Private One can never be too careful

[Lirka Ka]

BPFASSH

The Sith Order was a place filled with many a strange person. All sorts of odd and unknowable things that lurked in the darkness, scuttling in the shadows of the Empire and its many Lords and Ladies. Lirka had come to learn something about unknowable things recently.

What she didn’t know, was out to kill her.

Lirka was a paranoid creature on the best of days, and after the attempt on her life at D’Qar she had found her resolved steeled. It was time to be infinitely more proactive to dealing with those things she didn’t know, and those things that could eventually come to slip the knife into her neck.

It was Allyson Locke that had the misfortune of being the newest soul Lirka had decided she didn’t know enough about, and therefore most certainly didn’t trust her enough to not become a would-be-assassin. Yet, Lirka was a woman of science and that meant being making sure to test her theories.

So Lirka did one of the many talents she had picked up in her long years. She waited, she stalked, and she watched. Like the way a predator does their prey. And her stalkings had now taken her to the world of Bpfassh, Lirka had decided the battleground would be the tall buildings and dark alleyways of the Bfassi capital city. Plenty of dark little hovels to hide away in and plenty of building tops for the mighty metal Goliath to leap and glide between - eyes narrowed in on the Corellian “aide's” form. Waiting for that perfect moment where there’d be the least amount of witnesses to pounce. Both literally and metaphorically.

Finally deeming the time to have arrived, Lirka leapt from the building on which she perched. Hurling herself to the earth behind the woman, landing with the loud metallic clang of her boots hitting the earth. Slowly did she rise, looming. The glow of her helmet’s eyes burned bright today, and the brand beneath it itched greater than normal - for she moved with dark purpose today.

The Once-Sephi’s words hummed out, a venom trickling behind the distortion over her voice.

“Now, Aide. Let’s see what makes you so special.”

Maybe, at some smallest of levels beneath the endless layers of paranoia. There existed that minuscule kernel of jealousy.

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Lirka Ka //:
//: Attire //:

The day had been quiet. She had wrapped up her mission for the Minister in record timing. It wasn't much, and Allyson felt it was a waste of her skillset, but it seemed important enough for her to be sent. Allyson wandered down the empty street, shoving something into her mouth. As she looked down, she typed a quick message through the secure line, letting her handler know that she was on her way back.

She took another bite of the sugar-covered pastry, but this time, the center exploded with a red jelly. Her eyes widened, seeing that she had found the best part of the doughnut. She mused happily, continuing to eat and walk with a small box of chocolates and a gardenia flower in her hand. She was ill-prepared for the stalker that she had felt in the back of her head.

Allyson had ignored the weird gut feeling a few blocks back but focused on her shopping list. Turning the corner, it seemed it was the time for the stalker to 'strike.'

The ground shook as the mechanical beast landed behind the Corellian.

Her jelly-stained face was shocked by the sudden interruption to her happy musings about home. Stumbling forward, Allyson watched tragically as the flower, the chocolates, and the rest of her doughnut hit the pavement.

Landing on her knees, her eyes widened and fury burned in her throat.

"What the actual feth?" She whispered under her breath as she slowly stood up and grabbed the dirt-covered doughnut. Turning, Allyson came face to face with the Deputy that Madelyn had just appointed. She should have known from the woman's sneering of her cover position.

"You? Do you know what you just did?" Allyson shook the doughnut towards Lirka, an unrelenting anger burning behind the Corellian's eyes.

"You're an ass." Quickly, she threw the doughnut towards Lirka's face and then turned on her heel to create distance between them.

Unfortunately, she'd be going home without gifts this time, but hopefully not with a new bruise. As she ran, the Force surged through her, making her slip out of view of the Elf.

With her bow drawn, she began to climb one of the nearest buildings, trying to gain a height advantage over the creature.

Allyson groaned as this was not part of the mission briefing.

