The New Black

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

This Evoros name kept getting repeated around her circles like a bad habit. Evoros this, Evoros that, yet nobody ever fething knew who this ‘Evoros’ was when you asked about it. People zipped up faster than you could get a single credit out of your pocket to loosen lips that were otherwise too dumb to resist flapping to their hearts content. What was so mystical about this woman and why was she always one step ahead of Lassiter? She hunted people down as a living for the goddess, and yet she couldn’t track a single supposed fething man or woman? It drove her mad, almost to her wit’s end.

But no more. After having followed all the leads back to their roots, extorting and otherwise extracted information from other brokers through means that would make the average man wince in imaginary pain, Sena had finally managed. A small lead, a movement something on Nar Shaddaa. Now, it was most likely a dead-end, force know Sena hadn’t been subtle for the last few weeks, but it had gotten her something that she had not found otherwise: a lead, a solid and traceable lead to this person she was seeking.

Force. Even the escapees from the Ember weren’t this hard to track, and there were a good many of them that had almost managed to elude the Sword entirely. No, it was too late to turn back now. The trace was her last hope, and time was running short. This Evoros person was going to suffer for this. Nobody made Lassiter, the fething Sword of Vahl, jump through this many hoops just to find them.

It was an obsession, and it was one that had without a doubt put her in the crosshairs of the person she was seeking already. Sena knew this, but at this point even that was an acceptable price to pay for the sake of finding out who the hell this mysterious stranger was.

And then, well…

Something. Sena hadn’t considered what to do when she found this person. Not really. Murder was too quick, torture too pointless when she held no information that she needed. Sena needed to see this person with her own two eyes, needed to prove to herself that she had not lost her touch for these things.

Nobody escaped her.

Nobody.

 

[Evoros]

Mira Trell.
Mira Trell.
Sena Lassiter.
Click.

Yvonne smiled.

She'd caught word soon enough that there was a target on her back, and from there she'd been careful. Making light of threats was something she was good at, but Evoros didn't know that failure was something she could afford. Better to treat every enemy like they could outdo her.

And then it had become fun teaching this enemy just how hard it was to outdo Yvonne Evoros.
Backwards and forwards. Step this way. Step that way. Good. Then she'd disappear again. It was fun imagining the expression of frustration and futility and disbelief when the leads vanished, when the evidence came up blank. Back to the start again. And better still - that frustration achieved something beyond Yvonne's entertainment. It chipped away at subtlety. It made this hunter easier to find.

This one wasn't going to give up. Maybe she'd be able to kill her when she found her, maybe she wouldn't. But either outcome seemed inherently messy and entirely lacking profit.

So instead she'd gone searching herself. Her new enemy was rather too preoccupied to worry about the files attaching Mira Trell to Sena Lassiter and Sena Lassiter to a past filled with all sorts of secrets. Strengths. Weaknesses. Dirt. And Yvonne took note of everything. Every fight against slavery, every flicker of instability.

Sena Lassiter sounded interesting.
It was almost a pity what a mess she was determined to make.
Almost.

Eventually her search completed, and so did Lassiter's. The woman hunting her had a lead that would take her to her target. And the target had everything she needed to be ready for that arrival.

From there, Yvonne seemed to drop her guard. Her name was passed round more freely, the secrecy surrounding her subsided slowly, slowly, like the tide. It would never have seemed as though the agent controlled her own mystery. Surely, the assassin was getting her efforts rewarded. She had searched long and hard and now things were finally turning in her favor.

Meanwhile, she waited.

It was almost flattering. She had never been assassinated before. So flattering that by the time Sena Lassiter reached the end of her search, her target was being a good target, vulnerable, easy to strike from this close. Maybe it would be in her home. Maybe down an empty alley on the way back from a bar. Of course she didn't know. She wasn't supposed to. How exciting.

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

The ship touched down on Nar Shaddaa and out stepped a redheaded storm. People seemed to avoid her as if they were forced to, others because they had a genuine interest in not being walked all over by a woman seemingly on the path to war. The cameras would pick this up, spread the imagery to every security station in the vicinity through the net as soon as she stepped into view. Some mentioning Mira Trell brewing a storm, others about a mysterious redhead with an unusual aura about her, leaving a trail of confused men and women behind her as she walked the streets of Nar Shaddaa.

