Private Roaches Always Crawl Back

[Serina Calis]

"How far will you crawl?"

Tags - Vikai Caznä


The bounty was a lie.

But lies, Serina mused, were simply truths shaped with intent.

She stood in silence at the edge of the collapsed corridor, far below the crust of Myxene IV, where the veins of a long-dead war machine stretched in rusted arteries through hollowed stone. Ember Hall, they once called it—back when the Sith Empire's war alchemists came to test biotoxins and prototype ordnance in controlled environments. Back when it was still alive with purpose. Now it was a tomb. A choking, pressurized maze of flickering amber lights, abandoned armories, and war-forged rot. She had chosen this place carefully. It was perfect.

The bounty was posted under a falsified name, buried in encrypted networks only the desperate or unconnected would crawl through. A cache of forbidden technology. Five hundred thousand credits. Dead or alive. The identity of the target—Serina Calis—left vague enough to keep the elite at bay, but sweetly baited to attract another kind of hunter. The kind that had nowhere else to go. The kind with something to prove.

She wasn't hunting competition.

She was hunting instinct.

Behind her, the air shimmered with heat as her personal shuttle—sleek, matte-black, near-silent—hummed into its docking cradle far overhead. It was sealed now. No signals in. No way out. Not unless she willed it. And Serina, by her nature, never willed anything by accident.

Her boots pressed quietly against the grated durasteel floor, pacing with deliberate slowness through the vast central chamber of Ember Hall—a massive, circular vault where a single surgical chair stood elevated at the center like a monolith of forgotten suffering. Chains hung from the ceiling in ornamental loops, the remains of suspension harnesses used to test living weapons on sentient subjects. Every surface bore the scorched fingerprint of ruin: seared blast marks, pitted metal, blood-stained rust. The walls wept moisture from the atmosphere control systems still cycling, barely functional after decades of abandonment. The air tasted of ozone and rot.

Serina paused beneath the broken ring of an overhead light and lowered her hood. Her hair was pulled back in a clean sweep, leaving her face exposed—unpainted, unadorned, yet more sculpted than beautiful. A predator's elegance. Eyes like razors. Stillness like a monsoon before the drop. She wore no insignia. Her presence did not declare her importance. It enforced it. Quietly. Inevitable.

A soft hiss echoed from her wrist-link. The motion sensor she had planted near the surface had triggered. Someone was coming.

Finally.

She did not move. She wanted to feel the moment settle—to savor the final calm before the rabbit entered the lion's den. She did not yet know who the girl was. Only fragments had reached her, whispered through gutter channels and pirate hails. A lowborn thief-turned-hunter with a cracked saber and yellow eyes. Audacious. Undisciplined. Dangerous not because she was refined—but because she wasn't. A fire with no hearth.

But Serina had learned long ago that the galaxy's filth often bred the fiercest survivors. And survival, after all, was a form of power.

She would test that theory tonight.

With a silent wave of her hand, the door at the chamber's edge unlocked.

A low groan of hydraulic mechanisms cracked through the stillness. Red warning lights blinked into life. The vault's perimeter buzzed, as if the very walls knew what was about to happen. Serina descended the iron stairwell slowly, letting her presence spread through the chamber like cold fog. The Force moved with her—coiling, oppressive, not like thunder, but like the silence that comes after it.

The scent of scorched circuits drifted on the recycled air. Somewhere in the hall above, debris shifted. A footstep, perhaps. Serina didn't raise her head.

 

[Vikai Caznä]

Five hundred-thousand.

Five hundred-thousand credits.

That was more then enough for what she needed, and it was done for easy work - or at least, what she presumed to be easy work. Given the collective information that she was given, but truthful and fabricated, she was not all too concerned. Who even uses halberds anymore? Backwater tribes who still clashed with cheap steel and iron did not frighten the hunter. Five hundred-thousand credits and she could get what she wanted.

