First Reply Old Enemies and Dark Deeds

[Makko Vyres]

The office of "Big Nasty" Jeenu, Denon





"I want the boy alive," Jeenu told those who stood in front of his desk.

"That's...going to cost more. There is opportunity after the battle. The Jedi are out and about on important missions around the planet. Out of the safety of their temple. But bringing back a hostage will be expensive."

"I understand. Alive."

It was a long time since Makko Vyres had slipped between his fingers. He held grudges, but in this case the principal was important. No one joined the inner circle and got to walk away.

"Well...I've got four bounty hunters who can operate on Coruscant. The Wookie, the droid, the gunslinger and the sharpshooter."

Four dossiers were placed on the wooden desk. On a planet like Denon, using real wood was a true display of wealth.

"Good. Hire them all."

"But... The retaining fee alone will cost..."

"I said all of them."








Coruscant Night Skies


Jedi Knight Makko Vyres was on an important mission.

After the attack, the only pet shop that stocked vitamin drops for a pregnant trash panda was a forty minute airspeeder journey away.

His airspeeder suddenly dropped down a lane.

Makko fought for the controls for a second before realising this wasn't a malfunction. Someone was remotely taking control of the speeder from him.

He sensed danger. Makko dug into the Force and manipulated the odds. A Suerton trick he had been taught years ago.

Ping

Makko looked at the tranquilizer dart embedded in the passenger seat. He reached for the Force again, disconnecting the radios on the air speeder and giving himself control back.

The next shot wasn't a tranquilizer. A precise blaster bolt went straight through the main repulsor engine, sending him into a controlled descent.

Makko hit a distress button on his comm unit as he flew down towards a dark, industrial district in the lower levels of Coruscant's surface.


OOC/ join in and respond to distress call, or maybe even join the bounty to try and catch Makko.

 

[Karima Fett]

​

LOCATION: Coruscant - Industrial District 41
Objective: Take out the competition, capture a Jedi.
Tag: [ Makko Vyres ]

She considered it. Turned it all over in her head.

Coruscant was not her fight. Not her war for her to jump into. Fighting and dying for the Jedi? The mere thought of it only evoked insanity, and the folly of an old friend, who thought herself a knight in shining armor. Karima would have pitied her, if not for the circumstances behind their last meeting. So many years of friendship, broken for the sake of a weak and helpless creature, a Padawan!

If anything, she felt an almost desperate need to have her revenge. Against the Jedi, whose existence had created a rift between her and a dear friend, now so different she could no longer recognize her. So too did the bounty hunter feel an almost savage kind of joy at the thought of displaying her skill for all of her peers.

To Haran with the other four, those that dour bastard had picked to be his attack dogs. Powerhouses in their own field, but not nearly as polyvalent as herself; that was exactly how she would take them out and claim the bounty for herself. It was all just a matter of slipping a few credits to a disreputable (and equally disgruntled) communication technician in order for him to give her access to a section of Coruscant and its (near-drowning) chatter, sorting patiently through all of that noise to find something much more interesting than her true quarry, but those chasing him. They were professional enough that she struggled to get a proper fix on their location, but years spent as a killer for hire made it a little easier. Comms were open between her competitors, earning a snicker from her. This was exactly why she didn't do teams.

Ah, there it went. That distress call was exactly what she was looking for. All but bolting to her feet, she headed out of the damp alleyway sitting between a metalworking station and a telecommunication office she had remained it to monitor the situation. Nobody dared to stand in her way; a Mandalorian clad in the shimmering metal of her people projected a certain aura, after all.

Unfolding the stock of her blaster, she hoofed it as fast as she could towards the crash site. Her estimations had been... mostly correct, but still not quite precise enough for her to have been perfectly placed. She was no droid, after all; merely a very experienced soldier of fortune.

And when she reached it, the Mandalorian quickly scanned her surroundings with the barrel, before snapping her attention back towards the airspeeder.

"It's a bad day to be you, Vyres. But hey, you've got options! You can either let me take you in... or I can leave you to my friends to drag you back to where you belong. They won't be as nice and diplomatic as me."

Hell of a bluff; the other four would probably try and kill her just by principle for trying to steal the bounty from them. The Guild might just get on her ass for breaking the rules about competitivity!

Not that she cared. In her fathomless ego, she could not even begin to consider the notion that consequences might ruin her.

 

[Makko Vyres]

Chapter 1: The Sharpshooter

She always did her homework. A Jedi known to be able to manipulate technology. The slice into his vehicles systems had never been the end game.

