Short update with Sylph returning. Hope you like it.
“ I remember the car skidding on the rain slick road, the feeling of vertigo as it flipped followed by a sudden pressure to the side of my head and neck then the most grisly snapping sound I ever heard. Everything went dark after that…so dark…only for me to awaken in a moldering back slit gown caked in rotting, gray sepulcher dirt being cradled in the arms of {Name Redacted}.” Sylph explaining her “condition” to Director Hoover during her application to the then Bureau of Investigations.
Talon-II, Hanger bay-
“So what do you think the alarm was about?” Stormtrooper Vesk asked with a strict mixture of weary boredom and detached interest.
Tall and wide of breadth enough that he barely fit inside his phase III tactical armor the powerful trooper stood at the hanger entrance like some mythic guardian of the underworld.
“Who cares?” Grumbled his helmet less peer, leaning against the door’s edge as he slipped a deathstick over his lips, before reconsidering with a look towards his partner.” Nothing on the channels?”
Shorter but with a harder, more knotted muscular and the tanned bronze of a Badlander, Clement further distinguished himself from his clean and Spartan associate with his scrawling on his Phase III armor. Where as Vesk’s was bright and trim as newly down snow the aggravating Colonial’s was covered in grubby glyphs more fitting of a street-juvie than a member of the Emperor’s fist.
“Tactical feeds are dry.” Vesk answered cycling through his helm once again.” Whatever it is their keeping it closed-linked.”
“As long as they keep me fething out of it, I reckon I can let them be.” His partner drawled, loosening an igniter from his utility belt.” Come on, its likely a malfunction. The fething Commodore is onboard. Do you really think old starch pants would let anything tawdry happen while he’s here?”
Not that the Captain would permit half of what daily happened in the shadow of his command of course but special care would be taken while the Squadron Commander was aboard. And after all a Star Destroyer was a sealed city-state unto itself, nothing was about to get in without first going through the deflector screens and outer hull and there was no way they could have hidden that.
“I read you, its just that-hang on. Something new just scrolled up…” Vesk, going from mild interest to fascination, noted excitedly.
Raising a gloved hand to the side of his helm to help steady it as he turned towards his fellow Stormtrooper, reciting the atmospheric containment failure warnings flashing before his retinas.
“There’s been a breech, an entire compartment vented.” He needlessly translated as his friend gestured for his attention.
“Which is fascinating but ya need to shut it off.” Clement drawled rising up from his perch against the wall.
“There’s a hole in the ship, we could be under attack by Merikans or Xenos. There could be boarders streaming in as we speak in Vac-suits and you want me to switch it off. What if they are heading our way, what do we do then?” The taller stormtrooper exasperatedly complained.
“Because ya going to need both peepers for this.” The shorter one, his crooked lips holding his death stick twisting into a sneering smile, remarked pointing at the approaching figure.” Have a look for yourself.”
I. Pretty Woman- Roy Orbison
Which Vesk did, immediately closing any overlaying screens or message feeds which could hamper, however minimally, his vision of the woman walking towards them with regal grace. An effort of some obvious difficulty and force due to the stygian haired woman wearing the swaddling trunks of the Bacta tanks and one fething hell of a smile. A venomously sweet one which seemed to draw Vesk in and swallow him as she stepped right up to him, hand playing gently across the side of the blaster carbine he raised to an angle just off side of her.
“Restricted access Ma’am…if you have a clearance code…” He stammered, throat caught just a little.
“Son, I don’t think she’s interested in the shuttlebay.” Clement, inhaling deeply from his deathstick, chortled stepping admiringly beside Vesk.” Are you, Sweetheart?”
The Colonial never believing in the wild scuttlebutt which surrounded the Commodore, of his trysts which would make Admiral Thanagar proud. But staring at the fetchingly lovely and clearly chem-drunk out of her mind joygirl he was abruptly prepared to fervently change his opinion. Along with his cosmic positioning at the bottom of fate’s deck.
“Not just right now.” She cooed stretching her other hand to stroke the weathered cheek of the Colonial and tug the battered face warrior into the embrace of a kiss.” Think I’m hankering for something closer at hand. Powerful and solidly built.”
Which Clement, as well as a struggling to undo his tongue tied Vesk, would had gladly offered suggestions on where to find what she was looking for hadn’t her hand dipped from his leathery cheek to slip around his chorded neck. Curving back around towards itself in a durasteel strong lock which squashed any air as she pulled him over and buried his face into her shoulder. Her other hand, still stroking the blaster, equally suddenly encircling around the barrel as she painfully wrenched it from the stunned shocked Vesk’s hand. His eyes, behind the visor of his helm, growing as large as saucers as the woman coolly flipped the lethal set weapon around and caught it one handed, raising it appraisingly and gaining a feel for its heft in the same motion.
“This will do.” She concluded swinging it as a bludgeon into Vesk’s face with the force to split plastoid.
