Private Postmortem Hygiene

[Tohu]

Penthouse 5, Megablock 14
Corellian Sector, Nar Shaddaa​

“Man, what a pain…” Tohu let out a sheepish sigh as he scratched the back of his head, staring at the disaster he had conjured.

It was supposed to be a blue-milk run. A minor crime family capo was skimming off the top from the taxes he owed Black Sun. Crossing the Syndicate was a death sentence and Tohu was its executor. The capo was supposed to be alone tonight.

Except he wasn’t.

It was supposed to go like this: knock-knock, point-blank, bolt to the head, good night, bag and toss in the incinerators.

Except it didn’t.

It was the capo and two of his lieutenants. A tip off, or an incredible sense of self-preservation, fired a boom stick from the other side, riddling the door and Tohu’s left upper-torso with holes. He lit up the last charges of his personal energy shield, drew his vibrosword and well… this was the result: blood soaked the walls in serrated streaks, splattered from the kitchen through the living room and all the way into the vestibule; three mutilated bodies lay strewn in each of the rooms; overturned and smashed furniture littered the floor as if a tempest had passed through the penthouse.

Sweat and blood dripped off the edge of his brow as he held a bacta patch over the wounds on his chest. A cleanup crew was supposed to be arriving shortly.

Iskera Valest ​

 

[Iskera Valest]

Iskera stepped through the threshold with a smooth, deliberate pace, the door hissing shut behind her. The scent hit first—iron and carbon, layered over the sharp tang of ozone from discharged blasters. She drew in a measured breath through the thin respirator at her throat and exhaled slow, as though tasting the air for data.

Her eyes moved like instruments across the room: three corpses, one still seeping into the carpet fibers, the smear patterns suggesting panic more than precision. Furniture wreckage, glass shards, a broken bottle of something sweet. Tohu, if her contract was to be believed, bleeding but upright, leaning hard on a wall, his patch glistening with half-sealed bacta.

"Messy," she observed at last, voice calm, precise. From her satchel came sealed ampoules, neutralizers, and thin black gloves. With clinical ease, she knelt by the first body, already calculating solvents, timelines, and plausible stories.

Tohu

 

[Tohu]

The young woman's appearance almost startled him. She'd crept up inside the penthouse without making a single hint of a sound. A crown of dark hair, a sharp-featured face obscured behind a respirator and eyes guiding her movements methodically, Miss Clean purposed to work on the first body like an automaton.

"Yeah, that's one word to describe it." Tohu listlessly said. He squeezed the bacta patch on his chest against the rising burn of his wounds and strolled to peep over her work. "Sooo… how do you usually clean this up?" he asked, a curious glint flickering inside his dark iris.​

Iskera Valest

 

[Iskera Valest]

Iskera did not look up at once. Her gloved fingers traced the spray pattern on the tiles, gauging depth and spatter angle before dabbing a clear solvent across the worst of it. The blood thinned to a pale smear, already losing its story. Only then did she tilt her head toward him, eyes cool and attentive behind the faint violet cast.

"How?" she echoed softly, her tone more inquisitor than conversational. A measured sweep of her gaze took in the broken furniture, the charred doorframe, the drips leading toward the vestibule. "By treating it in stages. Neutralize fluids. Dissolve residue. Remove fibers. Correct the scene into something workable for the narrative they'll invent later."

She shifted, rolling one of the lieutenants onto a tarp with dispassionate strength. "The trick," she added, as though letting him in on a private formula, "is never to erase everything. You only leave the wrong details behind."

Tohu

 

[Tohu]

Tohu gave quick nods in rhythm to her words, but inside, his mind scrambled to understand anything of it. For a Shaddaa gutter-born, this science was as distant from his reach as were the stars above. Only the confidence in his gift of quick learning stoked a modicum of hope that he might untangle the knot of words.

"What story are you spinning then?" he asked after a brief moment of silence, jutting his chin at the second body she meticulously worked on. "Maybe I can help."​

Iskera Valest