Phrik and plaque and gingivitis

[Reverance]

Val'hala

Early Morning

Phrik Obtainment Thread

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ejsM0VF-Os​

Tap Tap Tap. Boot against linoleum, the dim and hollow white inflorescence of the lights shined down upon waiting area, room filled with the nervous and the hesitant. Chairs littered the square vicinity, pre-orchestrated tombstones for those of proper appointment, tables stacked with towers of magazines on recent news, hobbies, and the similar notions. “Walter Avius!” The name screamed from an older woman in white, smile painted in enamel and red lipstick as she bore the uniform of her profession, standing before a door that paved path into a hallway of calmness and still serenity, temporary as it may be. The ajar of the door gave hints at the sounds of drills and screams that echoed through the room, sending a shiver down any ones spine that might be forsaken to such future. Gabriel stood and folded the magazine, laying it in the empty chair that rested in his wake. He gave a smile to [member="Matsu Xiangu"] before he approached the candy stripper, gesturing for her to go ahead. He followed, the door swinging on hinge and assisted hydraulics as it closed behind him. One door, two door, three door, four. “Take a seat in the chair and the doctor will be in momentarily…” She spoke as she opened exam room four, waving towards the inclined chair and walking back down the hallway, closing the door behind the large Sith. With a crack of his neck, he propped himself into the chair and quietly inspected the room.

Yellow dome light above, fountain and spray attached to wall, sink and mirror across the way and an orange trash bin against the wall, marked with hazardous symbols. A metal tray sat next to him, covered in scalpels and automatic drills and swabs and little mirrors on metal extenders. The outside wall wasn't a wall so much as a plate of thick glass, giving way to the shine of an orange sun low on the horizon. Knock knock. The doctor strolled in, glasses upon nose and face mask upon neck, prepared to be tied back. A tie with tongues on it ornamented a clean white shirt, tie pin of brass and gold. “So…Walter…I see you haven’t ever been to this facility before.” He approached the inclined Sith Lord with a rolling chair, foot upon pedal and pumped, pushing the reclined Sith up in bounces that rotated back and forth. The doctor grabbed the mirror and slid over to Gabriel. “Open on up, lets see what might be causing the ache…” The doctor felt a prompt yank on the neck as his tie was tightened with a gripped hand, noose around the neck as the bucket is kicked out. “No…I have an ache you can’t fix doctor.”

The Sith Lord pushed the rolling chair hard with a kick as he leaped from the chair, sending the doctor hard into the door. It thumped, already closed, against the threshold before pushing back on the chair. Gabriel found proper footing before removing the paper bib around his neck, not recalling when exactly that appeared. Unclipping it and placing it against the chair, he wiped his hands and approached the doctor with a sort of nonchalance.

“I’ve intercepted manifests that your facility received a certain shipment…of heavy metals, for fillings. Seems ceramic isn't enough for the upper class…” The Sith Lord spoke as he leaned over the doctor. “Now…”

The doctor interrupted. “Yes yes…we got a large shipment of gold bars that were smelted and molded for fillings.”

“Lines were crossed...hose weren't gold. They were phrikite. I want what’s left and I want a list of those who received the fillings. And interrupt me again…”

“We…we can’t do that. Doctor patient confidentiality…” That was the second interruption. It would be the last.

Gabriel tilted his head and smiled. Tapping on his ear bud, he stared down at the doctor, shaking in his cushioned little seat. He sent a verbal message to [member="Matsu Xiangu"]. She would easily be able to find him, his aura a beacon of fire in the darkness of the dentist office. “Seems we have a doctor that doesn't want to violate patient confidentiality. How would you feel about persuading him differently?” His crimson eye traced back to the doctor, a man who would suddenly grasp the gravity of the situation.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Legs crossed, hair up and dragging her sharp features in to relief, she flicked her eyes up from her datapad as she heard Gabriel’s ‘name’ called. She returned the smile though hers was smaller, outwardly a casual flirtation between strangers that would never see each other again. She liked playing a part, perhaps an extension of the ability to live behind someone else’s eyes. She’d been called skin-walker, had named herself after the shapeshifters of Atrisian lore – it felt natural to wear someone else’s outsides, to pretend she was some other woman less inclined to daydream of him wi…perhaps it was best to move on.

She gave it a few minutes, sitting quietly before feigning a slowly dawning impatience, letting her datapad slide closed with a hiss and slipping it in her pocket as she got up.