Chewy-eared fragments flying, along with sparks thrown from frayed wiring, from the deepening fissure as the Stormtrooper was knocked back, fumbling for balance as the female assailant curved towards the struggling, against her and for breath, Colonial and dashed the weapon’s edge against the bared knot of his head. Unadorned and without protection she immediately felt the shift and increased drag of his weight as he became slacken, like a bag of ground meal which she let fall to the deck with a muted thud. Her attention rolling back towards the larger of the pair who was still in mid convolution fighting for purchase and balance. Half blind from his broken mask and undoubtedly reeling from her first blow he made no effort to stop the lithe strike of her foot’s base into his knee.
Armor, and maybe something else, breaking as he suddenly cursed profanely and clutched a hand at the backwards bending joint. Still, straddling and falling backwards on one leg, he kept the presence of mind to throw, however poorly, a clenched fist in her direction. One she evaded by regressing momentarily from him, stalking around the side of him as he slung off his broken helmet. A furious face, its nose bent and bleeding, scowlingly following her as he sat up.
Toying experimentally with his shattered limb he then, sliding his hand from over it to the floor, catapulted himself towards him. His hand snaking its way underneath her legs to topple her, no doubt planning to rely on his bulk to wedge her down as he wailed on her with all the skill of a tantrum throwing four year old. Instead he caught the blurred afterimage of her flight, a haze shadow which nimbly rocketed towards his approaching mass and tackled him. Her knee slamming into him like a proton torpedo as it found his throat, collapsing it shut and much more if its owner had willed it. Instead she was content to watch him writhe beneath her like some addled serpent, pinning his arms as if they were staked to the deckplate, as he shifted the most wondrous shades of colors. Only then, after he’d grown still and she was confident of its sincerity, did she release him. Picking back up the discarded blaster, never more than a hand width from her, as she rose and made her way towards the nearest of waiting shuttles.
II. Welcome to the jungle-Guns and Roses
She was going up its tongue like ramp when she heard the flutter and the onyx coat landed at her feet, an item she regarded detachedly as she looked back at the equally black-coated figure standing over the two Stormtroopers’ bodies. Through he, a venerable craggy faced man, also had a faded, wide brimmed hat.
“Like the villains in the Westerns.” Sylph thought to herself with an inward smile as she turned to face him, flowingly bending down to get the thrown article as she did so.
“Its your choice. But Emperor knows I wouldn’t want to be dragged half through the ship unclad as the day I was born.” The Man in Black answered flatly when she gestured it towards him.
“That is considerate of you. And it is a bit drafty in here.” She answered with genuine honesty as she slipped it on.” Through out of humble curiosity how did you track me? The Clockwork could have easily have informed you of my existence but that was on the other side of the ship. And then there’s Legion to worry about.”
“Actually it’s quite simple.” The man answered slowly, so as not to arouse fear or concern on Sylph’s part, reaching into a pocket of his coat and producing a datapad.” Following my predecessor’s disastrous handling I coated each body with a radiogenic element which internal sensors could easily track. You are, after all, hardly my first Changeling.”
“ The simple things work best don’t they?” She laughed, to the agreement of the man.” So let’s not make this complicated.”
“No, let’s keep it simple.” The Man in Black agreed thumbing his datapad.
Protected from its resultant ultrasonic squeal of the subterfuge weapon by his concealed earbuds unlike Sylph whose radiant face momentarily broke into panged anguish before her body fell atop the shuttle’s ramp like string cut puppet. Letting her remain there for several more seconds, drowning in the acoustic assault, before he terminated the sonic weapon.
“Simple enough?” He asked the air, pocketing the datapad, creeping up to her slumped form.
Bending knee over her, scooping his gloved hands to tussle her over his shoulder like a knapsack, when the spongy looseness of her fame fell away like a morning shower and the hand still clutching the blaster popped purposely up to fill his vision. A vision turned bluish-white in the next breath, Parvis uttering a whispered curse as he recoiled to the side. His hat, singed, falling off of him and the leftward most side of his face feeling like he sprayed molten lead upon it.
Through there was little to dwell as Sylph followed up the intended killing shot with a flurry of blows. The first of which the Man in Black redirected from himself with transitory contact as he backpedaled, the second he stopped full on, the third through embedded itself into his chest with a painful “twange” of cracking bone and the fourth blow he aborted with a shot from his thermal pulse gun, thrown into up from his sleeve to his waiting palm by his whirring sin eater. A shot his opponet returned in kind, a second ball of plasma scorching a hole through front and back of his coat’s side as he twisted out of the way, throwing himself to the side of it as he slung his arm after the half glimpsed mirage of motion and fired several more concentrated beams of EM energy after it.
Only then, breathing hard in sharp and painful bellows, did he relent and scoop back up his hat and rest it on his scalded crown. Eyeing Sylph as she fingered the blacken hole carved through her shoulder, particularly when the flesh itself flowed back together reknitting itself.
“Complete cellular rejuvenation? I was curious why the paralyzer failed.” Parvis noted with interest and not a little pang of envy as he probed the blacken, strip of flesh where his left ear had been.
“Makes this complicated, doesn’t it?” She asked with a hint of a smirk.
“Not at all.” He answered back, drawing from the folds of his coat a saber handle which then blossomed into an ebony shadow-blade.” I just have to reduce you to larger chunks.”
To be continued...