Alice Bloodscrawl
Wearing: Lawyer Suit
Armed with: Silver Heat
Earlier...
It had been a clean out, as usual.
Vera had savagely torn apart the Prosecution's case. It had been a difficult case but after she had singled out the weakest portions of the evidence they had on her client, a notorious Exchange Hitman, she had systematically dismantled each aspect.
The Gun had been easy to dismiss, all she had had to do was cast doubt he was the owner, as absolutely none of his DNA or fingerprints had been found on the pistol itself, as well as the fact the pistol had only been found near his property, not on it. She was very good at casting doubt.
Case in point, she had managed to destroy their best witness by playing both on the fact that they saw her client murdering the victim through the bushes, and that the light from a nearby garage light had been in her eyes as she had witnessed it. Her coup de grace had occured when she had tricked the Witness into admitting they had been drinking that night. After that it had been a sadistic game of trapping cops and detectives in their own testimony, poking holes in every single one of their investigation methods.
What had begun as a certain victory for the prosecution had ended in total defeat.
Was he actually guilty? Certainly. But Vera had been paid to get him a not guilty verdict, so that was what she had done. She hadn't even done anything illegal to ensure he walked. It had been an old fashioned destruction, done with fancy words of reasoning.
As the gorgeous Lawyer in her fancy white leather dress, packed up her briefcase as the not guilty verdict was red, she felt her evil little heart swell in delight as she watched the prosecutor's face turn absolutely red with fury.
"Ohhh, I heard you was a real snake, Miss Mina!" exclaimed the Hitman, a burly human in a fancy black business suit with bronze skin and a lantern jaw. He was known as Deronis The Butcher. Three guesses for the reader as to why. (Hint: he normally uses a deli cleaver)
"But to actually see you in action. I ain't never seen anyone get under a prosecutor's skin like you did! It was amazing."
"I aim to please..." Vera Mina replied, her ivory pale skin almost gleaming under the light of the old Courthouse.
"Vera..." he said warmly, holding out his hand. "You're an absolute doll. I won't forget this."
"I prefer you not forget about my paycheck." Vera replied with a smile.
"My bosses are good for the money." he assured her. "I assume we can count on your invaluable assistance in the future?"
"As long as the other side doesn't offer more, certainly!" Vera replied, of a completely mercenary mindset when it came to being a lawyer.
"I'll remember that..." he chuckled. "You're worth every credit. Every other Lawyer I talked to said they had me dead to rights!"
"There's 'them' having you dead to rights and then there is 'me' having you dead to rights." Vera replied. "I'll be in touch. We'll meet at the dockyards tomorrow."
Her client nodded and he walked out of the courthouse a free man.
As Vera gathered up the last of her paperwork the lead prosecutor, a man of broad shoulders in a slick, iron gray three piece suit with a pompadour hairdo walked up to her. She had gone up against him before. A slick government prosecutor. She had cost him over a dozen high profile cases.
"Mister Brightglare. Anything to add?" she asked politely.
"Yeah. How can you live with yourself?" he asked coldly.
"Easily. In Lingerie, resting on big fat piles and piles of credits." Vera answered, arranging the papers and placing them neatly in her white briefcase.
"Deronis is one of the Exchange's most vicious hitmen!"
"An assertion you and the rest of the government have consistently failed to prove..." Vera replied, starting to walk out of the courtroom.
"No thanks to you! Now he's free to murder again for them. He had a dozen innocents to his name and he'll have a dozen more now. This was the best chance we may have ever possessed at putting him away.
"Its not my job to judge him. It's my job to defend him."
(Cape Fear Theme Plays for a few seconds)
"Perhaps. But one can't do legal work in a vacuum, ignorant to the consequences. Just because you 'can' do a thing doesn't mean you 'should'."
"If you had paid me what I was worth, when I asked, you'd be waving goodbye to him as he was carted off to a Prison." Vera replied as she walked.
"One 'billion' was Space Lane Robbery!" he sputtered.
Vera stopped, turning with a smirk on her voluptuous features.
"Yes, it was and 'is' Space Lane Robbery..." she replied pleasantly. "But you would have gotten your money's worth."
