Visceral Vice

[Six-O]

From a vantage point this high, Maena seemed so unusual to the Droid. It looked so differently, the arithmetic that governed his scope and view of all things calculated the landscape in a way that the sum of what it saw, seemed so extralocal to a sentient such as He, that were discomfort a notion IGa-60 could approximate at any level, it would have felt it standing there. For a sentient like He, the confinements of Time could not damper the length of Life he was capable of living. Eternity, only He could subsist beyond that length of Infinity, and in his time thus far the Droid that was referred to simply as Six-O had witnessed many things.

Marvelous things that would maim and disfigure the tenuous minds of the so-called Beasts that prowl, those that thought themselves so dangerous, so deep-rooted with organic self-importance that the sparse flecks of red that spattered their fangs made them feel bloody and so powerful. For all the droll and absurd Sith Lords out there, IGa-60 had remained unimpressed. He'd take the dregs from the lowest city slums, the Criminals from the most lawless sectors of Galaxy first and always. At least those creatures understood atmosphere, danger, pain.

At least they were more reliable than the ferocious Last King types out there, seeking to caress their pleasure sensors and release their organic filth all over the Galactic Disc for the viewing displeasure of all sentient kind---or at least, Droid-kind.

Out there, out through the window of [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s opulent office sanctuary, the charcoal sky somehow shined, the thick, smoky blackness, heavily saturated with gleaming crimson across the horizon like a heavily bleeding wound. From it's lazy purchase atop the cylindrical dome of the Droid's Sensor Array, a sagging fold of fabric was lowered down with powerful hook-shaped hands, left to return to it's silent slumber between the stretch of broad metal shoulders.

Ash fell from the sky, and IGa-60 seemed very out of place right here.

The Machine stood silently, the hum of sensors and automated processes breathing, a ragged cloak that looked tailored for a Herglic, loosely drooping from it's frame. There was an odor to Six-O, not just from the fabric that bountifully clutched him - but the very metal and wiring of it's body. Death. More than 800 years worth of it in this Chassis alone. The malodorous fumes were etched in as Ancient scars, wounds in the metal probably older than most of the top ranking One Sith he once fought briefly for, combined.

Like snow the Ash fell, thick and stifling across the rugged landscape of the World beyond this glass. The sky lanes were less full than usual, when the powdery slag bled from the heavens, many chose to stay in. These days, sometimes weeks, were beginning to become well-known in Shadow Ports across the entire Spiral. The New City had a special penchant for depravity, a sickness that seemed to only grow when the soot tears stained the clothes of her many inhabitants.

It was very rare to see this particular Droid anywhere above the 300th Level of the City, the Machine - despite it's best efforts to remain relatively anonymous - was an Outlaw, to put it very lightly. It'd found itself summoned here when The Haruspex herself had encountered a group of DeAct Gangers flaunting their Operation Licenses in her face, seemingly half expecting the Ghastly Augur to allow them absolute access and cooperation with her resources to destroy the Automaton.

Thus it stood, let in by her. . . lower. . Droid Servant, awaiting the arrival of the woman with an ally located just down the Hall. He'd arrive when it was necessary, he'd arrive if the Droid concluded that Matsu was indeed a figure that held to the common courtesies of Underworld Etiquette.

Or perhaps, if need be, IGa-60 would need to test the integrity of her frail scaffolding under constant and repeated bludgeoning.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Two days earlier…

The print was small, the sort of small that screamed that she should be given more time to look at it than the ugly man holding it had given her. Oddly enough she didn’t think, however, that his paperwork was anything but legitimate. No...he treated her with disregard exactly because it was, and because he and his gang of equally as ugly men, women, and aliens were used to the deference it afforded them. On most planets. This far from Hutt Space she couldn’t blame them for assuming a formally backwater planet might be easy to cow.

“We’ve got reason to believe this droid has taken up an extended stay on this planet,” continued their captain, his disgusting visage materializing behind the binder of papers he’d flashed in her face. His nose was upturned so far she was certain if she cared to truly look she might be able to catch a glimpse of his brain, and the gnarled scar bitten in to his cheek collected the oil slick produced from overlarge pores rather sickeningly. However, the way he said droid - as if he wasn’t certain his quarry was just so, as if there was some horror he wished wouldn’t leak in to his tone - made her very, very interested. “And we’re gonna need everything you got. Access to camera systems around the city, oversight on any security you’ve got, access to any and all restricted areas, and all the resources you got to track this thing down.”

“He must be rather frightening,” she replied, leaning back in her chair, elbows resting on either of its arms as she laced her fingers over her lap.

“The specifics are classified ma’am, but you’d be better off with this horror off your planet,” he replied. She felt a trickle of impatience leak through his militant composure. Now, she wasn’t exactly inclined to just hand over her resources to just about anyone - let alone some overly demanding up-start with a crewcut so bad it was an affront to her sensibilities. But whoever this droid was... that little grainy picture of him from some other planetary surveillance system… it was appealing to her days back in the Fringe. If there was any one ideal she clung to, it was that of freedom. And being hunted by this crew of misfits hardly seemed a good way to exist.

“I understand that, but I don’t necessarily want to pool my resources in to the hunt for one droid. You must understand running this place is an enormous task. I can’t have everything thrown in to searching for a droid that hasn’t done anything to personally offend me,” she explained, seeming rather bored at this point.

That thin trickle of impatience grew, a dam suddenly bursting. Poor self-control. A gross weakness in character, especially in his line of work.

“Listen ma’am, I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal to you so maybe I should make myself more clear. It’s very important that we find this droid and destroy it. It's is a threat to your population. If you won’t help us, we can’t promise that your people or planet will be out of harm’s way.”

Up until that point Matsu’s legs had been crossed, the one on top bobbing lightly as she contemplated the conversation. It stopped. Her gaze froze on the Captain, her tone as icy as the atmosphere had suddenly become.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I just want you to understand the gravity of the situ--”

“So you’re threatening me…” she replied, perfectly, unnaturally still and watching as the Captain stopped speaking mid-sentence, his eyes completely blank.

Even from outside the thick walls of Matsu’s main office the sounds of rapid blaster fire could be heard, the bright and constant zip of bolts a frenzy of light under the doorjamb. The secretary that sat outside sat almost as still as her employer, hoping against hope she wouldn’t be called in to see whatever lay beyond that door.

When it was over, awareness fizzled back in to the Captain’s eyes. The muzzle of his blaster was smoking in sympathy with the dozens of fatal wounds he’d inflicted on his team, their eyes as unseeing as his had been only moments before. His mouth opened in horror and shock, and Matsu watched as his piggy expression changed while he tried to work out what had just happened. He knew at least, that he’d done it. But he couldn’t remember it. They were all dead. He’d shot them.

He turned back to her, rage overtaking the lines of his features. “What the KARK did you do to me?! I’ll karkin--”

Whatever he might have done, she would just imagine as she once again froze him, sighing. Too easy. One cybernetic finger pressed to the intercom on her datapad, sparing the woman outside the sight inside her office. She rather liked this one, and they all seemed to quit quickly when they saw these sorts of things. “Have one of the teams from the Unit to my office, please. 15 bodies, 1 live specimen.”

“Y-yes, my Lord,” came a frantic, if somewhat relieved tone as the secretary did as she was bid.

Present Day…

Most of the time she was in her office before her ‘guests’ arrived, but business called at inopportune times. As of late her small navy had been picking up unusual disturbances about half a lightyear away, unexplainable as star phenomena, interference from the ash storm, or anything else currently known. This far in to the Unknown Regions, and close to the edge of their galaxy, there was much they had to be wary of. The most recent report troubled Matsu, but she put it to the side for now. She had someone she’d been eager to meet.

Tracking down the IGa-60 hadn’t been easy, but her scout droids sped up the process considerably.

Why bother? She hadn’t acquiesced out of the Gang partly because they’d disrespected her, and partly because their jobs were directly opposed to her view on life. But she could have left it at that.

It was the ever-so-slight hint of fear in that Captain that made her interested.
Who was this droid?

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said as she breezed in behind him, moving for her desk. That most might have acted like a droid had nothing better to do didn’t really occur to the Sith Lord. “Have a seat, if you want.” She would understand if he wanted to look out at the storm. It was fascinating, even as someone who’d spent their fair share of time in them by now. The faint smell of the cloak hanging off his shoulders reached her, something deeper. Familiar. It gave her pause, wonder to enhance her already piqued curiosity.

She overlooked formality. No doubt if he didn’t already know her name from the droids that had sought him out and requested his presence, he’d have heard it somewhere along the hallways by now. Instead she pulled up a video on her datapad, explaining herself as she found the file she wanted.

“A few days ago, I had some men visit me here. I didn’t particularly care for them. They asked me for all I could throw to them for their job - which was, apparently, tracking you down,” she explained briefly, pressing a finger on the link she wanted. She handed the pad to the droid as it played. It was feed from a camera somewhere far, far underground on a plateau miles away...in the parts of the Unit that almost no one ever saw. A dark-haired man in a labcoat leaned over a rather piggish, ugly human struggling against the restraints pinning him to the stainless steel table. The scientist reached gloved hands down towards his experiment, working with a methodically frenetic glee as he created an incision along the man’s abdominal cavity and began piling...something within it. The subject’s screams echoed out of tinny datapad speakers, in no way doing justice to the symphony that occurred somewhere miles from there. “They met with an unfortunate accident,” Matsu finished, a quiet pause filling the air as the video ended and Matsu considered the droid.

“What I want to know is...why they were afraid.”

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

The sky was black, a smear of crimson severing the charcoal darkness, but where blood should have wept, there was only Ash.

For as far as the Droid could magnify, velutinous shavings bled through the torrid air. Ebon snowflakes descending upon The New City. With the arrival of the leisurely, careless, swirls of soot, the swelter within this slumbering Volcano began to rise perilously. A yawning mouth of madness and lunacy, it's gape so wide that the breath of it's depraved delirium could be felt an entire Star System away - at least by those of a, less evolved, make. The stuff of nightmarish fever dreams manifesting through unseen veils, becoming very real and overwhelming to those not deeply subscribed to such indulgences.