The woman behind the counter seemed bored, a piece of gum snapping between her teeth with an obnoxious crack that shot down Matsu’s spine. “Excuse me. I had an appointment scheduled for about twenty minutes ago, I’d just like to know if the doctor is busy…” (Oh, she’s good. Just the hint of a polite smile, a disarming smoothness to her tone.) The blonde behind the desk turns her head as if Matsu is pulling her gaze from the eighth wonder of the world and not a mind-numbingly beige appointment interface, snapping her gum again before answering. “What’s your na—”

To anyone watching it might appear as if the secretary had an episode, a brief lapse of movement as she stared at Matsu’s mildly disgusted expression. It was all the Sith Lady needed, a few seconds of images passing in click-hiss transitions, to see what they’d come for was not information trusted to the girl managing the front desk – hardly surprising. She made the girl spit out her gum in the trashbin before she relinquished her hold, watching the blonde blink rapidly and look around in confusion after her momentary blackout. Rude.

She had been considering moving back in to the hallways of the facility, trying to find the dentist’s office based on emotion and sensation, but instead another smile curled on to her face when she heard the low sound of his voice in her ear. She didn’t answer because she didn’t have to – her pleasure at the prospect of persuasion would drift just as his signature did to her. She moved towards the door Gabriel had disappeared behind, letting herself in and stalking down the hall, hunting his aura. “Ma’am, you can’t be – ” Matsu lifted her durasteel arm to direct a wave of her influence, scrambling another dentist’s mind and moving until she got to the door she was looking for.

The room was rank with fear as she entered (and she imagines what Gabriel must have done, the ten seconds it had taken for the doctor to realize what was sitting in the room with him) letting the door hush closed behind her and settling the three of them in silence until she clicked forward on heels almost as sharp as her claws. She didn’t say anything as she joined Gabriel standing over the doctor, reaching for a hand scaler and letting silence unwind the man weighing his chances of escaping the room. Twirling it between delicate fingers she gave him another moment before speaking up. “The list and the leftovers – tell me where they are.” She could just take it – she could feel he had a weak mind, soft like fruit left out too long. But where was the fun in that? “Feth you!”

With a sigh, almost bored, Matsu twirled the scaler hook-up in one hand and pried his mouth open with the other, stabbing the thin hook in to gum, between teeth, wrenching it upwards and rocking it back and forth as she closed her eyes and dove in to his memories. Pain was a mentalist’s best friend, the diversion to distract from her intrusion as she rifled through, passwords and files and locations, every name displayed on the forefront of his mind. What they wanted was hers in just a moment and she released him from her grip, leaving the scaler lodged in his gumline and patting him on the same cheek, eliciting a howl of pain that she cut with her smile. “Good boy.” But she’d dropped him in darker waters, speaking to Gabriel though she didn’t take her eyes from the dentist.

“I’ll get a hard copy from his office,” (and there, the gut-wrench when he realizes what he gave up). “In the meantime…he got some of those high-end fillings for himself. Every bit counts, hmm?” She turned her gaze up to her partner then, her expression predatory as she offered him first bite. “I’ll be ready whenever you’re finished.” She turned on her heel, slinking out of the exam room to the sound of the doctor’s panicked begging.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

She strode into the room with an air of confidence that the Sith Lord had come to expect. It was an aspect of her character that was quite fitting and well deserved, born of blood and bone and sinew. A cruel streak, a tendency for depravity the likes of which tickled his fancy, he merely crossed his arms and watched the spider begin to slowly devour her prey. Wrapped in the web of her powers, the dentist immediately succumbed to the torment and revealed, through weakness of mind, the whereabouts of those who had received the phrik fillings. Gabriel gave a sigh at the brevity of such things. As she turned, displaying obtained knowledge through whispered words and the veil of a smile, she gave nod for him to proceed in the sadistic sort of exposition for which he was often known. And if he wasn't, he should be.

As the door shut behind [member="Matsu Xiangu"], Gabriel gave a smile as his piercing gaze bore down upon the doctor. Through whimpers of pain, he pulled the scaler from mouth and wrapped clenched grip around neck. With the turn of the body, the dentist found himself in the chair he so often looked down upon through the haze of sickly yellow light and sterile instrumentation. "Please don't..."

