Things We Lost in the Fire [Invite]

[Natasi Fortan]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwPTbVMenRc

​

It was the Will of the Dark Lord that finally cracked through the veneer.

For months -- years, Natasi would admit to herself in the coming days -- the increasingly complex nature of the One Sith hierarchy, their unwieldy power structure, and their leadership's tendency towards foolish command decisions had festered, but she had allowed herself the merciful delusion that the Sith were no different from any other government with their mazelike hierarchies, their progression of the preferred rather than the meritorious. But with the announcement of the Will of the Dark Lord, the OneSith had gone from being vaguely ineffectual to something far worse.

It had gone full retard.

And so, Natasi reflected as she stared out the window of her office, it was time to move on. But more than that, she had to undo what she had done, in whatever way she could. The thought of what she was about to do thrilled her, but also made her sick to her stomach. Her beautiful office, an island of taste and class in a sea of anonymous white and grey Sith austerity -- hundreds of people -- millions of credits worth of technology and equipment and materiel. In a matter of hours it would be a pile of rubble. Or maybe not really. Natasi wasn't sure she had the heart to blow it all up, and she surely to God was in no mood to deal with the OneSith opposition waving their hands around.

There was a beep from her computer console. Natasi glanced over her shoulder and sighed. The woman turned and sat in her high-backed chair and crossed her legs, studying her computer screen. The cursor blinked over the window. Are you sure you want to delete this archive? This operation cannot be undone. Her dark eyes stared at the screen until she couldn't see the words anymore. It was just a MacGuffin database, something that theoretically had value but which the OneSith would be able to ignore, but still it was a momentous decision for Natasi Fortan.

She clicked her communicator on and said: "Are we still on schedule for extraction?"

[member="Maximilian Jens"] | [member="Ludolf Vaas"]

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

[member="Natasi Fortan"]

"Right on schedule."

The voice came over the communicator as cold as ice, displaying no hint of emotion. The voice belonged to Ludolf Vaas.

For a while the soon-to-be-former officer of the One Sith had thought things would turn out different. He thought that despite his better instincts, the order would be moving in line with progress. Or at least in line with sanity. Recent events had proven him very, very wrong.

It was the hulking and lecherous bureaucracy's latest decree, the Will, that had finally caused Ludolf to lose his own. No longer would positions of power and importance go to the powerful and the deserving, as was the Sith way. Now, the One Sith were handing out lofty positions to quite literally anyone with enough boot-licking prowess to satsify their superiors. The One Sith, unable to shake its own cancerous and parasitic growth, had finally turned inward on itself and become the very thing it purports to fight against. On paper, the order was stronger than ever and poised to take over the galaxy - but beneath the veneer of power and the illusion of imperious hierarchy lay a core as rotten as the Republic. The One Sith had, quite literally, become nothing more than a mockery of themselves.

In simpler terms, the situation had devolved to a complete and utter shit show. And for former officer Ludolf Vaas, this would not stand.

And of course, as repayment for his years of thankless service to the One Sith, the least he could do was take the lovely Natasi Fortan with him. He sat in the co-pilots seat of an Imperial shuttle, and motioned towards the skyline.

"That building, right there," He said to the pilot. "Be ready for extraction in exactly four minutes and fifty six seconds."

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Natasi sighed and closed her eyes. If only she could rid herself of emotions the same way [member="Ludolf Vaas"] seemed to do. Natasi had always been, apart from in private, rather stoic. But the Grey Wolf took it to a level that she could not match. "I'll be ready," said the woman into her comlink, and then she clicked 'yes' on the computer. In the blink of an eye, every database that Natasi had clearance to was deleted -- backed up to her thumb drive but gone from the cyberspace of the One Sith network. Naturally they would have backups so no damage was actually done because that's how they roll, but something had to catalyze this defection. Natasi gathered up the rest of her papers and put them in her wastepaper basket and then lit a match and dropped it in. There was a roaring fire in minutes.

A moment after, Natasi's assistant rushed in. "There's a fire!" he shouted.

"I'm aware of that," Natasi said calmly. "Don't worry, it's all contained." The assistant rushed across the room to smother the flames, but ended up kicking the basket over. Flaming detritus went flying, starting fires on her rug, a nearby sofa, and the curtains. "Well it isn't now," she observed dryly. She picked up a vase containing a few Naboo tulips and smashed it over the assistant's head. He went down onto the rug. Natasi sighed; it had been a nice rug.

[member="Ludolf Vaas"]

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

Ludolf's cold gaze out the window at the Coruscant skyline should not be taken for a lack of emotion. The Imperial officer actually felt a great deal of emotion at what he was about to do - but it was mostly anger, and carefully hidden beneath the stone expression of the Grey Wolf. Like all good Imperials, he had learned to temper his emotions in front of others.

Once the deed was done and the ties were severed, Ludolf would actually feel quite a bit better. His first plan upon reaching Eriadu was actually to relax with a glass of Corellian wine. And reflect.

The fire in Natasi's room was about to get a lot worse. The pilot of the dropship pulled up to the massive skyscraper controlled by the One Sith, hovering near the window to Natasi's office. Ludolf positioned himself on the edge of the ship, the wind of the high altitude whipping through his hair. Then, he raised a blaster at the window, and fired.

At once the window shattered, sending shards of debris in all directions. Natasi's once pristine office was now a smoldering ruin, and the fumes from the fire were now beginning to escape outside, sending small black tufts of smoke into the air. Ludolf jumped off the dropship and through the window, rolling across the floor and jumping to his feet. It was then that he noticed the body of Natasi's assistant laying idle on the floor.

