Private Runscan.Exe

[Enigma Iuda]

Tags: Daiya


“Do you know why your here?”

The Wookie awoke with a roar, thunderous and proud as a bucket of thick petroleum was poured over its body, the foul Iiquid sting in its nose as it began to cling to its fur. Eyes burning, nostrils stinging, it tried to look around and get a better view of its surroundings but the haze of the petrol made everything a blur and above, a floodlight directed its harsh beam directly at it.

It tried to search its memory but all it could remember was working its regular shift as a hand at the docks, loading crates into one of the shuttles headed for some city planet. Then darkness. Lifting his muscles arms, it tried to pull free but the chains holding it down were far too thick, even for of his kind to break clear from. Shaking its head, it began to roar louder.

“Nobody can hear you.”

Stepping clear from the shadows, Enigma walked out into the light, giving the Wookie a moments relief from the harsh glare. Leaning forward, the slicer waved a remote at the creature before stepping back out of the light, chuckling lightly as the Wookie hissed in pain.

“Nobody can hear you! I have sound dampeners throughout the room. Now, do you know why you are here, Rwwokwyyyr!?”

The normally incomprehensible language of the Wookie’s was made trivial by the translation unit in Enigma’s mask. There was a moments delay as the unit translated the Wookie’s reply into a brief binary that the program in his mask translated to text.

“No, no I don’t believe that. Do you know why I don’t believe that!?”

Leaping forward, the Wookie copped a quick backhanded slap across its face from the butt of the slicers pistol as Enigma rushed forward, the speakers in his mask screeching as his screamed from behind it.

“I DON’T BELIEVE THAT, BECAUSE I DON’T EMPLOY IDIOTS, RWWOKWYYYR! I DON’T HAVE MORONS IN MY EMPLOY! AND ONLY A MORON WOULD BE CONFUSED AS TO WHY I AM HERE!!!!”

Slapping the Wookie again, the cyber-criminal, took a few deep breaths to calm himself.

“Woah, woah, sorry about that, losing my cool, I’m chill, chiiiilllll.” He murmured, more to himself than to the Wookie. Pacing around the room, Enigma paced silently, pondering.

After a few minutes, the Wookie dared to groan out a question.

Turning sharply, Enigma sprinted forward, hands gesturing wildly as he pointed around.

“Why do I think you know!? How many little girls are running around shooting my men RWWOKWYYYR!? And of that infinitesimal number, how many have Wookie cuddle buddies looking after them!? There is a reason I keep you on the payroll buddy! and having you not let me know that the one responsible for capping Phelaan has come back to your little green jungle home, is not it! I pay you so I don’t have to come down here and deal with this myself!”

Turning his back to the Wookie, Enigma lit himself a smoke, turning to casually look back at his employee.

“Now, how long has it been since the ship Jaster’s Sparrow made port?”

Another groan.

“Good. Now...”

Tuning to walk out of the dark room, Enigma casually tossed his smoke over at the Wookie, shutting the door to the room just as it began to scream as it was engulfed with flames. Walking out of the shipping container that he had procured, he lit himself another cigarette and waited 10 minutes before activating the vacuum seal on the container, sealing in everything inside.

Designed to keep fish fresh but works on incompetent informants too.

Walking out of the holding bay, he gave a tip of an imaginary hat to the droid overseer. It continued to remain motionless, the virus running through its system would be purging its memory core temporarily until another few hours passed. Just enough time for the cargo freighter reach its destination.

Staring outside one of the air locks, Enigma watched the distant planet come closer.

“Ready or not, here I come.”

 

[Daiya]

[Some Mood Music]​

“It was how long since you saw them?” the girl wondered aloud as they made their way across the wooden bridges connecting the Silver Rest's campus with the speeder depot. She didn't look back, Daiya was eager to leave the events of the previous night behind. After her casual gathering with Jairdain had turned into more than she'd bargained for, the girl needed a reprieve. ”How do you just stay away for a hundred years, anyway?”

Tawrro’s low growl came with a heavy weight on it, and Daiya turned to glance up at the great beast. He looked ahead, wearing the guise of the military general again, but she knew better than to take him at face value. “You said it was just a disagreement. How is that complicated?”

The Wookiee’s answer didn’t satisfy her, but she allowed him to plod along in silence for a time. It was true, Daiya had not seen her own family for years. Her mother and siblings still lived somewhere on Denon, she imagined. She wondered if her mother thought her dead by now. It might be a kinder thing for her to think, the girl supposed, than to know the truth. It was safer. Now that Daiya knew the truth about herself —the real truth now— and it's consequences, she was even more confused than before.