Vikai had already been trudging through the overgrown filth of forgotten Ember Hall, stalking through dark tunnels long abandoned and cared for. Even she, someone unknowledgeable upon Sith lore and structures could figure out what this place was, and it's possible uses that it served. Of course, she did not care about this. It was irrelevant for what she came for. No, she did not care for lore, tradition, nor creed. She cared for practically, and in this very moment, the practical thing was to hunt and kill. She sought Serina Calis.

Through a dozen halls and tunnels she traversed through with only meager struggle, having to adjust her senses to the darkness of spots while also nearly tripping over the loose vines and debris, all the while she had to keep track of these confusing, curling grand halls. In her awkward stumbling and trudging through these halls, she had unwittingly stepped directly through a sensor that went unseen and unheard. She was known now. After far too long of a search, she found herself at the base of steel steps that led to the last possible place her target could have been. It was where she would kill-

Step.

Vikai's senses tingled. A unnatural sensation filled the briefly warbled mind. Was her prey truly coming directly to her? Would it be that easy? Or was it that she possibly underestimated what was she against? Unlikely, to her. Nobody with any sort of value would go in hiding in such a miserable, forlorn place. No, only people who wish to be forgotten would hide in such deplorable depths. She had nothing to fear.

Step.

A hand drifted downwards to her side from where her lightsaber was strapped at, from where gloved fingers slowly curled to grasp around it, her eyes of putrid yellow not shifting or waning away from those stairs. With each step, the grasp upon steel grew tighter.

It's time to see who is the the Hunter and the Hunted.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"How far will you crawl?"

Tags - Vikai Caznä


There was a sound she loved more than any scream.
More than thunder.
More than silence.

It was the sound of hesitation.

Serina heard it long before the girl reached the base of the stairwell. Not in the clatter of boots on metal, not in the shifting of weight or breath—but in the pause. The fractional delay in motion when instinct begins to rebel against desire. When the animal part of the brain screams: No. Wrong. Predator ahead. It was subtle, but unmistakable. A gift to those who had trained themselves to feel it.

And Serina lived for it.

She did not turn to greet the creature that approached. Not yet. Let the girl stare at her back a while. Let her project all her expectations onto the figure draped in black, motionless in the center of a ruin that reeked of lost hope and burnt things. Let her think she still held the advantage. That the prize she came for was unaware, unready, vulnerable.

Let her taste control.

Then take it away.

A soft hum cracked through the chamber as the decayed lighting system flickered. A line of lum-panels sparked to life across the arching ceiling one by one, casting long shadows across the ancient vault. The overhead chains swung with the faint motion of displaced air. The surgical chair at the center glistened with old blood now dried into black moss on durasteel. Around them, the architecture of the hall—the black alloy beams, the embedded arcane machinery, the crumbling spires of forgotten technologies—all stood like the bones of some dead titan.

Vikai would see it for what it was: a graveyard of power. And in the middle of it, unarmed and standing as if she were made from the marrow of the place itself… was Serina Calis.

Her posture was calm, regal in its restraint. Hands clasped behind her back. Hair drawn into its severe sweep. The faint rise and fall of her chest the only movement on her otherwise statuesque frame. But the Force churned around her like a thermal vent—quiet, pressure-laden, and ancient. There was nothing about her that screamed danger.

But every cell in the air said: run.

She turned only when the girl reached the final step.

Not quickly. Not with the alert snap of a warrior catching sight of their enemy.

No—Serina turned as though this moment had already happened. As though she was merely playing out the script of a play she'd written herself. Her head tilted slowly, face coming into full view beneath the light, and those violet eyes—unblinking, depthless, and sharp—met Vikai's yellow ones with such deliberate clarity that it felt like being caught between the teeth of a god.

And then, she smiled.

Not a warm smile. Not even a cruel one.

But the kind that moved as little as possible—just the faintest curl of her mouth, the barest flicker of expression—like the raising of a scalpel.