Below this stately tower of [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s resplendent creation, The New City boiled, spurious Emergency Services at least trying to maintain some illusion of Safety for those not befittingly crafted. The immoderately wealthy with rabid desires for forbidden pleasures of flesh, drugs and drink that other places in the Galaxy could only imitate, but wanting to avoid the violent ends of such violent delights.

If only they could fathom their actual place, the machine reflected.

IGa-60, did not belong here. . .

By the time she had entered, Six-O had already stood silently idle for the predominant part of an eon. By the time she had skirted around one corner of her desk, and offered the strange gesture for the Droid to claim the seat opposite her, the machine had managed to glean information buried within his Memory Cores from his very brief tenure with One Sith Intelligence, he had her name, he knew she was Sith. Had ruled on Coruscant, had fought in many battles.

Atrisian.

It was a simple grouping of letters that formed a word the Droid took pause on. Matsu, standing there, her eyes blinking over the corrupted and shifting sensor globes that so routinely plagued her ilk, was an Atrisian. Could she feel it? Did she know what she was approaching? Each singular step an entire eternity as she revealed what had occurred, what had transpired, why she entertained this meeting.

The machine never turned away from the glass, never presented her with the front of it's chassis. Never replied. Not even as she extended a datapad towards him, it's simple viewscreen illustrating the final fate of the noisome DeAct Gangers that had been hounding his heels since his abrupt departure from Atrisia nearly a year prior.

Gleaming red globes that ringed the monolith dome of the machines head blazed worse than the lava fires that burned all around Maena.

"Atrisia." The voice was robotic, mercilessly inhuman. "Do you remember it?"

He could have let her see it, he could have simply told her. But instead. . . IGa-60 could allow her only to listen. Was that not more grand and dramatic? Would that not enliven her hunger?

Anapestic crackle began to tune the sound in to an iambic melody, screams. Lyrical and grimly romantic, "A boy! He's just a boy!" the lamentation played over the warped bounce of a phonograph needle. Weeping shrieks of a chiliastic choir of souls sobbing.

IGa-60 had been in Jar'Kai after the great battle that tore that planet asunder and left a nexus of evil gasping in it's wake. He'd been in charge of rebuilding that once beautiful city, he'd taken it upon himself to uproot and extinguish the criminal element known as the Reki. His methods had been very controversial, especially as a hired Mercenary for the Galactic Alliance.

The chorale grew more desperate over his humming vocoder, "We are not Reki!" that Atrisian accent painfully enhanced to become blatantly obvious for Matsu. Gagging, wet and reflexive as unseen filth and excrement was mechanically pumped down the throat of a boy no older than twelve.

It went on, an endless cacophony of begging and nauseated vomiting until a new sound suddenly began to grow in it's place. Heavy. Profound. It rang like fleshy slaps of strong metal over taut and swollen flesh, until a seam popped, and retch splashed on stone.

By the time it had concluded, one of Matsu's Geisha Droids was being shoved in through the door, a golden eyed Arcona following swiftly behind, trying to slide his way in, around the left shoulder of what Six-O would regard as a lesser Droid.

"Your offertory has arrived, Matsu Xiangu." No one could say IGa-60 did not understand the proper politesse of maneuvering in Underworlds and Empires.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Atrisia didn’t matter much to her. It seemed so distant that sometimes she wasn’t even sure it had ever happened. Childhood, the way she’d started - irrelevant. It had been so normal that it hardly seemed to have bearing on who she’d become. There was no reason to think of it. At least...not many.

(Except those afternoons spent chasing Kesare over rooftops, so light that they didn’t break the clay tiles that clacked beneath each step they took. Pulling ahead, falling behind - that brunette-red shock of hair so different and shocking in a world populated by so many straight, black locks. Kesare was different, and on a planet where difference and being anything other than perfectly Atrisian was cause to be looked at only from down the noses of your betters, she and her family had been outcasts. Of only moderate wealth and on the planet to improve their prospects by working for a noble family, they were often ignored at best.

But Matsu had loved Kesare at first glance, and they’d been best friends ever since.

Those were the only reasons to remember Atrisia. The rest - besides a faint accent that persisted - she left behind, save for a few scraps of their culture and design when making her droids or choosing art. The rest had never been kind to her friend, and therefore Matsu simply forgot it.)

Despite that, she remembered the devastation done to her homeworld. Anger came from somewhere in her that remembered the places where she and Kesare had played, maybe a little sorrow for her tiny room where they’d dreamed of the wider galaxy. Those had surely been destroyed, though she’d never been back to look since war had come to her homeplanet.

Whether he was referring to general memory, or the war, she wasn’t sure. But either way the answer was the same.

“I do.”

When the recording started, she stared at the droid unseeing at first. As it continued, she turned so she too was looking out the windows, her hands clasped together lightly behind her back so both of them - one monstrously tall and the other near comically short in the same frame - were watching the same vista as the ‘memory’ played.

That he’d been something to fear was evident from those hunting him. But she hadn’t been entirely sure what sort of prowess to expect. Perhaps he was unstoppable a battlefield. Maybe he was capable of the sorts of violence that even some Sith found difficult to stomach. Or, possibly, he simply ‘thought’ a little too much for them to be comfortable with. Listening to that recording it seemed all three were at play.

Matsu was clearly lost.

As it continued on, her head tilted as if in study of some painting. She was looking outside but her gaze was far elsewhere, a steady glossiness to it. And for once the amber in her eyes was completely, utterly still. She might have been stone.

She wanted to see.

Matsu rarely gave thought to the hate surrounding droids. As with all things, she only bothered to care one way or the other when something directly affected her and droids had never bothered her. To hate something just because it couldn’t be understood...foolish. Regardless, her inability to catch glimpses from a mindless mind disturbed her. She’d never wanted a memory so badly that she couldn’t reach in and grab for herself. It wasn’t fear or worry - as a rule, she didn’t automatically read minds to preserve the challenge and intrigue of being around others. Mystery was not new. But she’d never felt quite so...naked around a droid.

When the memory was over, she blinked rapidly as if coming back to life. There was a pause before she answered. So this is why they were afraid.

“I see.”

She wanted to know more.

Putting aside her thousand questions, she turned slightly to see her droid stumbling to the side as the Arcona shuffled in. Offertory?

“What’s this?” she asked, more out of what she was meant to do with it. She was familiar with the wide-skull aliens, their glittering golden gaze. But what did this one matter?

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

It was a moment they shared, something terse, in every way---as the sounds of torture, the helpless crying had played----this one moment was every bit as crisp as the impermanence of her substratum in this Galaxy. That's all she was - all any of them would ever be - the brief sway of a flame, destined only for a simple flicker of light, before the Great Darkness swallowed it whole.

Only He was meant to endure. Only He meant to bear witness.

Two shadows, the silhouette of Droid and Woman stood in observation, the very etching of them a work of Art all on it's own. Matsu, built with soft curves and meager crest. Six-O, defined by broad and pointed edges the vertex of which cut high above her. Beyond that glass, Ash moved gently, darkness had begun to strangle that gaping red wound in the sky shut. Soon The upper-most Towers and Levels of The New City would be littered with light, blazing neon fires that would try to stave off the Stygian night.

Fate was curious, or the Force - for those of that persuasion.

Who could have known, out there in the falling sediment, a man that had stopped to observe Fire Rescue battling the orange jaws of a lethal Speeder wreck on his way towards a Descent Tram to the mid-200 Levels of The New City. Would have turned with head up, a hand clasping wet cloth over nose and mouth, and saw [member="Matsu Xiangu"] and her guest. That the outline of them looking out upon this sinful city would have possessed him to swipe oil paint to canvas, creating an unnamed Masterpiece that would Auction for Millions in the Core Worlds. Posthumously it would be nicknamed the Madonna and the Automaton, it's Artist savagely murdered in an act of zealous outrage over the connotation of it's depiction.

IGa-60, simply, did not belong here.

No, not there, standing in this place Matsu arranged. It was clean, glossy, modern. With accents of her home and things she'd undoubtedly found appealing or interesting during her travels. It illuminated her with a certain type of duality. The Droid did not know more than what it could sift through in Files that it refused to surrender. It could not see more than what her flesh and body language displayed - which given the nature of it's creation, could prove astonishing. The tiniest prompts and cues could never be hidden from the machine.

More than a Warrior, more abstruse than the typical Sith. Perhaps not quite as versant in the Underworld than it had originally calculated, but math was something the Droid loved to evolve when writing it's algorithms on how best to deal with singular individuals.

"Vero Cyone. " Six-O began, "An Arconan, created on Cona." The Droids answer related precisely to the vague question she asked.

Finally, as Matsu had turned, so too did the IG-Series Droid. Taking a single step away from the window to place itself at an angle from her, that thick scent of death wafting from the billow of a cloak much too large.

Vero Cyone had been staying on Maena since before Matsu had arrived there, a place of asylum at the edge of the Galaxy. Like all of the Arcona that roamed Stars, Cyone possessed that signature anvil-shaped head, his large and marble-specked eyes had turned golden from his serious addiction. His thick flesh was a brilliant shade of deep ebony, his fingers tipped with dagger-like nails. He took several paces in to the room, standing 1.9 meters tall. Though most humans would struggle to discern the emotion of a creature so very Alien, Matsu likely would not - given her very specific talent.

"Would you look at her, that. . . heat. . she gives off! " Vero said with a distinctly Reptilian accent, the syllables did not roll or hiss. But were no less blatant. "The whole City is talking about you. . . " His tongue dabbed at the air, he could taste her scent, distinguish her even more clearly now.