"Shh..." Gabriel felt the draw of Reverance within, the subtle insanity gripping him like concrete poured into the mold. His index finger found the parted lips of the dentist as he quieted the whimpers at the precipice of wailing. With an extended left hand, Gabriel flipped the switch on the overhead lamp and drew it above his new patient. He motioned for the man to open his mouth, as he ripped the face mask from dentists neck and placed it over his own mouth. A mockery of the profession, he would have laughed looking upon himself from the outside. "When I was a child, my father instilled into me the value of heavy metals...quite literally. Arkania is home to phrikite deposits, yet here I stand...on Val'hala, threatening the likes of you with the promise of pain to come...all for that specific substance. Do you know why that is, why I choose to go out of my way to inflict pain when I could so easily obtain ore from homeland?"

The dentist opened his mouth and shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks in anticipation of the event to come. With a smile hidden behind blue veil, Gabriel inserted the mouth mirror and chuckled. "Because I like it..." His left hand lifted into the air, his eye set upon three full phrik molar inserts, as he gripped the teeth with the force. "Try not to move...or don't. It doesn't really matter to me." With the flash of precise telekinesis, the bloodied phrik teeth were ripped from now empty and gushing gum cavity to be found in open left hand. With a sort of laboratory expertise, Gabriel grabbed gauze and placed it upon wound. It soaked red as he pocketed the teeth and stood from his rolling chair. "I know you haven't use all the phrikite ore for fillings. We will seek out these other...unfortunate souls. But I will send my men to pick up the rest of the deposits. They better be here...or I will come back to relieve you of the rest of your teeth."

He laughed as he pressed the button for the nurse to come and assist. Gabriel passed her as she entered the room, her eyes filled with shock as she viewed the now unconscious doctor. Gabriel picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted and bit into his left palm. He approached Matsu with a sense of glee, as he searched the facility with a wandering eye. Motioning the bottle to her, he spoke as he waited for direction, produced from patient records. "Hand sanitizer?"

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was kind of sad really, the lack of security surrounding the computer in the dentist’s office. Granted it was a dentist’s office and therefore not usually in need of top secret codes to crack, but the least he could’ve done was NOT write his passwords on a sticky note. Honestly, some people. She spent a moment lounging in his chair, feet up on his desk as she contemplated the poster of a sagittal cross-section of a human head, thinking idly that tongues were oddly grotesque when viewed from the side until she heard her datapad ‘ping’ in confirmation of the upload of patient information.

She was giving it a cursory scroll-through – noting that several clients had even had entire crowns of phrik over their natural tooth, an aesthetic choice she couldn’t really understand but then again she was the one with fangs – when a bottle of hand sanitizer invaded her field of view and she looked up. An eyebrow raised, she tilted her face up to look at him and wondered what it said about her that this moment was more unsettling than any of her previous in his company.

“Very thoughtful,” she responded somewhat sarcastically before palming some. She didn’t ask about how things had gone down the hallway with their dentist friend – she didn’t have to where Gabriel was concerned. Lips curling in to a little smile, she nodded her head towards her datapad and the list of names scrolling by. “Looks like we’re going to have a nice day.”

​

__________________________________________​

Val’hala was to Matsu what Coruscant might have been if the planet hadn’t been turned entirely to urban sprawl. Buildings over a thousand stories tall soared overhead, overgrown with creepers and plants performing their natural crawl towards the sun, leaves as large as speeders hanging from buildings and growing larger with their proximity to their food source. To facilitate their growth almost every skyscraper in sight had rings of steel constructed at regular intervals for vines and branches to use as trellises, and each building connected to the other by lengths of metal forming natural bridges overrun with growth. Sun filtered through wherever vegetation didn’t rule, shadows chopping overhead as traffic wove through the maze. Animals of unlikely persuasion seemed at home in their steel jungle – at first Matsu thought she’d just been mistaken when she’d seen a panther skulking along the lower levels of a building outside the dentist’s office until she’d taken a second look. The call of a bird was just as common as the bray of someone honking their horn in air traffic.

Their unlucky targets were spaced throughout the planet and they really had their pick of the litter. The majority of their haul would most likely come from the ore still unused by the delightful doctor but there was no sense in wasting the opportunity for more. Their options extended from their current position in Olympus all the way to the western city of Oriona.

They could see where they day took them.

She’d checked their current position against the nearest addresses and as luck would have it, there was a couple living a few buildings down where they could start. Methods of pedestrian travel seemed frankly…well, pedestrian to Matsu and after all, she was with Gabriel. First impressions of his athleticism often left her wanting a repeat performance – and no, that was not innuendo. Although, that was also true.

“That building,” she said, pointing to a skyscraper three south from the one they currently stood outside of on one of thousands of walkways surrounding every construction. “Level 987.” That left them 34 stories below their target. Child’s play.