She let that moment hang.

One breath.

Two.

Then came her first words. A whisper. A test.

"Are you here to kill me, or are you just lonely?"

It hit the air like a splash of oil into flame. Not because of what it revealed, but because of what it didn't. Her voice was low, smoky, intimate—so profoundly indifferent to fear or tension that it became its own source of both. She was not mocking. She was not taunting. She was curious.

And that was worse.

She began to move—not toward Vikai, but past her. Slowly. Casually. As if inspecting a new piece of art in a gallery of violence. Her eyes swept the girl once, head to toe, reading her with the intensity of someone dissecting a problem they already knew the solution to.

Too thin. Too reactive. Too angry. Good.

But underneath, a thread of something else. Something jagged and raw. Survival carved into sinew. That was rarer.

She came to a stop at the edge of the surgical chair, her back to Vikai now, as though offering it freely.

"You're not the first to follow a trail into this place thinking it ends with power."

A gloved hand ran along the edge of the rusted durasteel, her fingers tracing old blood like a scholar reviewing scripture. Her voice did not rise. She spoke like someone giving a eulogy for a god she herself had murdered.

"Most of them leave in pieces. If they leave at all."

The third and final line.

And with it, the full weight of her presence dropped—not as a force push or a violent flare of energy, but as an emotional collapse. The illusion of control shattered like glass dropped on stone.

Serina Calis did not flare with the Dark Side.

She inverted the room with it.

In the span of a breath, every shadow grew longer. Every light felt colder. The weight of her mind pressed against Vikai not like a hand—but like a black tide sliding up to the edge of her psyche, promising not to drown her yet. Just to show her how far beneath the surface she really was.

The chains on the ceiling groaned. The lights above crackled once, dimmed, and held.

A message unspoken.

You are not the hunter.
You are not even prey.
You are the specimen.

And Serina was the one who dissected things like you.

She turned again. Slower this time. Her face neutral now. Not bored. Not angry.

Just waiting.

What Vikai said next—what she did next—would define what she became in this web Serina had built. A lesson in identity, handed down not from a teacher, but from a flame to a moth.

And in that stillness, in that humid vault of rust and rot, Serina said nothing more.

She simply watched.

 

[Vikai Caznä]

Silent. Vikai was merely silent. She was silent as Serina, her quarry was revealed, and she was silent as the room was displayed in full. Lights beckoned to life; a false, artificial life that had meant to die a long, long time ago. Dark ebon halls covered in dust and overgrown by dwindling plants, and air so still that it stained the lungs that breathed it. That smell in the air. It was not death. It was the absence of life.

Nothing was meant to be here. Not anymore.

"Are you here to kill me, or are you just lonely?"

And yet, still there was silence from the fledgling Sith. Not a peep, murmur, or even gasp - was she truly that awestruck by Serina's presence? Was she so profoundly overwhelmed by this aura of prideful dread. A hand lingered near where her lightsaber was dangling from at her belt, beneath her cloak, yet no sort of motion nor action was taken to ready herself for combat. There was nothing. Nothing but that truly strange silence.

"You're not the first to follow a trail into this place thinking it ends with power."

Silence.

"Most of them leave in pieces. If they leave at all."

And yet, more silence. Every opportunity to claim the kill was not taken by Vikai. Not when she was drifted past, and not even when even when Serina had her back turned and presented freely for the claiming. Why wouldn't she just end it right there?

Because, Vikai was practical. Vikai did not have any creed, code, or sense of pride beyond what ego that one needed to survive, and may have been the most egoistical part of the Sith. The will- no, the need to survive. A foundational core of her existence. You must survive, no matter what. You can suffer, you can starve, you can be scared, but you must never not survive. Vikai did not take her chances to cut down Serina this entire time because she felt it in the very moment she had hear the clang of that very first step, that she had already lost agency and will to Serina's pride of self that molded her will. She was silent, because she knew that any word that slipped from her maw would be meaningless before the carefully curated responses that were already selected. No. Vikai opted for her own choice - her only choice. The secret third thing.

