First Reply The Gladiator Returns

[Miasmær]

Location: Loovria, Sith Order Space
​

Miasmær had been preparing for this. Stepping through the durasteel hallways of the grand arena's underground complex shrouded in a black cloak which obscured her distinctive features. Down further still would be the slave pits; her destination. But it would not be easy to get to, many would stand in her way.

Her hand gently brushed up against and traced the cold durasteel of these familiar halls. Too many times she had walked through this region of the arena complex to the fighting pit above, too many times she had spilled blood. Yet here she was again, to spill blood one last time.

As she rounds the corner one of the brutish guards would notice her, leveling a blaster towards her. Yet before they would have a chance to issue protest Miasmær's hand would lazily lift up, forming a claw as the guard's eyes would widen and his throat would constrict. Slowly Miasmær would walk towards him, and slowly he would float towards her, until the two met in the center of the hallway. Miasmær's black eyes would only hint at the inferno of rage and hatred that burned inside of her, yet even that glimmer terrified the guard more than he had ever been in his life.

Slowly the life would leave his eyes, and Miasmær would watch every second of it.

Soon Miasmær passed the corpse in the hallway, the event punctuated only by the thud of plastoid armor concealing a heavy frame hitting the durasteel floor behind her.

It would only be two minutes before the alarms begin to blare, red lights filling the previously dimly lit hallways. Miasmær waited. She needed the pit-master's keycard to pass by the shields blocking her way. As a dozen guards would file into the hallway, leveling blasters towards Miasmær as she is haloed by the blue shimmering field of energy which blocked her path downwards.

Soon blue was joined by crimson.

A red beam of energy, crackling with hatred from a cracked kyber crystal, would eminate from the lightsaber which is in Miasmær's hand.

The slaughter began.

Moving forward Miasmær twirled the blade, several blaster shots deflecting into the walls of the structure. With one outstretched claw she would grab the nearest guard with the force, knocking them into two of their compatriots before excelerating herself down the hallway with supernatural speed. Red blade met plastoid armor, barely a match, and two guards fell to her blade. Another would attempt to lash out with a knife, a futile attempt that Miasmær would sidestep and elbow him in the face before twirling around and seperating their head from their shoulders.

As the head would roll past the rest of the shocked guards, already brought down to half their number, they'd all stare in shock.

"Run."
​

Her only word had its effect. They would scatter, and she would pursue as a subtle smile would come to dominate her features.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

She was gettin' good at gettin' up to no good. That was the only explanation for the backwater broad finding herself in Sith Space in an arena built for death. The other reason was yet another dead end because she was either too late or too wrong. Her mission had been twofold. One — find Kyric. Break him out. Two — if not Kyric, others (that part she didn't math out. She never mathed these things out). The first had failed, the second she was mathing out when a low, thrumming growl rolled through the walls like the building itself had teeth. Then the alarms kicked in, a horrible keening loop. Red light bled into the corridors, strobed against rusted beams and reinforced cages. Pressure doors hissed shut two levels up. Inmates started yelling. Somewhere metal clanged—something locking or failing, she couldn't tell which.

"Not good," she muttered. "Real not good." Tansu grimaced and checked the schematics on her vambrace's screen, which was visible beneath her oversized jacket. What was the fastest way out?

She looked past the holding cells. None of them bore the face of her cousin, or anyone she knew. But somehow, they all seemed to have eyes like hers. Tired, twitchy, looking for a way out.

"Alright," she muttered on her sigh. "One good deed per infiltration. That's the deal."

She dropped to a knee at the nearest control panel, slid a vibroshiv under the casing, and peeled it back with a pop. Sparks fizzed out. The screen flickered. Static. Locked tight.

"Come on, baby, be dumber than you look..."

She tapped in an override. The lights above the cages blinked yellow—then shut off completely. Nothing opened.

"Kriff." She banged the console with her palm. "Cheap Sith junk."

Behind her, the inmates had gone dead silent. No screaming now. Just waiting.

"I'll come back," she said, loud enough for all of them to hear. "I swear it. I just gotta make you worth the trouble first." None of them saw the charm in her wink.

She rechecked her vambrace. There was a route to the security override on the next tier. But that corridor was also where all the guards seemed to be flooding in. Tansu took off running, boots pounding the metal floor. As she turned the corner, blaster muzzles and shouting voices met her in a flash of light and heat. Dozens of guards. Riot-ready. Maybe more. And they were all running.