Vera left her rival in the courthouse passage.
The Next Night...
Vera relaxed at the dining table, a goblet of fresh warm blood in her hand which she sipped from as she watched the news feed from her Holonet Projector.
"In other news, the famed lawyer Miss Vera Mina scored another seemingly impossible win in the court, where she effortlessly dismantled an investigation that had carried on for more than a year, getting all major evidence against her client, Franc 'Frazzles' Deronis, AKA Deronis The Butcher by his detractors, completely dismissed. Deronis is a free man as of now and has told the press he intends to spend time off Coruscant for an extended vacation--"
Vera flipped the channel, drinking more blood. She was wearing a silvery, metallic nightrobe, a photo of her long missing love, Karlie Destat in a gold plated frame on a nightstand nearby. Her quarters, an all white ensemble of matching furniture and other niceties, was wide and luxurious. She owned the small skyscraper it was in, in fact.
As the secret Matriarch of House Li-Ves, her duties had only multiplied as of late, allowing for very little in the way of free time. So she was always greatly irritated these days when her quiet time was interrupted.
The doorbell rang, and Vera sighed, getting up from the table where the comatose body of Deronis The Butcher lay. She normally did not betray her clients but his victim for which he had stood trial had looked like Karlie, and Vera had wanted the bastard to herself. She had nabbed him at the Docks. Simple matter of getting close enough with a jeweled ring hiding a tranquilizer needle. His bosses would never know what happened to him.
She picked him up and placed him in a hidden, specialized life support compartment. She would keep him alive as a snack for maybe a few weeks more and then he would go into the incinerator.
Alive.
Vera went quickly to the door after wiping the blood off her mouth and took on a dignified air as she opened the door. She smiled at her intern, Myles, a mousy, boyish young man in a business suit. He was in his mid twenties with hesitant, furtive movements to him.
Vera blinked.
"Why Myles, whatever can I do for you?"
"Our quarterly reports came in. Windfall, as usual. But I'm here about something else."
"I'm so happy to hear that... please come in. What's the matter?" she asked in the pleasant philanthropist manner she had cultivated.
"We got a new client. Our biggest one yet. A Retired Admiral has been accused of murdering an Alliance Intelligence Agent, also retired. Real famous, this Admiral. He fought all the way back during the annihilation of Csilla. Managed to destroy two star destroyers with a single damaged Cruiser." Myles explained, pulling out his file. "Retired due to war injuries."
Vera glanced at his datapad. Admiral Garen Taylor. Decorated War Hero. Found with the knife in his hand, standing over the body. Toxicology reports showed no sign of drugging. Media had leaked the victim's identity, as well as the suspect, making it impossible to keep it quiet like the Allaince wanted. But why were they so convinced he was guilty? Even she could guess and theorize a frame up...
"What are they offering, the Defense?"
"One two million in Aurodium Bullion." Myles answered. "The Government is willing to offer us two million in credits and access to choice properties and stocks just to stay out of it."
"Hmmm... Bullion is more solid. I think I will--" Vera started to say.
She was interrupted by the sound of pounding in her bedroom.
"My deepest apologies. Excuse me. There seems to be a malfunction with my drier." Vera said, heading to her room and closing the door. She found the panel that hid Deronis The Butcher being kicked outward.
Vera went over immediately as it was kicked open. She yanked the bound and gagged Deronis out, climbed into him and sank her fangs into his throat as they extended from hiding places next to the canines.
Her flesh shuddered and warped everywhere on her body in an extremely disgusting manner as she started to metabolize his blood...
It took five minutes to drain him of blood, and then she stood up, licking her lips clean of his blood, and she heard a gasp, and realized instantly her mistake in not locking the door.
Myles stood in the doorway, pale from shock.
"It...it blew open, and I heard sounds..." Myles said staring in horror as the flesh on her face shuddered momentarily before resetting to its gorgeous appearance.
"Myles..." she said gently, flashing that million credit smile. "There's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this."
Myles bolted for the front door, screaming for help.