The Arconan male wasn't scared, no, rather excited to endow her with what he had been carrying for so long. Vero Cyone was a Collector of a very unique type. Creatures and Specimens of a thorny particularization. Of course he had once been an actual Arconan of legitimate means, conducting his business in Universities and Museums. But after he had caught heat from the Cartel for peeling open a Hutt and wearing the Alien as a Salt-Packed, Womb-Like, Cocoon as part of some warped sexual fantasy, right here on Maena in fact, he hadn't found much work outside of the Criminal Channels - or much safety.

"Please, please. . . " He said, motioning for her to move back towards the Desk.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

From nowhere, the warm seaglass smoothness of her laughter erupted unbidden at the droid’s explanation of the Arconan. Humor? Sarcasm? Most likely she was projecting her own human assumptions on him. His explanation was probably just that - dry, factual, without flavor and accidentally abrupt. But maybe… Either way, she laughed.

She'd assumed, for some reason, that the alien itself had been a gift. Why that would be immediate she wasn't sure - maybe her son's numerous explorations as of late in to the one trade she found unpalatable had the idea on the front of her mind. Or maybe she had been worried about having to refuse the offer, therefore breaking whatever fragile exchange this was. But that would be absurd wouldn't it? Why should she care? Things were muddied. Strange.

The stench of death filled her nose again as he finally swept from his position by the window, the snap of an over-long cloak ejecting the smell in to the room as effectively as any aerosol. Not unfamiliar or unwanted. But old. Stacked on top of one another. The weight of time and time and time again in that fabric. Had he not shared those sounds (a boy! he's just a boy!) she would have understood what those gangers feared by the smell of him alone. The weight of forever.

Her attention focused on Cyone, her natural quiet if openly interested manner evident in the slight up-turn of the corners of her mouth. It made her scars roil slightly when she smiled, a brightening of already shiny scar tissue that made past wounds more evident. She could have had them healed completely. But they were shallow enough, almost beautiful on their own - fish-bone strata on a woman named for the sea. He had the apothecary’s way about him, exuberant and strange and prone to showmanship. But it made him endearing.

The droid he'd nearly knocked over in the doorway in his haste had righted itself. Matsu could swear its gait was stiff, as if offended.

“Only good things, I hope,” Matsu quipped back. She was no fool. She knew for every man who welcomed her quiet, seamless takeover there were a dozen who sought to defy her. But control took time. Grasping the Underworld by its throat took time. She was no idiot to sweep in and slam her boot down and expect results. She would do as she always did: seize power quietly, insidiously, and patiently so by the time the old King Pins knew something was wrong she was already seated in their thrones.

The alien, unlike the droid, was much easier to read. In comparison to the void-silence of inside of Six-O’s head, Cyone was a chorus. She found normalcy there. And it made it easier to judge whether or not it was a good idea to step towards the thing he was so eager to show her. She could sense nothing underhanded in his eagerness - or at least, nothing directed towards her. So therefore she came closer to her desk, watching thick fingers peel back the wrappings over something seemingly extraordinary.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

"Amazing, awful, alarming. " Replied the Arconan, gliding towards the Desk lightly. There was certainly an exotic waltz which his limbs moved with, neither weak nor strong, even though the size of the Aliens body would have left a touch of influence leaning towards the latter. "I was actually surprised how speedily my dear friend here summoned me, " the anvil turned, golden eyes gleaming towards IGa-60.

Tongue brushed the air, notwithstanding the keen sense of smell Vero had, that flick of his tongue was his only way to maneuver through the World. The eyesight of all Arcona was shockingly bad, like a Camera out of focus, underwater, through twelve layers of sheer Socorran silk. Thus the mystery of his discommodious canter became more clear - or at least, more than Vero Cyone was capable of seeing. Naturally, his tremendous affection for salt helped matters even less.

The incongruous Robes that sheltered the flesh of the Arconan were every bit as foreign as he, peregrine, with a collar that was as triangular as his head. The fabric was fine, there was no doubt that Vero Cyone had naturalized beyond well to his new home, and would not be denied the most preeminent fibril. The color of cordovan over golden sand, with ornate symbols and markings stitched throughout.

The Robes parted, ebon hand with fingers ringed with gold and jewels vanishing and appearing a total of three times, each journey producing another item of the same manufacture. Red tongue constantly waving and rolling, feeding finer points and details to the Arconan. "I've held on to these for a very, very long time. " Vero informed, two capsule canisters set on the surface of [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s desk, while a third resided in the grasp of his hands.

Each cylinder vessel seemed made of glass, capped on both ends with gleaming silver-colored clasps. They were warm, not from the heat of the body they had traveled up from the bowels of The New City pressed against, but from the whisper of electronics built in to the cap guards. Each one stood roughly fifteen inches in height, a liquid which burned a radiant pink hue packed around a compressed, fleshy set of creatures. One in each jar.

Two of these were what IGa-60 had intended to pay tribute with, an act of cordiality for her liquidation of those that had pursued and tracked it here.

"Curious, my friend would covet these to feed your hunger. . . given the hum of murmurs which surround you. " The Arconan informed with disquisitive mind, fingers twisting that curved canister longingly. "Abersyn Symbiotes are, " there was a long pause, she may want to sit down for this, the tone sounded as if something long-winded was blowing in from the horizon.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

His alliterative explanation of the things he heard was widely truthful. She didn’t need to be able to read minds to realize that. She knew what people said about her. Long gone were the days where she had real friends. Once she could see a new face and consider the possibility that it might become an ally. Nowadays the only people she really trusted had been with her since the beginning, and they could be counted on one hand. The rest were wolves. Some wore sheep’s clothing and others showed themselves for what they were. But they were all enemies in the end.

But it wasn’t the moment for rumination.
Why did she keep considering the stretch and breadth of her life in that, of all moments?

Instead she concentrated on Cyone, observing movement and fashion and manner in the way that sometimes told her more than she could glean from the same amount of time filtering through the billion strands of someone’s mind. The near-constant flick of his tongue didn’t bother her - she’d spent the majority of her life in the Unknown Regions, and she’d seen her fair share of species besides her own. Had she not been predisposed to tolerance that stretch of time would certainly have numbed her to the wild differences of sentient beings anyway. If anything, she found them interesting. It was intriguing, watching those glittering eyes turn in her direction and knowing he wasn’t really seeing her through them. Some amorphous shape, the idea, muted colors and thin lines where her shape collapsed in blur. She was heat and the way she put pressure on the air around her.

Funny, to be reduced to so little.

But regardless, she heard the beginnings of some great dissertation on the wind as he began. She didn’t mind. Passion was admirable. Taking a seat behind her desk anyway, she reached out and carefully picked up one of the canisters. Her fingers tapped delicately on the glass, plexisteel a soft metallic ring each time the canister rolled over in her palms.

There was much to consider her, not the least of which was Cyone’s comment about his surprise at how quickly the droid had chosen to bring him in to the equation. She had gotten the sense she was being tested in some way and that this gift before her was a sign of passing, but what quality she possessed that brought to this point...she didn’t know. But perchance more interesting was how fitting this gift was. Her love for insects, was well known. That people referred to her as the Spider, even more well-known. But not to the common person. She assumed to them she was little more than a mystery, a woman they paid attention to simply because she’d wrested control of the planet and had the power to crush them. But they had their lives. They didn’t care about hers. That he’d chosen this as an exchange of deed for deed, somewhat arachnid, a crawling thing...at his most casual the droid paid attention. But more likely, he made sure to know whatever there was to know.

She settled in for Cyone’s explanation.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

Methodical steps, encumbered by the heft of metal; bluntly resonated. Unmistakably, they belonged to IGa-60. Vero Cyone needed not to observe the movement with his eyes, as the baneful Droid strode behind him across [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s office, spoor filled with the simple purpose of removing the Geisha-looking Servant Droid from the room with the stiff clack of a forearm across the breastplate.

Had either the Arconan or Matsu glanced towards the direction, there certainly was a moment where the smaller Machine seemed to calculate it's odds. But it's Logic Processors seemed to weigh the estimate unfavorably, confrontation was avoided, the door sealed with emphatic gasp. Ambiance rose as the natural lights softened to dim glow.

"of a very unusual sort." Vero spoke, accent rich, voice growing as delicate as the light around them. In that small space of time since he had taken moment to pause, he too found cushion of a chair beneath him, those exquisite robes folding over like great fabric waves around the shoreline of his Reptilian edges. "Exceedingly rare. . . " The Arconan nodded his strangely shaped head, finally placing the third canister down in front of him as well.

With hands free, elbows pressed down upon the chair, his arms leaned inward, fingers clasped between fingers, priceless rings with their inset jewels whispering softly as his hands tightened. A smile curled the lips of the Alien, his tongue slithering purposefully from behind them. The glow of the incandescence that radiated off from her was astounding.

If only he had a small dab of salt to ease the burn.

"Civilizations have dissolved, entire species brought to the very edge of the brink - " The Machine finally joined them more closely, standing at what would be Matsu's left, seeming even less organic than it had before in it's complete and utter silence. Death. Ancient. Misery. Torment. It radiated such terrible things. "Don't open it here, my dear! " Vero abruptly added, that was plasma inside, and once the heating source was twisted off, there would be no stopping the Parasite. "of decay! " He concluded, normalcy returned. "They triturate and comminute. Such deadly, divine little creatures! " The awe he held of the Abersyn Symbiotes was charming.

Or was it frightening? That Alien Accent corrupt with affection towards an organism that was so cruel. Granted, was not all life equally as destructive?

He continued, tossing a blurry glance towards the IG-Series Droid, "Are you aware of the Galactic Empire? " quickly Vero affixed another point to his question, "The First Galactic Empire? "

Part of Vero wondered if she'd be mildly insulted if he smoked. . .

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She noted Six-O’s treatment of her Geisha droid more out of curiosity than anything else. It would hold no grudge, the concept of holding hatred for something as foreign as human biology (besides rudimentary knowledge of course) to its coding.