In the wrong direction?

"Where you goin'? I mean, good but —"

The hallway stank of ozone and pride. The kind of pride that dripped off people who thought power was something worn like a cape and swung around in crowded rooms.

"Run."

Or in this case, a cloak and a red lightsaber. Tansu skidded to a halt.

"Oh, chit."

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Miasmær
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[Miasmær]

Location: Loovria, Sith Order Space
​

A light tug with the force on a fleeing guard's ankle sent her collapsing forward, knocking herself and another guard down as she desperately clawed for anything to balance herself. The two, a mess of interlocked limbs, clambered over each other in a desperate attempt to escape as their doom approached. Too late did they begin to get to their feet. With a simple twirl of the crackling red saber the light left each of them, and Miasmær stepped over their bisected bodies as rage radiated from her like heat from a star.

She had waited for this day for years, ever since her old master had bought her from this place. To finally show the legion of fools who enslaved her what kind of monster she had become. They did not make her like this, they had only started her on the path. And Miasmær had arrived to show them where her path would cross with theirs for the final bloody time.

As they ran they fired wildly behind them, a few taking what few seconds they had to turn and fight Miasmær as she encroached ever closer towards the main security room where the majority of their forces would congregate and where the security override would be. She needed guides, this part of the installation being unfamiliar to her now as she carved her way through a bulkhead security door in a matter of seconds.

As the circular hunk of metal, burning at the edges, collapsed inwards and Miasmær stepped inside she noticed something; someone who did not belong. A human, not in any uniform used by the installation or Sith Order, stood at the far end of the hallway. Her steady approach did not falter even though the surprise added new unknowns and possibly more danger than she had ever wanted.

"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice bubbling with spite. Miasmær's void black eyes would lock with Tansu's as she approached, raising the saber in challenge to the stranger.

"And what are you doing here?" Perhaps she'd be a technician? One Miasmær could use to override securities for her. It would be less showy, less final, leave less of an impact. But Miasmær had a feeling her new master would prefer a concise strike over Miasmær's desire for the dramatic.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"L'il 'ol me?

Uh, don't fret about it. Just a girl tryna do a good deed in a place that ain't seem to have any sense of the word."

A brow arched and she looked pointedly at the bisected guards, then to the void-black gaze locked on hers and exhaled through her nose.

The impulse to step back was powerful, but she stood her ground. This was not a howdy-dee-do she wanted. And it'd be a lie to say she felt totally in control and not scared at all. Still—she had to fake it. If not to convince the scary red Sith lady, then to convince herself. She kept her hands low, stance easy, eyes sharp on Miasmær, cataloguing the rage like a storm brewing on the horizon. One that could either blow past, or destroy her.

"I ain't here for you," she went on, stepping just slightly to the side, like she might ghost past if the Sith let her.

She'd be remiss to ignore the warning thrum at the base of her neck, The Force's whisper that there were layers at play here — something more than wan murder and violence. Sure, Sith were evil and loved to kill but their normal M-O was destroying the innocents, right? The workforce for a brutal gladiatorial arena didn't exactly meet the roster of entirely innocent, which suggested there may be an angle Tansu could appeal to. Sith liked to hurt. To prove.

Keeping her eyes on the Sith's, she dared a step forward. Not quite enough to turn her back. Not quite enough to invite a swing.

"You uh..seem to have… somethin' goin' on with the folks runnin' this place." She gestured vaguely at the smoldering carnage behind Miasmær. "So what's your next move? Keep carvin' 'til the walls are drippin'? Or you actually here to do somethin' that might leave a real mark?" Her drawl stayed light, but the edge in her words sharpened.

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Miasmær
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[Miasmær]

Location: Loovria, Sith Order Space
​

Miasmær would squint at the stranger, a deliberate heavy gesture for a species whose eyelids could at best be described as 'optional'. Distrust hung thick around Miasmær. This could be a trick, a ploy to have a potential ally or captive who would turn out to be deadly. Miasmær couldn't know until it was too late, and at the very least this potential trick might help her a bit before trying to kill her.

"The slaves. I've come to free them."