It wasn’t so much a race as a feeding off his talent as she leapt down to one of the bars spanning between buildings, sprinting along its length before pushing off with the aid of the force to land on the side of the next skyscraper, her claws digging in to foliage and gripping at vines as she spidered from handhold to handhold. The sound of her arm whirred in her ear as she powered through, holding her position level with where they'd jumped from to keep her bearings with the floor they wanted. When she reached the target building she began her ascent – up, up, up, – climbing higher and higher she must have been nothing more than a small speck in relation to the immensity of the city, the wind at her back and the whining of the gears in her arm driving her to climb faster – faster – faster. She ticked off thirty-four floors, following the identical central hallway of each residential level, bold numbers marking each floor seen easily through glass fronts under the foliage she pushed aside.

Floor 987 came quick and she pulled her saber from her belt, igniting it and cutting a hole large enough to slip through - property damage be damned, hadn't they destroyed half a city? - and dropping down in to the hallway quietly (like a spider, reaching footing after descending from her web). There were two apartments per floor, one to the left and one to the right. Matsu sensed no one to the right, but two to the left which was good - that's where they were headed.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

A smile met with a smile, an innocence about her expression, colored in the gleeful proposition of a day being well spent. With a tilt of his head, he tapped the beacon on his chest, hidden beneath a robe of black. It would call for a dropship, to pick up a package to be used at a future date. A crate full of phrikite ore, with nothing left in it's stead. But beyond the flick of the beacon, the Sith Lord paid little effort towards the prediction of the fate of that box and it's contents. No, he had mind more towards the names upon computer and the teeth they owned that didn't belong. And, according to the woman who so often found company with Gabriel, they were going to have a nice day. Well, the two of them were, the same couldn't be said for those they would soon be visiting.

______________________________​

Ladders, ladders everywhere. Sure, they had taken on the form of buildings and sky scrapers that tug upon clouds like towels caught on snag. But they were merely ladders to those who were willing to climb. And if the two had learned something about one another from their previous escapades, it was in the notion that cities were merely playgrounds to be used a tossed away for the trash heap. Rubble and cement and body parts pushed into the dumpster with a forklift, carried off to the landfill as wounds inflicted and never truly healed, the smell of the rot something that drifted about the air for days to come. They were job creators, these two. Someone had to give that dentist medical attention, someone would have to patch holes that would be created presently, someone would have to tend to the needs of those missing teeth, and someone would have to clean up the streets and destruction with contracts for construction repair. Gabriel and Matsu were clearly just concerned about the economy and looked to improvise creative and synergistic methods of reinvigorating what was seemingly a planet drawn to a slow crawl, economically speaking of course. I mean, they wouldn't just go out of their way to hurt people...just for the fun it...right?

The Sith Lord followed the vanguard, a small woman with a sense of pressing desire, as she moved across the vertical bar that spanned the distance from building to building. Connected lattice structures preserved the natural inclination of vines to climb, runners to leap the distance, and creepers to spread without fail. By his calculation, they were roughly 30 or 35 floors from projected location. He got distracted a bit as she seemingly mounted and climbed up the side of a skyscraper, suddenly jealous of an inanimate object and the attention received from the woman who climbed upon it. Stripping such lustful notions from mind, fruits to plucked when ripe, he smiled and pulled sith dagger from back. Injecting his own force aura into the object, he followed suit behind the speeding woman, clinging to the buildings and flora as dagger struck deep into cement. Wound upon wound, moving like spiders and leaping lizards, clinging to surface only long enough to jump to the next.

As she ignited the glowing rod and stuck the building with her intent, swirling it around in true mixing form, she hopped into the side of the building through hole carved. That's when he realized that they had reached their initial destination. He would have noticed the numbers on the side of the building and the level vocalized by his companion, 987, but he had been distracted by her movements and her ability. Something not too far from the norm. With a toss of his weight and a skid across the floor within the hallway, a dive and roll required to fit through the hole created, his crimson eye surveyed the suddenly enclosed land that offered contrast to the playground outside. And while Matsu might have been attempting to be quiet, Gabriel was all pepped up and ready to go. With sight and force sense tuned to the door on the left, he envisioned and heard the giggling of two upon couch. A kick was all that was needed as his foot met with the door, just where the door knob's tongue extended to the strike plate. As the door bounced inward, Gabriel shifted on his weight and walked into the small apartment, the couple frozen on the couch. The holonet was blaring, they must have been watching some show about an old lab teacher, recently diagnosed with cancer, turning to deathstick production to pay for his treatment.

