Private The Devil Came down to Denon, Lookin' for a Soul to Steal (Beltran Rarr and Ravenous)

[Beltran Rarr]

Location:
Obsidian Star Mega-Complex aka "The Spire"
Green Sector, Denon
​

Beltran had been in meetings all day, sitting alongside the public face of Obsidian Star Technologies: CEO Debbis Endo. Endo had been the CEO of Obsidian Star for decades, but for much of the last few years, he hadn't truly been the leader of the company. In a manuever intended to deny the company from Beltran's enemies, the Lorrdian had engineered a quiet takeover of the corporation. Endo remained as the public face, but all of the credits and authority secretly through Beltran.

Under Beltran's shadow leadership, Obsidian Star had gone from a struggling arms manufacturer to one of the major suppliers of weapons and ships to the Silver Jedi Concord. Under the weight of the Concord's war with the Sith Empire and the Bryn'adul, Obsidian Star had made trillions and expanded outward into Concord space. But never one to place all of his bets on the same bantha, Beltran had kept the company's headquarters on Denon, a world that had remained officially neutral for much of the last six years.

As the days meetings wore on, Beltran's wisdom had paid off. The recent offensive by the Bryn'adul had led to the loss of Obsidian Star Aerospace's primary shipyard "The Forge" when the marauding aliens had cut off the world of Danuta from the Silver Jedi Concord. The loss of that facility had rocked Obsidian Star Aerospace on its heels and caused the entire corporation's stock to plummet.

The Aerospace Division had built a secret back up facility in the Unknown Regions, but that too had been overtaken. That time by marauders from the Brotherhood of the Maw. With the manufacturing facilities on Denon now entirely dedicated to arms production, that left the Aerospace division at a standstill. The earliest projection they could come up with getting a new shipyard up and running was at least a year.

All in all, it had been a disappointing day and as Beltran stalked back to his office he was in no mood for even more bad news. Yet, of course, it was there waiting for him at his computer terminal. Some time ago, Beltran had been waylaid on the Confederate world of Vandelhelm and caught up in a murder investigation. The investigation for Beltran had ended up with a building exploding around him and a group of cultists killing several civilians in a tense standoff. The apparent mastermind, a Force User that Beltran had never met, had managed to get away.

Since that time, Beltran had set up a computer algorithm to comb through the various news media entities throughout the galaxy, looking for any new murder cases that matched up with the ones on Vandalhelm. For a long time, nothing had come up. But today of all days, the algorithm had found a match. Right here on Denon of all places... A murder in the downtrodden Brown Sector that matched the M.O. precisely.

It appeared that the Devil had truly come down to Denon, looking for souls to steal.

Ravenous

 

[Ravenous]

Denon: Brown Sector
Time: 18:35

"What did I tell you about saying please and thank you?" A Mirialan father scolded his child who appeared to be a hybrid between himself and a human. "Can I please have some more salt?" Acceptingly the man passed the salt across the table his daughter greedily shaking the vial over her plate. "Be careful it'll get too salty!"

The room grew considerably colder as a draft blew through the room dimming the lights and rotting the paint off the already damaged walls. There was a terrible stench in the air as if someone tried to cremate a body inside a stove. The macaroni and blue cheese on the table began to turn brown and decay at the touch of an armored figure their eyes burning like suns and the space around them filled with a black smoky haze as the air literally died around him. Stoically the man ran his finger through the food the icky bubbling substance sizzling at his touch.

"Disgusting. No amount of salt is gonna fix this." It might have been the father's imagination but it seemed as though the walls and floor were ripped away and replaced with nothing but a black void filled with nothing but he, his daughter, and this mysterious assailant who's broken into his home. The man stood on nothing, the father and his daughter sat on nothing, and even in the face of such a looming and surreal threat, they could feel absolutely nothing it would be terrifying if there was any emotion left in this empty black hole of a space. The father felt no fear as the figure approached his cape billowing behind him. He felt no sadness as his daughter watched on not a twinge of emotion in her expression. Perhaps most egregious however was the lack of peace and acceptance the father yearned for as the man reached in his tattered cape and emerged with a dark cylindrical object that shot forth a blade of pure amethyst energy that severed his neck from his shoulders with no resistance.