Maybe 'complicated' was the right term, after all.

“What’s her name? Your wife, that is.” Daiya wanted to keep their conversation pleasant —so many of them lately hadn’t been— but she couldn’t help her curiosity. To her delight, Tawrro answered, and she tried her hand at pronouncing it. “Jawerralpher? Jowerralpurr?”

The Wookiee repeated it again. “Jowrralprr? Jowrralprr. Okay, that’s a nice name.” That got a chuckle out of her friend, a deep laugh that seemed to come from somewhere new. Daiya looked up at him, and he returned her gaze at last. “What? I said it right, didn’t I?”

Tawrro chuckled at that, and barked a clarification. A soft smile grew on the girl’s face, she had never seen this side of her friend. He had only spoken of his family before in a clipped, guarded manner. As if it was shameful. Or painful. Seeing him remark about the similarities she shared with his own daughters, it made Daiya wonder if that was why Tawrro was so protective of her. There were certainly times when his care felt more smothering than nurturing, and she sometimes resented it. This new knowledge added a twinge of guilt to those memories.

“What are their names?” the girl asked to keep the thread of conversation going.

They reached the speeder depot after another couple bridges, finding it packed with Wookiees, Jedi and other denizens of the galaxy mingling together. It was a strange sight on what would have otherwise been a homogeneous species' homeworld. The Wookiees were no isolationists, it was true, the fact that they hosted the Silver Jedi's temple was proof enough of that. At the same time, they weren't exactly cosmopolitan either. From what Daiya knew from watching and listening to Tawrro over the years, a Wookiee's life among the galaxy was a lonely one, and Kashyyyk promised the familiarity of his own kind above all else.

She hadn’t caught the name of his home village, but from the sounds Tawrro made to the pilot of the organic-looking craft, it had sounded appropriately Wookiee. The girl climbed in after Tawrro, admiring the design of the resplendent craft's interior. It was as if a branch of a great wroshyr tree had molded itself to a seat in her form, she wasn't even swimming in the chair like those she normally found built for species with larger frames, such as Wookiees. Settling back, the girl was happy to enjoy the ride and focus on little else.

Daiya’s homeworld had been a forest, and her life had been spent always living below a massive canopy with trunks stretching impossibly high towards an unseeable sky, creatures living out their entire lives in ignorant darkness beneath. Yet her homeworld had been a forest of metal and glass, durasteel trunks reaching for the skies above a duracrete foundation laid millennia ago and stories below. This world was a forest of another sort, Wroshyr trees reaching as tall as the highest skyscraper and thick as a several city blocks.

For a city girl, the sight was truly awe-inspiring.

Next to her in the speeder, Tawrro seemed to be growing unsettled. His fur bristled, and the grip on the seat grew tighter. They were small things, but Daiya's practiced eye caught them without thinking. She didn't bother asking about it now, the way Tawrro had dismissed and deflected her questions earlier held her tongue this time. She turned back to the sights, enjoying the ride despite her own preferences for planitia firma, figuring Tawrro's anxiety was just more of his consternation over seeing his family and fellow Wookiees again.

She figured wrong.

It only took another few minutes before Tawrro growled at the pilot. The Wookiee exchange took Daiya's focus away from the trees, and when it was done she rested her arm on her companion's, trying to reassure him. "Just relax! I'm sure he knows the best way to go, that's his job."

In her opinion, piloting was best left to the pilots. Directing from the backseat, or taking the controls onesself, usually led to disaster. She still had the scars to prove it, too.

Tawrro gave her a quick succession of barks, but then was quiet for a while. Yet, the girl couldn't manage to bring herself back to the tranquility the scenery had provided her before. It wasn't Tawrro's continually tense posture, or the pilot's nonchalant dismissal of his concerns. There was something inside her, tucked in some deep corner of her mind, that was pulling at her. Twisting her insides. It felt like a vision coming on, but though she pressed her fingers to her forehead and tried to shut out the world around her, she could only see black behind her eyelids.

This was something else, a feeling of foreboding that she usually only felt after looking at one of her completed drawings. A sense that something was not quite right. Was this a manifestation of what Jairdain had talked about? If it was, the girl wanted no more to do with it, not now or ever.