She ran! She ran like a little sniveling rodent that was being chased by a dog. She ran like a cowering soldier being shelled in a war. She ran like a child hiding from her enraged mother and her shoe. She ran with purpose, and meaning. The purpose to survive, and the meaning to escape the this chamber built upon absent death, and then escape from these dark, forgotten halls. She ran, and ran, and ran. A sprint that rivaled many. She was a nimble freak, who did not pride herself on her abilities, no, Vikai's pride was her will to survive.

In a split moment she had turned away from Serina, and was already leaping her way down the stairs, now on the first three steps down.

And during her cowardly escape?

She was still silent.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"How far will you crawl?"

Tags - Vikai Caznä


Serina did not raise her voice. She didn't lift a hand.
She simply watched.

The little thing ran.

She had half-expected it, in truth. There was always one among them—the gutter-borne, scrap-fed survivors who thought speed was agency, thought that if they ran fast enough, hard enough, if they could just get around the corner before death remembered their name, then they could cheat fate. As if fear were a detour from reality, rather than its purest expression.

And Vikai ran well. Fluid. Sharp. Her cloak whipped behind her like torn shadow. A survivor's sprint. The kind of pace that wasn't taught, only carved into a body by years of pain and narrow escapes. It was almost admirable.

Almost.

Serina's head tilted slightly. No movement. No flourish. No need to announce her intent.

Instead, she inhaled.

And with that single breath, she rewrote the room.

The Force did not lash out like a hammer. It curled. Twisted. Slid. A quiet, hungry thing drawn by intent alone. No gesture betrayed it, yet its presence thickened the air, slowed the flickering of the overhead lights, silenced the chains above. As Vikai reached the third step, the very metal beneath her boots began to groan—not because of pressure, but because reality itself was shifting its allegiance.

Then the air behind her changed.

Not forward, the Force whispered. Backward.

A current surged toward Serina like invisible undertow—smooth, precise, overwhelming. It wasn't a violent pull. Not yet. It was more intimate than that. Like gravity deciding it adored her. Like the galaxy remembering its center of mass. The hallway bent toward her, quiet and irresistible.

And Vikai resisted.

Ah.

A flicker sparked in the edge of Serina's vision. The girl's frame tensed. Her momentum faltered, one heel skidding across the stair plating as she grounded herself mid-motion. A breath exhaled wrong—too short. Desperation. She was pushing back. Trying to fight it. Drawing on that raw, untutored instinct that so many Force-sensitive orphans clung to like drowning men clutching their own blood.

She didn't yield.

And for a single second, she dragged.

Serina felt it.

The girl's body vibrated with the conflict—half-launched into a sprint, half-tethered by the pull. Her hand had moved—barely—but the motion wasn't to strike. It was to anchor. One palm out, fingers clawing at nothing as her presence in the Force expanded in a rush of panicked resistance.

Not elegant. But determined.

Serina smiled again.

Not with malice. With interest.

Then she deepened the pull—not abruptly, not explosively. That would be crude. She merely turned the dial, so to speak. From gentle tide to undertow. From invitation to inevitability.

The result was messy.

Vikai twisted. One leg swept backward while the other remained half-rooted. Her cloak tangled. The metal edge of the stair clipped her shin as she was yanked into a stumble. She didn't fall—not yet—but her posture broke. She lost rhythm. Grace disintegrated into instinctive flailing as her boots scraped against durasteel.

Still resisting.

Still surviving.

She slammed one palm against the handrail to stop herself fully from being drawn in—and the sparks that flared between her fingers and the metal were real. Force against mass. Will against domination. She anchored herself again, barely halting her descent, her breath ragged and her eyes blazing yellow through the dark.

But Serina didn't advance.

