Blind Leading the Blind

[Bron Vaashe]

If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.​

w. [member="Áine"]​

Darkness was the only word Orrin knew for far too long. His life had been devoid of sunlight, color, flowers, trees, sunsets, and moonlight. What memories he did have of them faded with each passing day, and he knew it was only a matter of time before those would be gone. His ears and skin were the only things which allowed him to see. Heightened senses helped him to create images of the world around him in his mind, but all of them were incomplete, shadows and mists of what was. Orrin learned to fight, it was hard, and it hurt, but his skill was something more than what it should have been. He discovered the force which gave him more sight. Now they would pay, all of them would pay.

Kuat had been the sight of his accident. An explosion had created a chemical spill which blinded his eyes. For years they had been dark, but never once had Orrin been able to forget the faces which caused it all. Greedy shipyard masters who could never stop pushing had driven them all to pushing the crews hard which made mistakes happen. One by one Orrin had tracked them all down, killing each of them, taking their fortunes to repay the families of those who had been devastated by the accidents. His own family was gone, but he could help those which remained.

Had it not been for the Confederacy’s invasion of the formerly New Republic controlled world, Orrin would have never found the last and final man on his list, Varik Talus. The ill planned release of New Republic intel by one of their leaders during the conflict gave away the man had been hiding on the CIS controlled world of Geonosis. The capitol world provided plenty of anonymity for anyone who did not want to be found. As the Confederacy grew, so did the number of people and races which traveled through the planet which housed the government, the knights, the military, and all the other cogs which turned the machine of the massive galactic power.

Orrin had been watching him for weeks, observing as much as a blind man could. It was an amazing thing to realize just how invisible he could be when posing as a blind beggar. The pattern was the same. Varik began each morning by walking through the markets, they were crowded which made tracking him difficult. Orrin’s senses were overloaded by the number of people around him, but once the pattern was established, Orrin was able to follow him. From the markets he would always go to a small cafe where Orrin could set himself up to be at the mercy of those generous enough to fill his cup. Red tinted glasses kept people from seeing the acid burns on his eyes, and the scars that surrounded them.

The cafe eventually led back through the market to the house Varik occupied. It was large, cearly holding most of the funds he had managed to escape Kuat with. Scoping the house was more difficult. Some days Orrin had to pose as a janitor, other days he posed as someone on a different work crew. Regardless of what he did, or when, there was always something off.
The feeling was there in the market, at the cafe, and Orrin felt it constantly at the house. There was someone else watching Varik, someone else targeting him. His focus moved from his revenge to the curious presence he could not identify. Several weeks were spent learning who, establishing when they would show up. Orrin became self conscious about whether he was being watched as well. However, one thing was clear, the presence which was following Varik was tracking the same movements and behavior as Orrin. There was another assassin.

Orrin knew he needed to confront this killer. The best way to do it was to surprise them. It would have to be near the cafe. There was an alleyway which was just to the left of the small outdoor building likely containing the trash compactors for the small family business. Orrin positioned himself early hoping to find the assassin, but something changed. Rather than follow Varik, the presence he had felt was with Varik. A sultry laugh landed on his ears identifying his competition as a woman.

He rushed as best as the beggar could to reach the spot he always sat. Varik had always dropped a few credits into Orrin’s cup, but this time, Orrin would slip a small, crude note into the woman’s hand as they passed by. It was simple.

“Rooftop gardens, Varik’s house, nightfall. Come alone.”

Orrin could only hope the woman would not kill Varik by then. Until then, he would wait, and after dark make his way to the gardens where he hoped to find the woman waiting for him as well.

