It'll Be In That Order (Lords of the Fringe Dominion of Bespin)

[Hannibal Oryen]

Always bring enough ammo. That was one of Hannibal's golden rules of bounty hunting. Today, he had broken it, and he had not realized he broke it until it was too late. It was like every Reaver in a three mile radius had heard the clicking of his spent CZ assault rifle, smelled weakness, and ran at him. It was understandable. By this point, plenty of their mates had been shot up pretty good by the Fondorian. The jimmies on these Reavers had been rustled to an abnormal degree, probably because Hannibal had been mocking them while doing so. Oh, how the tables turned!

"Kark, kark, kaaaark." Hannibal gasped in between his accelerated breathing as he ran through the narrow, warped streets of one of any number of cloud cities.

Behind him, Reavers were giving chase. About three dozen of them. It was pretty bad. They would have caught him by now if he hadn't been the coolest cyborg this side of the Sanctuary Pipeline. Cybernetic enhancements aside, Hannibal wasn't quite sure how much longer he could keep this up. He'd have to lose them somehow. Then maybe pick them all off, one by one, all incognito. Like Sliver Cell or whoever that freak with the three eyes was. It was difficult to remember these things when being chased by cannibals.

 

[Sal Katarn]

Explosion, brilliant and white. Dûvain was tossed through the nearest window, glass shattering, entire front charred. He sailed through the air before landing serendipitously directly next to [member="Hannibal Oryen"]. The abomination lifted himself off the ground, smoke curling off his body. Red eyes flicked across the terrain and the abomination gave an aggrieved twist of the lips.

"Ah, the mercenary with morals," he noted the fleeing fellow before looking at the swiftly approaching villains, "Reavers, I presume?"

The Hybrid's eyes narrowed. One of the Reavers froze quite suddenly, eyes glazing over, then the thug turned on his allies, shooting them in the back with his blaster rifle. The pursuers devolved into a bungled, confused mess.

 

[Ibaris Varanin]

There it was, the very thing that made her smile more real. Her shoulders relaxed, lines on her young face softening away into nothing. This was the thing she hadn't let her parents in on. She had no idea what they might say, but she felt that none of it would be all that good. Communing with the dead, even this one. She didn't want this taken away from her.

'Uncle,' she 'responded', 'why can't you just haunt me?'

Reasonable teenage question and tone. The question made perfect sense to her, but no normal teenager (haha, normal) would want to be haunted of their own free will. Had she been thinking about that, the thought would have made her smirk, and at the same time a little sad; while in her mind they would be scaredy-cats, some small part of her envied them their obliviousness.

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ibaris Varanin-Jacobs"]

A pondering thought. There were many answers to that question, some of them she would appreciate, others she would definitely not appreciate. The most obvious answer to him was that the whole… well, universe was simply too restrictive in its nature, world didn’t qualify enough and yet… yet there wasn’t a better descriptionary. How do you explain to someone just how much he had seen, and how much more there was still too explore? To witness? To experience.

Difficult, very difficult. So what was the second option he had? Well, Ovmar wasn’t actually dead, death would assumed a lot of things. One, that he had expired, two that he was currently being held somewhere against his will. Which wasn’t the truth, the Nether had been a joke. The Sith Lord had been there multiple times already, sure, for some reason the Force wasn’t working anymore there… but finding a rift hadn’t been all that much of a problem.

So what to say?

‘And keep you from your studies?’ she would practically feel the smirk radiating from his incorporeal presence. ‘Varanin would probably try and exorcise me within a fortnight.’

A pondering thought.

‘How are they? How are you?’

 

[Corey's OOC]

It appeared this meeting wasn't going to happen. Something else was going on here at Tibannapolis. Marek wasn't too keen on being in the danger zone. He preferred to send others there, or at least know that SpyNet was watching for him. But this task was for his own company, the one that wasn't linked to the Techno Union exclusively. When he started to sense the change in urgency around the city, he figured it was time for him to go do something about it.

Checking his belt for his pistol as the explosion happened, he shook his head. “What the frell is going on here?” Making a quick glance around, he figured it was time to locate anyone that was worth anything. And get them moving.

Pulling up his comlink, he knew a few people in the Fringe who were here, mainly the one known as @Darrell Irani.

“Whats going on? Explosions occuring, are you safe?” Had to check on the business bros. See what he could do to fix that, then he would attack the problem.