The trail that the Assassin had followed led her towards a man named Haii, and Lassiter was not bringing the bribes this time. Stepping out of the camera’s view and into the man’s store she wasted no time to approach him. Not a single word uttered, not a single breath wasted she pushed the unsuspecting man to the wall opposite his counter and latched on to the back of his head to scour what his surface thoughts covered.

The customers of his shop looked on in horror as she leaned in for his ear.

“Evoros.” She growled.

Thoughts surfaced. A compound, not too far away. Medium security, a man named Robb. Fat, middle-aged and balding. Worked the gates. It was good enough. Her arm pulled back with a firm grasp around the man’s head before she thrust him into the wall again and let go. The hearts of the people in the shop were racing, yet they calmed down in an instant as she made for the exit. Brows furrowing, seeds of hate planted within all of them. A burning fury unleashing with no memory of the assassin ever having been there. The sound of blades and other weapons getting unsheathed called out just as the doors closed behind Sena. Blasters called out into the street as man and woman alike began to tear each other apart within.

She was on the trail then.

Her pace quickening as she began to make way towards the compound, once again stepping into the limelight of the camera. She was getting sloppy, but this was Nar Shaddaa so who the hell cared?

Evoros was going to die before the day ended. That much was certain.

 

[Evoros]

Dark eyes scanned footage as it played on a screen. Static in between shots of red hair and fury. Another screen showed the same, from a camera placed various blocks away from the first. Another still - perks of working for organizations that were big on technology; there was plenty to go around - displayed a crawl of green-lit text; a feed describing the unexplained chaos that had broken out.

Conflict and hatred and rage.
Nothing to justify its suddenness.

It didn't bode well for the people getting in her way, but it was excellent news for her.

Truthfully, it wasn't supposed to bode well for her either. Lassiter wanted her dead. (At least, they were relatively certain. Somehow in all the words that all their sources had exchanged, the Collective hadn't heard the assassin promise her intent. But she was confident any intended outcome involved suffering, and that simply wouldn't do). And Evoros held no doubt in her mind that Sena Lassiter was very good at killing the people that she wanted dead.
A part of her was . . . not afraid, because fear was so useless, but apprehensive that the fight would come too quickly for Yvonne's chance to turn the tables. Evoros was a killer, not a fighter. In an ideal world, she was neither, but these things happened. Given the choice she'd prefer her enemy wasn't trying to kill her when she drove the knife through their heart.

But fear was useless.
She knew how this would go.

The man at the gates named Robb was not expecting company. He'd be little more than an insect to step on if Lassiter decided on death as his punishment for blocking the road.
Evoros, on the other hand, knew who was coming. By now she was almost looking forward to the introduction.

[member="Lassiter"]​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

The storm cloud continued to soar through the Nar Shaddaa streets before it caught on to what it was doing. A glance caught the shimmer of a camera, eyes peering straight into the lenses of her adoring fans all the while. She had more witnesses than ever before at this point, she had to fix that. Somehow. She didn’t know how, but it was a fix she had to make before she did anything too stupid.

Or maybe what she needed was a change of plans. That sounded far easier.

The compound was up ahead, the cameras continued to stay on her, yet security grew more scarce the further from the heart of the area she got. The recorders caught her shape again as she approached the security gate of the building. There he sat, balding and fat like the image of the storekeeper had promised him to be. His eyes set on Lassiter as she approached. The woman bent over to lean her arms against the counter of his desk.

He asked if he could help.

Lassiter feigned she was lost.

He gave her a look up and down and got hooked.

She had made him do it.

He was bound to her will, and her will wanted only one thing.

“Evoros.” She embedded into her speech. Eyes peered into his, promising everything he wanted yet offering nothing. His lips trembled for a second, his mental walls breaking down from the onslaught of a master mentalist in her prime. Before long he cracked, the dams bursting to show the face of a woman. Amber eyes, brown hair… Somewhat pale skin.

“Where is she?” The man tried to resist again, but his eyes betrayed him. They peered towards the entrance of the compound.

“Your keycard.” Sena held her hand out, the man obliged. “Thank you.”

She approached the door, card swiping at the door to unlock it with a hiss.

Memories erased.

Control released.

