Private Masked Greetings.

[The Lady of Deceit]

"The lie must be elegant. The silence must be total."
DEVILMAN


The Lady had not expected company.

Not here. Not in this hour.

The jungle canopy of Rakata Prime shivered beneath the weight of midnight clouds, where the moons cast long, broken shafts of silver through the foliage. Far below, buried in the fetid earth and obsidian rock, the Atramentum's fortress coiled like a serpent in slumber. Hidden from satellites, shielded by ancient technology and dark sorcery alike, it was not meant to be found—let alone breached. And yet, the alarm had come.

Perimeter breach. Silence within three seconds. No trace of attacker.

The transmission had been delivered by Atramentum's inner core, its mechanical voice tight with something almost akin to uncertainty. That alone was enough to stir the Lady of Deceit from her sanctum.

Within the fortress, shadows lengthened at her approach, as if eager to conceal her. She moved without sound, cloaked in a flowing garment of black and violet, the fabric clinging to her as though spun from the night itself. Each footfall was deliberate, measured, predatory. Her mask, a smooth, faceless thing of dark alloy and mirrored lacquer, reflected the dim emergency lighting, casting distorted echoes of the world around her.

She took position along a corridor veined with soft crimson light, a blind curve just ahead—a bottleneck by design, meant to trap and mislead. Her mind, sharp and venomous, unraveled possibilities with predatory clarity. Whoever this intruder was, they had disabled an entire defense grid in mere seconds. Not stumbled into her lair. Chosen to. That alone narrowed the list of suspects, and not one of them inspired anything as dull as fear. She relished the hunt.

Her fingers flexed slightly, the air thick with dark-side energy coiling like smoke around her form. Power vibrated through her like a taut string, her body perfectly still yet brimming with coiled potential. She didn't need to pace. Didn't need to speak. This wasn't a confrontation—it was a performance. One the intruder didn't know they'd already been cast in.

Let them think the way was clear. Let them step through the last threshold, believing they had eluded detection. Let them be bold.

For the Lady of Deceit was already waiting.

​

 

[DEVILMAN]

Rakata Prime – Atramentum – Corridor
Objective: Infiltration
NPC(s): Sage
Vehicles: Devilmobile, Devilwing​

The alarm signaling the entire compound before becoming silent had been by design. Enough for the sensors to detect a perimeter breach before he shut it down. Cameras were shutting down one by one as the Fiend glided from shadow to shadow within the compound. Lights slowly dimming and flickering before dying out completely. Men disappeared into the void as reinforcements scoured the darkness. Each and every one removed from the board by the lone Living Nightmare. All disappearing without a trace of what took them out. Nothing but blood and claw marks left behind.

The Proto-Predator sought to choke the stronghold with fear. The alarm had simply been set off to force the soldiers to move and shift their attention where the Demon wanted their attention to be focused. So it could steal each of them away into the shadows with practiced. No one knew what it was. Why it could not be stopped. Why blaster fire and weapons of all sorts had been useless.

All for the Walking Shadow to continue stalking down the hallways unseen and unknown. An enemy, a predator, that could not be harmed—that could not be stopped. This proper and primordial application of induced panic had allowed the Black Ace to deduce and locate the Atramentum in the first place amongst the dense foliage of Rakata Prime. Fear, retribution, superstition.

Vengeance.

It could not and would not be stopped by anything as meager as loyalty, training, or doctrine. No superior firepower or army would hinder it. The Detective's careful study of the weaknesses of the defense grid and each individual soul ensured its advance as it picked them apart one by one. Cloaking entire teams in shadow to never be found again and choking them off from one another, the Living Nightmare left no trail that it or anyone else had been there.

Except for the blood and bodies left in the wake. And not all the bodies had been found.

The Demon's warpath lead him to a bottleneck hallway. The Black Ace knew this was a trap. It could sense what laid ahead. Sonar waves cascaded over the corridor before feeding back into the Fiend's own sight. Slowly, the shadow of the Fiend cast itself over the red glow of the hallway as it slowly approached closer and closer. If the Lady of Deceit made her move, her attack would cast itself through thin air and shadow, catching nothing.