She had planned for his focus to be on undoing her work whilst she took the shot. The non lethal round should not have caught his Jedi senses.

She missed.

She almost never missed.

She swapped to her long rifle and put a bolt through the front of the airspeeder.

"Follow him," she told one of her drones. "But keep your distance or he'll take over your systems."

~

Even her long rifle wouldn't go through a beskar plate in one shot. At this distance it would be a risk to try and find a gap in the plates.

She settled her sight on centre mass.

This would still hurt.

~

"Oh, what an offer," came the reply. His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Makko tried to climb nearly out of the airspeeder. It hadnt been a pleasant crash and he stumbled to the ground.

The light was lazy down here. Slow to chase the shadows from the corners of the alleys.

"How about...you give me that blaster and..."

There was a sudden streak of yellow. The same light as the rifle shot that had gone through his engine.

It wasn't aimed at him. It streamed right for the middle of the mandalorian's back.

 

[Karima Fett]

​

LOCATION: Coruscant - Industrial District 41
Objective: Get off the X!
Tag: [ Makko Vyres ]

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Beskar granted her a hell of a lot more survivability than most, but it was hardly foolproof. The best armor, after all, was not being shot at all; and although the energy was absorbed by the armor plating, the kinetic impact was not. The killer for hire found herself face down to the ground, a pained rasp escaping her. Once the adrenaline faded from her body, that sort of wound would burn like hell; but there was no sense in worrying about the amount of bacta patches she would need afterwards. There was only the here... and now.

Hurriedly picking her blaster carbine back up, the Mandalorian mustered the will to get back to her feet- if only for her to make a mad dash for the nearest point of cover, all too aware that her ambusher had the advantage of surprise. Taking hold of a round projectile at her belt, the bounty hunter threw it down at her feet, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. It would give her time; her fiddling with the chemical reaction made it a little more difficult for thermal vision to pick things up within the cloud, and so she was just as blind as she hoped that sharpshooter would be.

Not that the Jedi were known to be all too affected by such disruption, but Karima was banking on that stupid code of theirs to keep Makko from separating her head from her shoulders at the moment. Hell, she might just have proposed a truce, if not for the fact that he knew she was after him now, thanks to her grand entrance.

 

[Makko Vyres]

Chapter 1: The Sharpshooter

That had to hurt.

He'd never seen such a powerful blaster bolt strike beskar before. He knew it had its limits. A mandalorian could hardly survive a direct hit from a tank.

There had been a flash of light and a metallic noise that sounded - almost comically - like a frying pan being struck by a spoon.

"I thought you said they were your friends!" Makko shouted out.

He turned for the airspeeder to fetch his lightsaber, but another bolt struck it just ahead of him. He changed direction, trying to escape the line of sight. This time the bolt hissed just above his head in warning.

"Feth it," Makko hissed, choosing to close his eyes, cover his nose and mouth and to dive into the smoke cloud.

 

[Karima Fett]

​

LOCATION: Coruscant - Industrial District 41
Objective: We make our own luck here
Tag: [ Makko Vyres ]

"I was being facetious, you idiot!" answered the Mandalorian with a pained hiss from the cloud of smoke, all too aware of just how blind such a countermeasure made her. Sure, she was buying herself some time, but if the markswoman held a convenient enough spot, she could simply wait out the smoke and blast her again once it dissipated; or just shoot her if she tried to leave it. Trying not to think about the fact that she was, by all intent, a dead woman walking, the bounty hunter inhaled deeply... and secured her carbine over her shoulder, the magnetic clamps leaving it securely attached to her back, alongside her jetpack.

Wait.

Her jetpack.

It would be a hell of a gamble. If the sniper was skilled enough, she might just treat this as advanced skeet shooting and blast her out of the air. Nobody would spread news of her mighty deeds in that cantina, and she would be unworthy of the name Fett.

But when she felt that body bump into her own, she knew she had to take the chance. Wrapping her arms around the Jedi as tightly as she could, the suave soldier of fortune let out a warm chuckle, meant to comfort herself more so than her prize.

"Try not to wiggle around too much."

And with that little warning, the lady of beskar left the smoke cloud with a gracefully controlled burst of her jetpack.

 

[Makko Vyres]

"I was being facetious, you idiot!" answered the Mandalorian with a pained hiss from the cloud of smoke, all too aware of just how blind such a countermeasure made her.

Makki didn't know what facetious meant. It irked him that she snapped back with some kind of retort that he didn't understand.

She wrapped her arms around him and Makko made no immediately move to resist. He didn't sense any lethal intent.

"Look you can't..."

