First Reply Oops, I broke it again

[Scherezade deWinter]

Wearing: Armatura | The Forgemaster's Ring | Ring of Stasis | The Sofitor
Wielding: 8 Nozhi Blades | 2 Whimsy Knifes | 2 Nastirci Combat Knives | Fire and Smoke | Combat Gauntlets | Tessen | 2 TOTT-001 Arc Light Blaster | 2 Dissuader KD-30 Pistols with Glitter Bullets

---

The foundry hummed like a living thing. Conveyor belts made noise. Heat rolled through the air, thick with the scent of metal and oil. Scherezade laid Copero's Wail and Clarion on the worktable in front of her. The former was a sword once proud, once bloodied, once hers. What had for a short moment been one of the happiest moments in her life upon receiving it had, with time, turned into something else entirely.

She had been young and foolish when she'd received it, thinking loyalty would save her butt. The girl she had been there didn't exist anymore. Hadn't for a very long time. But now seemed like the right moment to release the last of the tangible memories, and leave the rest where they belonged, inside her.

Clarion was along for the ride. A nice sword, one of the first she had ever requested from another, but its long blade wasn't suited to her preferred two-handed, short-blade style. Why not let it go too?

Scherezade picked up the cutter, its plasma line reflecting in her glowing green eyes. Sparks hissed as she pressed it against the first blade's spine. The metal screamed. When it split, the sound was sharp enough to make the lights stutter. One clean break. Then another.

When she was done, eight pieces lay scattered in front of her. She touched one with her gloved finger. It was still hot. There. The weapon, for all intents and purposes, was gone. She already had ideas and plans on what to do with the materials remaining, though these, she felt were perfectly okay to do in one of her Whimsy HQ's. To bet truthful, she could've done the breaking at them as well, but doing it away from there felt more right to her.

A tech-droid rolled forward, extending a tray. Scherezade dropped the fragments in, the clangs echoing in the room. "Melt them down," she ordered, "but not all together. Different batches."

The droid beeped compliance.

As she turned to leave, the lights in the foundry suddenly went off. The Sithling blinked, confusion easy to read upon her face. When they came back on, the droid was no longer holding four pieces, but only one.

"What the krak?!"

Scherezade's face snapped to the rusty walkway above them. There! Movement! Her hand grabbed the last fragment from the droid, no longer trusting it to keep safe, and jumped dozens of feet into the air, ready to tackle her enemy and tear them limb from limb.

 

[Jak Meridian]

Luck was a fickle thing. Some people had it, their marks left on galactic history in more ways than one- in ways that left them immortal though they themselves were long gone. Gambling with life seems so grim when looked at face value, though there were those like Jak who saw the game for what it was.

The constant shifts of alliances and rivalries. Wars ending only to act as a catalyst for the next ten to follow. The only constant besides death was luck.

His convictions regarding such a matter is what drove Jak down the path he had been on since a young child discovering his Force abilities: personal freedom. It was easy, then, for most to view his actions as contradictory. After all there were plenty of times where he did something noble, even heroic. Only it appeared noble. Appeared heroic.

In reality every choice he made, every path he took, and every decision he weighed all hinged on his own freedom. It was merely luck that anyone who crossed his path wasn't immediately thrown to the wolves. Yet just as quick as he was to help he could just as easily commit an act that all but ensured the death of innocent, or a terrible fate coming to fruition. As long as he was benefiting or moving forward.

It was especially odd when one considered his own personal wealth. He wasn't the super rich but he had a sizable fortune through his Nabooian nobility. So why would he take a job to steal a weapon?

One of the greatest mysterious in this galaxy was understanding why Jak did what he did, how it relates to his quest for freedom, but regardless of understanding here he was.

It took hours of planning. He didn't know exactly why this weapon was wanted or who currently possessed it. All he knew was the buyer was willing to pay extra for discretion. Standing on the walkways above the massive foundry, Jak kneeled and made his way above his target.

Below he could see the fragments and someone working on them, though their face remained hard to place from his position. Even with his new mask, which he had crafted for himself recently, and the optics they contained couldn't get a clear image of the worker's face.

Regardless, it was now or never. Breathing in the Sith closed his eyes and allowed his senses to take hold.

Anger. Hate. Pain.

Opening his eyes he threw his arms forward and sent a blast of Force energy through the ceiling of the foundry. The disruption had worked: for a brief moment the lights had gone completely dark. Without wasting a moment he quickly threw his hands forward, the fragments launched through the black space and into his chest.

A split second later the lights returned he suddenly felt a familiar presence. He was surprised he hadn't detected her previously, and would likely give himself a talk about it later, but the worker of the weapon was one he knew: one Scherezade deWinter .