"Myles..." she called out calmly, following him as he pounded on the door, screaming as loudly as he could for aid, unable to open the door.
"Its no use..." she explained in a casual manner. "The walls are soundproof. All the security in this building is personally controlled by me. You will never reach the exit without my permission."
Myles kept his back to the front door, now quiet and petrified.
Vera smiled again. And then she put him in a sleeper hold.
"Shhhh..." she whispered
Present.
Myles woke up on Vera's couch. He sat straight up, his head hurting. He saw evidence of electrical burns on his finger tips and couldn't remember the past three hours.
Vera was standing over him, looking clean and immaculate in her nightrobe.
"Myles!" she said, pretending concern and surprise. "Thank goodness! Are you alright?"
"What, what happened?"
"Oh it was terrible. There was a lamp I had bought that turned out to have a faulty mechanism. You moved to turn it on and you received a most terrible electric shock. You were out cold for the past few minutes. I was about to call my private med-center..." Vera answered smoothly.
"I...I..."
Vera sat next to him.
"Oh please, Myles, don't get up!" Vera exclaimed, handing him a healing stim. "You should take a day off, I'll handle the rest of the business with the admiral."
"The Admiral!" Myles exclaimed "That reminds me. To hedge his bets, he has requested a member of the Jedi Order assist you if you accept his offer."
"I work alone." Vera replied gently, applying another healing stim, this one to his burned fingers.
"Not if you want that Bullion..." Myles replied, wincing in pain. "Miss Mina, I have a splitting headache...I...I think I need about a day off..."
"Of course, take as much time as you need..." Vera replied with a warm smile, having sampled his blood while unconscious and finding it delicious. "Stay here, if you like...after you go to the med center."
She had already disposed of the body. Myles only nodded and Vera smiled, feeling a very small amount of guilt for frightening him...
Myles leaned back, very exhausted suddenly, and Vera called for a med droid through her private service line...
Hours later...
Vera arrived at the High Security Penetentiary that was being used to hold the Admiral for his trial.
She was not ready to speak to the Admiral yet. First she had to get to know this Jedi who would apparently be part of the investigation...
Pradd Miolonn
Armed with: Silver Heat
Earlier...
It had been a clean out, as usual.
Vera had savagely torn apart the Prosecution's case. It had been a difficult case but after she had singled out the weakest portions of the evidence they had on her client, a notorious Exchange Hitman, she had systematically dismantled each aspect.
The Gun had been easy to dismiss, all she had had to do was cast doubt he was the owner, as absolutely none of his DNA or fingerprints had been found on the pistol itself, as well as the fact the pistol had only been found near his property, not on it. She was very good at casting doubt.
Case in point, she had managed to destroy their best witness by playing both on the fact that they saw her client murdering the victim through the bushes, and that the light from a nearby garage light had been in her eyes as she had witnessed it. Her coup de grace had occured when she had tricked the Witness into admitting they had been drinking that night. After that it had been a sadistic game of trapping cops and detectives in their own testimony, poking holes in every single one of their investigation methods.
What had begun as a certain victory for the prosecution had ended in total defeat.
Was he actually guilty? Certainly. But Vera had been paid to get him a not guilty verdict, so that was what she had done. She hadn't even done anything illegal to ensure he walked. It had been an old fashioned destruction, done with fancy words of reasoning.
As the gorgeous Lawyer in her fancy white leather dress, packed up her briefcase as the not guilty verdict was red, she felt her evil little heart swell in delight as she watched the prosecutor's face turn absolutely red with fury.
"Ohhh, I heard you was a real snake, Miss Mina!" exclaimed the Hitman, a burly human in a fancy black business suit with bronze skin and a lantern jaw. He was known as Deronis The Butcher. Three guesses for the reader as to why. (Hint: he normally uses a deli cleaver)
"But to actually see you in action. I ain't never seen anyone get under a prosecutor's skin like you did! It was amazing."
"I aim to please..." Vera Mina replied, her ivory pale skin almost gleaming under the light of the old Courthouse.
"Vera..." he said warmly, holding out his hand. "You're an absolute doll. I won't forget this."
"I prefer you not forget about my paycheck." Vera replied with a smile.
