First Reply Blood in the Gutter (Jedi Please!)

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

The situation at Woostri had done one thing of benefit to the people of the underworld: it had displaced millions of people.

One of the systems nearest was that which housed Vandelhelm, a mineral plundered world inside of a cloud of asteroids that made reaching it difficult if not deadly dangerous. For some, the thrill of braving that asteroid field was worth the price of admission alone. Elevated heart rate, high levels of adrenaline; it was a dopamine high like most took drugs to achieve. Drugs were for the vermine, though. Filth required such things. But the galaxy was full of filth. It clogged the streets, the gutters, the alleyways. Everywhere you turned there was more and more of it and half the galaxy was fighting to keep it around while the other half fought to keep it around but govern it differently.

Vermin governing vermin while making more vermin. Well, he was the exterminator, the one who bled worlds dry, the one sent to cleanse. But in reality, he just did it because he didn't like people. Filthy, disgusting creatures. If he could wipe out everyone in the entire galaxy he'd do so and then wipe himself out along with them. The galaxy would be better without any sapient life within it.

Vandelhelm itself was a corporate monarchy, one of the worst sorts of government. They made tons of money selling mined ores and minerals from the world and then used that money to lord themselves over the common populace. Not that he cared about the common populace. If they didn't care about being ruled by corporate pricks that was on them. If they did and didn't do anything about it, that was on them. If they did, did something, and failed, well, then they were weak. Didn't matter that this was the fringes of Alliance space. The people here didn't get much of that benefit. Corpos still did corpo stuff.

With the massive influx of refugees, his daggers had plenty of throats to slit. Young, old, it didn't matter. If it breathed, it bled. The only sign of his passing the blood soaking the gutters of the city streets and the bodies filling the alleyways, the morgues, the mortuaries.

The Red Death had come to Vandelhelm.

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Open​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧

Now as a rule, Jorus Merrill - once Master of First Knowledge to the sprawling Jedi Orders - knew which way to go. Sometimes that knack and instinct felt like a curse. Today, certainly. Today, with refugees' blood on his old boots, and not much recourse to offer, not much help. The few spacers he'd come with were patching up the equally few survivors. Jorus felt drawn on (blaster in hand, watching the skies for corpos) - drawn onward on the trail of whatever had done all this.

He was breathing hard, both from emotion and from exertion. He was old and tired and carrying a goddamn Czerka concussion rifle, because whoever he was after was going to end the day as hamburger.

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

Sometimes, every so often, he got curious. It was pretty rare that he didn't just lead with a dagger to the back. He didn't care about exchanging words with people the way some killers did. Some liked to toy with their prey, bandy words, make them think they had a chance of escaping. He found that sort of thing odd. The thrill was in striking when they didn't expect it, in seeing the shock on their face, not in leading them on.

Plus, there was no leading on someone carrying a concussion rifle. They meant business. Dirty, nasty business.

He tilted his head to the side as he watched the man from behind him. "What's it after, I wonder? Hunters don't hunt hunters… unless they wanna end up prey."

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus kept the concussion rifle slung over his shoulder for the moment. He turned and got his blaster pistol, a local Merr-Sonn knockoff, up to cover the tall young man.

Affected speech. Mask. Blood spatter. And most importantly, Jorus' navigational instincts had gone silent. Yes, this was the one.

Looking for mental balance, Jorus took a slim moment to assess the cityscape around them. This was the boundary of a new refugee area and a small industrial park. He'd like to draw or drive the killer into the latter for obvious reasons.

He clicked his lapel comm twice - a location pulse meaning 'found him, keep your distance' - and fired, zap zap zap. Concentric blue rings of stun fire rippled out at the killer. Stun shots were harder to block with a lightsaber should one emerge, and came with much less risk of collateral damage. Plus, being expanding rings, they were just plain harder to miss with.

፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

Head tilted to the other side as the gun came up and fired three blue circles at him. For a split second it appeared that nothing had changed, but before the first ring arrived, he was no longer there, vanished in the blink of an eye.

"Capture? On a killer? That's stupid."

The voice appeared to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Age messing with your head?"

The last one sounded as though it came from right behind him. Jorus might feel a whiff of air passing the back of his neck even.

"No, no… over here."

But he was standing near the refugee area, not the industrial park. Jorus wanted to push him into an area he could corner him with little chance of collateral damage, but it wouldn't be so easy. He knew that weapon the man carried. Knew what it could do. Would he dare fire it around so many innocent people? Even though he had help, he couldn't dare, could he? Oh yes, he understood the clickity click of the comm to be a signal to others. Few hunted alone save for those like him.

And those like him had given him many trophies over the years.