No longer was there a shadow cast on the wall.

Only one of her soldiers, mask cracked in half, hyperventilating before glancing up towards the corner of the ceiling in fear. The soft red light flickered once more before snapping off, plunging the entire corridor into darkness.

The light of a singular demonic symbol and piercing eyes cut through the darkness now before descending upon the Lady of Deceit. Its claws swiped at her belt, intent on severing her tools from her person, before pinning her against the wall with its supernatural strength. One limb would be enough to hold still both of hers.

Its free limb had its claws sink into her mask, cracking and damaging the surface. It was different from the others the Walking Shadow had encountered. If the claws dug deeper, sooner or later, the Black Ace could tear the mask off or even reach her face underneath before tearing both off in the process.

For now, the threat of further violence hung in the air.

"Who are you?" the Fiend interrogated, the dark timber of its command echoing off the corridor walls, "Talk."

The Lady of Deceit had been deceived. With one swift move, the Living Nightmare had the Lady of Deceit in his grasp. And if she tried pushing him away with a practiced application of her biofield, she would find the Fiend immune to her tricks.

The Force would not save her here. It held no power over the Demon. It was beyond such powers as its hollow gaze fueled by a calculating rage tore into her vision from within the darkness. The cracks in her mask grew as he pierced his claws further.

"Before I tear you apart."

Direct: The Lady of Deceit || Indirect: N/A​

 

[The Lady of Deceit]

"The lie must be elegant. The silence must be total."
DEVILMAN


She did not scream.

She did not gasp.

She did not speak.

Where another might have broken into breathless pleas or sharp-edged threats, the Lady of Deceit gave nothing—offered nothing. No flicker of fear rippled through her form as the demon's talons pierced her mask, sending delicate fractures spidering across its gleaming surface. The sound was sharp in the voided corridor, glass and alloy whispering of imminent destruction. But still—silence.

Even pinned, immobilized, her poise did not falter. The air grew colder around them. Not from fear, but from control. A silence that wasn't passive, but palpable. Calculating. The kind of silence that made hearts falter and pulses stutter. She watched him—not with the eyes beneath the mask, but with the mind behind it. And in that quiet, heavy and unyielding, it was she who stared through the Fiend, as though measuring the depths of its hate, its hunger, its vengeance—and cataloguing it for later use.

The Force did not swirl around her. No lightning burst from her palms. No shields formed to protect her. There was no desperate scrabbling for power, no reach toward salvation. Because the Lady of Deceit did not beg the Force to act.

She made it wait.

She allowed it to be silent, as she was silent now, commanding with inaction. Daring with stillness.

The blood of her soldiers was still wet in the demon's wake. Their screams, their failings, their foolish devotion—all meaningless in the grand game. And now she was in its grasp. But even as those claws dug deeper, she did not move. Did not answer. Did not so much as tremble.

Because silence… is power.

And it wrapped around her like armor more complete than the shattered mask. Her stillness was not surrender—it was promise.

The demon's breath seethed in the dark.

She tilted her head, ever so slightly, the sharpest mockery of curiosity. Not submission. Not defiance.

But something worse.

Amusement.

Let him threaten. Let him rage. Let him believe himself the hunter.

The Lady of Deceit had already made her first move.

And it was not with words.

​

 

[DEVILMAN]

Rakata Prime – Atramentum – Corridor
Objective: Infiltration & Interrogation
NPC(s): Sage
Vehicles: Devilmobile, Devilwing​

Something was off. An instinctual awareness honed by years of training indicated the situation here was different than what he had previously encountered. No vocal nor physical indications of fear or a reaction. Not even the breathing was off. The sensors within the palms and fingers of his clawed glove detected vitals indicating a rational calm, a steady calm. No adrenaline, no spikes in heartrate or breathing. The tilt of her head to the side—a micro-expression the Proto-Predator studied behind cold lenses—indicated a subdued (yet perhaps amused) curiosity. She appeared to be analyzing him while her silence bought her the time necessary. A few seconds.

And seconds was all anyone needed to develop a counter offensive.