"What happened to him?" Vaas asked with an amused sniff.

[member="Natasi Fortan"]

 

[Natasi Fortan]

With Natasi's back turned to the window, she had no way of knowing what was coming. The window exploded into a thousand pieces of shimmering transparisteel. She let out a frightened cry and turned, her hand clutching at her throat where a string of pearls might have been, in a different time. It wasn't until the fumes got sucked out from the shattered window that Natasi realized how bad it had been. Her eyes watered, stung, and the smoke clutched at her lungs.

Waving a hand in front of her face, Natasi grimaced at the body of the assistant on the ground. "He tried to put out the fire. But there's too much here to incriminate to let it stand. It's unfortunate, but no great loss. He wasn't a great assistant." Suddenly the alarms began to blare; they must have been alerted to the window shattering. "Blast," she said. "There's no time... help me." She took a running start and kicked the flaming trash basket out the window; it sailed through the air, burning papers leaping into the wind before burning to cinder. She took one of the assistant's arms and nodded at [member="Ludolf Vaas"].

"He'll have to go too. Less said, the better. Maybe they'll think we jumped to escape the fire." The fire which had now spread to engulf her desk, chair, and sofa, as well as the paneling on one wall. "You take his leg and we'll drag him over."

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

Shrugging, Vaas picked up the unconscious assistant by the legs. A terrible price to pay for being an incompetent assistant, but such was the nature of business amongst the Sith. Perhaps if the One Sith themselves hadn't decided to royally screw over his superiors, the assistant might have met a better fate. But now, he would be an indirect casualty of war. Ludolf would not protest; he needed no special prodding to kill a man, especially if it was for the greater good.

Together they heaved, and the assistant's limp body flew out the window, to make a grisly impact somewhere on the streets of Coruscant a few thousand feet below.

"Let's move!" Ludolf turned to Natasi, shouting above the din of the flames and the transport at the window. "A security team will be here any second!"

He jumped out the window and landed as gracefully as possible in the transport, trying not to pay attention to the vertigo-inducing heights. He extended his hand out for [member="Natasi Fortan"] to do the same.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Natasi gaped in disbelief as [member="Ludolf Vaas"] flung himself through the air onto the ship's landing ramp. "You're not serious!" she shouted across the gulf, over the sound of the ever-growing flames. "I couldn't possibly!" She paced away from the window, only to be confronted by flames in every direction. And it would only get worse in a moment when the security team came barreling in. She fretted, chewing her lip thoughtfully as she walked to the edge of the room again, peering down into the chasm between the building and the ship. "I don't think I can!" she cried.

Again she paced away, sighing heavily. The fumes were starting to sting her eyes again. She didn't think she can, but she knew that she must. A moment later, the doors were kicked in and Natasi had to move. She ran for the window, at the last second leaping, but her shoe had leaped from a shard of broken glass, not the ground itself. The glass slid, changing the angle from which she moved; Natasi did not get quite the angle she needed, and instead of sailing onto the ramp, missed it by some margin and was able only to grasp the strut holding the ramp to the ship's closing mechanism with one hand, and the ramp itself with the other.

"Blast!" she cried, struggling to get purchase on the ship even as the security team opened fire. "Help me!" she shouted.

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

[member="Natasi Fortan"]

Wind whipped through Ludolf's previously coiffed brown hair as he squinted through the smoke at Natasi. The height at which they were hovering was quite immense, and Ludolf preferred not to think about it as he stood at the transport's precipice. He would prefer not to end up like Natasi's assistant. Unfortunately, Natasi herself was now having problems, and time was not something that they had in great abundance.

"Natasi, you have to!" He shouted. Then, the flames kicked up some more, finding more documents and flammable objects to feed upon, causing Vaas to double back. Brushing smoke out of his eyes, he roared again. "Get in here! Jump!"

Jump she did, though it wasn't enough. Ludolf reached an arm down to quickly grasp her, his other arm holding onto the dropship's door handle for leverage. Grunting and gritting his teeth, Ludolf pulled the noblewoman up onto the transport deck with one arm just as the first shots of blaster fire came whizzing by. Within a second, the transport was away, a few stray bolts pinging against the durasteel body of the ship.

It was only when they were far into the Coruscant skyline and breathing heavily on the floor, did Ludolf notice he had been hit on the arm.

"Well. It wouldn't be a trip to the capital if I didn't get bloody shot at least once." He examined the cauterized skin on his bicep, beneath burned fabric.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Natasi swung precariously from the ramp, scrambling up as [member="Ludolf Vaas"] helped her, crawling over his body and then throwing herself against the bulkhead as the wind tore at her clothes. She realized a moment later that one of her shoes had come loose in the fracas, and was plummeting down to the city streets below. The door sealed behind them, and Natasi tried to catch her breath before noticing Vaas's wound.

"Are you all right?" she asked, crouching next to him on one knee as she examined his burn. "It doesn't look bad but it probably hurts like the dickens," she commiserated. "Let's get you cleaned--" she began, but was silenced when the ship rocked violently. She stood and crossed to the viewport to see a few One Sith security fighters closing in, guns blazing. "It's nice to be wanted, isn't it," she murmured as she helped Vaas to his feet. "Does this thing have any guns?"

Natasi found her way to the dorsal gun pod and slipped the headset over her ears. "The scanners are next to useless in this kind of traffic," she called over the channel. The presence of civilian craft in the vicinity made nailing down the attackers difficult without a visual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHGXfFJ2TMk