"Wanna play a game?"

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"Wanna play a game?"

Dread welled up at the obvious implications. Dread was a distraction just as much as the instinct to catalog and classify. Jorus took a step, then another, and kept his focus on the navigational instincts that had let him carve out hyperlanes in days of yore. He couldn't be sure he was heading toward the killer; maybe he was just heading where he needed to go to avert more harm to the refugees. Someone who'd find glee in that harm or in baiting Jorus up close was, perhaps, predictable, but then again Jorus wasn't out to predict. At least not consciously.

They were in a tumbledown empty street just now; anyone still around had retreated into the buildings or farther, but the killer was right: the concussion rifle wasn't an option at these angles, just a dead weight on Jorus' back.

The killer was quick, sure enough, but a Forcer's instincts and a Forcer's instincts could cancel each other out all too often. With the stun blaster, Jorus fired where he felt it was important to fire, and let that speak for him.

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

The man was right. Two people using the Force to enhance their instincts could essentially cancel each other out, provided the Force had an interest in that happening, or the person utilizing it had that intent.

He had no trained grasp of the Force. It was instinctual. Everything he did just came natural to him, like breathing or walking. There was nothing he had to do to make it happen other than to do what he needed to do. Such as running over towards the door to a building that people had previously disappeared into when the confrontation on the street had begun. One second he was standing at the entrance to the refugee area, the next a blur of a motion and he was at the door.

But the man had guessed correctly, or countered correctly, and the blue circle of stunning energy hit him. For a moment a blue glow overtook his body and he shook, dropping to his knees. Curiously, his hand remained on the frame of the door, fingers tapping at the controls. After a single short second, he stood again, the door opened, and he disappeared inside.

Screams quickly emanated from within.

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus didn't break stride despite the dread of the same old gleeful game imposed on him a hundred times in the last century. It never got much easier.

At a brisk pace, he made it through the door as the first screams erupted.

Without even pausing to see the situation, which could range from deceptively innocuous to horrible, he swept the first room with stun fire at the level of most people's faces and the killer's neck or sternum, as fast as Jorus could pull the trigger from the doorway.

It left him open -- to a gut shot, a trap, a quick circling around behind him -- but in the end, so what. So what if this fight turned out to be the last.

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

He could very well have killed the old man. That much was true. Wouldn't have been hard with the man leaving himself so open, almost as if he wished for it.

There was a small element of the man inside the mask that would have understood that, were it the case, but he wasn't there to see it. In fact, he'd quickly moved through the first floor, slashing the necks of the few people who had been dumb enough to try and watch what was happening through the windows near the entrance. His blades were precise, making sure to sever the jugular so that blood sprayed profusely with each pump of beating heart.

One of them stood long enough for Jorus's shots to hit him, stunning him as the blood flowed. It was almost insult to injury at that point, but the man was already dead walking, so it didn't matter.

The one who'd killed him had already gone out a back door, moving onto the next building, a trail of blood left for Jorus to follow.

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Vandelhelm, Jorus recalled as he tracked through the rapidly dying, was not the kind of world that cared about a scene like this. It wasn't that much worse than him, frankly, not in this moment.

That was the idea that made him stop and offer comfort for a few heartbeats, squeezed a hand, called it in with his lapel comm. His modest crew and associates had only limited assets, expertise, synthflesh dispensers. Nothing left by now. There'd be others, locals, family, coming to mourn and rage and help or fail to help. He could move on. He didn't.

Knowing that the killer got his kicks by putting Jorus in this situation did little to blunt the pain. It did however put him in the killing mood that he'd seen coming. In an area this dense and vulnerable, his usual options in such a situation -- tactics that made the concussion rifle look positively nuanced -- were off the table.

He unslung the rifle and followed instinct out the back. He'd paused maybe a minute.

፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

A minute was more than enough time.

Time for what?

Time to kill, if he'd wanted it. He could have been in another building, going through and slaughtering everyone in it. Wouldn't have been hard. Wouldn't have been anything outside of the normal for him. Making Jorus squirm was nice, but honestly, it was the killing that really made him... well, thrilled? He didn't really feel anything, come to think of it. He didn't have feelings like that. It's what made him so different from everyone else. He didn't feel the way they did.

But when Jorus stepped through the door, a finger squeezed a trigger from a few steps away. No sound accompanied the shot, just a blaster bolt from a Silencer. He preferred to use his daggers, but he also didn't feel like getting that close to the man who was hunting him.

Not yet, at least.