It was a simple enough claim, and mostly true. She had come for revenge, freeing the slavers' stock just seemed like one of the more efficient ways of doing that. Not to mention the carnage of a slave revolt would both further damage Miasmær's enemies and cover her retreat from the system. Perhaps deep inside Miasmær wanted to free the slaves, to prevent others from undergoing what had once been done to her. But that was a secondary, perhaps tertiary desire at most.

"Are you an engineer? A slicer?" she'd ask, her tone impatient and clearly demanding an answer.

On one hand Miasmær hoped she could get the opportunity to storm the main security room, slaughter the army of guards, and then move on to her objectives. But that was dangerous, and this girl could be the ticket out of unnecesary dangers. Hopefully she would come willingly, but already Miasmær's muscles tensed as if ready to pounce. She would come, willingly or not.

Her stare and question would be temporarily interrupted, a singular guard firing a shot from behind Miasmær. She'd twirl, deflecting the blast before dragging the poorly armed soldier forward with a powerful pull of the force straight into the waiting blood red crackling beam of Miasmær's saber. The bisected body would fall past the two women, the momentum carrying it a few more feet as Miasmær would turn to face Tansu.

Her eyebrow would raise inquisitively, waiting for an answer.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu's brows shot straight up.

"What a coincidence. That's what I'm doin'." Her expression fixed to something marvelled at serendipity rather than souring with suspicion.

Wow this Sith's glare was unnerving. Long, endless, black and like the void itself. She was about to respond to the Sith when she flinched, suddenly aware of violence half a second before it happened gruesomely before her.

That was going to have to stop. One way or another. This killing was brutal — a slaughter.

Her teeth clicked shut and she lifted her hands, palms out at the Sith.

"While you're holdin' that big red stick, I'm whatever you want me to be, sugar." Tansu half-lied, pointing obviously at the plasma threat angled her direction.

"I was headin' to the control room. I can help you on one condition." She held up a finger, emboldened by an upbringing of negotiations. "The killin' is a minimum. These guards are just paycheck collections, right?"

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Miasmær
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[Miasmær]

Location: Loovria, Sith Order Space​

The hallway split between serendipty and suspicion. This was too good to be true, surely this girl was lying to save her own skin? Regardless, Miasmær could use that lie for a while so long as this girl proved useful.

She listened to the girl, trying to sus out any hint of lie or deceit before crinking her nose in disgust at the girl's naivity.

"They're complicit in slavery, none are innocent. Whether they beat the slaves or allow it to happen, it does not matter to me. The atrocities carried out here will end in blood." She would stare at the girl long and hard. How could one have lived so long in the galaxy and not be jaded? Was this an elaborate disguise? Innocence meant to disarm? Or perhaps she was simply too inexperienced..? Miasmær would show her what the galaxy really was. No fairytails, no good endings, just suffering as everyone looked out for themselves.

"I was headed to the main security room. But this control room... it has the means to unlock the lower levels?" Technology was never Miasmær's strongsuit. She had barely been taught to read let alone navigate complex machinery. In recent years since her freedom she had been attempting to rectify the flaws of her upbringing but engineering was too far beyond anything she had taught herself yet.

She needed this girl to cooperate, even if just for a few minutes to find this control room. Odds are it wouldn't be nearly as well guarded. So, in an attempt to gain trust the crimson red of the saber would retract. Now only lit by the dim emergency lights Miasmær would look down upon the stranger.

"Lead me there." she would command, her tone audibly softer as she tried to put the girl at ease.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Inaction doomed the workers to death by sabre. It didn't sit well with Tansu and she evidenced her disagreement with a flat frown.

"Well I ain't got time for a womp rat runaround, so yeah, it's got the means to unlock the gladiators." Tansu tilted her head, studying the red woman in the flicker of emergency light. The saber hissed off, but the tension didn't ease. Like the pause before a storm.

"Lead me there."

The words landed soft. Almost polite. Tansu gave a slow nod.

What was she doing? This was a Sith. Probably one of the first she faced up close. And what would she do? She couldn't be as complicit as the guards were to evil — the Nautolan was a study, an incarnate of evil. But one made, perhaps? She knew what her father would do, she knew what her mother would do, and she knew what her grandmother, the Great Redeemer would do. Did she have the chops for the latter two?

The only way she could find out was to try.

​

"Yeah, I'll get us there."