The man began to flutter his eyes as he tried to regain his bearings. His eyes set on the clock. It was weird how fast ten minutes could just flash him by so. Must have taken a nap or something. Sena meanwhile was already looking for the next person to put under her spell. Who that was remained to be seen, but she had an idea of what she had to do first.

She was close now. She could feel it.

 

[Evoros]

Tempting as it was to sit and wait to be surprised, the passing minutes lended a rising carefulness to her steps. Yvonne was prone to arrogance, but she steered clear of recklessness. This kind of job wasn't too forgiving of mistakes fuelled by recklessness, and she'd worked this kind of job long enough to know it.

Instead, she stayed nicely in place as she lay in waiting, but her eyes were everywhere. Those eyes stared through the cameras that were spaced through the compound Sena Lassiter had just entered - there were fewer further in, but enough that she could maintain some awareness of how long she had left to lie in wait - closely studying the building's activity without ever interfering, without ever giving a sign she was on watch.

Finally, a flicker across one last screen.

Lassiter was nearby.

Not long now. Minutes at most. Good.

She sighed, and then a buttonpress minimized the window where a dozen cameras watched her would-be assassinator. Then, carefully, thoughtfully, Evoros stood up, walked the short distance to the door, and - click! - locked it shut.

Not because she expected a locked door to hinder the assassin (she didn't want it to, for that matter). Rather, it was a precaution.
Yvonne Evoros valued her life. Valued her safety. Of course, she was an agent. Putting herself on the line was entirely necessary in this line of work. But when she took risks, they had to be calculated. Thought out, carefully anticipated. This was a risk she had thought through and knew she would deal with everything just fine, but it was a risk all the same. Sena Lassiter might have been outsmarted, but she was still incredibly dangerous. And all things considered, Yvonne would rather have a moment's warning before anything incredibly dangerous burst down her door.

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[SIZE=11pt]With her feth-ups there was little doubt about it. Evoros was more than just aware, if anything she was most likely already prepared for it, and that made the game all the more exciting. To hunt unaware prey provided little challenge, yet to hunt aware prey was a danger. Danger meant a risk for failure and failure meant death. Was today the day? Sena didn’t care, but a big part of her could have hoped.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Stepping into the facility she entered what seemed to be a lobby of some sort. There were cameras all around as well as a man getting out of his seat to apprehend the intruder that intruded upon his evening nap. A subtle hand gesture made the man open the door for her and Lassiter began to take her first few steps into the adventure that was finding Evoros’ hiding spot. While the layout of the facility was still a mystery to her the idea of swinging in the wild was a strategy that had the redhead all the more excited to finally meet her target. The cameras focused on her by now, Evoros sitting on the other end making their plans on how to stop her from getting to them no doubt. Lassiter threw a sparse glance into the transparent lenses that followed her but was quickly interrupted by a guard that came marching around the corner straight towards her. Yet another quick hand gesture made him turn on his heel and head in the opposite direction, and he wouldn’t be the last guard to do so either. The redhead’s mind extending itself onto every single man and woman who stepped in her way.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]In more way than one, the force would be her guide for this. Following what and where her gut told her to go Lassiter would soon come by a door. A click echoed into the hallway and her eyes would set upon them with an initial look of surprise or even shock before a chuckle parted her lips into a grin. Eyes wandering from the knob to stare right into the camera by the door as the devilish grin continued to spread on her lips and slid for her cheek. Yet as she stepped by the door Evoros would find that her assassin went right by it. She had of course been correct in assuming that an assassin would not be dissuaded by a door, but there was something else that needed her attention first.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Evidence.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The actual — or well, majority of — evidence of her presence.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Sena would continue to walk down the hallway until she eventually came across what she needed to find. The security station. The altar of screens and other machinery to keep an eye on intruders and keep them away. From what Sena could sense from inside there wasn’t much more than a single man on the inside. By the way he moved he was either getting ready to seek out this unwanted intruder, or he was getting ready to fight her. The door opened before her, but she was ready. Out stepped a man, and a second later a redheaded bombshell stepped right into him. Her lips touched against his, surprise shrouded his mind as he fell back onto the floor with the woman on top of him. His defenses were down, her offense was up. Tendrils of the force seeped into his mind to distort his very being into something a bit more… Subservient.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Handle the cameras?” She whispered as she slowly began to pull away from his prone body.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Oh yeah.” The man grinned and propped himself on his elbows.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Wipe them, and destroy the backups.” The act was up on Sena’s behalf, her voice returning to the same cold and uncaring tone it always carried. On missions at least. The man was already under her spell like an abuser around spice. His will bowing only to a single person, and it wasn’t himself. Not anymore.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Anything for you, love.” He whispered in soft obedience as he took his seat behind the screens again. His chair screeched as he pulled it towards the terminal. Authorization, accepted. Confirmation, complete.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]One by one, the cameras around the base would begin to shutdown. One by one, Evoros’ advantage was being lost. One by one, Lassiter was getting closer to running a knife through the back of the woman who had eluded her for too long.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It was enough to make the half-Vahla laugh for herself. And so she did.[/SIZE]

