darth Keres glided with funereal composure, her ghostly lightsaber singing openly admist the gloom, its glow casting her shadow vast and distorted upon the walls.

The Artisan gangster lunged through the chaos, vibrosword shrieking in brutal defiance as it met her blade. Sparks burst outward in diseased constellations, their weapons locked in a bond while gunfire howled around them like a gale filled with screaming spirits.

Then the air itself seemed to bend.

The Force coiled at Darth Keres' will, unseen fingers tightening around her foe as his movements faltered, as though shackled by invisible chains. With a sharp, merciless gesture she tore him off balance, drawing him helplessly into the white translucent arc of her blade. The light cleaved through the smoke, and his cry fractured into silence as he crumpled, his vibrosword clattering away into shadow.

Across the gloom-laden room, Darth Keres became suddenly aware of two SecNet paramilitary men advancing upon the boy and the case. Their armored silhouettes cut through the half-light with mechanical intent, rifles low but ready, as if they were the extensions of some unseen, iron will. Then the world inhaled, and exhaled darkness.

A smoke canister burst open its muffled, blasphemous cough, and a filthy bloom of pink swallowed the room whole. The air curdled into choking veils that wrapped around furnishings and throats alike, devouring forms, blotting out faces, unmaking certainty.

Within the churning veil of smoke, Darth Keres closed her eyes, and the world bowed inward at her silent command. Through the dark currents of the Force she reached for her two Silencers, their presences glimmering like distant, obedient stars amid an abyss, and impressed upon them a single, inexorable will: that the SecNet shuttle be unmade and that they return to the sanctuary of her ship. The order carried no voice, no syllable; only cold, absolute certainty, a thought sharpened to a blade and cast across the void.

She opened her eyes and stepped forward into the blighted cloud, her translucent blade igniting a path through the choking pink. The two SecNet paramilitary men loomed from the murk, half-blind, coughing, their forms wavering like phantoms at the edge of dissolution. They staggered toward her in desperate confusion, but she walked with funeral calm, each footfall the silence before a bell's toll.

The white light surged, a merciless line cleaving through the haze, and their struggles were swallowed by the dark and the smoke.

In the dim threshold beyond the room and fleeing smoke, Darth Keres glimpsed the boy, a fleeting figure cutting through the doorway, the battered case clutched to his side like a relic torn from a grave. One breath he was there; the next, he was consumed by shadow, as though the passage had swallowed him whole.

A resonant clang shuddered through the walls. SecNet's protocols awoke with mechanical fervor, and the building began to seal itself in stages of cold, pitiless precision. Doors slammed shut, one after another, their locks biting home like iron teeth, severing corridors and strangling escape.

Darth Keres stood alone in the suffocating room as the final barrier sealed, the air heavy with ion and disbelief, the boy and the case now entombed somewhere else beyond the crowd of walls and steel....

​

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Melee Weapons​
  • XIII​
• Armor​
  • Robe​
• Accessories​
  • k​
• Ship​
  • Taciturnitas​
• Personal Guards​
  • Silencers​