"Now that he's out of the way." In a flash of light, the room returned to normal bringing gravity with at as the Mirialans lifeless body collapsed on the floor. The daughter was left alone glued to her seat with horror as the lightsaber-wielding foe glared at her murderous intent in his eyes. The girl's catatonic expression earned her no sympathy as the man who murdered her father reached in his pocket and drew a syringe the white liquid bubbling inside foreign to the young one. "Before you get your hopes up this isn't going to put you under."

Denon: Burning Household
Time: 18:45

Smoke stained the air and ash littered the ground outside a smoldering and blacked housing unit the walls charred and burned to a crisp. In what appeared to be a stove explosion two corpses were found inside the home their scorched skin and bloodied bodies emptied of life and barely resembling the people they used to be. In most cases, this could be written off as a simple accident but some things about this whole scene just appeared to be...off.

The child found in the burning house had massive injuries to her head namely the gaping hole simply removed from her head. Not blown apart like in an explosion not burned away like a fire would but cut away like a blade would in surgery. There were traces of a numbing agent in her blood this one in particular known for its wide use during surgery and other medical operations. Perhaps the most damning however was the fact that the girl's brain was simply...gone as if the person who removed it set up this fire in order to destroy the evidence. What horrifying knowledge it is to know there is someone loose on the streets with such heinous intention on his mind blending in with the populace sitting and waiting to strike. Who knows when they'll strike again and when their sights will look away from destruction.

Beltran Rarr

 

[Beltran Rarr]

Denon: Burning Household
Time: 2030

The scene was already filled with firefighting droid units and dozens of Corporate security personnel when Beltran's speeder pulled up to the scene. His driver, a highly trained veteran from the GA military turned Corporate Contractor turned in his seat to look at his employer.

"Are you sure you want to go in alone, sir?"

Officially, Beltran operated under the cover identity of Cornelius M. Sneed, chief engineer of Obsidian Star Technologies, when he was on planet. Very few, if any, of the Obsidian Star personnel he dealt with knew him as anything but. However, Beltran Rarr, had spent much of the last decade as a member of the Antarian Rangers. He had risen through the ranks, fighting against the Sith and Bryn'adul alike. He had dozens of battle honors to his name. On top of that, since he learned of his Force Sensitivity, he had trained under and fought alongside some of the best warriors in the Silver Jedi Order, Laertia Io and Caltin Vanagor just to name a few. More over, Beltran had spent much of the last year secretly apprenticing to the enigmatic Sith Lord Darth Solipsis , learning the ways of the Dark Side so that he might turn them against the Sith.

Simply put, with perhaps the exception of the being who had engineered the scene before him, Beltran counted himself as one of the most singularly dangerous men on the planet-if not the sector itself.

That being said, as he adjusted his smart glasses and smoothed out the jacket of his exceptionally expensive suit, he didn't expect or desire anyone on Denon to know that. "No, Scotland," He replied in a posh upper Coruscanti accent. "Thank you, but I will be fine. Please stay here and keep the speeder running."

"Of course, sir." Replied Scotland Haymes, former Master Sergeant in the GA infantry.

"That's a good lad."

Opening the door, Beltran got out of the speeder. He looked out amongst the carnage of the still smoldering homestead. Fire-droids had already put out the blaze and were now conducting an investigation into the origins. Corporate security droids were documenting various pieces of evidence while the Detective in charge oversaw it all.

"Excuse me sir, you're not permitted on the crime scene." Said one of the security droids as Beltran stepped passed the security barrier. "I'll need to see some identification, please."

Beltran pulled out his ident-chit and allowed the droid to scan it, speaking in the same posh accent he had in the speeder. "Cornelius Sneed, chief engineer for Obsidian Star. I've been granted special dispensation by the Corporate council to walk the scene."

Were he speaking with a flesh and blood being, he suspected the next question he'd face would be why a chief engineer of a powerful arms company wanted to walk the scene of a seemingly random fire in the Brown Sector. But the droid simply ran the check, saw that he had indeed been granted access, and allowed him on his way.

Beltran stepped into the remnants of the still smoldering homestead. He could smell the scent of ash, smoke and also the faint odor of charred flesh. For those unaccustomed to smell, it was usually enough to make one queasy, so Beltran placed a hand on his stomach and gulped-as if trying to keep himself from vomiting. It was all part of the act.

He approached one of the Crime Scene Analysis droids and spoke crisply after enough time had passed that it made sense for him to have regained his composure. "Are there any abnormalities present on the scene?"