 

[Evoros]

She tested the doorknob. One push against it, then two.
Yes, it was locked. Perfect.

Satisfied she would know when her guest arrived, Evoros sat back down and reopened the window of the screens spread through the compound. She hit a key to zoom in on the footage of a figure approaching the door to the room.

From one end of a camera, Sena Lassiter was smiling. From the other end Evoros smiled back.
But then the smile vanished with a swish of red hair and the camera was staring again down an empty hallway. No attempt to break down the door, no . . . nothing. As though she had changed her mind, disappeared instead.
That was her first flicker of uncertainty.

All the same, Evoros waited patiently, smilingly, without fearing for her safety. Amber eyes stayed trained intently on the array of cameras splayed across her screen as they waited watchfully for an assassin - until some minutes later, when one flickered with static and shut down. The footage went black.

That was the second time she wasn't certain.

She opened a terminal, typing with pretended confidence (she was pretending for nobody's benefit but her own. Funny.)

Accessing backups...
Error.

Another turned to a gaping square, seeing nothing. Another. Another. Until the only eyes she had left were watching an empty monitor, shocked. Maybe it would be another few minutes. Maybe the assassin would stop, sit down an hour or so, then return to her agenda. Without leaving the room - sacrificing her immunity against an ambush, sacrificing her last certainty - Evoros couldn't know where Sena Lassiter was or how long it would be before they were finally introduced.

Eyes ticked back to the screen, finally nervous. In moments, she could tell the Collective’s higher-ups that she needed to abandon the mission. They had footholds all over Shaddaa - surely an agent would be here before Lassiter could do any lasting damage.

The idea flickered through her mind, but she didn't for a moment let it take shape.

She'd be let be, she was sure. Assassinations were a unique sort of awful that you could be forgiven for fearing, and her track record was golden enough that she'd be assigned low-risk missions for some time and then things would revert to normal. But it would be failing. And Evoros despised failing. Failure ran deeper than her vanity. She had spent weeks playing Sena Lassiter into her hands. Everything was in place. Evoros had taken long enough in getting to know this woman to know that the assassin would be very able to escape if she thought she couldn't take down her target anymore. This chance wouldn't repeat itself.

If she abandoned ship, she let herself down and she let Sena Lassiter down.
They'd both waited so long to be introduced.

Deception was her craft. She was good at molding Yvonne into someone more useful. And now, she shaped Yvonne back into Agent Evoros, who wasn't worried about this other woman because she was the one holding the cards.

All the same, the waiting was tense.

| [member=Lassiter] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

Some moments passed.

It was quiet.

Oh so very quiet.

Perhaps if Evoros listened carefully between the silence orchestrated by a master silencer she would hear her own heartbeat as it pounded against her ribcage in anticipation. The thought of it made the assassin’s lips curl into yet another grin as she took a detour on the way to her prey’s office. Over the radio, the seeming radio activity of the officers around the facility seemed to go quiet. But before long a single crackle of static would shriek into the woman’s office.

“Hello.” A woman’s voice, Sena’s voice, whispered over the comms as a man breached the door with a loud kick. His rifle stayed trained on Evoros. One shot, aimed square for the elusive woman’s shoulder fired off before he approached her in full. The shot echoed around the building.

“Target secured.” The man reported into his device, spoken in unison to the sound of a woman stepping through the door behind him. “Checking on Asset Forty-Two before dragging this schutta back to security for questioning. Over.”

“Roger that, clean up crew on hold. Over.”