Caught off his guard, he found himself slammed against the ground with her standing above him. Without hesitation he threw his hands forward to Force push her just enough to give space between them.

Standing he smirked beneath his mask. "Well I certainly wasn't expecting to run into you." Though they met once before, that was before Jak had created his mask and adopted a completely new alias for his Sith activities. He debated revealing the truth, but opted to instead leave his mind open just enough for her to discover it on her own.

"I'm the Crown Killer," he decided to introduce himself under his new guise, the mask scrambling his voice into a tone similar to a protocol droid.

He stood ready, to fight, flee, or both. But luck rules Jak, and he wouldn't forgive himself is he didn't entertain the mere lucky fact that the person he was hired to steal from just so happens to he someone he recently encountered before.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She was mid-air when she caught the scent. The world seemed to fold inward for a heartbeat, stinking of metal, heat, smoke, and blood. That blood. Scherezade didn't think, she moved. By the time thought caught up, she was already standing atop Jak Meridian , boots planted on either side of his ribs. He probably hadn't even realized who he'd just royally pissed off before her weight came down.

Then his push hit, flinging her backwards, boots screeching against metal as she skidded to a stop. The air around her vibrated. Anger, yes, but threaded with something else, a delicious and familiar chaos that coiled through her veins when the world tilted sideways and everything burned brighter for it.

The mask caught her eye. That ridiculous mask. It was the second one she'd encountered in a very short time, and while it wasn't unreasonably to expect a new fad such as this among the Sith, it was still twice more than she had expected in a short amount of time. A bark of laughter escaped her, far too sharp to be friendly.

"Never heard of you, Jak," she mocked, tone clipped, the sing-song lilt gone cold. Her fingers twitched, and the air around them seemed to crackle while she decided whether or not to ignite it, "how stupid do you have to be to steal something from me?"

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

When Jak mentioned he made that silly mask himself in order to maintain a less Sith-like public image, Scherezade wrinkled her nose before looking seriously confused. She didn't quite understand what Sith-like public image meant. She'd been as public about her Sithiness as one could be since she'd come out of the pebble, and hadn't ever found herself in a situation where she'd want to try to present herself as something else. Maybe that was part of why she was such a bad actress.

Her eyes followed him to the fragments he held in his belt. It wouldn't be the first time she'd un-belted a man before, though this time it was most definitely less about pleasure and more about business. Plus, she was more or less ready to gut him from groin to nostrils if he didn't give them back.

"That," she corrected him, "is not a weapon. It's parts of what used to be two weapons, one of which was made by specifications I demanded, and the other a gift for annihilating a planet."

So no one else had ever held them. She didn't know anyone had even cared enough to learn about them. She wielded so many blades, and those two didn't quite stick out other than in their sheer size.

But hold a minute.

"Are you saying you took on a contract and never even bothered to check who the target is? No intel? Background check? Nothing?" she asked, the surprise all too evident in her voice, "are you new at this or something?"

Scherezade took a few steps, closing the distance between them.

"I can play along," she said, voice low, "on one condition. I want some of your blood as collateral. You complete this mission to my satisfaction, you get the blood back. You don't, and you suffer."

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

Of course blood was not a light ask. Why would she have demanded it if it were? But there was no time to discuss the finer points of it, as Jak was so obviously not into even negotiating, and instead had sent a Force Push her way. It wasn't a strong one, and Scherezade braced herself against it. The push did force her back some, but she was still standing through and after it, even if a foot or two further away now.

Before she could react, he was up and gone towards the ceiling. Of course she leaped after him, mind turning off to considerations that might have affected how the rest of the night turned out. For now, Jak had turned a friend into an enemy, and Scherezade was not one quick to forgive it.

None of her weapons came out as she chased him. No. Jak had instead invited something else instead, something she was pretty sure he didn't know about since he hadn't bothered to research his target, and would probably not have come across it even if he had.

She was a Blood Hound. Honed in blood, controller of blood, able to read and affect the blood. And as the two of them moved, he away from her, and her after him, she let the Force seek forth. If he didn't find a way to block her, she would have the control over the blood that ran through his veins in short order. She couldn't use it to make him move the way she wanted to, but she could make him regret his life's choices. And right in that moment? That was the whole point. She would make him bleed, suffer, and give her the fragments of her swords back.

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

The Sithling burst into laughter when he tried to make her feel the pain she was inflicting on him. It was an old trick, one of the first things that any Sith worth their training learned when they began to train in earnest. But Scherezade didn't mind the boiling within her. She had spent her first year of life in an eternal summer, making her threshold for heat, both inside and out, slightly higher than most.