She didn't need to.

From where she stood—half in shadow, the surgical chair gleaming just behind her—Serina merely regarded the sight as one might watch a new creature emerging from tar. Wretched. Primitive. Intriguing.

"Good," she said aloud, voice soft as silk dragged over a knife's edge.
"Fight me."

It wasn't a taunt.

It was permission.

She let the Force ease just slightly—not enough to give Vikai her freedom, but enough to make her think she could earn it. The hallway lights flickered. Dust curled upward from the vents. The tension in the air did not retreat, but circled.

Serina stepped forward. One step. Just one.

And even that was enough to make the room bend.

She moved like an executioner with no rush. Each motion calculated not just for distance, but for weight. Meaning. Her presence filled the space behind Vikai, not because she chased, but because she did not need to. It was a kind of domination that didn't have to shout. It simply was.

"You're not fast enough," she murmured, and the words dropped like a needle into the brainstem.

It was not pride. It was fact.

But it wasn't final.

She stopped halfway down the stairs, keeping just enough distance to give Vikai a decision. Not safety. Not even the illusion of it.

A choice.

Flee again. And see how much slower that second sprint feels when you know she's waiting.
Or turn and prove yourself something more than vermin.

The Force coiled around Serina now—not as a weapon, but as a crown. She was not angry. Not amused. She didn't need to be.

She was.

The hall settled.

No push came next. No final tug.

Just silence.

Vikai had not yet fallen. Had not yet broken. And that, to Serina, was the most interesting thing that had happened all evening.

She offered nothing else now. No monologue. No threat.

Merely a pause.

An invitation.

Let the girl earn her next breath.

 

[Vikai Caznä]

A moment of collection.

A rattled grasp of a sweat-ridden hands curled so deeply around the railings that lined the stair-case she oh so wanted to descend, to the point where her skin begun to burn against the old rust that now lined the metal. She wanted to be free. She wanted to descend. She did not. Not because she wouldn't, but because she couldn't. Vikai was somebody of practicality. A understanding of fact. She knew her limits. She knew her weaknesses. She knew the near finality of the situation.

She knew there was a chance of survival. Practicality speaking, you should latch onto that chance.

After a hitched breath through gritted teeth, the young sith's head whipped around towards up the stairs. Her breath was earned. Now she had to act. The turn of her head only brought her the knowledge of a few things. A nearby air-vent which a slender type such as her's could fit through, along with old dusty plates of metal that hang above that could possible block a path, if only for a few seconds. It was not much, and it would not be enough, but she had little choice, now did she? She opted for a different plan than running, though. A entirely new one that she was not used to. One of her worse skills. Untrained, and found lacking. She spoke,

"What do you want!?" It was hiss-howled out, like she was some rabid, small animal snarling out to a massive predator to stay away. A fitting sort of image for this situation. Seemingly fitting.

She collected herself. Now she had to face the choir of death that rung to her from above. That choir of silence, that could lead to annihilation. Let's hope it's a reasonable sort of tune!

Serina Calis Sorry for the massive delay. Finals week was recent and it ruined me xoxo

 

[Serina Calis]

"How far will you crawl?"

Tags - Vikai Caznä


"What do you want!?"

Ah. There it was.
The scream that wasn't a scream. The bark of a feral animal who had realized its teeth wouldn't save it—but would still bare them anyway. That trembling defiance shouted not from confidence, but from the sheer unwillingness to curl up and die. A cracked voice. A brittle snarl. But not begging. Not yet.

Serina halted her advance.

Not out of mercy.

But interest.

She tilted her head, hair falling slightly out of place, catching the flicker of dying light like strands of black filament. Vikai's voice still echoed off the rusted metal, swallowed by the hall's cavernous belly. It rang out like a challenge hurled into the mouth of an eclipse.

"What do I want?" Serina repeated, softly.

The words floated down the stairs like perfume. She didn't shout. She never needed to.

