Matsu Xiangu
The Haruspex
Point Nadir
“Identification.”
The woman’s voice at the other end of the line was brusque, though Matsu was not expecting anything different. A flash of annoyance cast out like a net, dragged back with nothing to show for it as she let her fingers fly over keys to type rather than speak her response. At this distance and with no familiarity with the bored stranger it would require too much of Matsu’s energy and steal too much of her current subtlety to communicate telepathically. So she answered with an alias crafted rather artfully for her by a lone slicer who seemed to see the benefit in maintaining her warm wishes. While she assumed no one within the comet-city would have scruples in regards to her morality, she thought her reputation might precede and preclude her. Her invasion of several unsuspecting planets within the last few months was hardly idle gossip, and no one was more prickly about protecting what they considered theirs than criminals.
But while there was something appealing about the daydream of bringing her armies to bear against Point Nadir, the destruction she craved was more personal.
“Cleared.”
She’d never visited the criminal comet before, mostly because she’d never had a reason to take the trouble. The problem had never been finding Them so much as wherever their haunt was at the current moment. As Jackrab Hole yawned in to Fische’s Cove Matsu pulled up the fabric that had draped around her neck while it wasn’t being used to cover the lower half of her face, obscuring the mess of gnarled flesh. She had taken to having all of her clothes designed to cover her scarring elegantly - a fact that She would no doubt find as amusing as ever. Matsu’s discontent lay not with her appearance but what it meant for her, and one of its most glaring grievances was how much harder it made it to go unnoticed. Her arms were already a giveaway, but there was no getting around her holohorror face.
She left her ship in the Tethers. She didn’t much care what condition it was in when she came back to it, if it was even there at all.
The streets of the lower levels - if they could be called such - twisted and turned, rolling back on themselves or opening to completely new passages choked by the stench of decay both human and animal. Cloaked and hooded, Matsu could have passed for some slip of a ghost gliding among the rats feasting on half-rotten cheeks and tongues. Bodies rose silently as she walked by, pulling rodents and cockroaches from their flesh as they shuffled after her, muscle and bone gaining more coordination as they moved for the first time in days and weeks. Those who’d come to Point Nadir to make something of themselves only to find there was nothing to build threw themselves where they thought she couldn’t see, pressed in the slivers between makeshift shacks or hiding themselves under blankets. But she wasn’t there for them, and by the time her surroundings started showing more signs of affluence she had a sizable group of the Dead marching behind her.
Though still far from the more showy districts, wherever she found herself now was still admirably more perceptive of the hooded lady and her companions. And as was inevitable in such a place, the group whose turf it was considered did not take kindly to the gathering.
“Oi! What the hell is this?” The query was delivered in an exceptionally abrasive, nasal tone and Matsu wouldn’t have stopped were it not for the owner inserting himself squarely in her path.
“Let me pass,” she said simply.
“What, you dumb or something? Don’t speak Basic? I asked you a fething question lady - what the hell are you on about?”
Her eyes narrowed, rage hollowing her stomach at the realization that he was one of those who would never understand her, who couldn’t hear or understand anything sent telepathically. He hadn’t heard her. It drove her mad.
One of the Undead slipped out from behind her, walking impressively upright despite half of its ribcage having rotted in a crumpled mess due to the way it had died. It ignored the three bullets the protesting man put in its chest, reaching out a hand for the vest he wore and holding him close as it heaved an ocean of acidic bile on his face. Matsu pushed the hood off her head then to watch, her impassive face hellish in the glow of the acid pouring from her creature’s mouth. Time, practice, and experimentation made each incarnation of her army more easy to control and therefore deadlier. Beautiful.
The Undead who had so kindly removed the annoyance stepped back, wiping its mouth on the back of its hand and seeming to ignore the way the acid chewed through its own appendage. What was left of the guard rose from its knees, flesh melted from crown to sternum in a blooming pattern revealing a denuded skull - the center of some awful flower.
“You can understand me now,” she stated it in that sorceress’ language only her children understood.
It nodded and she would have smiled.
The other members of the gang she assumed her newest child had once belonged to came pouring from their hiding spots, intent on protecting their territory and riches. Matsu wanted nothing so fleeting, but it was the quickest way to what she did want. People came to Nadir to build something, and they came to be hidden. And so she must draw Them out. She assumed information would not travel at quite the same speed as which it was carried on Coruscant, but there was no ignoring the screaming that surrounded the Sith Lady as her army set to work expanding its ranks.
[member="Loray Tares"] | [member="Aver Brand"]
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