But more importantly, she knew several different methods on how to stop it. She wasn't a Sith Sorceress like her twin sister. She wasn't a great Jedi who learned all the available mind tricks like her best friend. She wasn't even a generalist like a recent friend she made, the Dark Lord of the Sith. She didn't have to. She was Scherezade.

The next moment, any onlookers would no longer be able to spot Scherezade. The woman was just… Gone.

Because the way to break it, was to move into an adjacent dimension. Well, not really, but thinking about it in that way had helped her gain control over shadow jumping all those years ago. Shadows connected to each other, though only few knew how to traverse between them. Scherezade was one of those people.

Inside the complete darkness, Jak's reach to her was broken. Would he be aware of it? She didn't know. The downside was that her attack on his blood had been broken as well. But that wasn't a problem.

For a breathless instant, the world held its balance. Light, shadow, and sound, were all suspended. Then the air shivered. The ground beneath Jak's boots went cold. And then the darkness in front of him bent inward, folding on itself like a wound refusing to close. It pulsed once and split open with a deadly silence.

Out stepped Scherezade.

She didn't so much emerge as she arrived, the shadow sloughing off her fram. The edges of her form gleamed where the light dared to touch her and the slow curl of a smile that didn't belong to the sane or the merciful.

Her glowing green eyes caught the flash of distant fire and threw it back, brighter, crueler. The shadows recoiled from her skin, unwilling to cling too long. For one terrible heartbeat she seemed larger than the space that contained her, as though the darkness itself was a door and she was its keeper. And then, before she could give Jak the time to finish drawing a breath, she moved.

The fingers of her left hand darthed forth to the pressure point at his throat. Her right hand, wielding an unignited saber, was coming too close, too fast.

The shadows sealed shut behind her with a sound like thunder swallowed.

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

It took her a moment to understand why he emphasized her last name so hard. Of course. She hadn't told him what it was when they'd met on that dead station not too long ago. But if it was a move meant to impress her, it was sadly misplaced. Scherezade had been branded as a turncoat, a terrorist, and a bunch of other things. To the galaxy, that had happened four decades ago. To her, only one. But still, records didn't delete themselves, anyone with a mind for it could have discovered that with ease.

So it was Mando mercs on her tail? The Sithling raised an eyebrow. Granted, her knowledge of their culture wasn't great, but she was pretty certain they tended to fight lose their battles on their own. Though, Jak was truthful. If they had come for her themselves, they wouldn't have survived. And the fragments… Not what he was here for. That was the important bit.

He was going to get one final chance from her.

Scherezade extended a free hand forward, palm up. "Give me what you stole" she said, voice low, "and you get to walk away, Jak." If his little Mandalorians were sitting where he'd motioned for, they could come out of their bigger tuna can and try to fight her herself. That was the way, or something equally dumb like that.

If he wasn't, of course… She would have to make him truly regret it. But she believed that was an understanding the two of them already had, and that she didn't need to explain it to him like a child.

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

Jak was talking, but none of it was of interest to Scherezade. Her focus was on his leg. She had a feeling that she knew what was coming, and that it would be even more of a reason to make her want to keep him very much alive and in quite a lot of suffering. And there it was, him leaving her to those who had jumped out of the explosion above them.

Scherezade rolled her eyes.

The Force swarmed up her spine in a familiar electric rush. Her twin blades were in her hands a heartbeat later, green and green hissing alive, casting wild reflections across the shattered walls. The first volley came instantly, as four wrist-rockets, four repulsor-boosted leaps, and eight rifles on burst fire.

She moved.

Blaster bolts shot through the air behind her as she rolled under the rockets, sabers flashing in a tight cross that carved two of them out of the sky. Shrapnel clanged against her armour and she came up from the roll on the balls of her feet, laughter bubbling out of her as though she'd forgotten she was supposed to be seething at Jak in that moment.

"HI!"

The closest Mandalorian didn't waste time responding and fired a grappling line straight at her chest. She angled her green blade down, catching the line, letting it wrap around the hilt twice, and then yanked. Hard. The jetpack warrior lurched forward, momentum breaking his balance, and she spun into him, driving her knee into the soft joint just above his greave. Something snapped. His shout turned to static.

She buried a dagger between two plates in his neck before he hit the floor.

Seven left.

Jetpacks roared overhead, and three of them opened up with flamethrowers from different angles, turning the area into a churning inferno of superheated air. Scherezade didn't even think about retreating. She jumped straight through, the bubble of the Force shimmering around her with the prettiness of a gigantic soap bubble that somehow made flames peel away from it.