The droid answered immediately, having been provided Beltran's credentials through the shared security network they all operated on. "It appears that the elder resident was decapitated and the younger resident had a hole cut through her skull. These injuries are not consistent with what would be expected if they had died from a simple home-fire. An examiner team is en route to collect the bodies for autopsy."

Beltran nodded and moved away from the droid. He stretched out with the Force and was immediately assaulted with a familiar sense of wrongness. It reminded him strongly of the murders that he had helped investigate on the Confederate world of Vandalhelm and a name came into his mind, unbidden. It was something that he had heart whispered on that world, between terrified police officers. He spoke the name aloud, sending it through the Force as well. If the being was who he thought it was, perhaps it would hear it. Perhaps it would realize that on this world, it was not only the hunter-but now also the hunted.

"Ravenous."

Ravenous

 

[Ravenous]

Denon: Abandoned Warehouse
Time: 19:27

Ravenous laid tucked inside his velvet red sheets his brown unruly hair sprawled across his pillow and his pristine gold-encrusted mask sitting idly on his chest flakes of his charred dead skin having flaked onto the mask. Even now after all these years Ravenous' face simply refused to heal or even improve leaving it in the same bloody charred state it's always been. Time didn't move forward for the man's body it remained stagnant and steeped in old ways yet every day it decayed at a supernatural rate, cells died, and didn't regenerate yet this doesn't appear to affect the man and it's creepy a medical mystery is what it is.

A warm lingering presence washed over Ravenous its inquisitive fickle nature prodding at the empty void inside him. It felt his power and it was intrigued to understand it understand him. But intrigue must be tempered with caution. The presence grew nearer and searched more closely for Ravenous only for his sinister and greedy aura to seek out this new signature and hunt it down to drain its energy and feast on its power like a wolf having caught its prey. The void inside Ravenous was all but invincible as far as he was concerned, the only way he knew it could be beaten was to fill that void with something which in most cases people only had themselves to offer up to a voracious presence that never satiated.

Flashing blue light filled the darkroom as the Holovision blared to life its screen rapidly changing as Ravenous flipped through the channels searching for his preferred program. Finally, the man settled on the Local Holonet the fame of his exploits having reached public eyes once again.

"Ladies and gentlemen we bring you shocking news tonight. A local housefire in the cities brown sector has now been ruled as a homicide rather than a simple accident! Investigators have discovered that the residents a forty-seven-year-old and an eight-year-old appeared to have been disfigured before the blaze broke loose and that other evidence of foul play bare shocking resemblance to a recent string of murders committed across the entire outer rim specifically on the planet Vandelhelm where local police were caught in a hostage situation with a group of cultists thought to be responsible for the murders. Law enforcement is working diligently to catch the perpetrator and citizens are advised not to walk alone during nighttime hours. Next up how Obsidian Star's recent stock plummet will affect-"

The Holovision faded to black as the door to Ravenous' room slid open revealing a slender horned figure in his doorway. Their womanly figure and gumption in barging into his quarters narrowed down the suspect list immediately.

"What do you want? I was watching that you know."

The woman stepped into the room revealing her orange skin and white lekku that resembled spikes more than anything. Groggily she slumped against the doorway a bottle of ale dripping onto the floor.

"You don't need to watch it! YOU WERE THERE."

"It doesn't hurt to stay updated on recent events but of course YOU wouldn't understand your always too wasted to even stand!"

"You knew what you were getting into when you showed me your huge collection of exotic alcohol!"

"And YOU knew what YOU were getting into when you showed me your huge-you know what? Nevermind. Just tell me why you're here."

"The troops are done loading up the explosives we can be off within the hour." A devilish smile split the Togruta's face. "So I thought I'd tell you to put on some pants."

"GET OUT!"

Even in her drunken stupor, Arizelva was smart enough to leave at Ravenous' command his wrath a painful experience she wished to avoid. Minutes later Ravenous was clad in armor surveying the convoy of trucks stocked full of high-grade explosives and a contingent of Defilers set on sowing discord. Tonight Denon would do more than bleed...it would be drained and it would remember the tears it shed. Tonight in the cities green sector a huge podrace was about to held and it was even rumored that a few wealthy businessmen were betting their companies on the races. Thousands of people were set to be there and the stakes were incredibly high making it one of the biggest events ever held for a Podrace...