“Roger, roger. Over and out.” The officer would speak, once more in unison to the assassin’s voice before he fell over to the floor in exhaustion.

A hand raised towards Evoros, a grip seeking to take shape around her throat and push her up against the wall behind her desk. The sense of sheer unkempt glee was evident in the former slave’s eyes. Open to witness all yet distant enough to make her prey know she was just one of many, her grin a ghastly mirage that had been the last thing no one had ever seen. “I have waited for this day.” Her expression grew more unstable for each step she took as she approached the hopefully choking, gunshot wounded woman. A small giggle sifted through her teeth with little more than a shred of her sanity left to hold it back. “Trust me, sweetheart. Started as business, turned into pleasure.”

“Nothing but pleasure. The greatest of its kind. Sheer, unbridled security.” Sena’s voice hissed in a whisper before it lowered into a deep chuckle while she withdrew her knife. “Any last words, Evoros?”

 

[Evoros]

Gradually, quiet settled like a shroud. Time was at a standstill.

Evoros waited.

Even the white noise of the radio stilled. The murmur of handfuls of voices as they went about their business dropped steadily across those moments that stretched out with anticipation.

Then, silence. Her heartbeat was the only noise as it counted the seconds she was left to just sit there waiting - and it was pounding loudly, concern rising with the wait. But it was silent now. That had to mean -

Hello.

Her gaze wanted to seek out the radio that made the noise, but instead it went for the door in time to see it kicked open. A figure pointed a rifle straight at the agent. It wasn't Sena Lassiter. That meant a few more moments before it came to life or death. So when he fired the gun, Evoros wore surprise. The bullet tore into her shoulder - she let out a shout of pain that was entirely authentic, but her mind reminded her not to fear yet. She was alive. She planned to stay alive.

Amber eyes were alert and cautious as they moved from the man to the doorframe. The redheaded assassin stepped into the office and Evoros smiled a smile that cut a hard line across her face. Grim satisfaction. She had succeeded, and it would stay that way.

The agent made a pretense of resisting as Sena wrapped a grip across her throat. She could have resisted, if she'd wanted to - it wouldn't have lasted long, but she could've. But her back hit the wall and she let her throat tighten. Breath was leaving her, and it took moments before she was gasping trying to get it back.

Now?- no, not yet. Moments. She knew what to do.

Yvonne had wondered how Sena Lassiter might kill her.
Last words.
Perfect.

She could feel her pulse in her chest, her neck, her head, but she found the words.

"There's a team of agents who know you're here," she said breathlessly, eyes never wavering. "When I don't tell them I'm alive, they're sent to kill Ameli Trahir."

Her smile returned.

"Slowly."

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

Had that been any other threat, maybe Lassiter wouldn’t have done what she did. Had that been any other threat, maybe she would have stood down. But that wasn’t any other threat, and it wasn’t likely that it would lead to what Evoros would have wanted, Sena would hope at least. An expression of sheer surprise swept across her face for a second, but she wiped it as fast as it arrived. Teeth visibly gritted, eyes lighting themselves on fire as if staring into the embers of a fire that Lassiter had thrown so many more before Evoros into. To threaten the Sword was one thing, but to extend the threat to her last shred of hope for herself and the future was another. To attack her last anchor within the confines of reality was just about the worst move one could make.

The grip around Evoros throat tightened, her back dragged against the wall with a harsh whisper of fabrics and leathers being dragged against its surface. A small spark ignited from the palm of Sena’s hand followed by several others until finally her hand spat embers like a mistreated fireplace. Fire erupted to swallow her arm.

“You’re bluffing.” Sena spoke through her gritted teeth as she slowly began to approach the woman on the wall. “You don’t know chit.”

And even if she wasn’t, why would she send them after Ameli when the threat itself remained in the room. It was just the two of them, no one was here to save the person that they needed to keep alive. At least no one other than-

A metallic hiss sounded from the floor. The grasp around Evoros’ throat was released. Eyes set on the soldier on the floor, his rifle firing a single bolt at the assassin with no success. He rose from the floor, grabbed by the throat much like his chief had been before he had messed it all up. Before he ensured his own death which just this once had not been in the assassin’s plans for the evening. His face found her flaming grasp, fingers digging into cheek, chin and any cavity it could find with no intentions of letting go.

