See What I've Become

[Nisha Decrilla]

Contruum's predictable weather whipped around her tattered cloak. How long had she been lurking in shadows now? How long had she had naught but Contruum's delinquents and her self to talk to? She didn't know, but what she did know is she'd lingered too long already. Blood trails and dark plague carved a nice little path towards her. whatever she did, wherever she ran, he would find her.

An enemy of my enemy is a friend.

"I'm not going to them for help."

She ducked down another ally, footsteps taking her to the old office block. Windows still shattered, it was open to the elements, but she liked being able to look down on the decrepit world.

You might as well just stand out in the open and invite him to come for you.

"Can't get off this world."

Yes you can. You've got enough people in this hell hole to get you onto a ship.

"He'll just follow me. Not worth risking more people."

When did you start caring so much. You can't risk others, but you can risk yourself.

"Shut up."

What about Moira?

"Can't trust that tincan."

So what can you trust?

"Only myself."

Well we're totally karked then aren't we.

Glass crunched underfoot as she passed over the threshold, and headed for the duracrete stairs. The drunkard that claimed the lowest level stirred from his slumber as she passed him. He lunged to grab her ankles, slurring something incomprehensible, she swung a boot to his face and he recoiled from her. She continued upwards, five six flights of stairs.

Look at how far you've fallen.

"Don't start."

You've never been this low, Anaya. Even when the kicked you out of the Empire for your backstabbing ways you never hit rock bottom like this.

"I really fething hate you."

Nice, self loathing. There's something new.

"Get out of my head."

She stumbled up the seventh flight. Falling onto her hands, glass pricking her hands. Sucking in a breath of pain, she got back up. boot echoing as she crossed what had once been an open plan office.

You did this to yourself you know. So eager to drive that blade between peoples ribs that you lost all the friends you could ever have.

"Sarge is my friend."

Fat lot of good that's done you.

She passed a pane of reflective glass catching a glimpse of herself. Tattered clothes, deep shadows beneath her eyes. She blinked, the reflection changed, it was smirking at her. What about Ovmar?

"I've risked to much to drag him into this."

He could save you.

"No."

A new body isn't that unappealing is it.

"I said NO!" Her hand shot forward sending a blast of energy at the glass, blowing it outwards. Shards would rain down onto the streets below. A laugh echoed in her ears and she looked down at herself. The tattoo was shifting across her skin. Disgusted she moved to the edge of the floor where a portion had been blown away.

What are you waiting for, Anaya?

"Death."

Too cowardly to take your own life? You could just jump.

She moved so the tips of her boots were just off the edge.

Jump. Just do it. Put us both out of our misery.

"There's always another way."

Jump.

For a moment she swayed, teetering dangerously, rain was coming in sideways, lashing at her face, the wind beckoning her to fly.

Jump. Jump. JUMP!

She sucked in a breath, sanity claiming her again and she fell backwards and scrambled away. That laughter echoing in her ears again.

You were so close then. Its getting easier you know.

"KARK YOU AND THE DARK HOLE YOU CRAWLED OUT OF!"

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"]

Contruum, that least fortunate of worlds, had nearly killed Rave once, had made her wealthy once -- she knew it as an untrustworthy neighbour.

She found Anaya three stories up, in a building that had taken the brunt of the Republic assault on Velok's auction. She'd crossed paths with the Twi'lek only rarely, known of her through mutual acquaintances -- but then there were the rumors about Rakata Beta. Rumors at the highest levels of the Fringe wound up being one of two things: True, or involving Jared Ovmar.

Suffice it to say, anyone who could screw the Chosen One had Rave's attention.

In close-fitting armour of muted gold, Rave ascended the broken staircase. "Master Fen, it's Rave Merrill. Do you have a minute?"

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

You've got a visitor.

"I know, I'm not deaf."

What could the infamous Rave Merrill want with a wastrel like you.

"Burn in hell."

You really should stop talking to yourself you know, Rave will think you're mad.

"I'm beyond giving a feth about what people think."

Liar.

She pulled herself to her feet, and dusted herself off.

See? Even now you're trying to look as good as you can under the circumstances. Pathetic.

"Kark you." she grumbled. This conversation was over by the time Rave would reach the top of the staircase, but she could still feel that smirk still hear the low chuckle of laughter.

"I'm hardly in a position to deny you, Rave." she responded finally, there was a touch of impatience in her voice. She turned back to regard the broken city.

No need to be so cold, she might be here to give you what you want. Can you imagine what that would do for her resume?

"Please shut up." she breathed, her words whisked away on the wind.

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"]

Rave found a seat on the edge of half a bathtub. The other half, apparently, had been on the Republic's kill list, along with the rest of what had once been a 'fresher. The wall was gone, of course, leaving no barrier between her and Anaya.