She turned, her boots scuffing the floor as she led Miasmær down a side corridor, deeper into the station's service layer, where the floors sagged and the walls sweated condensation. The klaxons continued to wail, and every so often, they'd hear footfalls of guards being deployed in the wrong direction.

Along the way, Tansu tapped at her vambrace—quietly bringing up the control schema. Her mind raced with questions, escape plans, observations — all of them drenched heavily in the desperation that came with the issue of finding her place in the galaxy.

"You were forced to fight here, weren'tcha. That's why you're back and out for vengeance, huh? Ya remember life before all the anger?"

Ooooh boy was she out of her depth. How did 'ol gram do this daily?

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Miasmær
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[Miasmær]

Location: Loovria, Sith Order Space
​

Miasmær followed after the girl, the clicking of her boots being the only thing audible coming from Miasmær. She moved like a predator stalking its prey, every muscle tensed and ready to pounce at any second if the opportunity was to present itself. The girl was guiding her, good. But that didn't mean she could be trusted. It had once been beaten into her that she could trust no one, and years dwelling with the dark side of the force had only enforced that idea.

The saber on Miasmær's belt was a heavy weight, a reminder of her ability to kill. The weight was comforting, the weight of power, the weight of safety.

The girl spoke, Miasmær's gaze resting on the back of her head with a flare of anger she'd struggle to swallow down. It was obvious, she shouldn't have been surprised the girl had figured it out. Still though, to hear it spoken aloud triggered the animalistic parts of her; to fight or fly. Miasmær needed to fight, to overcome. But she stilled her tongue from lashing out, she couldn't drive her guide away just yet.

"Yes." is all she'd say, her tone dripping in bitterness and finality. She did not want to elaborate.

"Do you have a ship?" she'd ask, her tone lighter "My shuttle can carry only a few of the freed."

The rest would have to find their own way out. Perhaps an armed revolt, regardless. After finding freedom it wasn't Miasmær's duty to look after them. A few would come with her, those who couldn't protect themselves. They'd have a place in Miasmær's entorage, a safe place. At least, Miasmær hoped.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Deeper they want, and the stink of blood and damp stone replaced ozone and circuitry. Old torches flickered in recessed wall sconces—archaic, and designed to feel ancient and cruel on purpose. Emergency lights flickered like dying fireflies overhead, casting everything in a murky crimson wash. One foot in front of the other, warily treading because of the killing machine behind her, Tansu's boots hit the dirt with quiet rhythm, a sharp contrast to Miasmær's heavier, more deliberate tread behind her. Tansu kept ahead by a few steps. Her shoulders itched. Not from the cold, but from Miasmær's presence; The Sith walked in a way that seemed slow enough to show she didn't need to run.

"Do you have a ship?"
"My shuttle can carry only a few of the freed."

"I do," Tan answered with a nod, working through the logistics. "I reckon I — or we –can also facilitate some kinda route to the hangar where guests and workers are all parked. Freed ones can hijack their own rides from there too."

Tansu took a turn down a tighter passage, ducking under a dangling chain and into the rough-chiseled hall that led to the control alcove—a half-collapsed room where the pit handlers once triggered shock collars and timed arena lifts. Tansu stopped outside a door marked SEC-SUB4 // LOCAL AUTH NODE—not the main security suite, but a valid terminal for manual overrides.

"This is it," she said. "Should be able to drop every door below from here. Open the cells. Maybe even jam the alarms if we get lucky."

The Sith was rotten, evil, and coated in a mutation of the Force that Tansu felt without even trying. Nurturing something like that from the dark to the light could be like watering a fence post — you couldn't grow something that was dead and purpose-driven. But maybe, for all that rot, if she poked at it enough, there could be something solid underneath. A foundation to build on. Make a bigger fence, so to speak.

Her hand hovered near the panel that would open the door, and she turned to face the Sith behind her.

"Can I ask somethin' bold?"

She proceeded without permission: "Does it ever feel good?" She held Miasmær's gaze."Killin'. Hatin'. Burnin' through people like they're all made of what hurt you." No heat in her tone. Just curiosity. Steady and quiet as a fuse waiting to be lit. "Is it the real answer… or is it just what's left when nothin' else works? Or someone teach you it's the way to be? 'Cuz I can't help but notice you're a little lighter when you speak the word free. "

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Miasmær
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