When Six-O came to stand near her left side, she once more felt that yawning inevitability. It was a strange thing to think of someon--thing. It wasn’t just the way he smelled, the material-burn of years and years and years of heat and function within a chassis scored by other people’s horrible memories - or lack thereof, when he took the ability. Or the stench of decay on the cloak that billowed around him whenever he turn a turn. It was the sound she heard when she attempted to hear his mind, though she knew there was nothing there to hear. She knew it, but she tried anyway because...there were a couple times already she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

But the sound.

It was a low, radiant hum. It was the sound of a black hole, desperate emptiness, an event horizon spiraling her towards hurtling infinity and the unknown on the other side. It was ultimate destruction, gravitic collapse, the weight of a mass so large it destroyed all that drew too near. A lesser woman might have found her hands trembling, her breath a shaking rattle as it escaped from half-parted, nervous lips. But she was - as ever - still. Listening. It rose and fell. Perhaps it was the grind of machinery translating to her understanding, but it hummed. It soothed in its endlessness, too much knowledge. Loud and unbearable and terrible, quieting down to an almost gentle embrace, loud again, quiet, loud again… (She often imagined teeth stuck in bleached skulls, empty sockets watching the sky change as stars were born and died, a thousand years of motion it wouldn’t rejoin. Inertia and ennui. A final rest.)

It was her usually completely impassive expression, as ever, that did not betray her mild annoyance at the implication that she might open the canister. She didn’t dignify the warning with a response. Instead she focused on his seemingly inappropriate admiration for the creatures within the capsules. She imagined that garnered him more than a few worried, wary glances on a regular basis. But it would come as no surprise that in this she was not bothered either. It would be rather hypocritical, would it not? To find his love of that which crawled and creeped disturbing when it was she who spent so much time among the dead and dying? The things that destroyed were beautiful in their efficiency.

She nodded at his question, humming an affirmative since it was doubtful he could see the motion. “From what remains of history, yes,” she answered. The Gulag Plague had wiped much of history, especially very old history, from common knowledge. Entire libraries, singular copies of ancient histories, had disappeared as swiftly as half the galaxy’s population. But she knew as much and more as anyone could know. She caught the faint wonder in his mind. “And no. I do not mind if you smoke.”

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

With how her hands had birthed such subtle knell from the canniken, Vero Cyone had not urged abusive indignity upon her common sense, merely candid warning. In that small shake of a Durnii's tail, there seemed to illumine something that the Arconan had heard dull whispers breathe of her. That her calm sea, sometimes swelled very big waves. Cool as ice on the outside, but there was no hiding that brief discharge of heat that flared so brightly within.

There was a quiet moment, comfortably mute of fricative, yet there was very much happening. An indistinct sketch, obscure lineation finding itself etched and engraved with seemingly shallow strokes that only truly appeared much deeper to those with a certain type eye. [member="Matsu Xiangu"] was infiltrating a World far-flung from the agency of Sith, or Jedi, Empires or Authority. The Criminal Underworld was an eternal sump of filth and vileness - but an organism, wrought with a certain suavity that was misplaced on most.

Not her though, not so far.

From below the ocean waves of moving fabric, a stonework case, thin and shallow, surfaced. Leaning forward, Vero Cyone placed the bottom of it on Matsu's desk between the two Abersyn Symbiotes she had not yet examined. Jewel hemmed fingers flipped the lid open, and with surprising ease the Arconan retrieved a thin black stick from the case, pinching it between his lips before he struck the head of a purple-tipped match against the edge of a resplendent ring.

Synthesized Salt Leaf and Ammonia, it produced no smoke to speak of, but the aroma was enough to obscure the fetor of IGa-60's gruesome perfume of obliteration and oblivion. "An educated one. . . I am impressed. " The bloom of the black stick lessened as it was ushered aside between the joints of two fingers, "To even possess a single Abersyn, was a Death Sentence clear across the Galaxy. " The story continued, "Even in Hutt Space, their Stormtroopers would arrive, lives would be snuffed, whole colonies would burn. These exquisite little monsters. . brought to the very edge of extinction. "

Metal and moving parts, stronger and more forceful then the flesh of her body could ever hope to be. It stood abreast from her, infinite silence, abhorrent harbinger of cruelty and coldness. Statuesque, indifferent, an unrelenting reminder of how savage this Galaxy could be.

"In the Market, they're worth Millions! " The words were seasoned strong with lechery, yet, it was obvious that this Alien would never sell them. That this gift to Matsu, while set up by the Droid, was an almost spiritual type of exchange from the Arconan. "For three adult females, ready to reproduce - closer to a Billion. " Another drag, letting the Ammonia his Species required, rejuvenate his vigor. "I was in the Market for Mutant Akk Dogs when I caught rumor of a Shadow Colony on Xorrn, left in ruins, it's inhabitants driven to madness, their minds dominated by a certain shade of sickness. The very type of symptoms I had waited nearly 18 years to hear whispered, after I had learned of the Abersyn Symbiotes. "

Curious gift indeed, the sickly hot breeze across all of Maena had it that Matsu herself had a proclivity towards ruining her enemies minds.

"When Six and I arrived, turned out, things were, in this instance. . . as veridical as the tidings told. " There was a certain sort of grin that widened, the oddly shaped head turning ever so slight, absorbing that blurred smudge of the Droid. "Their eyes were as radiant as burning plasma, their flesh clawed and mangled like searing rivers of slag. Fires brightened the dark skies of this barren and naked world. I still remember the brilliance and blossom of it all. The taste of it. The attractive outlines and blotches. . . " Fond memory retraced, interesting, the very abstract way the Arconan grasped at the details, incontestably because of the horrid vision his actual eyes afforded him. "If you don't respect them. . . disastrous horrors can awaken. "

One might manage perceive a sense of yearning, a pining for that very outcome. Actually, it was as clear as it was late and that Xero Cyone felt the paranoid need to be returning to the only haunt he felt true safety in, aside from there, next to the Droid - disastrous horror, was exactly what the Alien wanted to witness from these splendid Parasites.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She wondered if parting with the symbiotes was difficult. She didn’t detect anything beyond the normal amount of wistful longing at the prospect of their departure from his hands, but it was hard to imagine he didn’t find some measure of sadness buried under the distraction of his storytelling. But he could rest assured - he was not giving them to someone who did not feel the weight of their gravity. Truly, they were quite the gift, even without their particular drive towards her interests.

“You can be certain I will respect them,” she assured him, a reverent smile on her face as she placed the canister in her hands down gently on the desk between them with its sisters. “Until I don’t.” The smile curled somewhat wicked.

“Thank you,” she murmured to Cyone, still wondering at the perfection of this offering as she turned her head to Six-O. “Truly.” She received hundreds of gifts of varying size and earnestness, but most were obviously the sort of thing that had been procured with no research or the sort of thing its sender would have liked for himself. These creatures were carefully selected.

There was a heartbeat where she considered the slight string of paranoia that fluttered off Cyone.
She discovered she wasn’t keen on the thought of seeing the droid go quite yet.
Matsu imagined that wasn’t something people commonly felt about Six-O.
The night was full of surprises.

“I have to go down in to the city to attend to some business. If you’ll allow me a moment to make sure these are properly seen to,” she said, sweeping her hand slightly towards the Symbiotes, “I’ll accompany you back to the lower levels.”

She said it in a way that implied it was already settled.

_______________​

And she did have business. Her son had informed her of ‘Benny’, a heavy, hirsute man that oversaw one of the more popular pleasure dens in the mid-high levels. What happened in the middle, or the very bottom, needed little oversight. The sort of people that ventured that far cared little for the things they might see in their pursuit of release - in fact, passing by a dead woman may be exactly what they were looking for. But Benny ran an establishment that, being on Level 116, needed to have at least some veneer of respectability. He had run the place before Matsu had wrested control of Maena and so she had let him continue. But he was...disappointing.

She would have to pay him a visit herself.

But as it was, Six-O and Vero Cyone were still within her company. They’d escaped the topmost floors at that point, criss-crossing between walking stretches of a level and taking lifts and walkways that expedited their travel downwards. It was possible to take airbuses that brought people down to specific levels while bypassing all those above, but the ash-storms forced them to run less often as visibility went down. And besides, Matsu liked walking her city.

Ash ghosted on the edges of the level’s platforms as wind carried it under overhangs, but the deeper they went the less the ash mattered as the city’s claustrophobia built on top of itself enough that not even light penetrated.

“Vero, I think I might know a few people that you might get along with quite well,” she said by way of conversation. “I used to run with a guild of Beast Hunters. They’ve since disbanded but they share your proclivity for collecting...unusual creatures.” The constant wavering of paranoia from his mind, picked up without even really trying for anything, might prevent him from new friends. But she would at least offer. It would distract her from the constant distraction of the black hole of Six-O’s presence.

She had no idea where Vero was going. But she found herself in no real hurry.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

The New City. Her City.

It'd always been there. A festering wound, permeating it's disease upon unwary drifters from the Fringes to the Core. An enchanted temptress singing her sirens song, thighs splayed, provoking delicious perforation in to the peccant womb of immoral deviltry. This harrowing aperture of her irreligious cleft, enkindled by the eroticism of the psychosis that broil within. Ready and willing to obey your command with insincere submission and corrupt every vein of those that would violate her with hysteric lunacy not easily shaken out of.

The City, like the Master slowly crawling to mount the hollow of it's greedy mouth, was athirst for everlasting perdition. Only here, only Maena, could ever slake that sort tempestuous agony.

Ash abandoned the Heavens, powdery cinders, carried in from fires far beyond horizon.

That top level, that place of copious affluence, it could be regarded in breathtaking wonder. Though it's diameter was considerably less than that of the size of the worst parts of this City, it seemed no less colossal. Monumental towers thrusting upwards from rock and steel to stab the dark sky, soot swirling in feverous winds, lights--both dim and of ardent neons--frustrating the grasp of night from ever crossing the ambit of their glow.