Say what you will, but the side of the galaxy near Wild Space was almost more safe, and less unexpectedly crazy.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

Hannibal screeched to a halt, just in time for the magical malignant menace that was [member="Dûvain"] to sail through a window and land next to him. The Fondorian had questions and the sinking feeling there would never be any adequate answers. These questions, and the feeling, only amplified when Dûvain worked his vile magicks on the swarm of Reavers, causing them to turn on one another. It was too much for Hannibal to watch. Well, not really. He was glad they were assaulting and cannibalizing one another rather than him.

Schedule freed up, he decided to speak with Dûvain.

"Gee whillikers, it's the freakin' space gnome." Hannibal said. "Do you always show up outta nowhere or 's this kinda a recent thing?"

 

[Hira Mitsae]

[member="Marek Starchaser"]

‘Tough to say.’ the businessman finally managed to answer, slowly gathering himself up and dusting himself off. The office was positively ruined, the pale guy gone, Varanin jumping outta the window, explosions rocking the installation. Wonder above wonder the Baron and his secretary were still sorta alive, huddled underneath the ancient old oaken table they were marginally well off.

Darell sighed to himself and scratched his chin. It seemed most of the reavers here were done for, what with Duvain, Denko, Varanin’s death field and the blaster fires of all two of ‘em. ‘The Reavers are pretty much handled, and I suppose we won’t be having any problems on the business side, no?’

This had been directed at the Baron, who quickly managed to nod. If it hadn’t been for the collective might of Varanin and Irani, the guy would have been very much a dead person. Such things managed to warm people up, when threats and rationality did not.

‘How did that casino business go for you?’

 

[Corey's OOC]

Finally someone getting in contact with him. Felt like his timing was just off for him on this floating city. He really needed to get message out to someone on Cloud City to get his company moved out that way. He would, shortly, first it was a matter of fixing this SNAFU. The one best thing he knew was to run towards gunfire. And explosions. As much as that was counter intuitive, getting there and affecting change at the source would put an end to the crazy going on in the rest of the location. Marek had his gun at the ready, his lightsaber still on his belt, but he was an Alterer of the Environment and a TK Master. He was going to have trouble here.

Shoot straight. He could do that without the Force.

“Met with a few folk. Seems we're going to be able to set up here. Hoping to expand to the other cities on this world. Think you can talk me up to the Baron, just in case? There is a luxury cruise home from here in it for you,” Marek laughed to himself as he continued onto the Baron Admin office, and away from the HR offices. Simple, right?

And he didn't have to get his hands dirty... Yet again.

[member="Darell Irani"]

 

[Ibaris Varanin]

A little laugh, soft and fleeting fell out of her. As much as he had been an instigator of her studies, a boon to them, he was just as adept at distraction. It could be said that this was a distraction, but so many of her studies were for the moment fruitless and simply too hazardous to engage in, especially when so much of her time as of late had been spent aboard the Chimaera rather than planetside on Annaj or any of the worlds of the Fringe Confederacy that were deemed 'safe enough'.

'You're right. Papa doesn't mess around,' the thought came with a sigh, 'I'm allowed freedoms, but there's limits, y'know?'

She slumped a little.

'They seem okay. I worry about them, uncle. But they seem okay.'

The worries they carried were not unlike her own, and that was where the 'okay' came from.

'Are you okay?'

Seemed strange to ask, considering, but it couldn't be helped.

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

 

[Vrag]

Man, cleaning the streets was turning into a routine procedure; shoot, fry, rinse, repeat.

So damn easy.

The things they were fighting… not even men anymore, just humanoid husks filled to the brim with crazy. She wondered, sometimes, how they didn't stop to fall on their knees in worship to their gods — or whatever it was that they believed in, anyway — and start chanting in some weird, unknown language. It'd be only proper, seeing as everybody called them reavers. They had to reave for someone, right? Something?

Well, not that it helped them very much.

Another click from her slugthrower, and then the woman realized her clip was empty. Feth, a quick, ragged thought before a blur tackled her to the ground, all blood, teeth and nails. Nasty. She struck the lunatic with the cool barrel of her gun, taking a morbid sort of pleasure at the wet sound as she rolled them around in the dirt. With a couple of well-aimed punches, the Knight finished him off, lifting her gauntleted fist from the grisly splatter on the floor.

"Alright, you motherkarkers," the woman growled and unclipped a grenade from her belt, heedless of the gore that still hung from her fingers. She chucked the cooked bomb into the fray, taking cover behind a pile of corpses right before the thing went boom. Clothing, armor, limbs and organs; it all exploded outwards with little discrimination, coloring the poodoo brown of the walls with a fresh coat of red.

And people say that the Sith never cater to them. Ha! If that wasn't a public service... well, no time to waste. There were always more reavers to kill in this business she called her own.