Still, something compelled Daiya to speak out, a harsh whisper passed to Tawrro as the canopy seemed to lose some of the light streaming through it. It was darker here, the trees were taller now, the forest was older. Even without the Force —or whatever it was— nagging at her, it gave her the creeps. "Maybe you were right before."

Tawrro nodded, but he gave no audible reply. Something passed between them, a signal built from shared experience. Reaching inside her bag, the girl pulled out her blaster, keeping it low even though the shadows were already growing long. She was nearly startled by the series of growls and barks from the front of the craft, followed by a laugh from the pilot. Daiya still managed to bring her blaster pistol up and train it on the back of the pilot's head. "You don't need to land us in the Shadowlands, then. Just turn around, and you won't get hurt."

Daiya frowned at the response from the pilot, and Tawrro's growl this time was just one of anger. "Who hired you? If someone's got it out for Tawrro, they'll have to go through me!"

The pilot's laughter this time was uncanny, eerie and fox-like. It heralded the arrival of a break in the trees, and the light streaming through the open canopy revealed a ship landed in a clearing that looked far too uninviting, despite boasting natural lighting in the middle of darkness. Daiya's brow wrinkled at the growled response, her heart skipping a beat as it kickstarted a faster pace, while the sense of something wrong before exploded into her whole body. She felt lightheaded, and nauseous, and chilly all at once as the speeder pulled up to rest alongside the parked starship.

"What do you mean, Tawrrowaldr isn't the one you were sent for?"

Enigma Iuda​

 

[Enigma Iuda]

TAGS: Daiya

Pale flesh exposed, so much so that it was almost translucent in areas, the various sockets and pieces of circuitry that had been implanted into his body appearing as dark silhouettes beneath the scrawny white skin, Enigma lay on his stomach, allowing some of the solar powered pieces of gear within his body a brief chance to recharge.

Around him, a pair of ISR drones floated on patrol, recording as well as keeping a perimeter around the area.

This is the damn Shadowlands after all.

Alongside the drones sat a blank stared Rodian, a vacant look on his face as he stared at the shadows of the trees around them. Having been subdued by Enigma, how long the electronically induced pacifism would last was something the slicer didn’t really know. Or care.

“In my experience” he said, still laying down. “The galaxy is just like a systems security. It’s full of holes. And the real talented folks, they identify those wholes and exploit them.”

The Rodian knew that Enigma was talking to him but also was smart enough not to interrupt him while he was in the throes of one of his soliloquy’s.

“I mean, millions of people, millions of bytes, all directed and trafficked about by the rules they are meant to follow and just like info traffic and speeder traffic, you find the gaps that are left behind by others. You don’t throw the whole flow off, you don’t crash the system or anything like that, all that does is attracts attention, no, what you do is, you find those gaps that others have left and occupy those, exploit those, that’s where you live homeslice.”

From above, the sounds of the jungle silenced briefly as the throaty sound of a transport engine began to rumble through the air, signalling an end to his musing and another step closer to getting off the planet. Shrugging his shirt back on, Enigma sat up and waited, legs swinging over the edge of the crate he was perched on.

As the ship touched down, Enigma touched a augmented hand to his mask, patching into the ships surveillance and grinned. Patching into the ships comms, his distorted voice filled the craft.

“Come on out kiddlywinks, don’t make me pop some holes in your piñata.”

Inside the craft, the pilot walked towards the pair, rifle point with lethal intent. “Out, now!”

 

[Daiya]

“Out, now!”

The pilot's harsh words, his aimed rifle, and clear intent should have scared the girl. It would have scared any other teenage girl in her position, particularly one on a foreign world, in a strange speeder she couldn't pilot, brought to the middle of the spookiest, creepiest place on the planet.

Daiya wasn't like the other girls.

Her eyes narrowed behind the barrel of her own blaster, still pointed at the pilot. She wasn't scared. She was barely nervous. She was in a confined space with no cover, and that sucked. But if this was what her bad feeling had been telling her about, it needed a chill pill. To her right, Tawrro had brought his shotgun up to bear, and the edges of Daiya's mouth curled upwards. "It's two to one, and you're the one. I don't think you're in a position to be making demands."

Daiya's mouth twisted into a smug expression, and she bounced her eyebrows once at their opponent, waiting for him to blink first.

“Come on out kiddlywinks, don’t make me pop some holes in your piñata.” A voice from outside called through the openings in the organic speeder frame.