Duracrete and ore, curvaceously fabricated throughout. Where the steel and stone had not been manufactured by bent back and skilled hand, it had been carved in to the very bedrock and framework of this extinguished crag, the tomb of it's once molten center replaced by things far more fiery and dangerous. Her maw no less silent these days, no, the roaring had only grown.

Unparalleled in it's wonder, a finite range of expanse had forced a very clever use of construction. Where the very Uppermost Levels supported a relatively clean and common build, with vast open spaces and plenty of room to stretch out. The Lower Levels afforded exactly the opposite, with barely enough elbow room to comfortably move around. A true, claustrophobic, sort of nightmare.

Nebulous accumulation of Homes, Shops, Bars, Clubs and every manner of Establishment all piled up and strewn haphazardly throughout. QuickTrams, ShuttleTrains, Foot Bridges and Pylon Arcologies all shuffled in, all feeding the frenetic atmosphere. Each Level felt different, with broad gaps of change the lower and lower you went. What seemed grandiose and wealthy at the top, was nightmarish and shudder-some towards the bottom.

Yet sinister victual seemed to so heavily nourish all that would reside, no matter how brief their stay - or life.

Matsu herself, had not actually proven to be an unwelcome addition to the migration from the top in to the belly of the monster - no matter how abrupt and unforeseen her self-imposed invitation had been. The Arconan and the Atrisian spoke at length about her days with the Beast Hunters, the Droid generally kept a solid stride a few paces in front. A rock for the raving and manic crowds to part around.

Beggars, Cultists, Criminals, Revelers, below that first 100 levels, one could never be certain exactly whom they would be crossing - or bumping in to.

As an illustrative example, it seemed no sooner than Xero Cyone had departed, safely locking himself away behind a number of security doors, a middle-aged Nagai female suddenly approached the Sith Lord. Her voice was far more dull than her pale white features which seemed to reflect the orange neon even more brightly than the actual bulb of the light. Her voice was corpse-like, utterly lifeless, as she spoke a soft whisper in to the small woman's ear. Handing [member="Matsu Xiangu"] a folded Matchbook with a single word written under the bend of the paperboard.

Benny!

-----------------------------------

The 287th Level. Things had begun to grow more dreary, darker in feeling, but not visually. Down here the unnatural, radiant, vividly colored lights blistered endlessly through day and night. Reducing shadows to simple puddles of black that hung to corners and cracks. It turned out, Benny, liked to frequent a certain place down here. A little dive known as The Morgue. As Matsu had been informed, it seemed the man was there now.

This time, IGa-60 had been the one to invite itself.

The Morgue was the sort of place that attracted an older type of crowd, a more immoral sort. Slavers, Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, War Criminals, Mercenaries, Swoop Gangs and the type of individual that liked their company. Or at least, liked to pretend they lived dangerously. The type of place that kept the lights low, where the clientele minded their own business.

"On the House, " a M'shento'su'Nikto Barkeep suddenly spoke up as Matsu and Six entered, their stride carrying them towards the gleaming black Bar Counter. "No ice! " The aliens flesh was milk white, indicating it's Southern Heritage back on Kintan. Of course, he hadn't even actually provided Matsu with a glass, simply an offensively bright purple Can, that felt strangely textured under the pads of fingers and grasp of a hand. Which, also, was instantly left gasping with the crack of it's tab, sweat rolling down it's sides in the 104 degree heat of this place.

As it turned out, the Ashstorm at the top of the Volcano had clogged the Air Processing Units, which happened often, but fate would have it, for the last three weeks a fire had been ravaging a large segment of the 347th Level. Which, unfortunately, left this place in an unforgiving type of swelter.

Sharper than the edge of a knife, the drink would be. Citrus after notes that would threaten to sever the tongue, and bloody your nose. Zeltros Purple Orange. Very interesting sort of flavor that both was delightful and confusing. Known for it's strange ability to make one markedly more elated, with a terrible case of the smile-face.

Just because she was Matsu Xiangu did not mean she got the top shelf stuff for free, down here at least.

"Where is it? " Asked the Droid, in regard to the Target the machine had essentially demanded he be allowed to join in on the hunt for. So sure, they had someone to find, but one could guess Benny was there for both business and pleasure, he wasn't going to be leaving any time soon. Why not enjoy a moment?

The candle-like glow of the Cantina dimmed to total darkness, green and red strobe suddenly clashing like the strike of Jedi and Sith blades of yore. On a narrow stage built up from the floor of the same Maena Black Wood the Bar Counter gleamed with, stood a Shistavanen accompanied by three Givin Band Mates. Zrykaon and the Dead Bones. A local band deeply entrenched in the Maena Music Scene. In The New City Fringe and Rim Rock had always been the Rage. The endless neon nights had always been drenched with synth. But Z and the Dead Bones were of the new wave of sound. Music steeped in Horror Iconography, Nihilistism, Obsession, and lusciously laced with Occult undertones.

"It was a hot. . night. . . sick and wrought with fright. A time for Devil's and Angels. " Sang Zrykaon, black glasses strung over his Werewolf eyes, a denim jacket laden with patches and pin-buttons of Horror Movie Icons and Esoteric Symbols. "You and me. . and drunken dreams. Wine spilled on the table." The Shistavanen breathed, his voice husky with a haunted, ghost-like spirituality. "Gold highlights touch your face. . . " Finally, the Wolf on the Stage had found Matsu in the crowd; one hand holding the Microphone to the side of his mouth, while the other came to point directly at her, denim fabric crawling over the chalk white fur of his forearm, bracelets of all type and manner clutched around a strong wrist. "Watch their spirits treeemble! "

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There were many who operated under the assumption that notoriety made for invincibility. Matsu found it wasn’t uncommon among Sith as a whole to try and make their deeds well-known, as if there were some imaginary checklist and the one who ticked the most boxes would be declared the most powerful. It was prevalent no matter what group she threw her hat in with for the time it remained entertaining, but it was this dreadfully predictable habit that always sent her back to her solitary ways. There was a point to building something for oneself (futility of trying to make something that lasted aside), but working to achieve the fear and derision of others was...counterproductive for one, and boring for another.

Maybe that was why the New City appealed to her as much as it did. While the upper-levels recognized her, past a certain point she was hardly recognized and those who recognized her didn’t care who she was. It marked a certain sort of recklessness, the kind of place that made someone view her as just one more dangerous thing in a constant array of them but nothing out of the ordinary, that made her City feel strangely like home.

So she didn’t mind the can with no ice. It occurred to her that she might get the bartender to bring her some if she wanted to expend the effort, but that was the sort of pointless use of power she railed against all the time. Besides - she much preferred being overhot to overcool. The sweltering heat and oppressive humidity created by the fires levels below brought a slight sheen to her skin at worst, seemingly barely affected. No, instead she embraced the sense of being at her own beginning, trying the drink though she intended on no more than a taste. It nearly cut her tongue of her mouth. It was good.

The Morgue was filled for the most part with a consistently low hum of sound - a mix of conversation and music that blended together. It wasn’t the sort of place that got louder as people started talking over each 0ther, an irritating and self-defeating loop. It was the sort of crowd that purposely spoke in hushed tones, the nature of their conversations not strictly private enough to keep out of a bar, but still something that was best not to be advertising. Most filtered in and out, jockeying for spots that were usually not quite so scarce, but the ash storms always drove people to seek lower levels. More people meant better business, even in these slightly more sordid parts.

“I haven’t seen him yet,” Matsu answered once Six-O’s mechanical tones drifted in to her ear over all the other sounds. Mostly her observations of the world around them were a convenient way to distract from her confusion and curiosity surrounding the droid. She’d been around plenty but there was that black hole sound in that place she’d search for a mind that was haunting her. He’d invited himself along just as she’d found herself in the city by her own invitation. She couldn’t say she was displeased. But wasn’t that a strange thing to think about a droid? She was beginning to follow an utterly confusing string of thoughts, and one she had no answer for. Strange.

She was saved from her own musings by the sudden change in ambiance. The room took on a different hue and feel as the attention shifted to the band pumping their music through the establishment. Of course, not everyone listened. Their topics of conversation were more important than some band playing another song they’d never hear again. But a good amount of the noise stopped as most shifted in their seats or turned to look over their shoulders as the vibe of the room got darker. Matsu watched quietly, more absorbed in the general atmosphere than the song itself until...a hand was pointed towards her. Her expression was somewhere between completely passive and vague annoyance, finding the singling out less a compliment and more an inconvenience. Sighing, she made to sit through the momentary attention until the Shistavanen focused on another woman somewhere else in the crowd.

But somewhere in said crowd, Benny had looked up from his conversation at the exact moment most had been turning to see who the Wolf was pointing at. He decided in the next moment that he had best take his leave. He hadn’t done anything wrong - of course not! - but still, he knew the Xiangu’s weren’t exactly pleased with him and overall it seemed prudent to be on his way out.

Most likely, he had been trying to make that retreat quiet. But the Twi’lek male who had been sitting with him - another of a few people Benny owed a significant amount of credits to - had other ideas.

“Ixta koa’an chi’si! Kunta tun lia’ren shacusha! Eesh vree daden!” The distinctive shouting was loud even over the sound of music, especially accompanied by the deafening screech of metal stool against duracrete floor as the alien shoved back his chair to follow the now sprinting Benny. By the time Matsu had pinpointed the confrontation she only caught the retreating end of Benny - but that was enough.

“Oh. There he is,” she said casually to the droid next to her as if they were observing a particularly boring round of Coruscanti golf instead of witnessing a devolving bar conversation and an escaping person of interest. Matsu reached out for Benny’s mind, feeling a debilitating shred of not-her-own fear stab through her mind as she sought Benny’s vision. “He’s running out a back door, right side of the building when looking at it from the street.” Her ability to see through his eyes only went so far though, and the further he ran the weaker her connection would become. So there was nothing to it but to follow him.