Her tone was not angry. Nor mocking.
It was curious.
It was hungry.

And, worse still—it was truthful.

Serina took one more step forward, the metal groaning under her precise weight, but she did not descend further. She remained above, a shadow against the ruinous light, eyes unreadable as the vault hummed with quiet tension.

"I want the same thing you do," she said at last. "To not be at the mercy of creatures bigger than me."

Her voice wasn't venomous. It wasn't even cruel.

It was inviting.

And that made it more dangerous than any threat she could've whispered.

The Force shimmered faintly around her as she relaxed her posture—not in submission, but in permission. Her arms unfolded from behind her back. One hand ghosted along the edge of the railing, fingertips gliding down the pitted metal. There was no immediate power in the gesture. No threat. But the moment felt worse for it.

Like watching a lion sit down.

"They sent you here to kill me. Or test me. Or maybe no one sent you at all, and you're just another desperate thing clawing through old corridors hoping to matter."
"But the truth is—you're not here for the credits. Not really."

She began to pace, slow, above the girl, letting her voice do the hunting now.

"You were starving long before you set foot in this tomb."

She stopped directly above Vikai now, on the catwalk overlooking the stairs. From that angle, she could see the girl's fingers twitching on the railing. Could feel the unrefined tension bubbling inside her like a furnace just shy of bursting.

"So I watched you. And I saw."

She leaned forward slightly, one hand pressed against the rail, voice dropping now to a hushed intimacy that somehow echoed wider.

"I saw you didn't flinch when death whispered. I saw you knew you were already inside the trap, and still chose to move."

A long pause.

"That makes you more than most."

Another step.

Then another.

Serina's boots clicked once, then twice, then silence as she reached the landing directly above. Her silhouette stretched long across the stairwell. Her gaze pinned Vikai down—not like a predator anymore, but like a painter contemplating where to place her brush.

"What do I want?"

She asked it again, slower now. As if tasting the question for its texture.

"I want to take that howl inside your throat—the one you don't even know how to use—and sharpen it into a song. I want to see if there's a creature under all that bruised flesh and broken instinct that can do more than run."

She descended one step.

Then two.

But still did not touch her.

"But I only invest in what won't waste my time. So I gave you a chance. I let you run. You tried to take it. You failed."

Serina let that fact hang in the air like incense—scentless, but stifling. Not said cruelly. Merely stated. With surgical precision.

"That was your test."

Another pause. She tilted her chin slightly, and her eyes gleamed.

"Now… here's your opportunity."

She extended her hand—not dramatically. Not theatrically. Just… naturally. Like it was always meant to be offered. A curve of fingers. An open palm. A leash offered in velvet.

"Come with me."

The words struck like a kiss between blades.

"Or… don't."

Her hand lowered. Slowly. Deliberately.

"And go back to whatever hole you came from. Keep being a roach in someone else's cellar. Until they crush you for being inconvenient."

She did not smile. Not anymore.

Instead, she stared.

Not through Vikai—but into her. Through the bruises, through the hissed bravado, through the cracked saber and all the scars she wrapped around herself like armor made of rusted pride.

She waited.

One heartbeat.

Two.

The room held its breath.

And in that sacred, dreadful silence—Serina said nothing more.

She didn't need to.

Her offer had been made.

Now it was up to the creature on the stairs to decide if she would bite the hand…

…or take it.

 

[Vikai Caznä]

"Did it matter that I even crawled?"​

Jagged nails crawled across the rust as the tense, skittish thing managed to slowly drag her hands away from the only support she had. She recovered, physically, if only barely. As instinctually as ever, a boot shifted as her head craned downwards to her escape. Down the stairs. Where her hollow freedom laid. They say you can't teach a old hound new tricks, but what about a wild beast? The instinctual provocation to survive screamed, and in turn, Vikai would indulge - but she knew better than to let it command her freedom. Her heel raised upwards as her muscles flexed, like a coiled spring ready to launch forth - yet it did not find that release. No, instead Vikai was caught like a entranced animal who smelt the most sweet of fruits.