Gabriel rubbed his chin and approached the couch, scooting the couple over as he sat down. They seemed frightened, which was good, because the Sith Lord was flustered and seemingly a disarray, as he wiped the bangs from his face and tied his hair back. "Ya know, I think I've seen this episode...they steal a...uhh...transport ship right? Use it to start producing their product?" The two had obviously not seen the episode, the look of the impact of the spoiler heavy upon face. Gabriel smiled, mouth agape, as he leaned back against the chair, feigning surprise. "Oh...hmm...you hadn't seen that episode yet. My bad." Tonguing his cheek, he turned towards the two and crossed his right leg over his left knee. "Tell me, have you all been to the dentist recently?"

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She could feel the jittering of his excitement, an infectious sensation, and thinks perhaps this was different because this was just a spot of fun. Of course there would be benefits in the end, but most of their time together thus far had been spent surviving. True, the mercenaries on Annaj hadn’t been a particular threat and in the end they’d escaped their personal version of hell – battered, bruised, and exhausted, but alive – but their lives had been the prize at the end of the day no matter the actual odds of their continued existence.

The only risk to today was that dentist overestimating himself in the false safety gathered from their departure, and that could be easily rectified.

Matsu would describe it something akin to a bubble being burst when Gabriel kicked down the door to the apartment, the easy flow of sensation – comfort, relaxation, affection punctuated by teasing – jarring in to nothing but surprise quickly swallowed by terror as the two Sith entered like invited guests. It was a side of Gabriel she wasn’t familiar with yet, the man that sat down next to the couple with a more wild appearance, almost wired. She still bounced off his energy as always, a buzzing admiration that had her stalking to curl up in another seat and complement him. “Gabriel,” she exclaimed, tone smooth in faux admonishment (like a hand pushing his hair from his face in partnership to her teasing when she came to sit in his lap, something entirely too personal for the situation but wasn't this, what they were about to do, almost the same as what others might consider lead-up?) as if she actually cared. She’d seen that episode. “It was a good one though. I liked the part where they killed their lawyer’s henchman and –” she stopped herself, letting out a semi-exasperated chuckle and rolling her eyes. “I guess I’m no better. Hmm, anyway…”

This was the perfect moment to intrude, when they were both still putting the pieces of the puzzle together and dealing with the shock of what had just befallen them. Wasting no time she snuck in to their heads. The dentist had of course kept records of what each patient had received, which teeth had been filled or covered with crowns – but digging now would make her work even easier in a few minutes. Neither of them had the Force and there were literally no barriers to her search. “She has fillings in the first and second bicuspids, upper left. He…hmm, fancy – two crowns, lateral and central lower incisors and a filling in the first molar upper left.” She made a thoughtful face, tapping a finger against her lips. "You two should really brush more. That’s quite a few holes in your teeth in a short period of time.”

She took hold of the woman’s mind, rebuilding the illusion of the dentist’s office. At first everything would seem routine – the light taste of blood, someone asking questions she couldn’t answer because she had metal instruments in her mouth (and how stupid was that, really?), rinse, back at it – and then suddenly…the hygienist’s face would fall slightly, her work picking up speed. “I think something…oh my god…” she would say after another moment or two of taking stock of the situation, pulling the instruments from the woman’s mouth (covered in blood, why are they COVERED in blood?!) and moving to call for the dentist frantically. (Dissolving…gum disintegrating, exposing the root, pink slop soft when she pressed her tongue against it before her teeth started tumbling out of her mouth, trying to catch them and put them back in, the sharp clack as they hit the floor, enamel and pulp destroyed and irreplaceable, the roof of her mouth turning to mush and slipping from between her lips with the rest of everything, all going help help help help help).

Outside of the illusion Matsu raised her durasteel hand and held it open to catch the teeth she yanked with a precise telekinetic tug from the woman’s mouth, a pop far cleaner than what she’d planted in her mind. She remained placid in the face of her victim’s screaming, tearing at her skin and curling inward in convulsions. The ‘ping’ sound of his wife’s teeth landing in Matsu’s hand must have jarred the man from his fear, turning with a snarl as he lifted from the couch and lunged for the Sith Lady rattling her prize in her palm.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

He merely smiled as Matsu described the information, gleaned thoughtfully from dental records, as the Sith Lord worked ardently to remove what phrik remained in the dentists mouth. She had a knack for details, especially when it would lead to the sort of depravity they looked to instill. Nevertheless, his eye remained fixed as she tapped finger against lips, anxious to see where this little trip would take him next. It was quite exciting. And that's when she did it, gripping into the female with the power that sent shivers down the Sith Lords spine. Bumps upon the skin formed along the neck as he leaned back, watching an artist at work; a work of power that aroused certain emotions beyond the mere infatuation he had for the creativity of her powers.