...Imagine how big it will be when half of the stadium goes up in flames...

He could see it now, the smell of ash as it paints the ground black with soot, the black billows of smoke as they rise into the air painting the sky gray with smog. The sounds of screaming as the flesh is torn from the body exposing the now charred muscle tissue underneath. Blood will line the seats and horror will once again bare its fangs.

"The Police are after me...well I won't be so hard to find anymore."

Beltran Rarr

 

[Beltran Rarr]

Beltran sat aboard his ship, the Imperialis, legs crossed in the middle of the ship's meditation chamber. The room was completely quiet, with the exception of Beltran's own breathing. He no longer looked anything like his alias, Cornelius Sneed. His business suit had been changed for his sentinel armor and mask. Over his shoulder he wore his cloak, an artifact that he'd acquired while on Pillio with his mentor Darth Solipsis.

The gear weighed heavily on the Lorrdian, as did the competing Light and Dark Force energies from his mask and shroud respectively. It wasn't often that Beltran wore both items at the same time, for he knew that keeping such diametrically opposed pieces in close proximity was dangerous. But his target was not a creature to be easily trifled with.

In addition to these pieces, Beltran also wore his combat rig, and holster, which contained his favored Hand-Cannon, loaded with six rounds of Sith-Killer Ammunition, a 10mm Pulse Pistol, a small energy buckler on his right wrist. His father's lightsaber hung from his belt and his pike was strapped into a scabbard across his back. Finally, also hanging from his belt was his personal cloaking device. It was an unreliable piece of scavenged tech, but one that had proven useful for short periods of time in the past.

In a perfect universe, he would have some of his Paladins with him for support, but he had long considered keeping his life with the Rangers and his life here on Denon completely separate from one another. There were perhaps only two Antarian Rangers who knew of his connection to Obsidian Star. His retired former commander Valkren Calderon, and fugitive Gunnery Sergeant Tulan Kor. It was also likely that Darth Solipsis had soused out the connection as well, through the use of his spy: The droid called Sentinel, who lived aboard the ship. Even his recently deceased friend, Sergeant Reece, hadn't any idea.

Under the steady piloting of his astromech, who he called Dot, the Imperialis was flying over Brown and Green sectors, looking for any sign of Ravenous or his cultist followers. Sentinel monitored all of the holo-channels looking for breaking news, as well as monitoring all of the Corporate security and police band channels. For his part, Beltran was reaching out through the Force, trying to gain some knowledge of his quarry's next plans.

The first set of murders, Beltran suspected, were a message. A kind of declaration of Ravenous' arrival on this world. Beltran suspected that the mysterious being's next move would be far larger and many times more devastating. Beltran would have liked to be able to stop the being before he killed anyone else, but he suspected that would not be possible. Instead, he worked to force a confrontation where he intended to remove the being's head from it's shoulders.

"Do you feel me, Ravenous?" Beltran called out through the Force. "Do you sense me coming? That shiver of cold, that's not the air. That's death approaching. That's me, and I'm going to see you very soon."

Ravenous

 

[Ravenous]

(Hot damn this man brought his entire armory!)

The world didn't exist. In this desolate bleak space, there was only Ravenous standing alone in the void where nothing would even want to touch him. Except for Beltran Rarr ...apparently. Did he want to seek out Ravenous? Did he intend to find him by reading his thoughts? Following his energy? It won't work, while he's in the void Ravenous cannot even read himself. He claims to be alone in the abyss but that's not true even he isn't there NOTHING is. The only difference...between Ravenous and everyone else...is that he fell into the abyss with a parachute. Even now as Beltran delved deeper into Ravenous the dark Jedi used his power like a ladder to climb into Beltran and corrupt him as dirt would a pond or ink would stain paper.

"You hear that Beltran? I have a parachute! It doesn't matter how long or how much of the void you keep out if even a dot of ink touches paper it's no longer white. And when I tear apart your page...that dot of ink won't seem so small anymore will it?" Ravenous tore at Beltran his dark aura vigorously tearing at the man that would dare to approach his dreamscape. Ravenous smirked as the void began studying Beltran subsequentially providing its host with a new plethora of information. "Do you miss Lorrd? I would think not considering all the people you slaughtered there. You and me. We have something in common. Determination. Persistence. We live for our dreams. We kill for them too. Do the people you've killed...visit you? Mine don't. They're too afraid." Beltran threatened Ravenous with the freezing sting of death its cold embrace beckoning him. "I didn't just bring a parachute. I brought a coat too. I'm not here, the wasteland is. When you step into it...what will you bring? We'll talk more later."