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

End of the line, instinct said too late. He leaned aside - lurched, more like - as he came out the door, but the concussion rifle's bulk slowed him. The silenced blaster bolt caught Jorus alongside the chest with a heat and an impact that he might have shrugged off thirty years ago. His coat took some of the brunt but he was well and truly shot. He felt betrayal and, primarily, chagrin at the naivety of trusting to a higher power.

Then again, he'd trusted to a concussion rifle too, and that decision was feeling pretty solid.

They were out back of the bloody house, not much room but enough. At a guess, and a guess was all he had, the only people this shot would take out of the fight were the pair of them.

He already had the rifle in hand and its muzzle was already dipping toward the ground between them, just in the half a heartbeat since the blasterfire hit.

Which way? he asked the Force, and it wasn't a request.

He pulled the trigger and the back alley turned to shrapnel around them.

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

BOOM.

His feet are lifted into the air and he's thrown backwards at the same time as duracrete and shards of metal pepper his body. Twisting mid-air, he lands upon the ground in a disheveled heap of cloak and armor. Ears ring. The taste of iron coats the inside of his mouth. Little bits and pieces of duracrete and metal have pierced his body in a variety of places, and he coughs once before catching his breath.

Inside the mask, a grin remains on his lips.

He staggers to his feet, unsteady, wavering. The pistol he'd been holding has disappeared. Blood drips from within his sleeve, down the outside of his glove, and onto the ground below as his hand slips inside of his cloak.

"Oh... that was fun."

When his hand reemerges, it holds a vibrodagger. The other hand also holds ones. He starts forward, slow pace towards Jorus, no sign of pain holding him back, just physical damage.

"Hate to break it to you, but that's gonna be your last trick."

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧

Pressure, pain, and silence. The detonation threw Jorus through the disintegrating door and into the blood-stinking dark of the back hall. As he skidded he kept his grip on the damaged rifle. He'd blown out his own eardrums, he realized at some remove from himself. The killer was coming, two daggers in hand. Back behind Jorus, or up above his head, he got no sense of movement, no medics coming to tally the dead or shepherd their last breaths. In the gloom he knew little of their species, race, gender, age. They'd only been people, and Jorus' few moments here had been the only triage they could get.

Not such a bad way to go, he figured, dropping the massive rifle beside his leg. Its legendary Stouker concussion chamber shivered and sparks hissed against blood in the floorboards. He was blaster-shot even before he'd blown up the pair of them; pain seized him all across the chest, all down his shaking arms, and clarity eluded him - not that he had the time for tactics. He drew his depleted blaster pistol and the last-shot pulser hummed against his palm.

Defending a house filled with the dead, in a refugee camp nominally under the vast old Jedi carelessness. Defending wanderers of no special bloodline, riven from their past, unrooted from any home, clawing out a future - the kind of people he and his daughter and his wife had been. His ship had come; theirs hadn't, all the dead behind him.

No, not such a bad way to go. Even if he wished he was under the stars.

Still lying slumped, he met the killer's glowing eyes. "Be seeing you, Alndys," he said.

And shot the broken rifle.

 

[፧R፧E፧D፧S፧H፧I፧F፧T፧]

He could see the look in the man's eye even before it happened. A warning. Brief, but worth heeding.

The blaster shot. The rifle exploded. He had already started backpeddling when he saw the look but the concussive force knocked him into the air before he heard the shot or the explosion. It threw him through the air for the second time in a short minute, twisting, tumbling, until he hit the wall of the next building over and bounced off of it. He landed on his side on the ground.

A cough and blood splattered the inside of his mask. He knew that wasn't good. Still didn't care. He was alive, which meant he was going to stay that way. Rolling to all fours, he stood, shakily, blood dripping from both hands.

"Guess... you had one more trick."

He tilted his head to the side, bent down to retrieve his knives and walked over to where the explosion had taken place. Wasn't a lot left of the guy that had caused it. Most grizzly kill he'd ever accomplished. Didn't phase him, he just didn't understand it. But in the end he tapped a dagger to his forehead and then touched it away in mock salute.

"Be seeing you."

Then he turned and walked away.

---

ATTIRE: (See Bio Image) | WEAPON: Vibrodaggers (2), The Silencer

TAGS: Jorus Q. Merrill ​

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

True enough, there wasn't much left: the mangled guns, boot heels and sodden rags. And a memory — sixty years past — of tall, masked women on the fifth wildest world he'd ever found.

"Your weapon," said Confusion at what was clearly the door. She held out one long, gray-skinned hand with too many fingers. "You will not need it."​

The house creaked and blue-white hyperlight flickered under its glossy surfaces: broken windows, pooling blood, dead eyes, just for a heartbeat.

Absent the light, the house sighed and went still, and stayed that way.