She landed on one of the flamethrower-wielders, boots slamming into his visor. The T-visor cracked like brittle glass, and she rode him to the ground. Before the others could adjust their aim, she shoved her green saber up through his chin and into his skull. The fire gutters sputtered out as his body went limp.

Two down. Six left. She wasn't getting a break.

A beskad came for her head, the old-school Mandalorian answer to everything. Ugh. She caught the blade on the guard of her saber, twisted, and kicked backward into the attacker behind her. Another gauntlet tried to clamp around her throat. A fist hammered her ribs. Someone fired a shock dart. It hit her pauldron and skittered off harmlessly, thank the Force. Now seemed a bad time to be shocked as any.

And Scherezade howled with laughter, spinning in a tight cyclone of blades. Her sabers carved burning arcs, forcing the closest three to fall back. She slipped a throwing knife from her bracer and sent it sailing into the knee joint of one who'd tried circling her flank. The knife sank deep; that Mandalorian buckled but stayed in the fight, snarling something in Mando'a.

They were good. They were coordinated. They were hunting her the way they hunted Sith. She hated them.

But at the same time, she was Scherezade deWinter. She was chaos in humanoid form, and she didn't need coordination. She needed a heartbeat, an opening, a single stupid moment of someone thinking they had her pinned.

The opening came when two of them tried to grab her arms in unison.

Scherezade shut off both sabers.

Weight shifted. Balance collapsed. In the dark of their helmets, shock bloomed.

She head-butted the one on her left hard enough to dent his visor and flipped backward, boot slamming into the stomach of the other. Sabers re-ignited mid-spin, and she used the fall to slash through the jetpack of a third diving at her, sending him spiralling into a wall.

Her landing was messy, uneven, but she pushed off the ground with her hands, kicked herself upright, and flashed the Mandalorians a feral smile.

"Okay," she panted, eyes bright and alive. "NOW we're having fun."

Six were still alive in okay for functioning, forming a wide arc. Their HUDs were synced now, breathing as one machine. They'd learned. They were adjusting. They were going to make her fight for every inch.

And Scherezade was absolutely delighted.

 

[Jak Meridian]

-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Jak Meridian

---

For a heartbeat she split her focus. Jak was below, doing exactly what she expected. Messy, showy, too pleased with himself. Fine. He was going to regret not taking his chance to run away. She catalogued the placement of the bodies he left and the angle he would need to come back up, then folded her attention back into the fight above. Only a fool ignored the battlefield outside their own reach.

Five Mandalorians remained. They pressed in with renewed determination, their rifles rising in perfect sync. Two of them had already stepped exactly where she wanted them.

Scherezade grinned.

The air around her tightened, thickened, as the pressure of her will sank into their bodies like invisible fingers. Blood answered her. It always did. One Mandalorian faltered first, boots scraping. The second stiffened at the same instant, armor creaking as something inside him pulled the wrong way. Their pulses spiked in her senses.

Scherezade closed her fist.

The sound was quiet, almost polite. A gasp behind a helmet. A sharp inhale. Then their bodies jerked forward as if something inside them had tripped. Blood surged toward her in a single violent rush, ripping free from arteries and veins, bursting through the smallest seams in their pores and armour. Not a fountain, not a spray, just a wet implosion that dropped both warriors to their knees.

They collapsed a moment later. Their armour hit the floor with a cold metallic thud.

Three left.

The third tried to retreat. Smart boy. He boosted backward with his jetpack, hand snapping toward a grenade on his belt, visor locked squarely on her.

Scherezade was already moving.

Her Persuader pistol cleared the holster before he completed the motion. The shot cracked through the air, the glitter round trailing a faint shimmer like a party trick gone very wrong. It hit his visor dead center.

The glitter stuck.

Then it began to eat.

The Mandalorian slapped at his helmet, staggered, and tried to scrape it off. The visor softened, sagged inward, and the surface began to curl like melting plastic. The glitter burrowed through it in fast sparkling streaks. His voice rose in a panicked, muffled shout as the material gave way and the glitter reached what lay beneath.

The visor dissolved. His scream cut sharply as the acid bit into skin. He clawed at his own helmet like he could rip the pain out, stumbling, dropping to both knees. The glitter spread in bright streaks across his face, leaving a smoking, shimmering pattern that carved deeper with each passing second. A moment later he crumpled, the last bit of visor sloughing off his cheek and clattering to the ground.

She'd rarely been so proud of her little invention. Glitter covered acid for the win!

Two Mandalorians remained.

Scherezade flicked the glittery residue from her pistol and smiled at them, bright and eager.

 

[Jak Meridian]

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[Jak Meridian]

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