It hurt.

You could hear that it hurt. But regardless of that Lassiter remained still as if she had become as blinded by her hate as the man had become in her attack. She remained as quiet as he had turned once he ran out of vowels to shriek, and her eyes stayed as burning hot as her arm when she turned to throw the man against the wall behind Evoros.

One foot towards the door and the other towards the desk with her attention turned towards the woman behind it.

“Who are you?” A low growl would part Lassiter’s lips. “And what do you want?”

 

[Evoros]

Her eyes fixed onto the assassin, tapered amber and unfathomable as they studied her ever so closely. For the span of a heartbeat, just before she pushed it away for fury, Lassiter let disbelief show.

That was all she needed.

Killing her was dangerous now. Whatever else came next, the true danger was out of the picture. Evoros could grin and bear the rest. Few missions were without their element of pain, after all. So her expression was levelled as fighting for air became harder, as embers sparked at the assassin's fingertips. It hurt, of course - like a schutta - and she couldn't help hiss through her teeth at the sparks of burning hot. But pain wasn't permanent. She would get over it. She had a job to do.

Bluffing. The agent looked as though she might've laughed if she hadn't been saving her oxygen. She would've explained then, very clearly indeed, the exact nature of Sena's predicament, explained just what had to happen before Trahir's safety could be guaranteed-

A rifle fired from the floor, and Evoros smiled even as she gasped for air the moment she could again. That smile remained the only trace of emotion her features offered as Lassiter turned her focus to the soldier; she watched without so much as thinking about the pain he must be in. Her mind was on the assassin, making careful note of just what she was capable of. This would be a success indeed if the job went well.

Speaking of the job-
Time for introductions.

Her smile straightened into seriousness, and words aligned themselves carefully.

"I suppose you already know my name." Her last name, anyway. It was the only part of her identity with any impact. The name Yvonne wasn't closely guarded, but it went around more quietly than its counterpart and it meant less either way. "I'm a spy, Sena. I work for an organization who grew interested when you cropped up."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"I can tell you more, but I need you to ease up with the flames first."

[member="Lassiter"]​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

“Evoros.” Lassiter growled under her breath at the insinuation she knew the other woman’s name. A spy, albeit not a very good one if she was able to be found like this. Eyes set on the floor in an instant. Found. Sena hadn’t followed a trail, she had followed a treat on a leash. A lure. Furious eyes locked onto Evoros’ holding back the urge to outright assault her where she stood.

The fire on the half-vahla’s arm simmered down until they finally extinguished.

So she was played then.

“Speak.” Lassiter’s throat rumbled in a hissed threat. “I still have the mind to end you where you stand. Don’t tempt me.”

And before Evoros was able to remind her of the stakes, “You don’t know what you are risking with your threats. You have no idea what it means.”

 

[Evoros]

Evoros looked ever-so-slightly more at ease as she watched the flames die down. Too soon to be off her guard, of course. She didn't expect Lassiter to let go of her plans to end this mission so soon in - it would have been almost disappointing if she had.

It would have been easy to assert her control over the situation then, laugh at how easily she'd baited the assassin. On some level it was almost tempting.

But one issue lay beneath the desire to celebrate early; swaying Sena Lassiter was something that the Collective could achieve whether or not Evoros made it through her part of the job alive. She wasn't so irreplaceable as to merit extra precautions to keep her alive; the Board had told her in no uncertain terms that her survival was her own responsibility.

If she let things go sideways, there was no safety net to fall back on.
Conclusion? Her ego was not allowed to be what let things go sideways.

"I always know what I'm risking," was all she clarified. Slowly, her smile was drifting into seriousness. "I work for the Collective. A shadow organization, naturally. Hires a good deal of agents in my line of work. And a good deal of agents in your line of work."

It was clear where she was going with this.

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

Did she really understand what it was she was doing? Did Evoros know the bonfire she was poking at truly? Was it the same thing to read about instability as it was to experience it first hand? To rattle the beehive, to stoke a fire that ran the risk of devouring everything in its path should it be allowed to. The literal fire had stopped, but the ones in Sena’s eyes had not. The temptation to set Evoros aflame was too great to hold back, and if truth was to be told Lassiter wanted nothing more. Yet the other woman had gone through some lengths to seemingly arrange this. She had played the assassin like the fool she was and seemed to think she operated from a position of somehow maintaining an upper hand in the situation.