Now it was time for the pilot's lips to curl. "Nope, but he is."

Chit. Maybe that bad feeling wasn't so farfetched after all. From the tone of Tawrro's growl, he seemed to think so too. Then he added a lower one, pointed in her direction.

"Yeah, he has a point, I know," the girl agreed, a little annoyed that it had to be said aloud, as if not admitting it would lessen the stink of whatever poodoo they'd just stepped in. Tawrro uttered another string of growls and barks. "What he said," she added at the pilot with a chuckle, tossing her head in the direction of her Wookiee companion. Anyone driving on Kashyyyk should know a Wookiee threat meant business. To the voice outside, she shouted, "Fine, laserbrain, we're coming out. But my buddy here isn't a cuddly piñata, harm us and he'll make sure you die before he does."

She moved first, unlocking the door to the speeder and letting it open. The looming darkness of the shadowlands seemed to flood in first, before giving way to the light of the clearing they'd landed in. It was dimmer than back at the speeder depot, casting long shadows that leapt easily towards the depths of the shadowlands around them, and it gave her the creeps. Like she was intruding here. Like the shadowlands were just poised, waiting for her to make a mistake. The girl wasn't sure which enemy to be more afraid of, the spooky and corrupted forest or the hooded figure standing before her.

He was wearing a mask. Actually, Daiya wasn't really sure if the figure was a he at all, but the distorted voice and aggressive tactics made that an easy default. He donned a hoodie pulled up over his head, but had short sleeves that exposed his pale, tattooed arms with hands that didn't seem quite right. At second glance, she saw they were not real hands, but cybernetic. In any other circumstance, she would have been curious enough to ask about them, but a threatening cyborg in the middle of a spooky forest was not the time to be wonderstruck.

Tawrro stepped up to her side, offering the first words by way of a short growl. The girl looked up at him, then glanced behind her, and saw that the pilot was, indeed, lying in a crumpled heap in the middle of the speeder.

Well, they weren't going to go back with him, anyway.

Daiya kept her blaster trained on the cyborg, and turned back to him with a little more reassurance now. The threats were in front of them again, even if they were unknowns. A cyborg with magic hands, a couple drones she spotted patrolling the edge of her vision, and a Rodian who sat breathing but appeared otherwise dead to the world. Plus the shadowlands. It wasn't hard to understand why her breath came up short.

Though with Tawrro beside her, the odds might not be even but Daiya knew they had a fair shot at survival.

"Alright, we're out. What do you want from me?"

Enigma Iuda​

 

[Enigma Iuda]

Finally, she girl walked out. It was obscene to think that someone so young was able to punch such a dramatic hole into his operations, but there she stood, hale and whole in all her puzzled glory. Ignoring the open threat of the Wookie, Engima leapt up and actually took a few steps forward to get a better look at her.

Like legit how? This ain’t some holonet movie where 360 quick-scope kids actually pull off headshots on assassins and we all live happily every after. How did this kid manage to pull one over one of the best runner-bosses on my payroll.

She doesn’t even look like a threat, I mean, she doesn’t exactly look scared but other than that. Did she just get lucky? Did the Wookie pull it all off and just used the kid as a scapegoat?

Stepping back to sit back upon his perch, Enigma watched the pair intently, content to just conduct the conversation as his targets watched. If they felt more comfortable holding weapons, all the better.

“We’re all just pinatas kid, blasters make us all go pop, furball or not. You’ve been a damn pain for me to track down and now look, you squashed my buddy!”

Gesturing to the pilot, he laughed again, shaking his masked head.

“Probably not the best idea, I mean, I could just bail now I guess and leave you to the various jungle critters that are around. But instead, I have a better idea. If you agree to answer my questions, I’ll agree not to turn fuzzywuzzy there into a zombie like my friend Ned here. At least I think his name is Ned. OI! Ned!”

Turning to the Rodian, still staring blanky into space, Enigma clapped him on the shoulder before turning back to the pair.

“Ned’s a good fella. But, like I said I got questions, you got answers. So, lets start this off a bit nicer shall we? I mean, I got you here and that’s really the hard part. So, I’m Enigma, you’re Daiya, I was Phelaan’s boss, you’re the one who 86’ed him. So, lets start there.”

While it was hard to tell with a masked figure, Enigma’s frantic, tic like movements stopped as he glowered at the pair, the humor fading from his voice.

“Why did you decide to open some airholes in my employee?”