Truthfully, Gabriel didn't need to use the force or any sort of sensing mechanism to know when Matsu was about to start her work. Or perhaps play is the better term for this specific circumstance, and all the circumstances that preceded this adventure. Was it a wiggle in the brow, a glimmer in the eye, maybe the slightest wrinkle of a smile at the corner of her lips? Unread microexpressions to the laymen who hadn't experienced the sorceress at her best, but all the telltale signs for someone who was looking laid upon deceptively placid smile. And Gabriel was always looking, always watching, his own manner of obsessiveness was representative in the unbroken gaze as her umber expression broke against the woman who had not a clue of what was occurring. And as durasteel hand lifted to catch removed phrik from mouth, crimson gaze turned to the male counterpart and watched as he set purpose against the spidery companion.

A lunge. But it was oh so slow, as the Sith Lord intercepted the man with his own similar maneuver, tossing him clear across the room and into the wall. His body hit with a crack against beige painted duracrete, a soft thud resonated through the room and threatened to vibrate the ornaments atop mantle on the adjacent wall. The Sith Lord scratched the philtrum above his upper lip with an idle right hand as lingering eye glanced over to Matsu. He smiled as he approached the husband and lifted him from the floor, pushing him against the wall. "Apologies about that..." Gabriel straightened out the mans clothes as he patted him free of dust. "Didn't mean to ruffle you up there...it's just that..."

In a snap, Gabriel's right hand jumped out and hit the man square across the jaw. His left hand clutched to the collar to keep him standing. As blood and select teeth spit out from mouth and clacked against floor, he surveyed them from a distance and found them lacking phrik. He cracked his neck and once again, straightened out the now wobbly man, whimpers escaping trembling lips. "You have something we need. Well, we don't really need it...but we want it. You see..." A one two punch echoed from the Sith Lord, a right to the ribs, a left to the jaw. Another punch, another set of teeth. Clack-clink-clink. There it was, two crowns upon teeth and blood. Gabriel leaned back and down, gazing into the mouth breather as he swayed in and out of unconsciousness, chin lifted with left hand for ease of inspection. "There was a mix up somewhere down the road, and where gold was supposed to be used...they used phrik instead. No ones fault really...just a mix up."

A last punch, a clink-clack. The last piece of the puzzle laid splattered upon tile as he reached out with the force, lifting the three pieces to his hand as he flung the unconscious man to the couch. It caught him with it's cushion grip before flipping over from the force of the fling. Gabriel pocketed the phrik pieces and approached Matsu. Brandishing the bottle of hand sanitizer, he squirted the gel into one palm and offered a dab for [member="Matsu Xiangu"]. Face painted in an almost peaceful smile, a man happy with his current predicament.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Her expression did not change even a hint as the man came for her, face screwed in a caricature of anger and panic. She could have stopped him without raising a finger – an enemy’s distraction would always be her greatest ally, the split second they let down their guard in emotion or pain. How easy it would have been to slip in and take away all motor function, watch him drop to the ground immobilized so that she might complete the same type of impromptu extraction she’d so kindly performed on his wife.

But she didn’t have to because he pooled out of her peripheral. (He. Him. Sounds like a curse, like blame, but is so far from it. Fascination. Because if she were a lesser woman she would be afraid – the thought of him would terrify her and what she saw in front of her now would break her. And she would have been lesser, but she would have been smart. He is the man that they fear.)

She shifts her eyes to watch him, her gaze unwavering even when the woman comes to her senses and lets out a wail of pain. Matsu pinched her fingers together – unnecessary, but habitual from her use of magic in which the movement of her delicate fingers was everything – as she stilled the woman with a light brush of her mind, freezing her silent. “Shhhh…” she admonished. She wants silence in this moment as he works, nothing but the sound of his voice as he explains ‘ever-so-politely’ juxtaposed with a spray of clot and ivory that stills her further in her seat. What little of her naturally dark irises remained such gave way to amber, smoke-curls of gold that crowd shrunken pupils in a rush of excitement.