She slid off the stool, top-shelf forgotten after one more big sip and she was gone.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

There was a certain sort of sensuality that hung in the parched air of Maena, something that breathed out through The New City. Something heady, something stirring, an intoxicating sort of poison that added flavor and fed the appetite of Tort and Vice. Pore over any area, any building, any vein of avenues or passing speeder closely enough and you would find the sort of Sins this World inspired all throughout. It was a remarkable thing to contemplate, the Why of it all.

But, even far beyond that veiled and abstruse inquiry, The Madness of Maena was an ailment far more delectable to devour.

Only sixty levels below their feet, distant as it may very well be, who could have calculated that one such desire could have evoked the irate inferno that now furiously raged with no calming end even in speculative sight. Or that, by odd fortuity, IGa-60, had been the primary malefactor behind the furor?

The Machine did not allot resources towards locating something as trivial as Organic Morality within it's day-to-day Operation. To Six-O, Executing it's Primary Protocol was the only thing worth valuing - if some sort of compensation for it's service was involved? Nothing held more weight. There was no obligation for it to excogitate why Sentient Meat had thirst for His particular artistry, or why their hands were too brittle, too soft, too fragile, to execute the execrable Acts.

To be witness of the final moments in the fleeting life of young Maena Melne, had been a point of sublime sorrow for her father, Tamet Melne. The man, Tamet, had been of Wroonian descent, by some degree, with yellow eyes and skin a pale shade of blue. His Daughter, named after this lurid World, had been but a small suckling. Aggrieved, with the perverse malady of this hellish planet anchored in his gaze, he had retained the Droid to act out the wickedness that provoked his arousal.

Tamet Melne wanted to watch something beautiful die.

Why then, as IGa-60 steeped the small babe of the fathers creation in accelerant, then obscured it's limbs and frame of doughy soft flesh with the grinning flare of ruinous flames, did the man wail and whimper? The yowl of his lament sang of rueful remorse, offering a sort of remarkable accent to the blubbery dolor that his infant morbidly bawled.

So alluring was the thought, that even the reason [member="Matsu Xiangu"] stood, perspiring Can in her hand, sweat beginning to give her flesh a certain exotic sheen, had a story. The tale of a man driven to delirious lengths for his aberrant desires. A bitter and heartbroken narrative that saw Tamet Melne try to erroneously pad the fire off from his child with bare palms. A tragic comedy that laughed at his efforts as flesh, charred black, pulled away effortlessly from bone - the deathly blaze spreading across the entire room, consuming, gorging, indulging, every bit as much as the rabble of this infernal Planet.

Again, the Droid found itself in silent reflection, did she know? Did that mysterious thing she so effortlessly control alert her? Did the Force recognize the Machine's role in all of this? Matsu. . . Matsu. . Matsu. . . . . Matsu. . . . . . . . Matsu! MATSU!! MATSU!!! If only she knew Demon hidden behind the metal, beyond the gleam of red sensor globes that unfailingly examined her, never blinking, never moving, always watching - no matter where she stood, or what she was doing.

Ash blanketed the top of the New City, making the malignant cancers that rotted Her corpse repine like maggots in the meat of Her many Sins. Here in The Morgue, on the 287th Level, that hunger became blistered with calidity.

"Under. . that perfect touch. . " The Shistavanen crooned lowly, crimson and emerald light reflecting off from the large, round-lense glasses that rest stylishly on his Werewolf-like face. His simple lyrics underscored masterfully with a repetitive, weighty thump of a Kick Drum and gloomy melody from the Piano. "There lies an. . obsession. . . "

Like most in this establishment, they drew very little scrutiny from the majority of The Morgues champions. Overlooking the obvious focus Matsu garnered from Zrykaon as he exerted his command over the small stage, the majority of individuals this far down were not impressed. By anything or anyone. No one was special. No one was untouchable. No one was safe. Someone always was holding a knife, and two corners away they'd still get stabbed and left lifeless - no matter how unstoppable they believed themselves to be.

The Haruspex and The Machine, the only color of gaze they could glean were those of disgust at the mere thought that this woman had come here with a Droid. Her property or otherwise. Filthy karking echuta! It was a conscious sentiment of disgust that curled terrifyingly off from everyone that passed the two of them as they stood at the Bar, surveying for Benny in the sunken sea of booths and tables sheltered in the shade of dim light throughout The Morgue.

By the time Matsu had located their prey, with the helpful succor of a Twi'lek and the yawning of metal over a duracrete floor, it seemed as though the timing could not have played out better. Whispers were beginning to rise, and it appeared their welcome was very rapidly beginning to wear through at the seams.

"Flush them out, I'll take the front. " The Droid retorted mechanically to Matsu's directions on which way the man was fleeing, departing from her side only moments after she had went in to motion, with what seemed like violent, or even deadly, intent.

"Prisoners. . laid low by love.. . . .. " Z and the Dead Bones continued on as Matsu breezed through The Morgue towards the back side exit where Benny and his other pursuer had vanished, passing all manner of Alien and Sentient Being on the brief journey. Including, what appeared to be a Zabrak male. His White Flight Suit, which was stained and smudged in grease, peeled open down the center, one hand cupping the spiny frills that crowned a female Rodian's Skull as she crouched between his parted thighs. That muzzle trunk mouth of hers latched on to something very personal, laboring the deepest and most satisfied sort of moans from the man. "Satisfy thy. . . hunger! "

They were the last words she would hear of the Werewolf's song before she pressed her small body through the door, one could only hope she had not allowed herself to become so distracted by what she had seen, that she would not have sensed the ambush awaiting her on the other side, or the intensity with which it would be unleashed upon her.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was easy to look at Matsu and assume she'd have others do her dirty work for her. And sometimes that was simply easier. It was the privilege of age, experience, and hard, back-breaking progress that she found herself in a place with underlings she trusted enough to delegate important work to. It could be argued that chasing Benny through a club somewhere in the dense pack of the 300 Levels was something she could leave to them. Lucas was capable. Kesare was capable. Zult was capable. Any of her apprentices would have most likely been capable. But the truth was…

...she missed this.

There was a time in Matsu's life when every day had been a dirty struggle for survival. There had been no Force, or at least not in a way she could control or understand. She didn’t pretend to be like one of those who populated these levels with no chance of getting out - her street urchin status had been by something of a choice (at least at first), and not by an inability to be anything else. But she’d had to live in places like this once, finding tin awnings to sleep under with a ratty blanket that smelled like stale cigars and even staler piss. She’d had to chase people like Benny down when they’d stolen the few credits she’d scraped up to her name. And a little girl like her had to do terrible, hideous things to people who tried to steal from or cross her - things bad enough for others to hear about, to make them stay away. Those lean years were the price for knowledge, the trial before the galaxy had found her good enough to guide her towards the Fringe. That had soon translated in to war, invasions, endless turning of a machine she’d found distasteful except for the one thing it provided: release.

So quiet. Ever a stone. But even in her, there was something that begged to move.

The Rodian on her knees registered on Matsu’s radar, but only briefly. Mostly she was preoccupied with the way the droid had given her orders. That might have been a little bit of an exaggeration...maybe. But few spoke to her like that, not even those who had her favor. It didn’t bother her, at least not in the way it should have. She’d felt the animosity in the building - that hundreds of years of hatred and fear of droids and those that would bring them in to bars still prevailed did not escape her notice. She simply didn’t feel the same aggravating prejudice. (Not that it was pointless. Droids were dangerous.) So it wasn’t that a droid had ordered her that bothered her so much as the fact that it...relaxed her?

Her thoughts were tangled, almost tangled enough that Benny’s clumsy attempts at knocking her unconscious nearly succeeded. Instead, she ducked under the brick of duracrete he’d pried off a crumbling way, barreling in to his stomach. Being so small this hardly did more than unbalance him, but it was enough for her to barrel in to the open space between him and...two of his friends?

It would figure that someone as slimy as that cretin brought bodyguards. And suspicious.

The two other men were tall, the sort of muscular that made them look fat. Considering her options in the space of one breath in, one breath out, Matsu raised both hands and shoved with a telekinetic push at Benny and one of his associates, blowing them off their feet so she could focus on just one as he barreled towards her. Redirecting the same energy at his body, she tossed it upwards, watching as he lifted in the air. She didn’t control him there, saving herself and letting gravity exert its will. As he tumbled back to earth she sprang the claws from her right hand, a waiting bed for one thug to land on. She did control those last few feet - he was rather large after all, and she didn’t want to be crushed as his massive weight landed on her outstretched fingers. Phrik impaled soft flesh, puncturing through stomach and intestine.When she threw him off, she twisted her hand, gathering at slippery organs and holding on as he rolled away and onto the floor.

By now Benny and the second man were up. Benny...was running, though to Matsu’s satisfaction it was right in the direction [member="Six-O"] had gone so the Lady didn’t fret about her quarry. Instead she turned to the second so-called bodyguard, moving in close to confrontation as he did. There was the flash of a blade under neon lights, water dripping off its silvery face - or perhaps that was Matsu’s imagination - but as he brought his right arm up to stab her she returned with her left, grabbing the inside of his upper arm to block him from anything vital. Her reflexes were nearly supernatural, but then again, they should have been. She’d never scorned the Jedi as warriors - she’d learned a lot from her brethren in her youth, including the ability to use the Force as a tool for flowing through a fight instead of a Sith’s obsessive control.

In the split second her grip on the inside of his right arm would hold, her left flat against it, she started punching him in the face with the other. She was small and slight. And she was certainly no droid. But plexisteel arms laced with phrik packed a devastating punch, well-cared-for machinery hitting more like a freight train than any woman of her size had a right to be surprising the thug with. The first connection crunched audibly, a wet hrrrnnngggghhh of released air hissing out of the man’s face as multiple something’s broke. She hit again and again, again, ignoring as his fist opened to drop the knife. Again. She ignored the way she had to stumble to follow the collapse of his body as he slammed in to the brick wall behind them, closed metal fist connecting with skull until there wasn’t skull anymore. It was a wet, thwacking sort of sound - the kind that accompanied a particular sort of halo. By the time she let up, his neck supported a mess of broken bone and gnarled flesh.