 

[Lirka Ka]

It was almost amusing. Almost. Had Lirka actually known the true reason for Allyson Locke 's being here, the Once-Sephi might have tried to strike her on the sheer principle of it all. Sweet treats? Romance? Enjoying oneself in ways that didn't involve some sort of mayhem, murder, or general unpleasantness? Well. That was simply heresy under Primordial Darkness.

Alas, it was only Lirka's other delusions motivating her today. Lirka noted that the woman's possessions were odd for an assassin, but she knew that the knives aimed her throat came from all sort of odd and unsuspecting places. Though perhaps it spoke more to Lirka's impeccable timing that she decided to land at the worst possible moment and yet the best possible moment to make the biggest mess of the situation.

What had she done? Lirka knew damn well what she had done. And told the Corellian as such through the mechanical distortion of her words.

"I know what I've done. I've revealed a rat."

And, continuing with the grand timing of the night. The pastry splattered itself upon Lirka's face-plate. The Once-Sephi stood there, unfazed, though perhaps flabbergasted beneath the emotionless slab of plundered beskar as the thing slowly slid down the shining metal. Leaving a trail of red jelly in its wake. An ass!? Lirka had been called many things before in her life. But an ass!? Well that was simply too crude. It felt almost unbecoming for a monster of her stature, and frankly, she was offended.

And in Lirka's world, offense was solved with blades and fists.

Watching the woman's form burst away, Lirka noted the speed. She knew that sort of force-enhanced movement well, from a different time, with a different face. It fed into her delusions even more. Just who was she dealing with? A tsis'kaar perhaps! She knew those devils would get start sulking for her eventually, vengeance for the handful of times she had come to blows with them many years ago. And Lirka gladly shared her theory, for such was her self assurance that the prospect of being wrong was simply impossible.

"Run, little assassin, run! It'll make it all the sweeter when I crush you under foot!"

Lirka had her own speed, it took a moment to get started but soon those metallic-tree-trunk legs began to get into motion. Servos and mechanisms whirring and groaning as Lirka's massive form thudded after Locke. Her electo-whip crackling into being as Lirka's claw-like eye slits looked up at woman's climbing form once she finally sprinted long enough to get her back into view. Not one to allow a foe an easy time, Lirka drew the weapon back before sending it out towards Allyson with the sparking crackle of electricity being released, yet it was a strike intended to startle more than maim. Almost as if she was toying with her quarry some.

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Lirka Ka //:
//: Attire //:

Allyson climbed the tall building using the rickety ladder as her best means. It didn't take much to hear the monstrosity of the Slavemaster drawing closer. Allyson could listen to her and feel the machines through the Force - something she would keep in her back pocket if necessary. As she drew near the top of the short building, the crack of the electro whip made contact with the brick wall she was climbing. The sound of the weapon startled her, causing her to lose grip on one of the ladder rungs.

Slipping and hanging by one hand. The Corellian dangled as her feet kicked, trying to find the ladder's footing, but her weight was starting to wear on the old building's ill-treated ladder. It wasn't meant to be struck with the whip and rapidly climbed. On top of its shortcomings, it was old and unkempt. The metal creaked as it began to bend with Allyson's body.

"Oh, chit." Allyson felt the weight beginning to give way. Under her, the elf seemingly waited for her to fall. Looking down, Allyson frowned and pointed towards the creature. "A rat?! You've got to be kidding me. What gave you that impression?" She figured now it was as good as any to show the mechanical deputy who she was dealing with.

Holding on for dear life, Allyson focused the Force on the humming and the whirring of the mechanical servos that helped propel the elf forward. Her focus was mainly on the arm that holds the weapon. Her hand was outstretched, and she squeezed, trying to stop each of them through mechu deru. If she could disable the arm for long enough, she'd be able to escape.

The last thing Allyson needed was a scene on a planet she had just scooped for information for the Minister. Remembering that, Allyson shouted. "You're gonna be in trouble, you know!" The Force continued to bear down on the arm of the once-Selphi. "The Minister ain't going to like you messing with me while I'm WORKING," Allyson shouted, emphasizing that she was working particularly for Madelyn.