"My bosses are good for the money." he assured her. "I assume we can count on your invaluable assistance in the future?"
"As long as the other side doesn't offer more, certainly!" Vera replied, of a completely mercenary mindset when it came to being a lawyer.
"I'll remember that..." he chuckled. "You're worth every credit. Every other Lawyer I talked to said they had me dead to rights!"
"There's 'them' having you dead to rights and then there is 'me' having you dead to rights." Vera replied. "I'll be in touch. We'll meet at the dockyards tomorrow."
Her client nodded and he walked out of the courthouse a free man.
As Vera gathered up the last of her paperwork the lead prosecutor, a man of broad shoulders in a slick, iron gray three piece suit with a pompadour hairdo walked up to her. She had gone up against him before. A slick government prosecutor. She had cost him over a dozen high profile cases.
"Mister Brightglare. Anything to add?" she asked politely.
"Yeah. How can you live with yourself?" he asked coldly.
"Easily. In Lingerie, resting on big fat piles and piles of credits." Vera answered, arranging the papers and placing them neatly in her white briefcase.
"Deronis is one of the Exchange's most vicious hitmen!"
"An assertion you and the rest of the government have consistently failed to prove..." Vera replied, starting to walk out of the courtroom.
"No thanks to you! Now he's free to murder again for them. He had a dozen innocents to his name and he'll have a dozen more now. This was the best chance we may have ever possessed at putting him away.
"Its not my job to judge him. It's my job to defend him."
(Cape Fear Theme Plays for a few seconds)
"Perhaps. But one can't do legal work in a vacuum, ignorant to the consequences. Just because you 'can' do a thing doesn't mean you 'should'."
"If you had paid me what I was worth, when I asked, you'd be waving goodbye to him as he was carted off to a Prison." Vera replied as she walked.
"One 'billion' was Space Lane Robbery!" he sputtered.
Vera stopped, turning with a smirk on her voluptuous features.
"Yes, it was and 'is' Space Lane Robbery..." she replied pleasantly. "But you would have gotten your money's worth."
Vera left her rival in the courthouse passage.
The Next Night...
Vera relaxed at the dining table, a goblet of fresh warm blood in her hand which she sipped from as she watched the news feed from her Holonet Projector.
"In other news, the famed lawyer Miss Vera Mina scored another seemingly impossible win in the court, where she effortlessly dismantled an investigation that had carried on for more than a year, getting all major evidence against her client, Franc 'Frazzles' Deronis, AKA Deronis The Butcher by his detractors, completely dismissed. Deronis is a free man as of now and has told the press he intends to spend time off Coruscant for an extended vacation--"
Vera flipped the channel, drinking more blood. She was wearing a silvery, metallic nightrobe, a photo of her long missing love, Karlie Destat in a gold plated frame on a nightstand nearby. Her quarters, an all white ensemble of matching furniture and other niceties, was wide and luxurious. She owned the small skyscraper it was in, in fact.
As the secret Matriarch of House Li-Ves, her duties had only multiplied as of late, allowing for very little in the way of free time. So she was always greatly irritated these days when her quiet time was interrupted.
The doorbell rang, and Vera sighed, getting up from the table where the comatose body of Deronis The Butcher lay. She normally did not betray her clients but his victim for which he had stood trial had looked like Karlie, and Vera had wanted the bastard to herself. She had nabbed him at the Docks. Simple matter of getting close enough with a jeweled ring hiding a tranquilizer needle. His bosses would never know what happened to him.
She picked him up and placed him in a hidden, specialized life support compartment. She would keep him alive as a snack for maybe a few weeks more and then he would go into the incinerator.
Alive.
Vera went quickly to the door after wiping the blood off her mouth and took on a dignified air as she opened the door. She smiled at her intern, Myles, a mousy, boyish young man in a business suit. He was in his mid twenties with hesitant, furtive movements to him.
Vera blinked.
"Why Myles, whatever can I do for you?"
"Our quarterly reports came in. Windfall, as usual. But I'm here about something else."
"I'm so happy to hear that... please come in. What's the matter?" she asked in the pleasant philanthropist manner she had cultivated.