Daiya

 

[Daiya]

The cyborg was right about one thing, they were all just piñatas that blasters made pop.

Which was why she felt better being the one with her blaster trained on the unarmed masked man. For all his bluster and threats, he wasn't doing a very good job of convincing her to be scared. Daiya had spent much of her life being scared, it was an old and familiar companion, but she'd faced bigger demons in her own nightmares.

If all he really wanted were answers, then putting on this song and dance was a little overboard. Blustering threats, parading around a zombified Rodian, staging the theatrics of co-opting their speeder pilot...why couldn't he just send holocomm mail like a normal person?

Finally, he introduced himself as Enigma. Which didn't seem so much as an introduction, as just another in his demonstration for dramatic flair.

The girl nearly sighed.

She was cut off by the mention of a name she had hoped never to hear again. A name that, genuinely, send chills through her spine. A name that had haunted her like a specter for years, and she had thought left behind in the glass jungles of Denon.

The name of Phelaan, her old nemesis.

Daiya stared at the masked cyborg with a renewed sense of self-preservation. If Enigma was claiming to be Phelaan's boss, then surely he had come to enact his revenge. Beside her, she felt Tawrro tense as he realized the same thing she had. She didn't turn to look at him, they'd had the conversation a thousand times already. He had lectured her for weeks afterward, and the only reason she had managed to convince his resulting paranoia that it was safe to climb on board Lori's ship was because she was a princess.

She should have guessed that arriving at Tawrro's homeworld aboard such a high-profile ship would have been a bad move.

There was nothing that could be done to correct it now. Enigma, whoever he was, stood before her now, demanding that she answer for the one thing she'd hope to put behind her. The one thing that had taken all of her strength to commit to, all of her savings to carry out, and all of her endurance to manage the fallout with her friends afterward.

Killing Phelaan.

Tears threatened to invade her eyes, but Daiya stood stalwart as her vision blurred, blinking away the flood. It didn't save her from the grip of the emotions that overtook her, the guilt and shame she already bore from the act. She had practically destroyed Tawrro's trust in her, he hadn't looked at her the same way after it. She had abandoned her other friends on Denon, their association too dangerous to re-establish even once she was safely off of Denon. She had run away from home once before, but after Phelaan, her flight had felt less like running towards freedom, and more like running towards a prison.

One that ended here, perhaps. The girl steeled herself, unwilling to break down in front of Phelaan's boss. If he intended to kill her, he should just get it over with and dispense with the dramatics.

Or at least cut back on the monologuing. Pro-tip for any would-be victims of Enigma: bring earplugs.

"Phelaan..." she started, and her throat choked with emotion. No, she insisted, she wasn't that scared little girl anymore. She had faced her lion's den and walked out unscathed. She wasn't about to die here, either. "Phelaan thought I was muscling in on his business. I didn't even know he had a business until he tried to have me killed!"

Now she looked up at Tawrro, knowing he remembered exactly the circumstances of that death warrant. Knowing he was the one who had taken it, and only reneged on it after discovering the truth of her identity. Apparently, somewhere along the line of putting out a contract on her, Phelaan had neglected to inform his contractors that she was just a kid.

That was his error, and her gain. Having Tawrro gave her protection, but only for a while. It had taken a year or so, and a number of attempts, but Phelaan's goons had cornered them both again.

An encounter which had impressed upon her the need to end their feud, once and for all.

Tawrro's reassuring expression as he turned back at her gave Daiya the confidence to continue. The circumstances of their introduction were bittersweet, but so removed by now that sometimes they managed to laugh at it. They had grown close in the years since finding each other, and though her last actions on Denon had shaken their relationship, the girl would never be afraid so long as he was around.

"What can I say after that? I won first." The impassive mask that had slid over her face was mired only by the girl's contrite tone and obvious inexperience. She was no hardened assassin, simply a resourceful girl who managed to beat her opponent in his own, lethal, race. It didn't make a difference now how scared she had been of him, or how much she had sacrificed to succeed. She had survived, and he hadn't.

Wasn't that the game of life?

Finally, Tawrro spoke up, issuing a series of barks and growls that gave no confusion about his intentions. With his questions answered, this Enigma guy had no more use of them. Daiya had no illusions that he would simply let them go, but she really hoped her Wookiee guardian had a plan if he did.

From what she had heard, the terrors of the shadowlands might give her nightmares a run for their credits.

Enigma Iuda​