Private The Yellow Brick House

[Eloise Dinn]

TA'A CHUME'DAN, HAPES
Continuation of the Crisis...
​

Eloise raced through the rain, the repulsors of her speeder blasting puddles as it scraped around a street corner. The city was still on fire, perhaps even more so as GA forces went to war against the Hapans. The radio, tuned to intergalactic news, spewed bulletins about the current situation at the Palace. Apparently the Queen had challenged the Chancellor of the Alliance to a duel. Eloise already knew the outcome of that fight.

What she still didn't know was where Dio was. He had disappeared on her while she was saving people from a burning building, vanishing without a trace. She had only the Force to help her find him, and while it was giving her enough of a gut feeling to guess where she needed to go, it didn't give her much in the way of what to expect when she found him.

The steady throb of energy she felt from him was like a heartbeat. Louder, then softer, then louder again as she drew near. It finally reached a fever pitch as she slowed to a crawl beneath an overpass, the wall covered in strange, almost ritualistic graffiti, dark colors rendered eerie in the rain. Up ahead of her was a garish old house constructed from yellow brick.

She pulled up down the street and got out. The speeder would probably be stolen or picked clean by looters by the time she got out of there, but she locked the doors anyway, stuffing the keys into her pocket as she stalked toward that ugly ass building, lightsaber hilt clutched in one hand...

Diogo Talon​

 

[Diogo Talon]

Captured—again. El was never gonna let him live this one down, if he survived. If she survived.

Diogo awoke to find himself bound and gagged. Thankfully, the after effects of the stun bolt were quickly weaning away due to the rapid healing properties of his Anzati blood. He blinked back the darkness in the corners of his vision and took in the space. Around him, the safehouse was sparsely furnished. Musty light bled inside, illuminating floating motes of dust as a Crimson Veil operative pushed apart the yellowed blinds to peek outside.

The operative wasn't the same one from before. He was a thickly built mercenary type with broad shoulders and massive forearms like Kashyyykian tree trunks. When he turned, Diogo was taken aback by his mean mug. A deep scar traveled down the right side of his face, splitting his scruffy eyebrow in two, cleaving through his milky white eye, and ending at his sliced upper lip. His one good eye was large and bulging. "You're awake," he said. His deep voice was as coarse as he looked. "What do we do with you, boy?"

"We can use him as leverage," came a voice from behind. Diogo recognized it as the man who shot him. Bastard. He was washing blood off the looted Consortium armor in the kitchen sink.

Footsteps echoed around the mostly empty room, growing louder as a third man approached. This one was smaller than the others, but with an athletic frame. He had thick, dark hair, swirling blue eyes that mirrored the luminous gases of the Hapes Cluster, and a chiseled jaw crowded with stubble. He cradled a datapad in his hands, which spewed a small video of intergalactic news reports and the Queen's brazen duel challenge. The man's voice was reedy, "We should kill him. The Jedi are no friends of ours and he'll just slow us down. This is our one window of opportunity, we need to leave while the Queen's occupied and the Consortium forces are bogged down by the Alliance."

"Extrajudicial execution? You'd have us be like the Queen, then?" the disfigured man asked. The question was accusatory, but the tone lacked bite, like they'd had this debate before.

"I'd have us live," the third man replied. "If that means adopting the strategies of my enemy, so be it."

Diogo was quietly assessing the situation. With stun cuffs locked tight around his wrists, his mind was clouded and his muscles were atrophied. His eyes darted around, searching for his lightsaber—it sat idly on the kitchen counter next to the man who shot him—and looking for an escape route. Though he wasn't sure how he could accomplish anything with the stun cuffs incapacitating him. Through the haze he felt a dull, yet familiar presence in the Force approaching, thumping like a heartbeat.

Eloise Dinn​

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise didn't do stealth. Her height and purple hair weren't exactly inconspicuous, and she was a little too honest and direct for skulking around. So there was really only one option for her to rescue her boyfriend, and that was charging in lightsaber blazing.

She kicked the front door down, the slab of metal hitting the floor with a loud thud, sending up clouds of dust. The trio of Crimson Veil operatives would see her, a huge and hulking woman wearing a wet hoodie, a green lightsaber igniting in her hand.

All Eloise saw was Dio, gagged and tied to a chair. She fought through the red threatening to cover her vision, enough to grind out a command through grit teeth: "Let him go. Now."

Diogo Talon​

 

[Diogo Talon]

Diogo watched with heavy-lidded eyes as Eloise burst through the metal door. She'd never been subtle—no reason to start now. Seeing her soaking wet, hulking with unbridled anger, and smelling vaguely like a washed out campfire, Diogo wanted to comfort her, even though he was the one bound, gagged, and in need of rescue.

"Let him go. Now."