Shaking off her hand, she turned in the direction Benny had run. Now he was in trouble.

 

[Six-O]

There was an arrestive quality that the Droid held, something salient, a substance that ran thick and foreboding. More than most, this Machine inspirited those around it with both concern and interest. Goading disgust, mistrust and irritation. The very essence of it's existence was paradoxical to the Organic mind. A byzantine skein of numbers, algorithms and convoluted protocols that governed a creature beyond the bounds of Nature, and all of Her restrictions - therein, the hatred for it's kind swelled dangerously.

But, there was something unique about IGa-60. Something rare. Something violently unstable, and full of menace.

Malignant, the intemperance of it's venality incinerated the chaste and spat them back out as the very Ash that wept. You could not witness those soot tears down here amid the cancer and obloquy that festered in the sprawling veins of this vertical city. But ask Tamet Melne, ask him why this pyrexia existed; why his daughter crumbled like grey charcoal in his hands; why the streets burned.

Ask him of Maena, ask him of the New City, ask him of the madness!

The 287th Level was a pit of igneous anguish, smothered of air from the blankets above, boiling slowly in over the fires below. The atmosphere seemed almost dim, the neon world less attractive and blinding under the haze of heat and a thin film of smoky fog. IGa-60, like his companion in this undertaking, found itself in a rather disquisitive situation with the woman. Though, the reasoning remained wholly Alien, incomprehensible to any coherent datum that a more simple sort of intelligence could cipher.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] captivated the processors of the machine, it always had a proclivity towards colorful and fascinating monsters of the most terrible sort. But Matsu, this one, it felt almost magnetic.

It required further investigation.

From the front of The Morgue, where Six-O departed the Cantina, the machine stepped out in to a quadratic zone---one of thousands on this Level-----fed by the amble of an untold mass of pedestrian traffic through narrow venation that webbed off in every direction. From this bottom platform which rest nestled inside of a womb of duracrete, if one were to look upwards they would see this hollow chasm of cramped cityscape rose nearly three hundred stories, with a scaffolding of repulsor foot bridges and solid-structure catwalks zig-zagging all the way to the very top.

The warmth was oppressive and heavy-handed, with the consensus of the multifarious volumes of organic life all seeming to agree. Clothing was light, or nonexistent, the biggest commodity of the moment being ice, frozen food products and chilled beverages.

IGa-60 combatively forced it's way across the crowds, uprooting the sluggish and uncooperatively stagnant that refused to provide the Automaton with ample room to stride onward through. Barely making it to the mouth of the alley as Matsu artistically left the walls and floor steaming with blood that bubbled and popped in the heat. Luckily it's timing was perfect, for the only taste of freedom from Matsu that this miserable oaf managed to taste was the unruly bite of a steel forearm across his round, greasy, deeply reddened face.

His eyes had been wide and cast backwards over his shoulder, watching Matsu tear through the two men he'd brought with him. He'd hardly managed to even catch a glimpse of the Droid as it suddenly appeared to the front of his escape. But that wallop though. It sounded unforgiving against the skull and fat meat of this pitiful organics face. The way his body bent through the air, curled backwards and deposited his round shape crown-first in to the ground. . . . it seemed to defy logic in it's simple display of the overwhelming strength a Droid possessed.

" Grrnmff!!! " Benny would yawp painfully, flopping with a strange sort of awkwardness on the ground, his brain unable to access words or coordinated motor functions. " Rrrrmmff. . . " Blood pooled densely on the duracrete beneath his face, spattering up wildly in crimson flakes as he stammered and gasped in to the thick pond.

Indifferent towards the mans condition, Six-O, Red Sensors examining Matsu and the fine work she had done, clasped the claw of it's hand over the back of a flab-rounded neck. With a basal sort of effort this disgusting husk of a half-coherent man was launched sideways, his weight throbbing against the side of The Morgue, his mouth howling another flirtatious tone of agony as his lifeless legs gave out immediately and he folded back over towards the ground. Where he had at least attempted to halt his violent progression with his right arm, but in the process, managed only a pop that echoed louder than blaster fire as the arm crackled under the weight - bone gliding through muscle and skin.

" RRRHHAAHH!!!!!! " The war cry of pain gurgled out through the flow of blood, the true depth of it's sound muffled under the crowd and between the two buildings in this alley.

Would this be how Benny ended? Murdered by a karking Droid and this damned Woman. . . this Sith. . that thought she could just toddle in and take things over here in the New City because she was some big name elsewhere in the Galaxy?

" St. . uuphid chit! BA-enn-ah ain' bowin'! " Benny spoke in an almost indecipherable gibberish, leaning on to his left side, clutching his grotesquely misshapened arm to his chest as he turned his eyes upwards towards Matsu. His face torn ragged, upper lip and cheek torn and gushing. His first molar all the way to his central incisor exposed and gleaming copper brown, nose broken; curled sideways in horror as if trying to escape his face from having to absorb the impact of another blow.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

CLAP!

An applause, somehow managing to sing with sarcasm, there was no telling from where or whom it was coming from. " Benny, Benny. . . Benny Boy! Ya didn't. . . . " There was a deliberate pause, at the mouth of the Alley IGa-60 had come in from, and further behind Matsu where the narrow duracrete path branched out with numerous arms, an unwieldy number of men and women began to crowd inward towards The Haruspex and The Machine - which now had stepped closer towards Matsu, suspiciously undaunted. " Disappoint us, did ya? I'm proud of ya my Chubby Benny Boy Thing. . . " The voice, slick and purring, hesitated dramatically once more.

In that pause, the Farghul the words belonged to, took a moment to clean the dripping edges of his Maena Ashberry Icecream and black Charcoal Cone with his long, feline tongue. His fur was sandy brown, his eyes gleaming sapphire. The creature stood even taller than Six-O at 2.2 meters, he had a strong and lean build, no shirt, a pair of loosely fitting red pants and black leather boots with a gun holstered to the front of his left hip.

" Kill them. "

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Up to this point, those few vagrants who had been calling the alley the home-of-the-moment had remained perfectly still, hoping to avoid becoming involved in one way or another if they could just...stay...unnoticed. But a lull in the action sent most of them running for an exit from the alley, moving much faster than their malnourished bodies might have suggested was possible. The slap of their shoes on pavement was a perfect opening accompaniment to Six-O’s particular symphony as metal connected with flesh and bone. She got lost somewhere in there, a variation of slap and crunch and impact.

She’d been here before hadn’t she? It had been a little different then, of course. She’d watched things like this once, five times, tens of times before she’d even left her cardboard box. There was always someone who owed money, always someone running from retribution for a betrayal, always someone who hadn’t done good work completing a job. And there had been a little Atrisian girl, impossibly dainty, a pale little thing with half her face peeking out from behind the ‘door’ of her cardboard box to watch business just like this with one wide, dark eye. Back then she hadn’t known she’d fall in love. It had all been experience, something to learn and understand. Other people were fascinating and she’d made it her business to learn how to anticipate them. She’d enjoyed all of it, every place she went, in some sick sort of way. Invasions, the progress of a Sith movement, training and teaching...it all meant something. But she hadn’t known this sort of place - this hive of brutal, throttling criminal freneticism - would become something like home.

The same observation was happening now, though this was no longer a little girl fascinated but cautious. This was a woman from whom fear had drained entirely, alive simply because ruthless practicality and an ability to read people even without her power kept her ahead of the curve. Somewhere in her mind that little girl crawled out of her box and rose on two skinny legs to scramble closer as she’d always wanted to, watching the droid’s brutal efficiency with dark eyes behind the gold that had taken over.

All the sudden she realized she was nearly on top of Six-O, just outside of the radius and turn of his blows, getting dangerously close. So was no fool - he would hit her if she got in the way. But she didn’t. She hovered so very close over Benny’s disintegrating face, her own rapt with complete absorption in her fascination as her gaze ticked between the droid and his work. Part of her was slightly concerned that he would keep going until Benny no longer had brains to answer her questions, but she’d also learned from observation that the human head could take far more abuse than holodramas would suggest - barring a hit somewhere particularly sensitive. Her head tilted as she observed, blinking in a slow, almost reptilian way as she lusted. Six-O wouldn’t be able to feel it, void of any connection to the Force, or a human or alien’s ability to feel its manipulation regardless of ability to use it...but she was a hungry little thing. She always had been. And the Force coiled around her in anticipation without her conscious thought, waiting to consume experience.

And then the clapping…

She hadn’t even realized that bits of trash and dirt had been lifting off the ground, the power of her fascination in the Force bending and hovering objects around them. They all clattered in one loud discordant drumbeat to the ground as her concentration was broken.

Irritating.

It was impossible not to see the Farghul first, though the men and women he brought with him quickly drew their own attention. Too many to count if she was trying to stay alert to their motion but maybe thirty, even forty. That wasn’t counting anyone who might be hiding. That seemed sort of absurd, and already Benny seemed to be the ripple hiding the contents of a much deeper, darker ocean. But there was no time for that.

Especially not when the group was directed to kill so quickly.

“I want the Farghul alive, brain intact,” was all she managed to say to the droid before it was time to set to work. Moving closer to Six-O as she calculated the scene before them, she felt a brief flare of frustration. She wanted to be able to speak in to his mind, more easily coordinate.

But this was a test, wasn’t it?

There were too many for her to control all at once with any real command, and attempting to do so would only drain her Force ability. She had no idea if there were reserves, or how many there were if so. So she would have to be precise. Her favorite.