"I want the same thing you do, to not be at the mercy of creatures bigger than me."

A miasma of artificial sweetness that found itself drifting down into Vikai's ears. The devil's temptation. The sort of ensnarement that she found herself burnt by before. She knew what it was. What it meant. Who was saying it. This was a tale that was woven for her before; and one that got such a gleeful smile out of the Sith. Sardonic, cynical amusement that would not go away, despite the horrible situation of misfortunate she found herself in. If anything, it only amplified the absurdist humor she found in it all. The self-deprecating, deathly moment she found herself in boiled over, and washed over as a hyena's snicker leaked from her maw. She had entirely stopped her desperation of escaping, not because she gained any sort of confidence or pride, but because reverberating hatred that filled her mind all these years finally found it's chance to be beckoned forth with words of venom. Her head lashed out almost desperately to search for where the idol of her ire was.

She found it. The looming monolith of pure Sith ideology in her mind. A creed given form. A echo of her master. Serina. The one that loomed above like a shadow threatening to snub out the light.

She smiled. Lips twisting wide and revealing fangish teeth.

"You are right, I am starving." A hollow agreeance, which was merely followed by mockery. "But not in the way you imagine. I do not hunger for more power. I do not need to be smarter, stronger, faster, smarter. No. I only need to be the one that won't die. I do not need to grasp at the things you value. Creed. Ideals. I know what you are. Manipulator. Controller. You like it when the room bends around your finger, and when that doesn't work, you crush it with a iron grasp."

Words of spite, envigored by emotions that dwelled and only now came to rise. She kept speaking, not in any sense of a coherent argument or monologue, but frustrations brought to be laid bare.

"Roach? /Roach/?"

The baleful gaze of yellow set upon Serina. The eyes of a wild beast. It starved, yes, but now this close. Serina could see what she could not before. This cornered creature did not starve to consume all it could. It didn't yearn for more than it could take. It did not seek to feast, but to cure it's famine. This wasn't ambition.

This was cathartic survival.

"There was a man once who said something so, so similiar. 'Might makes right. Don't you want to have that might, and be right?'. Those words of honey and satin. He promised to make me better. To make me whole. As if I lacked something. Did I? Was I weak? Yes, I was. I still am, too, but I understand something else. I understand how hollow those words are. The echos of time spawn so many like you. The ambition filled warlords that grasp at every last thread. I'm not impressed."

The beast's eyes went wide. She smiled nearly as wide.

And she did indeed stare.

Not through Serina - but into her. Through the regal armor, through the tremendous control she held, and through the sanctity of pride she held.

That sacred silence that Serina brought forth was only trampled, by that snarling little creature that wouldn't cease speaking.

"Five hundred thousand credits is why I came here. Enough to get myself a new ship, and get a nice new Holonet music player for myself, and then to gamble the rest away at the nearest Hutt den. That's why I came here. I love living, you know? I would want to keep living even if I was that slum rat back home, or the pompous Sith Lord that you are. I came here to kill you, because I wanted money. Nothing less, or more."

Resolve - or was it acceptance? It was a mere spur of a moment choice.

A hand was brought down upon the handle of her once creed, detached from her belt and brought to rest at her side. The weapon she knew best now in her life. The weapon that proved what she was, even if word wouldn't.

"So listen. Either you pay me more than what the bounty is to come to your side, or draw."

A cathartic release expelled from her mind, like when grime was washed from blemished skin. A mind at ease. A mind spoken freely - followed by the clarity of the room she found herself in, and with who. The grip around her lightsaber twisted, as her nerves twisted with it. The moment before the storm. The pulling of a trigger. The raising of a executor's axe.

Would she survive? Probably not.

Eh. At least there was a chance.

Serina Calis