Enough time to either set up a trap or signal his position within the base to the rest of the militia forces while he interrogated her. No matter the case, the shift in the atmosphere meant the Living Nightmare needed to end this confrontation now. If she would not falter and give him the information he sought, then the Detective could not afford to spare the time to interrogate her further when the rest of facility needed to be shut down and its personnel neutralized.

But it would return for her once it had completed the mission.

However, there was an alternative method to gain a certain measure of information before the Fiend repositioned itself within the base to throw off any potential pursuers or enclosing traps. The Fiend's clawed hand sought to rip the mask off the woman's face, tearing with such inhuman force. If no complications arose, her face would be revealed and therefore catalogued within its vantablack suit's optical sensors before the information was processed through a facial recognition program. Even an exposed eye would be enough to collect her identity. Assuming the female agent before the Walking Shadow had a registered identity to begin with.

Before planning to follow up with a surgical blow to the side of the temple to render the agent unconscious.

Direct: The Lady of Deceit || Indirect: N/A​

 

[The Lady of Deceit]

"The lie must be elegant. The silence must be total."
DEVILMAN


The moment the Fiend's claws tore downward with that monstrous, inexorable force, the Lady of Deceit moved.

Not with panic. Not with the desperate writhing of prey.

But with the sure, precise motion of a serpent finally striking.

The tension in her body, so carefully contained beneath the shroud of silence and stillness, exploded outward—not chaotically, but with ruthless calculation. As his claws bit into the edges of her mask, she shifted just enough, rotating her body along the axis of the pinned limb, letting the momentum of his own strength overcommit. The mask resisted, forged from alchemized alloys and woven with sorcerous threads, but it was not durability she relied upon. It was timing.

The second his force peaked—when the claws should have rended flesh and steel alike—she broke the pin with a precise application of kinetic leverage. A single, sharp step forward, collapsing the space between them, not retreating but invading.

Her free hand, fingers gloved in whisper-thin phrik mesh, shot up in a ruthless, surgical strike—not at his mask or chest, but directly for the nerve clusters just beneath the Fiend's extended arm, where muscle and technology fused. A paralytic strike. Temporary, calculated not to kill, but to seize the limb for a heartbeat's time. Enough.

In that instant, she flowed.

One moment a figure pinned against the wall, the next a twisting wraith, exploiting every fraction of biomechanical overextension his own assault had given her. She didn't waste the advantage with a crude counterattack. She didn't roar or lash out.

She simply moved—into the next shadow, into the next kill-box she had already prepared, the intricate traps laid into the very geometry of the hallways themselves.

And not a single word crossed her lips.

As the shadows swallowed her shape again, the cracked fragments of her mask caught the faintest glimmer of the dim, dying emergency lights—before vanishing utterly into the dark.

She had not fled.

She had repositioned.

It had never been about winning this moment—it had been about surviving the exchange to win the war.

And now the game had truly begun.

​

 

[DEVILMAN]

Rakata Prime – Atramentum – Corridor
Objective: Infiltration & Neutralization
NPC(s): Sage
Vehicles: Devilmobile, Devilwing​

His captured target certain had far more training and ability than the previous combatants he faced. His self-control over the suit's capabilities to crush the wrists in his grasp was utilized against him in this moment as his opponent slipped free from his grasp and sought a paralytic strike towards the underside of his arm. A tactic that may have worked on the more conventional enemies the base may have encountered before. Here, her attack's objective had become far more muted as the fibers and gels between the plating absorbed the impact, hardening upon the kinetic impact.

This confirms it. She is different than the rest.

How useful or troubling his female opponent could become would prove to be another matter entirely.

Adjusting his stance and instead facing his back now towards the wall, the Fiend's gaze shifted towards the movements of the opponent slipping away before slowly rotating his arm. It would be better to fake any kind of injury than behave he was invincible. Underestimation is a useful tool to create the downfall of an enemy. Meanwhile, his visor currently scanned the area in her current direction and vicinity before losing her entirely for the moment. Adjusting his visual equipment, the Detective suspected his opponent had either slipped behind cover in the darkness or perhaps utilized any measure of trapdoor or escape exits hidden away.