Ravenous saw something tap his shoulder. He didn't feel it he saw it, nothing could touch his soul-self nothing physical anyway but his real body would still feel the grasp and whatever it entailed. Slowly his consciousness returned to the real world where he found Arizelva furiously shaking his body. "We've arrived! Can you wake up and do your dark and menacing routine already?! You said it yourself we're on a timetable here!" Ravenous stood up and pulled his cloak over his body as he just now noticed the transport had come to a complete stop. "Remember we don't want to cause a stir just yet. Be covert and be discreet. If someone sees you, shoot them. If you are captured...shoot yourself, bash your head in, slit your throat. I don't care how you do it just as long as you are dead." The Defilers all nodded without hesitation their resolve strengthened by the presence of their leader.

Hissing the doors to the transport opened allowing Ravenous and his cohorts to step into the dimly lit parking deck a long row of speeders lining their approach as they strode forward guns primed and ready to demolish. There was a single elevator at the end of this long deck a tall beefcake of a Trandoshan standing next to it. It seemed the wages here weren't that good as the scaly man turned to run only to discover that his ankles didn't work. What a strange occurrence it was, his ankles simply froze in place unable to respond to or even be felt by the rest of his body. In a quick flash of heat Ravenous' lightsaber punched a hole through the lizard's ribs preventing him from screaming as the blade burned through his lungs and tore through his chest cavity.

Stoically Ravenous ripped away the passcard hung around the man's neck his access to the lowest levels of the building now secured. "Get rid of this body and roll over those explosives!" "Yes Preeminent" The Defiler doggedly ran towards the transport a group of his comrades already unloading its explosive cargo. While Ravenous was looked on in appreciation Arizelva scowled skepticism rooted in her heart.

"You don't honestly think this will be enough to blow the ENTIRE STADIUM sky-high, do you?

"No, I don't"

"So how are ya gonna do it?" Arizelva rolled up her sleeve and tapped a few buttons on her holo-wrist a map of the stadium promptly coming to life. "I ran this through every scenario and algorithm I had and I just can't-"

Ravenous switched the map view to a system of pipes running under the locations he specified.

"Wait those are-"

"Yeah. We don't need to destroy every bit of the stadium ourselves we just need to destroy the gas running under it. I would have thought a techie like you would have bothered to check anything other than Galaxy Maps."

"Yeah well, I would have known if I did as much homework as you do!"

"Forget it. We're done unloading."

Hastily Ravenous and his troops filed into the elevator their trail of death and destruction having only started. "Make sure our getaway stays out of sight. I don't want to be found out before we even begin."

 

[Beltran Rarr]

(Yeah, he does that )

Beltran was almost surprised when he felt a response to his broadcasts through the Force. Telepathic communication had never been his strong suit. He could receive it easily enough, but he rarely successfully initiated it. The feeling of touching Ravenous' mind was an intense one. He'd felt other minds, most notably that of his mentor Darth Solipsis. Where there had been powerful desire to dominate and control, here Beltran only felt a void, gnawing at him.

It seemed that the nothingness was filled with a bitter hunger that could not be sated. It desired to consume everything, everyone that it touched. It wanted inside Beltran's mind, the Lorrdian could feel that. Part of him instinctively worked to keep it out, building barriers. But the more he struggled, the more it gnashed at him.

So he let the void in.

He fell through the blackness. He was dimly aware, despite his inability to see, of a figure above him. Also falling, but far slower. A parachute. That was an interesting analogy. He could feel the blackness pulling at him, taking pieces of his mind and examining them. Looking for something to use against me, are we? Beltran considered, a slow and amused smirk crossing his lips. Have at it, parachute man.

"Do I miss Lorrd?" Beltran sent back. "No. All that was there for me was violence and pain. As for those I slaughtered...they deserved to die. Not a single one was an innocent. Not a claim you can make. But yes, they visit me sometimes. They remind me that I, too, am a monster deserving of death. Perhaps you will be the instrument of my judgement...but somehow I doubt it. Just another narcissistic psychopath sowing destruction and death, simply because he can."