"I was about to offer my services as an exorcist," she said; "I'm rather good at that. But the more I think about it, the more I feel what you are, the more I'm sure you don't have anyone else in there. There's a unique feel to possession and a unique feel to Force Walk, and I'm not getting that from you.

"You know there's no such thing as a free lunch. You know I'll turn this to my advantage if I can, though not to your disadvantage -- this is no zero-sum game. But I'd like the opportunity to try..." She tapped her temple eloquently. "Fixing what ails you. Because I know who you are, and I want Anaya Fen to owe me a favour."

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

Anaya managed a weak smile. "No one in here but me, myself and I and we appear to be having a disagreement. The sort that offers to split personalities. I'd invite her out to meet you, but she's not got a hold that strong."

Yet.

"And I'm not prepared to give her hold."

Clinging to a pathetic existence.

"I'm not entirely sure I could be of any use to you."

I could be.

Anaya closed her eyes, for a moment the took a step backward from the edge. She couldn't afford to have such a distraction now. She turned to look at Rave, glittering red eyes regarding the armour clad woman. She could feel the hairs on her neck stand on end, turning to glance over her shoulder she found the other her staring back at her. That wide mocking smile on her face.

You'll never be rid of me, you know that. I am what makes you genius. I am the ruthless part of you that gives you the ability to make the decisions you do.

Anaya forgot she wasn't alone. "You're reckless."

I didn't get you into this mess.

"No, my sentimentality did."

You should kill him.

Lightening sprung from her finger, its heat shattering the glass again. She blinked looking down at her hands as the mark shifted again, digust replaced the insanity in her eyes and then she looked up. Eyes calm, sanity seemingly back in place. "Did you seek me out, Rave? Or are you just in the right place at the right time?"

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"]

"A bit of both," said Rave, unmoved by the conversation with the mirror. "Call me an opportunist. I was on Contruum anyway, a rumor caught my ear..."

She shrugged eloquently and rose from the blasted bathtub. "What prompted this, Master Fen? What brought this on?"

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

"Stupidity."

Well at least you got that right.

"Oh, kark you." She snapped the continued without missing a beat. "Someone asked for a favour, I obliged and I paid dearly for it."

He didn't asked he demanded, and he pretty much left a veiled threat.

"She doesn't need to know that."

What are you going to do if he survives his pathetic mission? You always felt more for him than you should have. He was another one that used you, 'cept it was for your body, not your mind.

"Stop it." she breathed moving away from Merrill, fingers trailing across the panes of glass, the predator following her always. "Sarge might be cold but we had a mutual understanding, a mutual attachment."

That attachment cost you your freedom! Attachment is a weakness!

"Is it? Look at the strength he found."

That's not strength, that is suicide.

"That's rich coming from someone who was trying to jump us out the karking window."

Which is the better option?

"I will not be a slave again." She paused at the last window, her hand pressing against it. It warped beneath her fingers, exploding again. "And you will not take me down that road." She paused staring out from the window pane.

"I've been marked by the Dark Lord. Either by choice, or by force, he will have me kneel before him. He will have me beg for freedom. and I WILL NOT!" The windows withing six feet of her shattered under the physical release of her rage. She sank the floor, watching the mark shift on her again slithering across her arms.

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"]

Rave was only party to half that conversation, but as rubble flew around her she noted three things: Mention of Sarge, her brother's best friend; mention of the Dark Lord, whose eventual death was in the hands of the Deicide Oculus and its mastermind and her; and the mark swirling around Anaya's skin.

"It seems to me," she said, "and forgive me if I'm wrong, but your problem is twofold. You have a mark, and you have an admirer. I can rip that mark out of you easily enough. As for the admirer..."

A sharp-edged grin crossed her face as she went down on one knee before the collapsed Sith Master.

"...only Velok can help you," she whispered.

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

"Velok is dead." She replied bluntly.

Since when does that mean anything? Ovmar was dead.

"Velok was sealed into a crystal and cast into a black hole, idiot. Everyone knows that. Ovmar's circumstances were entirely different."

Does it bother you that he's been in Mikhail's head?

"Your ability to maintain focus is poor."

I just like making you squirm.

Anaya was still looking at her hands while she spoke to herself. "This is precisely why we are in so much trouble. Everything is a game to you."

Oh come on, you can't pin that one all on me.

"I bloody can."

Now whose lost focus?

There was that laugh again, the manic cackle that made Anaya want to scream. She lifted her gaze to Rave.

"Get me out of this mess, and I will owe you more than one favor."

IDIOT! What favour do you think she will ask of you!? Do you think it will be sany better than what Sarge asked of you!?