In a group so large, the attackers ran in far more bold a fashion towards the Droid and the Woman than they might have in smaller numbers. Handheld weapons, a couple blasters...her eyes darted over it all as she made a split-second plan. With a deep breath, she brought both hands up and pressed down and forward, a flat razor-wave of telekinetic power blasting through the feet of the front line of the onslaught. It would save her from doing anything more drastic as most stumbled and best, fell to be trampled at worst. A domino effect rippled through them as some tried to avoid others underfoot...and some didn’t try at all but tumbled to the pavement instead.

It was a good-time saving tactic, but it wasn’t enough. Extending a hand, she pulled the blaster from Benny’s waistband. He gurgled slightly as he felt it shimmy out of his belt, zooming towards Matsu’s hand. It felt strange there - she never really used them. Regardless, she leveled it a bloom of energy roiled out of the muzzle and burned on the chest of a man running towards her.

WHY...didn’t she use these again?

What hadn’t been obvious at first was that some of the crowd were droids. Various models, various sizes and condition, but nonetheless they were there. And they seemed to focus on Six-O. Oddly, there was an L-1 droid, seemingly ancient at this point. But even more strange was the unknown sort of droid that seemed to be living, symbiotic, on its back. The L-1 was making a beeline for Six, shoving through humans and aliens alike. Halfway there, it reached with both arms over its back to grab the droid living on it and pulled it off, tossing it in the air where it hovered with a menacing buzz. At first it seemed to do nothing, perhaps ejected because of its inconvenient weight.

But it quickly became obvious it was more useful than that as dozens of tiny holes opened alongs its sides and it began spinning even faster and ejecting an onslaught of small, deadly sharp darts. They were aimed at Matsu and Six’s side of the alley and not at the coming horde, though Matsu assumed the thing would change tactics the closer the Farghul’s people got.

Matsu threw up a barrier with her free hand, though the darts cascaded around either side of it and punctured the duracrete with repetitive forceful piercing sounds. The cement seared wherever they burst open, some kind of toxin leaking onto the ground.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

"Yes, take me alive. " The Farghul mocked as his crowd of faithful foot soldiers tightened upon the Machine and the Haruspex like a noose around the neck just prior to the drop. "Ya won't be so bold by the time this is over, Witch. " In this heat his Ashberry Scoop was melting rapidly, but that feline tongue was agile in it's effort to cup the cool, sugary bands that stretched down along the Charcoal Cone before a single bead could fall to the reinforced duracrete ground below his Trogodile Leather Boots. "In fact, you're gonna be very. . . very. . dead. "

The alley they were surrounded in became disturbingly obstructed, but life in the New City - in the MegaBlock that opened a wide set of paces away, went on as if this were a casual occurrence. Which, as it would be, was a fact. While this wave of violence grasped around Six-O and [member="Matsu Xiangu"] there were twelve other violent crimes taking place just in this area alone.

The worst of which involved a Baragwin ravaging and mutilating the fresh corpse of a Zabrak male. Turns out this particular incident arose after the Zabrak had erroneously assumed he could swindle the Reptilian with a loaded Chance Cube. He'd not understood this terrible folly until a sizeable knife had began to insert itself again and again through the flesh of his much smaller body. By the time the strange sentient creature had finished, the Zabrak had been rough-hewn down to a meaty husk of gore.

Six-O thrummed with energy and power, it's protocols beginning to access a greater supply of energy from it's core systems to amplify it's capacity to wage War.

They would be tested.

As far as IGa-60 was concerned, It would win. This lower creature. . this woman. Organic. She intrigued a sort of entertained attraction and interest from the Automaton. Why? It needed to find out. It required further study of her.

The pressure of the Farghul's drove of loyal scrappers began to exhort the Droid's most violent protocols. Most of them were armed with simple weapons, these were clearly the down-and-out sort, destitute doormats that were meant to offend Matsu in some way. Or perhaps, more precisely, weaken her in a way that the more important individuals would be less threatened by her strength.

Either way, down here, her reputation was only words whispered by those that had come from the uppermost Levels. More than ninety percent of these men and women have never even seen the top 50 Levels of New City - let alone heard of this very infamous woman. Droids in various states of disrepair and neglect, aliens and organics of all sort and variety filtered in. With them, it seemed the daunting heat that left this entire Level in an unforgiving swelter rose several more degrees.

From somewhere covered by IGa-60's Cloak, that Phrik Machete suddenly arose. Even before Matsu had willed the Force in to action, the Machine riotously reacted to the closest of the Farghul's men. In the blink of an eye - maybe even more swiftly - the clawed arm of the Droid, holding the Machete, struck out. Barely even a recoil in the steel limb as the blade sundered the skull of a female Brosin. From the crown of her skull down all the way to her breast bone he divided her. Blood welling out like a great flood, soaking what little clothes she had been wearing as it splashed down upon the hot duracrete and was left bubbling and steaming in the fever that clutched the entire Level.

That was simply the start.

Figures suddenly were sent swooping backwards, limbs breaking and curling out at wrong angles - bone shafts stabbing through flesh and meat. Bodies were trampled in the chaos. But even these displays of brutality did not sway the advance. More came in.

The Repulsor Droid the L-1 Tactical Model deployed hummed rigorously, durasteel spurs chewing apart stone walls and resounding stridently off from Six-O's Chassis. It's Red Sensors on that Spire Dome constantly monitoring Matsu as she thrust her hands upwards towards the threat and placed a barrier between it and herself.

Reacting instantaneously the Machine lobbed the weapon it had nearly halved the Brosin with. An underhand throw that flung the powerful Phrik Alloy-made weapon aloft. A moments breath later, the hovering Inferior was impaled, a bloom of pearly white embers flowering outwards from the metal wound as it swayed side to side in the air before succumbing to it's injury and powering down for good.

The crash saw it crumple the skull of a charging Ferroan, golden eyes thrust from the sockets that once held their orbit, the disgorged spheres aimlessly flailing as the mans body wilted.

Again, this hardly averted the assault Matsu and Six were under.

More drove in towards the two, the pressure beginning to come to a boil as bricks and bottles were heaved. Even before the L-1 Droid managed to grasp IGa-60 by it's chest, blaster bolts had struck it in the back. Three solid hits searing the fabric of it's cloak and fusing it to the metal blast armor.

Matsu and Six-O were in a fight, and with each breath she would take, the danger was rising.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The difference had always been one of the source - burning hot, or freezing cold? It no longer bore elaboration, those differences. Those who’d faced her knew well enough of the thing that separated her from the only sect she could most easily be identified with. Theirs was fire, instantaneous and hot, there to be used in its entirety at simple beck and call. It burned everything quick, left nothing in its wake, but it had been effective for centuries - and therefore, who was she to discredit it?

But in her was a well, reaching in to the earth to some dark center. Stones placed deliberately, held together with mortar meant to last the journey. Her power was brought up from the depths in small bucketfuls, a body starving for its own sustenance carefully contained and made potent, gasping obscenely as it drank wood-tang water. (A name that meant ‘of the sea’ in Atrisian, power like water, eroding and unstoppable, a power to shape worlds.) She was content to leave it there, at bay where it couldn’t destroy her too quickly. But sometimes it had to flood her, burgeon up out of the earth to overwhelm.

The flash of the Phrik machete in her line of sight caught the neon glare, a slice between sparks as it destroyed a droid in fell swoop. She dropped her barrier, reaching out to tug on the machete through the Force and send it flying back towards Six-O’s grip. She was uncertain whether it was more wise to alert him to its return or not, once again feeling a flare of irritation at her inability to tap a mind that didn’t exist in conventional terms. She chose to remain silent, figuring he would be able to notice the machete among many focal points of importance with those dozen red eyes.

As more of the mob collected, time slowed down.
Each breath was loud in her ears, strands of hair pulled from her bun to stick to sweat-plastered skin.
Her heart hammered in her chest.
She hadn’t been this excited in years.

Breath in.

Power erupted out of the well she was so careful only to sip from, rushing up its walls and overflowing with explosive force.

Breath out.

The closest line of the mob froze mid-step, eyes going wide as they fell back under some invisible onslaught. Blood flew, strips of flesh lifting and floating like petals until there was nothing but cartilage and bone where faces had once been. The loud pop of multiple sets of eyes erupting staggered the line behind as the fore fell to corpses, momentary horror writ on their expressions. They were, of course, too hardened to be stopped - products of Maena’s pressure, creating grotesque diamonds in the rough. But it was only the moment that Matsu needed, shifting her attention from visceral means to the more cerebral as she grabbed their distraction and made it her door.

Nothing fancy, no time - instead of creation, she opted for destruction, wiping their minds clean and planting the simple seed of danger and self-preservation. They grew well in each other’s presence, instantly nurtured as confusion turned to defense turned to lashing out at the men and women beside them. The mob’s frenzy made friend and foe irrelevant in the face of a loss in sense of self, the line affected simply searching for a way out as they shot, stabbed, punched, clawed, and bit their way through what had once been their fellows.

At the other end of the alley, a Geisha droid - as simple as she was in comparison to Six-O - had heeded the news of a disturbance in the sector. They rarely interceded, choosing instead to protect their veneer of simplicity at all costs.

The Ashberry ice cream had held up admirably in the sweltering atmosphere - more expensive of course, as vendors were forced to whip more air in to their product, to add all manner of gums, just so their wares would last more than a minute in the cone. But it was no match for the short blast of plasma that the Geisha droid shot towards it, a frightening, almost alien sound from a super-concentrated beam instead of a blaster. The charcoal cone was left curled and acrid at the edges, the ice cream vaporized.

Had the geisha droid been capable of expressions, she might have been wearing a sarcastic smile. As it was, her face had peeled back in four parts like some mechanical venus flytrap, revealing an array of sensors underneath, now operating with full capabilities. Her body had extended at the joints, making her nearly as tall as the Farghul, and with her droid’s strength nearly a match for him.

Back at Matsu and Six’s end however, more of the mob had poured in from the main concourse, coming up behind the pair. Get crushed between them and put up a stand...or go up?

[member="Six-O"]​