Truth told, Lassiter had waited for this day for a long while.

“No you don’t.” The redhead finally responded with the shake of her head as she took her first few steps over towards Evoros. “You have no idea who you are dealing with, and you have less of an idea what kind of pain you are playing with.”

“You have my ear, what is it that you want?”

 

[Evoros]

She shrugged, an I-won't-argue, and tried - unsuccessfully - to contain a grunt of pain as the wound in her shoulder reminded her of its presence. The agent knew the gunshot hadn't been intended to be fatal. But that did nothing to let up the pain.

Regardless.

Tempting as it was, Evoros didn't move back against the wall when the assassin came closer. It might have been necessary to begin with, but she couldn't deny hating how it felt to be backed into a corner. It meant you had nowhere to run. And Evoros had experienced it enough to be strongly against having nowhere to run.

But that had been a long time ago.
No use dwelling. Things had gone wrong before, but today things could go right.
A sigh brushed aside distant, unpleasant memories, and with a calculated ease she fixed her gaze on Lassiter again. From the outside she looked entirely calm - and for the most part she was calm on the inside, too. For the most part.

"What I want," the brunette said carefully, "is for you to stop using your talents against us and start using them for us." A faint trace of a smile, a thing of irony rather than her hallmark smirk. "Consider this a job offer."

Offer. Funny.

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

“That is the dumbest job offer I have ever gotten,” Lassiter shook her head. “And I got one from threatening to cut a man’s most beloved possession off.”

The desk before Evoros slid aside to let the assassin approach her. Saber unclipped she held it by her side to keep it at the ready. How many times had she done this exact same dance now? Countless amount of times with only varying degrees of how hard she pushed onwards. In most cases the victims were already scared out of their mind at the symbol Lassiter represented to them, but that wasn’t the case with Evoros. She was already fighting against her own fears and better judgment as it was. No, what Sena had to do was poke at her to find what made her tick and what didn’t. What made Evoros someone who could oppose a psychotic killer and still have the courage or outright stupidity to offer her a job.

The world would begin to fade away at the assassin’s approach to create a void. A nothingness of the assassin’s own design. A visualization of the trade this woman had offered Sena, and the gifts that Sena would be offering in return.

“You threaten my queen, and expect me to bow down to you?” A low growl like a blood-chilling hiss would seep through each ear in a dissonant throb. “You know nothing, offer me nothing, and you are nothing.”

“I have one master, I have one goal, and you are little more than an obstacle.” The hiss would shriek as shadows flashed before Yvonne to bite at her. Yet before their attacks could land they dissolved into a thick tar-like smoke that looked to fill her lungs and choke her where she stood. “Your life, Ameli’s life and my own matter little to me. I am replacable, Ameli is a weakness, and you are a pest.”

Skin would begin to boil.

“Tell me why I should let you live. What do you have to live for?”

 

[Evoros]

Her heartbeat pounded irregular with fear, but her breathing was ever so calm. Her gaze betrayed nothing.
She knew just as well as the other woman what to do.

The room disintegrated into nothingness, and she lifted both eyebrows in what very much looked like genuinely eager interest at exactly what the assassin was up to. She was genuinely interested what the assassin was up to, not that it made a difference. The mind was a realm she was familiar with (her affinity had never been for fighting, always for convincing enemies to surrender before it got to fights) but it had been a long time since she'd clashed with somebody who could twist thoughts and longer still with somebody she knew was better than her at it.

But it seemingly barely bothered her that they'd slipped from reality into Lassiter's creation of emptiness. Evoros was far more focused on the glaring redhead than on whatever surrounded them.

"Sena-" she looked almost sympathetic as she spoke over the hiss running through her skull, as though she genuinely wished that she didn't have to do this- "that's how threats work."

A shriek that pierced her eardrums did little to inconvenience her.

Shadows like a dozen armed enemies did little to inconvenience her.

But smoke taking up space in her lungs where air ought to be, that brought with it a reminder of just what it felt like to die as it took hold of her in the same moment air slipped past her reach?
Jackpot.