"I don't care." she said shaking her head "I don't care. Whatever it is anything is better than this."

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"]

"Of course everyone knows it. Because clearly Velok is bound by common knowledge." Rave shook her head. "He lives...and I know for an absolute certainty that he can resolve this mental schism you've got going on. Come with me; my ship's not far. Come meet Velok."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

[media]https://soundcloud.com/roadrunner-usa/deicide-lunatic-of-gods[/media]

Contruum, what a pathetic backwater world.

A solitary black shape roared silently over the ruined slums below, its formed concealed by a combination of technology that made it invisible to standard sensory equipment, and it's black paint-job allowed it to blend into the darkness of Contruum's turbulent weather. The Sicarius-class Stealth Yacht carried several individuals, som of them pilots, and others armed soldiers, but there was one that dwarfed them all in size and power. The Sith Lord, Darth Vornskr, was here on a mission for the Dark Lord, or perhaps that's what he had told himself, but in truth this was a personal quest that he had embarked upon. With the ability to sense the mark placed upon the flesh of one he loathed intensely, he was able to quickly track her down to this backwater world, and he had come prepared.

A blatant approach would alert her to him, and so Vornskr had deigned to utilize his Sith Amulet to cloak his Force signature when he arrived on the world.

His stealth yacht came to a stop several klicks away from the target's location, and deposited the Sith Lord onto a nearby rooftop. Vornskr would continue his trek on foot, utilizing his intelligence training to navigate the city with relative ease and stealth. For this quest he had brought along several weapons besides his lightsaber, such as a blaster pistol, a grenade launcher and several types of ammunition for said-grenade launcher. He was well adept at urban warfare, and if he could get the correct drop on [member="Anaya Fen"], then perhaps he could end this without any further damage to his own emotions.

Force knew that this entire ordeal was something that deeply impacted the Sith Lord, although the only person besides him that was aware of it was the person he was coming after.

Kaine Zambrano would have his revenge, one way or another.

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

"Oh yes, she seems trustworthy." A new voice broke through the conversational wall, a dark but amused voice. It came from a man in the corner of the room. He was sitting on a small piece of rubble near the open edge of the room, his face rested in his hand, his arm propped up on his knee. Long silver hair from his head, cold orange eyes sat in his skull, and a long smirk danced across his lips that told of knowledge no one else could possibly have. The man ignored Rave completely, he only looked to Anaya laying there. He seemed unconcerned with everything else.

"I mean, she couldn't possibly be lying for her own gain could she?" The man mocked Anaya, grinning and smirking at her. "No, people never lie. Especially people you know."

The Phantom spoke as if he knew Anaya, as if her life was an open book to him.

His smirk continued even as he lifted his hand from his face. The man stood to his full height, standing above Rave, looming over her for a moment before taking loud booted steps over towards his apprentice. He squatted down besides her, tribal garb rustling slightly, bone tooth necklace pressing into his skin.

"Better decide quickly." The phantoms head turned away from Anaya. "I think youre about to be in trouble."

The spectres grin widened.

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

Moridin?! What the hell is he doing here?

"How the feth should I know?!" She sat up leaning towards the phantom. "I know all about lying for self gain, or have you forgotten that, Master."

This is beyond insane now, you know that don't you? Not only are you talking to yourself, but you are talking to a ghost.

She laughed. "So, I can either talk to this ghost or talk to another one. Does it matter? So long as the end result is the same and I get out of this mess. I don't think it does."

He's right though, you can't trust her.

She regarded Merrill once more. "She won't burn what's useful to her, and she knows I won't burn her. I don't pick fights I can't win."

Yes you do, you just don't realize you can't win them until its too late.

"Will you please, feth off."

Who? Me or him, or her?

"Both of you. Not you Rave."

Nope, sorry, completely attached to you, as I am...well...you.

She got to her feet. "I can't feel any danger, Moridin, though that does not mean its isn't there. I wonder who he's sent?"

Shall we go and find out?

"Where is your ship, Rave?"

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"] [member="Darth Vornskr"] [member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"] [member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

"That's not Moridin, that's one of the Crusade's false gods. Obsessed with omniscience." She examined the Force Phantom with clinical curiosity, walking around it, ignoring it as a person. "Vectivus-style, I think, but I'm no expert. Fascinating."

She gestured, though she didn't know it, more or less in the direction of the concealed [member="Darth Vornskr"], and made for the staircase. "Ship's this way."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

With a grace and finesse that seemed unbecoming of his large frame, Vornskr dropped down from one of the rooftops onto an open balcony whose railing had been blown into many pieces that now rested at the alleyway down below. Gently he removed the large metal case that had been slung over his back since his departure from the ship, and sat it down on the cracked permacrete of the balcony. With two snaps, Vornskr opened the metal case to reveal a pristine "Manticore" SienarTech Grenade/Missile launcher that had been commonplace in the Old Empire's military, and a weapon that Vornskr had extensive knowledge of. He removed the launcher from its soft mold, and loaded a single short-range rocket from the case into the slot at the back of the stock.