"...ah fuck!"

He should have realised what she was doing, but the sudden acceleration upwards caught him by surprise. She got her wish; he didn't try and wriggle free at all.

"Where do you think you're going?"

No blaster bolts lanced out to meet them. The sharpshooter didn't risk the mandalorian dropping her prize.

 

[Karima Fett]

​

LOCATION: Coruscant - Industrial District 41
Objective: Up, up and away!
Tag: [ Makko Vyres ]

"Thought I'd figure that one out once we touch down", answered the bounty hunter with an easy grin one could easily hear, even if it remained hidden from sight behind that T visor of hers. "Probably shoot our way out. Mix things up a little."

Our, not my. Maybe it had just- slipped from her lips. Or maybe Karima knew exactly what to do to keep herself from getting blasted; keeping herself as close as possible to the quarry. A bit ruthless, but she counted on the "taken alive" provision of the contract to come and do the heavy lifting there, which... it ostensibly did. No blaster bolts came to send her crashing down to the ground, which- was something of a mixed blessing. Sure, no getting killed by a frighteningly accurate markswoman-

-but also no opportunity to trace the origin of these shots. Blindly looking around just wasn't an option; the longer she spent in the open, the easier it would be for that rival to properly line up a shot and drop her.

"Please tell me your stupid code isn't going to stop you from trying to kill them", grumbled the bounty hunter as she tried to bring the both of them to an upper level. If they could find some sort of access corridor and lose the deadly sniper through the maze of maintenance tunnels... well, she could set up an ambush, kill her, and make her way back to the employer with her prize.

Assuming she could keep the Jedi from outsmarting her, but that was a problem for future Karima.

 

[Makko Vyres]

"Probably shoot our way out. Mix things up a little."

Our way out.

Now he was expected to participate in his own kidnapping.

"Please tell me your stupid code isn't going to stop you from trying to kill them"

"If they attack me, then no, it won't," Makko replied. He walked ahead of the bounty hunter, heading inside.

They couldn't be far from the shooting position of the sniper. Makko stretched out with his senses, trying to find the shooter.

They entered what appeared to be abandoned office space. A maze of corridors and empty rooms.

"Who exactly put out this bounty then?" Makko asked. There was a reason be was cooperating for now.

There were actually two reasons. He was still finding his feet after his involuntary flight.

 

[Karima Fett]

​

LOCATION: In the bowels of Coruscant
Objective: Allies it is, then!
Tag: [ Makko Vyres ]

Laughter came as Makko's response; it seemed that even now, with his freedom and her life at stake, the Mandalorian was more than happy to string the Jedi along.

"Now that would be telling, darling", answered the soldier of fortune with an undeniable dose of smugness, all too glad to lord this bit of knowledge over him.

Pragmatically, she had no reason to let this unlikely "ally" of hers in on the whole picture - but giving him the impression that she only cared to withhold that information to get a rise out of him? That might just lead him to underestimating her. An advantage she would sorely need when this shaky understanding of theirs came to an end.

"That sniper's probably searching for us already- trying to cut off our escape. It's what I would do. We can either try and navigate our way up, though I lack a map... or we set up an ambush and kill them. I much prefer the latter; never understood the penchant for loose ends in the profession... but, what can you do, right?"

There was a nonchalance to her talk of killing, as if the notion of taking a life was no more of a bother to her than flicking a piece of debris off of her gleaming beskar. Even now, the way she moved appeared almost languid; a good way to mask just how primed and ready she was for a confrontation, finger on the trigger as her T visor slowly turned this way and that.

Few things in the galaxy were more dangerous than a Mandalorian seemingly at ease.

"I bet you play the part of the good prince in distress well enough, right? Make it convincing and I might be able to blindside them."

It was hard to tell when she was serious, sometimes.

 

[Makko Vyres]

"You want me to play bait for your trap?" Makko asked rhetorically, with a shake of his head.

As days went, this was one of the strangest ones he had suffered in a while. He would get the information out of the mandalorian or one of the other hunters on their trail.

He felt a disturbance in the Force. He might have offered a warning had it not been for her smug tone.

There was a dull thud from their right as they walked down the corridor.

"You said there were more hunters out..."

---

CHAPTER 2: THE WOOKIE

Seven foot of angry wookie crashed straight through the wall to their right. It collided with the mandalorian and it's momentum carried them straight through the wall on their left. She was carried into an abandoned office of desks and chairs.

Makko was left in a cloud of plaster dust.

"I'll wait then," he muttered to himself, sitting down in the middle of the corridor on his own.