The Crimson Veil operatives froze for half a second, not expecting a six-foot-plus woman to come storming in like a purple whirlwind with a lightsaber.

The thick built man was quick on the draw. A blaster was held firm in his calloused hands, aimed at Eloise. "Easy, lady," he urged in his rough drawl.

The small man hastily dropped the datapad, holding his hands up in surrender, though an easily-accessible blaster pistol was holstered on his hip. He stared intently at the green lightsaber blade and licked his lips nervously.

The third man swiftly strode out of the kitchen wielding Diogo's lightsaber hilt—it had been the closest weapon within reach and he was no slouch when it came to melee combat. "Or what?" he growled.

Eloise Dinn​

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Each of the three men had a different response. The big and burly one drew his blaster; the scrawny little guy immediately surrendered; the third one grabbed Diogo's lightsaber. Either he was a Force User, or an idiot who thought lightsabers worked like vibroblades.

"Or what?"

"What do you think?" she replied. Her green blade growled as she held it out in front of her, ready to attack. But she didn't plan on engaging them in melee yet. "You're Crimson Veil, right? We saved your people from that burning building downtown." And if that alone wouldn't convince them to back down, she added with more vehemence, "The Queen Mother hates us and wants us gone, same as you. Ever heard the phrase 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?"

Diogo Talon​

 

[Diogo Talon]

Diogo was grateful El was trying the diplomatic route (he didn't know if she had it in her, tbh). She seemed to harbor some sympathies for the Crimson Veil. He did, too, but mostly 'cus of Charlotte; they were connected to her and whatever she left behind, as though she left smudges of lipstick on the rim of a glass he couldn't bring himself to throw away. She existed only in traces and memories now. Which made him want to befriend these men despite the dicey predicament and death threats.

That would all go out the window the second they laid a finger on his girlfriend, though.

The guy with Diogo's lightsaber was definitely an idiot who thought lightsabers worked like vibroblades. But he was smart enough to realize he was outmatched by a Jedi, especially one as imposing as Eloise.

He was on the verge of backing down, but they'd worked too hard and sacrificed too much to give in so easily. After finally finding the ignition switch, the Crimson Veil operative carefully raised the sizzling blue lightsaber just shy of Diogo's neck. He looked expectantly at Eloise.

With leverage secured, he was willing to negotiate. "I saw what you did," he admitted, but the recognition fell purposefully short of gratitude. "But the Queen's made many enemies—that hasn't made 'em our allies. The Jedi and the Alliance have never been our friends. You'll make peace with the Consortium when the dust has settled, then turn your backs or your guns on us. We'd be fools to trust you."

Eloise Dinn​

 

[Eloise Dinn]

As the one with the lightsaber ignited the blade and held it to Diogo's neck, Eloise's green eyes flashed dangerously, something feral and decidedly not diplomatic lurking behind her gaze. But she hadn't worked so hard at tempering her anger just to give up at the first sign of resistance.

"I saw what you did," he admitted, but the recognition fell purposefully short of gratitude. "But the Queen's made many enemies—that hasn't made 'em our allies. The Jedi and the Alliance have never been our friends. You'll make peace with the Consortium when the dust has settled, then turn your backs or your guns on us. We'd be fools to trust you."

"It would be more foolish to threaten me," she spat back, unwilling to play at being a representative of the Jedi Order. No, she was just Eloise, their captive's very pissed off girlfriend. "If you harm him, I'll wipe out the entire Crimson Veil myself. Including General Kalen. Is that what you want?" Especially when they were so close to achieving their goals of overthrowing the royals...

"The Jedi Order won't side with you. They're too busy wringing their hands over civilian casualties, playing the enlightened fething centrist like the clueless idiots they are. The sooner you get that through your heads and let us leave Hapes in peace, the sooner you can get back to your anti-monarchy revolution."

Diogo Talon​

 

[Diogo Talon]

Diogo witnessed the feral flash in Eloise's smoldering green gaze. He wanted to move, to cry out, to do something—anything. But he was stuck, forced to be a spectator to this morbid Holodrama that had leapt out of the screen.

"Keep the General's name out of your mouth, woman," the man spat. A pissed off Jedi was a dangerous thing, but so was an indignant revolutionary wedded to a righteous cause. He carefully inched the lightsaber closer to Diogo's throat. "Threaten my people one more time and see what happens."

The operative shared Eloise's disdain for the Jedi Order, and the Alliance as a whole. Their centrism was complicity. They feigned the moral high ground and were too cowardly to pick a side, which meant they ultimately served to uphold the status quo.

He started to speak, to press her, but his words were drowned out by the angry roaring engines of a heavy hover transport. Instantaneously, blinding lights flooded the safe house, bathing the room in a harsh white glow that exposed everyone and everything inside. When the engines ceased, commands soon followed—barked in the native Hapan tongue.

The Consortium was here.

Eloise Dinn​