Perhaps it’s obvious as she takes the proffered pump of hand sanitizer that she’s thinking about ways to hurt him, moments to themselves, but it’s gone almost as quickly as it flits across her face.

After a moment she lifts herself from her seat, surveying the painting they’d made in the span of a minute and nodding in appreciation. She’d considered wiping these poor fool’s minds, burning names from memories and blurring faces to leave nothing behind but the pain they’d caused, but in the end it wouldn’t matter. This was material stolen from the Fringe, phrik stolen from the benefactors of the system – this was the natural consequence of overlooking the order of things as they stood.

“Well, we’ll leave you to it then. Sorry about the spoilers.” She righted a vase on a small table against the same wall Gabriel had seen fit to throw Matsu’s attacker in to, presumably dislodged from its rightful place in said altercation – a thoughtful woman.

She took a moment in the hallway to arrange their house calls in the most efficient order and based on who’d gotten the most work. It would take a few hours as long as they took the time to enjoy themselves, giving the dentist enough time to gather the remaining ore he had access to while also getting a few odds and ends to supplement their final supply. “Hmm, let’s visit one of the other cities and then we can come back to check on our friend?” Spoken with all the gravity of attending Hologram Fun World.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Another city, another set of 26 to scavenge, metallic brown and a wash of blood transposed against linoleum. She spoke the words of the plan and it made sense to him, a correspondence of two minds discovering agreement in link-mindedness. He was assuredly along for the ride, the idea of picking through the rubble when sitting upon a pile of it made him smile at the nonsensical methods in which they manufactured their own entertainment. Jumping into the sun to feel the warmth. With a scratch to a scruffy chin, now smelling of sanitized gel, he led her over to a metal door and pressed the switch with an arrow pointing towards the floor. Like an iris of white, the pupil casting doubt upon their descent, the doors slid open to the sound of metal scraping against metal. The inside was a bright shine of white luminescence as he placed a hand against the small of Matsu's back, ushering her into the steel descending coffin. As he turned, the door closed behind him, and he pressed the button that showed a shuttle bus in imagery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlFHuCzPgY​

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The sounds of the elevator moving vertically downward sent vibrations through the vehicle as Gabriel stood next to Matsu, idly spinning thumb over thumb. It wasn't often they had the opportunity to actually sit and enjoy one another's company. It often involved running and jumping and cutting and bleeding and hurting, the things that stirred within him. But for every nail pulled from the bed, growth must happen in kind. To truly appreciate the bitter, one had to know the sweet. A soft word spoken, a caress of skin against skin, a shared drink against firelight. While he knew her better than he knew most, he also knew so little of her history and world beyond the purveyance of damage inflicted against one another and others. Perhaps, one day, he could share those sorts of moments with her, hand placed against body not to cause anguish, but to instead draw out the monstrosity of comfort. A mind confused of such notions was further confounded by the thought of it's overturning, as pain and comfort were so often misunderstood and sent head over heel. Perhaps, he just desired to know her in her entirety, beyond the damages deserved and convergence of their own afflictions. The way that she handled herself, in this situation and much as any other, reminded the Sith Lord of how much of her he found so enticing, in her full ensemble. A moth drawn to the flame finds carapace burned, cindering completely.

The door opened as he exited the elevator, focusing his attention upon a cement tongue sticking out from the building. The glass lined the broken bridge with a landing pad extended towards the end. Just as he approached, imagining her in toe, a shuttle of blue and silver landed abruptly and opened a door, powered by an inward swinging arm and hydraulics. The lights on the top of the vehicle likely read words of the next city that the 'bus' would arrive at, but Gabriel was distracted by his own thoughts and the revelations of the day that had him climbing the highest peaks and descending into the lowest valleys. As he walked into the bus, over 100 feet in length, he passed the driver and bumped chests with a tattooed figure. Pushing Gabriel back, who gave the footing for purpose of sport, brandished a knife and laughed, his posse following suit. "We got a bus fare system here, old man...pay up or ship off!"

Mohawks, tattoos, tan vests, fingerless gloves, and denim jeans. And wouldn't you know it, they all smiled toothy grins, filled with phrik dental implants. That dentist sure did get around, or maybe the error was far more prevalent in these neck of the woods. After all, phrik was a natural export from the planet. Gabriel merely smiled, not entirely sure how they would react to his petite companion, as he approached the leader unabashed. Bending down slightly, he inspected the thugs mouth and chuckled. "Boy...you got a pretty mouth..."