"We got a new client. Our biggest one yet. A Retired Admiral has been accused of murdering an Alliance Intelligence Agent, also retired. Real famous, this Admiral. He fought all the way back during the annihilation of Csilla. Managed to destroy two star destroyers with a single damaged Cruiser." Myles explained, pulling out his file. "Retired due to war injuries."
Vera glanced at his datapad. Admiral Garen Taylor. Decorated War Hero. Found with the knife in his hand, standing over the body. Toxicology reports showed no sign of drugging. Media had leaked the victim's identity, as well as the suspect, making it impossible to keep it quiet like the Allaince wanted. But why were they so convinced he was guilty? Even she could guess and theorize a frame up...
"What are they offering, the Defense?"
"One two million in Aurodium Bullion." Myles answered. "The Government is willing to offer us two million in credits and access to choice properties and stocks just to stay out of it."
"Hmmm... Bullion is more solid. I think I will--" Vera started to say.
She was interrupted by the sound of pounding in her bedroom.
"My deepest apologies. Excuse me. There seems to be a malfunction with my drier." Vera said, heading to her room and closing the door. She found the panel that hid Deronis The Butcher being kicked outward.
Vera went over immediately as it was kicked open. She yanked the bound and gagged Deronis out, climbed into him and sank her fangs into his throat as they extended from hiding places next to the canines.
Her flesh shuddered and warped everywhere on her body in an extremely disgusting manner as she started to metabolize his blood...
It took five minutes to drain him of blood, and then she stood up, licking her lips clean of his blood, and she heard a gasp, and realized instantly her mistake in not locking the door.
Myles stood in the doorway, pale from shock.
"It...it blew open, and I heard sounds..." Myles said staring in horror as the flesh on her face shuddered momentarily before resetting to its gorgeous appearance.
"Myles..." she said gently, flashing that million credit smile. "There's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this."
Myles bolted for the front door, screaming for help.
"Myles..." she called out calmly, following him as he pounded on the door, screaming as loudly as he could for aid, unable to open the door.
"Its no use..." she explained in a casual manner. "The walls are soundproof. All the security in this building is personally controlled by me. You will never reach the exit without my permission."
Myles kept his back to the front door, now quiet and petrified.
Vera smiled again. And then she put him in a sleeper hold.
"Shhhh..." she whispered
Present.
Myles woke up on Vera's couch. He sat straight up, his head hurting. He saw evidence of electrical burns on his finger tips and couldn't remember the past three hours.
Vera was standing over him, looking clean and immaculate in her nightrobe.
"Myles!" she said, pretending concern and surprise. "Thank goodness! Are you alright?"
"What, what happened?"
"Oh it was terrible. There was a lamp I had bought that turned out to have a faulty mechanism. You moved to turn it on and you received a most terrible electric shock. You were out cold for the past few minutes. I was about to call my private med-center..." Vera answered smoothly.
"I...I..."
Vera sat next to him.
"Oh please, Myles, don't get up!" Vera exclaimed, handing him a healing stim. "You should take a day off, I'll handle the rest of the business with the admiral."
"The Admiral!" Myles exclaimed "That reminds me. To hedge his bets, he has requested a member of the Jedi Order assist you if you accept his offer."
"I work alone." Vera replied gently, applying another healing stim, this one to his burned fingers.
"Not if you want that Bullion..." Myles replied, wincing in pain. "Miss Mina, I have a splitting headache...I...I think I need about a day off..."
"Of course, take as much time as you need..." Vera replied with a warm smile, having sampled his blood while unconscious and finding it delicious. "Stay here, if you like...after you go to the med center."
She had already disposed of the body. Myles only nodded and Vera smiled, feeling a very small amount of guilt for frightening him...
Myles leaned back, very exhausted suddenly, and Vera called for a med droid through her private service line...
Hours later...
Vera arrived at the High Security Penetentiary that was being used to hold the Admiral for his trial.
She was not ready to speak to the Admiral yet. First she had to get to know this Jedi who would apparently be part of the investigation...
Pradd Miolonn