Bracing himself, Vornskr held the weapon tightly in his grip as he used the Force to line up a shot that would take the missile through one of the broken windows to hopefully come to impact right in the room that his target was in. Sadly, the weather was not on his side on this, as the wind continued to pick up and the rain came down relentlessly, although it did give him quite a bit of cover to set up this little attack. He took another moment or two to recalculate where the trajectory of the rocket may go, and he was satisfied with the results either way. He never expected to take her out in one hit from afar anyways, he wanted to look in her eyes when he took his vengeance.

Anyways, without further ado, Vornskr let loose the missile.

Whooooosh, KERPLOW!

[member="Anaya Fen"] [member="Rave Merrill"] [member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

"No," Anaya corrected Rave. "That's Moridin." She fingered the tooth necklace about her neck. It matched the one the phantom was wearing. "I've met Sol...in fact I know him quite...intimately."

See your sentimentality brought him along too. Should have gotten rid of his stuff a long time ago.

"Are you really going to do this, the whole way?"

Of course.

She followed Rave reaching the top of the stairs as the hairs on the back of her hair stood on end, the all too familiar sense of danger increased tenfold. She didn't yell, she simply grabbed Rave and toppled them both down the stairs as the missile found home on the floor they'd been on. The floor above collapsed, and cracks appeared in the ceiling as the structural integrity of the whole building began to degrade. Anaya was laughing, laid on the floor as small pieces of debris showered down on them. She turned her head to look at Rave. "You still want to help me?"

I wonder who he sent.

"So do I."

Shall we go and say hello?

"I think we should let them come to us."

She got to her feet, offering Rave a hand if she wasn't already up.

Well that's no fun.

"This isn't about fun, this is about survival." She was still grinning.

[member="Darth Vornskr"] [member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"] - Anaya says your net's down and you're ok with us moving on.

[member="Anaya Fen"] [member="Darth Vornskr"]

Flat on her back, looking up at the gaping rent that had once been a floor, Rave struggled to process several concurrent bits of information. For one, someone had just taken a shot at her with a missile launcher. For another, if Talith was Moridin-

Feth, I fought Moridin. Feth...

She hauled herself upright, accepting Anaya's hand, and moved out through the gray, sooty rainscape of Contruum. A dull and disheartening world, totalitarian in its way -- she didn't know its alleys well enough to keep them unseen, so speed would have to do. Assuming her Rassilon-class starfighter (recently captured from Daemos) was still there, anyway. She would have to sit on Anaya's lap to fly, but better close confines than, you know, death.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

There was no time to waste.

Vornskr was on the move before the missile even detonated against the floor, taking the large rotating barrel from the case and slapping it into it's correct position on the bottom of the launcher. He took several explosive grenades and began to fill in the empty slots in the drum, before finally taking the rest of the grenades with him and lunging off of the balcony to continue to trail his target.

Well, targets now.

Vornskr had sensed another individual in that room with Anaya sometime ago, but if they got in his path of vengeance then they will suffer the same fate as the accused. Priming the grenade launcher, Vornskr lunged from building to building as he tracked both of them through the gray haze that had fallen upon the city. Calculating on the fly, he lobbed an explosive grenade to a spot just ahead of the fleeing individuals in an attempt to cut them off.

The barrel would rotate soon after the grenade was launched...

[member="Anaya Fen"] [member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Nisha Decrilla]

Anaya was hot on Rave's heels as they ran through the haze, rain hampering her vision.

We're not gonna get away without a fight.

"I know, I know."

If we lose her...

She knew the streets of Contruum. Spent enough time here, had enough of her scumbags lurking here to know the twists and turns. She caught Rave's arm and stopped her as the grenade bounced several feet ahead of them and exploded. "Oh you cowardly son of queen." she growled, eyes casting skyward into the haze. "Go and get your ship. I'll keep this schutta busy. Just...don't be late."

Discarding her tattered cloak Anaya jumped, the force carrying her to the roof tops. No doubt that barrel was ready to lose a grenade straight at her, but she was ready for it.

If there was anything Anaya's mind could agree on, it was a fight.

[member="Darth Vornskr"] [member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Anaya Fen"] [member="Darth Vornskr"]

This state of affairs suited Rave just fine, minus the shrapnel that had just glanced off her shiny new armor. She ran on, left Anaya to do her thing, and made her way to the place where she'd left her Rassilon under hired guard. A quick payment, and she began running through an accelerated preflight.