Another creak as she tried to kick back to the ladder. With her movements and the strain of her weight, the ladder's weak metal snapped, causing her to plummet and lose focus briefly, giving Lirka's arm a sense of reprieve from the Mechu Deru. Allyson could catch herself for the most part, but then she remembered she couldn't control the speed of her fall with the Force. She wasn't like that; she wasn't built for that action.

So instead, she landed, letting her body crouch with one hand out and the other pressed against the concrete. Silence stretched between them, the air tense in preparation for combat.

Then suddenly, a loud groan as Allyson struggled to stand back up, her body protesting the idiocy she had just done. Her head whipped up, and she looked at Lirka. Allyson stood with the bow back in hand. "Seriously, is this because I gave you a dirty look at the meeting? Or is it because you probably suck at your job and got demoted?" She smirked, trying to hide the overwhelming pain in her lower back and legs.

 

[Lirka Ka]

Plenty content to see Allyson Locke stumble ever so slightly from her crackling blow, a low mechanical rumble coming from Lirka’s hulking form that might have been some sort of heavily distorted chuckle.

Locke’s pointing was met with barking accusation, Lirka evidently was very much not kidding. That hint of madness trickled out of every word - the Minister kept some odd company.

“Rodents are wretched things, skulking in the dark. Squirming, writhing, murderers and assassins. The knives in the dark.”

To call Lirka unhinged would really be putting it too likely. D’qar had awoken some of the darker impulses within her armored form that had been better off forgotten. Quick to judge, quick to strike. Quick to “interrogate” out whatever information she had deemed pertinent. There was perhaps some kernel of humor in it all, Lirka did rather exemplify the expression “every accusation is a confession”

Soon, Lirka could feel the mechanisms of her arm fight against her. The Once-Sephi tried to move regardless, sinew and muscle straining against servos and steel. Mechu-Duru was something Lirka had only the vaguest of knowledge of, having read about it perhaps once or twice in the massive storages of lore held within the Kainate’s vaults: to little surprise, such abilities interested her little. But to her delusions? Well, it made sense that a possible assassin gunning for her throat would be able to make use of such esoteric powers

She responded to her newfound helplessness with a snarl, the likes of which should have come out of an animal more than a person. The caged beast hungry to strike after being denied.

“We’ll see, won’t we assassin?”

It was perhaps an unfortunate thing to cause such strife for the Minister, but Lirka knew her cause was just. The quest for knowledge bowed to no one, and the Once Sephi knew the blade at your side was as good as the blade in your back. She needed to understand, an unseen angle of attack would be her undoing - she knew that much well enough. Allyson’s cries of working went to unsympathetic ears, met only with scorn.

“Working on stuffing your face and indulging in trinkets, assassin?”

Lirka’s thoughts were revealed rather quickly, and perhaps her scorn for the profession that once upon a time Lirka herself had partook in. In a different time, and with a different face.

Glowing lenses watched the Corellian’s tumbling fall with some amusement, Lirka waited for her to thud to the ground before taking her lumbering steps closer. While under normal circumstances, Lirka’s blade would have been alight and gunning for her quarry’s throat - these were not normal circumstances. Lirka needed to know first, kill second. In that brief freedom her arm let the whip crackle through the air again in a display of preluding violence.

Another rumble of frustration came from the mechanical monster at the Corellian’s quipping.

“Idiotic. I was subsumed. Not demoted. No, little rat. You are an unknown variable - I do not tolerate unknown variables. You aren’t in the records, you aren’t in the history books. You simply appear one day, walking the dark path. You appear upon the Malsheem, and no one bats an eye. You walk among the Sith’s high society for their ridiculous little games. Yet…who are you? What makes you so special, Rat? What blade hovers before me now, waiting for the chance to slip into my neck when I least expect it?”

And with it, Lirka’s paranoia was revealed bare. It was a hard life to live sometimes when invisible assassins lurked in every shadow, waiting for the moment of weakness.