 

[Áine]

Geonosis | [member=Orrin Teslit]​

The Geonosian heat was a pleasant change for the young assassin. Most of her early life had been spent on a cold and frigid moon, and since then she seemed to have gravitated toward planets of a similar atmosphere, but Geonosis was a stark contrast. Despite the planet being owned by the very entity she now worked for, Áine had refused to give up the lure of the hunt. Geonosis was the perfect place for the honey trap she set, the perfect place for her to practice the intuition that made her so deadly in the first place. No matter who she worked for, or who she loved, it would always be Áine's way. He held no special semblance to the Confederacy itself, but Áine had found Varik by pleasant surprise. Manipulating him had been easy. He fell hard and fast, as though her mere presence had pulled the ground from underneath him. Perhaps that's what had drawn Áine to him in the first place. The ones quickest to fall were always the ones who were willing. Gulible and nubile as she pretended to be but with a thousand times more credits than she could ever hope to own, Varik was the perfect prey. For a good while now she had simply been company, making the most of the haphazard way he spent his credits. He had even offered to provide her rooms at his lavish homes in the city centre. How was a woman to say no to that?

Eventually, as it did with most of her targets, the fun would wear off. They would start to demand things of her that she wouldn't have permitted in the thousand years it would take for old age to claim her. Normally this was her queue to strike. There had been few rare occasions when she had simply slipped away in the middle of the night, not a trace to be found, but that was only for the nice ones. The ones she had fooled into falling in love and the ones who would feel the keen sting of her departure the most. Varik wasn't that simple. Theirs was a mutually beneficial relationship, and she had been picking up the signs that she was running out of his generous nature. In fact, as they took their usual early morning stroll through the market stalls, that was exactly what was on Áine's mind. Their time together was like an hour glass, and just like the rapid fall of the final grains of sand, Varik's patience for her coy ways was wearing thin. There were only so many more nights she could put him off, only so many more nights she would be permitted to return to her room alone. If she wanted to keep any semblance of respect for herself, Varik would have to die tonight.

The fiery red head was snapped from her daze, drawn from her visions by a powerful presence that would have been enough to cause her alarm. But when she furrowed her brow to concentrate on it, something stopped her. A solid object pressed against her paper white fingers, which her instincts implored her to clutch hold of lest it slip from her grasp. With a confused expression on her face, Áine craned her neck to scan the crowd with quick emerald. Half expecting to see someone she knew from the Knights Obsidian, she was more than confused when she realised not a single face stood out to her. Despite changing her tactic and doing her best to pick apart their features one by one, the crowd was moving too quickly and Varik was eager to have her attention back. There was nothing she could do but slip the note into her pocket and press on with the slow pace her companion set through the markets. It was funny how much a tiny folded square of paper could weigh on a person's mind. The whole way through the markets Áine found herself hard pressed to pay attention to the fine merchandise eager sellers shouted of, she found it hard to find any interest in the lavish gifts Varik offered willingly, all she could focus on was the note.

By the time they returned to the house, Áine was all too desperate to slink off upstairs and indulge herself in the note. Upon finally laying her eyes on the scrawled text, the porcelain woman could do nothing but huff. Putting the force signature from the markets and the note together wasn't a hard conclusion to be drawn too, but she still couldn't understand why on earth whoever it was would want to talk to her. Time passed by painfully as she waited for the sun to disappear and the sky to blend from orange to black. The dinner Varik was hosting, one of a thousand she had been party too since her arrival, could not have dragged more. For once in her life she found the presence of nobility boring, because for once in her life there was something exciting in store. A mystery clad the silence of night, in the hurried words scribbled on crumpled paper. It was well past midnight by the time Varik's house hold went dark, and well past the hour by the time Áine managed to sneak away from his overly drunk and ambitious attempts to woo her.

The door leading out to the gardens creaked open on rusted iron hinges. Her instincts told her to stay in the shadows, to avoid the moonlight that cast bright streaks of white onto the lush flora, and she heeded its words. As silent as the darkness she clung too, Áine crept along the worn cobble pathways, sticking close to a hedge that had been trimmed down just enough to cover her full height. So far she could sense nothing of the force signature she detected earlier that day in the market. All there was was the heavily perfumed air of a thousand brightly coloured flora and the gentle sway of the leaves as they caught in the late night breeze. Her crimson brow furrowed. 'Hello?' The sickly sweet tone carried through the silent gardens, almost as floral as the flowers she stood by. She called out to nobody in particular, against her better judgement to stay hidden. Whoever had sent her the note clearly wasn't interested in a fight, other wise why would they have bothered asking her all the way up to the gardens? Why waste the time when she could have been tucked up in bed by now, an easy target? 'Is there anyone there?'