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Back at the dentists office, 3 large guards stroll into the facility with electric pallet jacks, bearing the words of a one eyed man and his capable companion and their affinity for causing harm. Ushered into the back warehouse facility, they met several crates and were accordingly shown the most cost effective routes in and out of the facility. Of course, this wasn't by the preceding doctor, as he was taken to the nearby emergency room for dental damage and blood lose. The irony isn't lost on the guards, as the sounds of their snickering can be heard over the wheels of the pallet jacks, rolling heavy crates of Phrik out to transport ships.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Leaving the silence (save, of course, the layered and rich symphony of elevator music providing ambience) of the lift was like exiting one world for another. To share silence easily with someone she’d tread battlefields with, explored worlds populated by the shrieks of the lost with, felt precious – rare, even. Quiet was so often difficult. Matsu found a home in both chaos and calm, a quality she found lacking in most others. But not him. She forgets she hasn't known him for the long stretch of time it feels like, understanding him well as a man of power and prowess but knowing very little of how he came to be that way. She had tilted her head, a sideways glance upwards to watch him standing there, idle with his thumbs in hypnotic motion and eye staring out on a world not in front of them, and felt the side of her mouth quirk up in the hint of a smile. She wanted more than anything to see whatever he was seeing, whatever far-off vista his memory recalled to pass the time in the elevator. (For that's what she assumes crosses his mind, not the ponderance of pain and pleasure's connectedness. It would shock her to see something slower, something shared, her fingers tracing ink over raised skin, eyes stuck on firelight refracted through the glass she hands him as they...what was the word...relax? Shock, but not displease. She'd considered the same.) She thought someday perhaps he might let her see, and she would share in kind - question for question, vision for vision. He never confirmed it in so many words but she was convinced he was far older than he appeared - the things he must have seen, done!

So when the men on the train threw down the gauntlet with the title "old man" Matsu had to laugh. You have no idea. She'd never given much thought to the fact that he appeared somewhere shy of 50 beyond the fact that it was kinda hot - what she imagined his actual age to be made his apparent age more akin to quarter-life anyway.

She watched the flicker of uncertainty mar their otherwise calculated expressions of intimidation as Gabriel spoke, the almost imperceptible backwards slide of legs as they briefly considered fight or flight in the face of an animal they'd never encountered. They hadn't noticed her at first, a slip in the wake of the man they challenged, but she wrapped a hand around Gabriel's arm and peered around from behind him as if she were the slightly confused and entirely helpless company the 'old man' was keeping.

There were a hundred ways it could go. Half of them were messy, heinously painful displays of a man with centuries of technique and a woman naturally cruel. The other half were quiet and in this instance Matsu saw prudence in the latter. Val'hala lay within Fringe space and she'd agreed the first day Ovmar had taken her back to Annaj that she would guard what their organization called their own. Matsu could easily erase their faces from those left alive in the bus after they cut a bloody swath, but the Fringe promised protection in return for total rule and deference and attacking the innocent wasn't part of that. The dentist? He'd stolen from the Fringe. The couple they'd just paid a visit to? Rich and cognizant enough to realize what they'd bought. These dopes? Matsu wasn't sure how they could afford the shirts on their backs judging by a distinct lack of personal hygiene and general 'haven't changed in days' appearance. Perhaps they'd just gotten lucky or some mistake had been made the day they went in to get work done. It didn't matter - they weren't at fault.

Reaching out, she touched against their minds, light enough that they wouldn't feel her. As her eyes passed over them in time with her assessment she fell on one towards the back of the group waiting for Gabriel to make a move, his fingers fanning every few seconds to readjust a nervous grip on his knife. Fear was her gateway and she settled easily, seizing control and making him drop the knife with a loud clatter – a sound loud enough to distract his companions and give her an opening to seize all of them. Inside their heads everything would appear to lurch, the entire bus teetering as some mechanism failed and gravity took its toll, sending the entire ship careening towards the earth, tossing them head over heels to slam against windows and walls – spines breaking against poles meant to hold them up, heads cracking on glass. But to anyone outside the nightmare in their heads they would just appear to freeze for a brief second, just the time it took for Matsu to use a deft spot of telekinesis to pry root from gum and collect their implants before they came back to their senses with no more fuss to those around them than the tension before a fight - a tension quickly dissipated as confusion dictated the men take stock of their situation.

She’d left them with the impression they’d all been in an accident minutes before – dreadful thing really – and they were all on their way to a medical center to get looked at, get something done about those new holes in their mouths.

[FIN]​

[member="Reverance"]​