He then brought the full weight of his will down upon Ravenous through the connection they shared. Beltran already knew that he wouldn't be able to track the other being through this dark miasma of nothing, but perhaps he could glean something else. A clue...an explosion. The sounds of screaming and pain. A wound that does not heal...

"He's planning to blow something up," Beltran said to himself as his eyes opened and their connection broke. "Something big." Keying the ship's intercom he spoke. "Sentinel, I need to know if there are any large gatherings scheduled to take place in either the Green or Brown sectors tonight. Something public, the more people the better."

A few moments later, the droid replied. "Several events are scheduled that match your search parameters: A techno-metal concert at the Operatic Theatre, the Hover-ball Finals at Green Stadium, an anti-corporate rally in Brown sector, the Championship Cup for Podracing held at Brown Stadium..."

"It's the podrace," Beltran replied, halting the droid. The surety in his voice didn't come from any conscious part of himself, but from the Force. "Dot," Beltran called to his astromech. "Take us to the Brown Sector Stadium, as quickly as possible."

"I hope you've got a big coat," Beltran sent out through the Force. "Because the ice storm is about to hit."

 

[Ravenous]

CRINKLE! CRACK! With a swipe of his hand, Ravenous threw the gas technician aside his bones protruding through his skin as he slammed into a wall his chest crushed.

"Anyone else like the gasoline smell? I don't know something about it just hits different ya know? Anyway, get to placing those charges."

The masked Defilers leaped into action placing charges on the massive gas tanks inside the dank gas-filled chamber. What a beautiful display it will be, a massive blue fireball that will eclipse the stars themselves, eclipse wonder, eclipse reason, and eclipse life.

"I'll cover it up. All of it. The city. The stars. Life." Ravenous stood still for a moment as if he were answering to something, something worthy of his attention. "You said I could do it. That's it. I don't need another reason. You didn't need one. Neither do I" Ravenous let a smile creep onto his face as he looked behind him as if expecting to see someone. "Can you hear him too, Beltran? I doubt that much. You haven't been around him long enough to hear the whispers, only feel his presence. How fast are you falling, Beltran? Can you see the bottom? I can't. I do see you. You're getting smaller. Your resolve is getting smaller you can't win here. Not here where I lay in wait within the depths of darkness. And not here where even your most repressed memories are driven to the surface in your psyches desperate bid to make room for the void. You can sit back. And you can watch. While I burn life to the ground. Then grind it into dust."

Ravenous ripped himself from his mental space the charges on the gas tank set and ready to detonate on his command. "Arizelva's team should be done by now, which means it's time for phase three." Ravenous and the Defilers left the chamber and entered the nearest elevator which jetted them back to ground level where the race track and press box were. The dark Jedi wasted no time kicking down the door to the press box the two commentators inside eagerly watching the race below. "This is gonna be one for the books people! It seems that-" SNAP! The commentator's neck was ripped from his shoulders blood spilling out of his head as he collapsed on the console...dead.

"Showtime."

Ravenous tapped the mic to make sure it was on his answer provided in the form of a loud tapping noise. "Testing...testing one, two, there...Hello, pod racers and podracing fans. I'm sorry to interrupt your beloved commentary but that is not what should be on your mind right now. You see years ago on the planet coruscant I had an epiphany. I understood that the striking difference between life and death was held up by only the thinnest string that no one dared to break because we all assumed we were on the side of life dangling over a bat of lava. But that's wrong. That's just unbelievably wrong and no one points this out because we pretend that this is right but it's not. The only difference between life and death is that we all believe life is good and death is evil but that's wrong. Life is evil because it only serves to push us towards death. Death is also evil because it only serves to blind us to what a curse life really is. I'm not saying we should all die, that's not it at all. The problem is that I no longer am blinded. This is not supposed to happen. We're supposed to be blind. We're supposed to be happy! But I'm not and your not, at least not after I kill you, you won't be. I want to see you perish. I want to see you die. I want everyone to remember this. So they remember what happens when we remember...that we're not happy we just pretend that we are. Stay blind. Stay dead. Stay happy. I won't. We won't. But that's okay. Because someone else will. If even one person can stay happy because of this...then I am satisfied."

In a flash of golden light, the stadium was brought to life flaming embers coating the ground and burning the grass, the sky was smoggy as some billowed into the air and Ravenous' ears were thick with screaming as people scrambled to get away from the flames a torrent of madness having sullied their dreams and destroyed the stadium around them the support beams caving under their own weight as parts of the coliseum came crashing down.