However, the Demon could not remove the thought that supernatural abilities may have been at work here. If a Force User capable of disappearing in shadows or teleporting within them was his opponent, it meant he would need to exercise special care. However, his current working theory remained that the base had its own labyrinth of spaces that he would eventually become privy to understanding and noticing.

It would only be a matter of time.

Shifting his sensors towards an overlayed HUD showing him a composited view of the entire corridor and beyond as his sonar and motion sensors stretched beyond his visual sensors, the Black Ace opted for a singular tactic, for the moment at least. Instead of disappearing once more, the Proto-Predator stalked forward through the hallway. His body tensed and bent enough to move quickly, if necessary.

But otherwise, his posture had softened and calculated. Arms bent yet remained at his sides as he took a simple walk forward.

He could disappear once more, if necessary. For now, he stepped further into the darkness without fear. Seeking to track down his opponent and explore more of the facility with a practiced patience, the Walking Shadow's attention shifted between any surveillance devices, new chambers or corridors, or any sign of an attack or hidden compartments for his new adversary to strike from.

There was no fear in his movements. It was simply a biological function that made him move faster and become more alert despite hi slowed pace. His composure complete and steady, prepared for any onslaught.

He would tear the secrets from this place. How long the Lady of Deceit chose to delay the inevitable was up to her and her troops.

Direct: The Lady of Deceit | N/A || Indirect: N/A | N/A​

 

[The Lady of Deceit]

"The lie must be elegant. The silence must be total."
DEVILMAN


From the void, silence lingered like a held breath.

The faint flicker of overhead lighting spasmed once—then again—before stabilizing into a rhythm. Four steps. Another flicker. Four more. Another pulse. It was not chaos, but choreography. A metronome set to his movements. Not random… but watched.

Then, the voice came.

Not from the end of the hallway, nor the walls—not from anywhere. It emerged from the very air, a layered distortion that slithered along the edges of hearing. Feminine, yes—but not soft. Cold and intimate, laced with the texture of static and secrets. As though it had passed through countless mouths before reaching his ears.

"How exquisitely blunt you are," it began, like silk drawn over sharpened glass. "Blood before identity. Carnage before comprehension. I wonder… do you dream of what you're hunting—or do you simply enjoy the chase?"

There was a hum, low and resonant, beneath the sound. Like something waking from beneath the walls, a deep vibration that pulsed once through the floor, then vanished. All sensors would detect it. None would explain it.

"You believe you've mapped the terrain. Counted the walls. Charted your clean little invasion through straight corridors and field reports. But this stronghold… is not a structure. It is a design. A system of lies and thresholds and breathing corridors. You are not in the fortress. You are inside me."

The lights above fluttered, then dimmed—not all at once, but in a slow, deliberate cascade. Red emergency strips gave one final protest of flickering light before snuffing out entirely, their glow devoured by something far deeper than shadow.

This was no mere darkness.

It was unnatural. Total.

A suppression.

Not an absence of light, but the refusal of light. Night vision failed. Thermal imaging froze. LIDAR returned nothing. The air became a smooth, black sheath, swallowing all visible form and distance. It was a blank slate that defied technology. Vision was dead here.

Unless…

…you could see through the Force.

There, perhaps, a shape might stir. There, perhaps, presence itself might become the only illumination.

The voice resumed—quieter now, as though just behind his shoulder. No directional origin. Only proximity felt through nerves rather than sound.

"I watched you tear through them. One by one. They were nothing to you. Obedient flesh. Programmed loyalty. You peeled them open like fruit."

The smile behind the voice was audible. Not mocking, but intrigued. Appraising.

"But I am not them."

No raised tone. No shout. Just that same intimate stillness, a whisper that didn't need volume to command the air.

"So let's change the terms."

Something shifted in the atmosphere.

No movement. No wind.

But the texture of the space changed—became thicker. Not heavier, not crushing. Aware. The corridor itself now felt intentional, like a throat closing around a breath. Walls that remembered footsteps. Shadows that remembered names.

Then came the final words. A murmur. Velvet. Close.

"You came to hunt. But now… you're on my table."

And then—nothing.

Just blackness.

Just silence.

​