And it felt like lying in a heap against the wall, bones broken, blood pooling. She should have gone out in a blaze of glory, fighting to the last, becoming immortal in the same moment she died to save countless, but instead she would fade away like candlelight, quietly and all by herself. Viera had never seen this much blood and although it was her side that bled the hollowness in her chest felt like the dark red was about to fill her lungs, her throat, spill from her lips as her eyes went lifeless. What would that feel like, she wondered? It couldn't possibly hurt more than the wounds themselves. More than losing had. Perhaps it would be pleasant in a way, a final moment of comfort before one last-

-breath escaped her as she steadily, steadily, kept looking at Sena Lassiter. Evoros had not died then, and she was not dying today. Survival was, more than anything else, what she did.

But what she had to live for?- there was another side to that quest.

"You already know what happens if I die. But hiring you is their mission." Her next sentence was little more than a whisper, a clear struggle to find the oxygen to reply, but she still gave no sign of planning to resign herself yet. "Mine is living long enough to find some answers."

| [member="Lassiter"] |​

 

[Lassiter]

[member="Evoros"]

A dislocated arm with bruises across the entirety of her pale skin. Legs snapped and dragged through the dirt like a broken tail. There was blood running down her nose but she couldn’t feel it. Tears that would have tickled against the softness of her skin were left unfeeling from the numbness where his hand had struck her. Red hair stuck to red skin as if it tried to blind an eye that had already swollen to the degree where it did not matter. She did not know what she had done to deserve this; nobody knew. They just lived with it because that was all they could do. No one intervened either because they all knew that it was a surefire way to experience the very same treatment for themselves.

The teenager struggled for breath as her strength began to fail her. Vague voices whispered at the back of her mind as she felt her eyes stare at the back of the man who had tried his own means of breaking her. Thinking got harder, vision faded from here and her eyes closed. Someone had tried to help her but the man had turned around to yell at them to stop and to leave the girl there to her fate. It had been in that moment that Sena had felt it sing to her, the peace of mind that encroached upon her senses like an angelic chorus of serenity.

Was this what she had brought others all this time? The voices grew louder and she readied herself to lose the last piece of herself that she had. The men who owned her had already taken her body from her, brought her a lifetime of experiences worse than hell and broken her will. Nothing remained for them to take except this one last thing. A smile curled at her lips, she didn’t need her senses to feel that. She was about to die, and everything about it felt better than anything she had ever felt in her entire life.

Yet the chorus was silenced by the hasty mutters of a slave working overtime to bring her back. Scrawny fingers running up and down along her body to seek for any unseen damages. The girl coughed herself back alive before the frown of inevitable disappointment set on her.

She was alive again.

Lassiter shook herself back into reality before looking at Evoros again. A momentary slip up, a familiarity in what she had felt seeping from Evoros mind. The fact that it wasn’t Evoros who wanted Lassiter but her employers made the request at hand all the more interesting. The implication would be that Evoros wasn’t actually working for her organization as much as using it for her own means. Sena could admire that, and she did. The saber by the side of her hip let her ease into a far more relaxed state. Her breathing returned to her as she looked down upon the amber-eyed woman just a few more footsteps away from her.

“Then…” Her head shook. “I work for you.”

“Not your organization, but you.” The redhead said and put on the same RBF as she tended to keep about her. “I don’t care about them, but you…”

“You have a purpose.”

“You need to live. For now.”

Lassiter had already gotten the answers she needed. It was all about seeking death at this point.

 

[Evoros]

She had changed a lot over the years, but she'd always been inherently selfish. It was her and then her friends and then her allies, without variance. And she shied from friendship on principle. That left her and the Collective, and there had been no question for even a moment where they were on her list of priorities.

So she shrugged, and her eyes understood.

"I get paid the same either way."

But whatever her seeming indifference, she without doubt preferred this outcome to the one the Board wanted. After all, she'd just told this woman the truth when lying was her craft to the point of second nature. It was definitely in her best interest to have an ally in her.

"So do you," she added, an afterthought. "We have... nicer methods of motivation once you're doing the job well."

Money was the root of all evil, after all. And no matter how noble their intentions, it was hard to ever call the Collective good - not that Evoros minded, of course. She definitely couldn't be called good, but she didn't particularly mind. You didn't get anywhere through a life of good deeds, and she still had plenty left she wanted to get.

| [member="Lassiter"] |​