"Wow. Amazing. To think I made up that whole speech!"

Beltran Rarr

 

[Beltran Rarr]

The Imperialis had just flown overhead of the stadium when the flash lit. An explosion ripped through the massive structure, sending flames throughout. From above, Beltran couldn't hear any of the panicked screams that were surely sounding, but he felt them. He felt their fear, and their pain. He felt them die.

Delicious. The thought came to him unbidden, as the truth often does. Through the Force, Beltran fed on those negative emotions and used to augment the power he held within him. Another being might call him a monster for this, and Beltran really wouldn't have argued. But Beltran was a monster with a code. He had not hurt them, and by using the power of their terror, he would bring their vengeance down upon the being that had. It was a semantical rationalization to be sure, but it worked for him.

"Dot," He said. "Lower the ramp, please."

His astromech complied, and the boarding ramp lowered. Cold wind mixed with warmth from the fires below assaulted him along with smoke and ash, as well as the audible screams of those perishing below.

"Hand," Came the monotonous voice of Sentinel. "An address was given over the stadium's public announcement system just before the explosion. It is likely that at least one of the culprits are there."

That tracked with what Beltran knew of Ravenous. On Vandalhelm, he'd created a cult around himself. It was obvious that the psychopath craved attention. That he would wax on about his insane beliefs right before lighting a stadium of people on fire only seemed natural.

"Understood," Beltran replied. He then jumped from the ship and down into the stadium. He used the Force to slow his fall and landed lightly not far from the commentator's box. He drew his lightsaber with one hand and stalked toward the compartment.

He made no effort to hide himself in the Force now. He wanted Ravenous to know he was coming.

 

[Ravenous]

​

Ravenous' smiled soured as a ship soared through the ash of smoke rising into the sky its ramp opening over the stadium as a figure leaped out his signature carrying the corruption Ravenous left earlier. In all honesty, Ravenous was surprised Beltran Rarr had the tolerance to endure the void especially in the method he chose. Even Zlova Rue tried to keep the void OUT and she was insane! To take in the void was to take in death itself and he appeared to be fine with that...this guy might just be more daring than Ravenous was when the void first approached him.

"Arizelva, get out of here. I'm going to be sticking around for a little bit."

"Oh god...what are you up to this-" Ravenous shut off his comlink as he heard a saber ignite its power radiant enough to rival the fire outside. Opening the sliding metal door Ravenous walked towards the beefcake approaching him with a drawn weapon the darkness and fear around him feeding into him like a drain after a bath. The negativity remained after disappearing into Beltran which meant the void wasn't the one eating it, perhaps this Ranger is even more promiscuous with the dark than he would let on.

"Looking sharp Beltran, you certainly dress for the occasion! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the void made it pretty easy to find out your name so yeah there's that. You're probably wondering why I did all this, or maybe you don't care. Yeah, I'm getting the feeling you don't care." Ravenous ignited his blade and pointed it at Beltran his eyes golden with hate as his tattered black cloak billowed in the burning wind. "What do you hope to gain by coming here Rarr?" Ravenous circled around Beltran only stopping at his right side putting rows of bleachers between him and his pursuer.

"You've come to kill me? You've proven good at killing, not much else though. You know you're an interesting experiment. You are like a reflection of me in a way. How does a sociopath, break another sociopath it's a real dilemma as to how I'm going to get under your skin, and when I do find a way I think I'll be just a bit smarter and just a bit wiser."

Ravenous' arm began to glow white and crackle with energy the current he produced traveling up his weapon and circling around the blade almost like a sheath made of energy. In a blinding flash of light that turned the bleachers to dust and painted the area in pearly white luminescence, Ravenous shot the energy from out of his blade its pure destructive power enough to annihilate anything that stood in its path...including Beltran...

Leaping off the side of the stadium Ravenous escaped the ensuing explosion chunks of metal and embers falling with him as the armored man broke his fall on the hood of a bright red sports speeder.

"Like that? It's called Kinetite Blade! I've been waiting a while to test that out and I finally got my chance! It's a pure manifestation of Kinetic energy so your weapons and force powers are WORTHLESS against it!"

Ravenous stood up and shut off his blade a smile splitting his face as he readied himself for Beltran's next attack.

"Run those hands! I'm ready to smash you into the dirt!"