One on One (Naomi Lang, PM for invite)

[Danni Reyok]

All Danni did was inhale and she nearly gagged on the stench of the Lower City. Why anyone would want to live down here was beyond her. The only good thing this hellhole was for was to lay low and hide, Danni knew from experience. Although Danni herself, didn’t spend a lot of her career down here. This place was a wasteland of dead buildings and factories. If you saw it from the right spot, the only thing that would come to mind was a graveyard, minus the beautiful flowers and headstones. This place was far from beautiful, it contained the poorest and most disease-ridden people, it there were any. Nothing was worth living for down here; useless you wanted death of course.

Danni sighed; she now realized why the Inquisitoriate stuck her down here. It was the prefect obstacle course and no one around to get in the way, not like the Empire cares. Danni reluctantly moved from her spot between two buildings. Her armor shown a glossy black, even through the murky gas you would call air. The men and women back at headquarters told her she would be needing heavy armor and a few weapons of her choice.

It was like music to Danni’s ears. After being trained and observed for the last few weeks, finally she was going to have some fun. First off she was told that she would be dropped off in the Lower City. After some short details they led her to an arms locker, she took three weapons. Two guns; a pistol, the Merr-Sonn 434 or “Deathammer” as it was known in bounty hunter terms, and a light repeating blaster, the Blestech T-21. Her third weapon was her long-time favorite, the Ryyk Blade. The two she possesses have thin durasteel blades that run down along her forearm, slightly passed her elbow. The weren’t the most deadly weapon but they got the job down and messy at that; just the way Danni liked it.

Something out of the corner of her eye moved. The thing the instructors told her was to always be alert. Maybe she should follow orders for once, instead of playing it be ear. Danni smiled to herself as she walked through littered alleyways and old streets. The light repeating blaster bouncing slightly against her back as she moved. She wore her beloved weapon belt from her earlier career, where her Deathammer pistol hung openly. Her two blades were tucked away in sheaths that were strapped to her thigh’s open to easy access.

Danni’s old pride flowed with every step she took. The musky air became denser as she moved. More movement around that she took notice of. She picked up her pace, moving swiftly through skinny spaces between run-down buildings. The faster she moved the quicker the movement around her. Her mind screamed at her to stop but her ignorance took over. Paranoia kicked in after Danni started running. There were sounds loud and soft, all over. The moved faster and faster, matching her pace. The screaming in her head got louder. There was not stopping it. Danni’s head hurt, the pain increased as did the screaming…Oh god it hurt! Frustrated, confusion, and Danni stopped dead. She was thrilled? Of this? She hadn’t been this excited since the beginning of her first missions. No, she couldn’t be, she wouldn’t let herself. She didn’t want to revisit it. She needed to clear her mind.

Side-stepping out onto a street, Danni reached inside her vest pocket and pulled out her stash of death sticks. Nasty little things they were, but she couldn’t help herself plus they were illegal too, but to hell with it, she needed the stimulation they provided for her. Popping one from the container she placed it between her lips. Placing the package back into her pocket, she pulled out a lighter…

Danni flipped the top off, making a reddish-orange flame appear out of the capsule.

[Naomi Lang]

Coruscant, the epitome of all modernized civilizations, with its towering chrome skylines stretching from horizon to horizon and beyond, its ferrocrete plazas spanning man city blocks with immense marble guardians face the Imperial Palace with heads bowed in homage to the late Emperor. The crown jewel of the galaxy, a planet-wide city of grandeur and extravagance as close to the heavens as one could get with feet still on solid ground.

But like every other city in all the systems, beneath the ignorant citizens of the sky, blinded by the aura of perfection, lies the dark pit of despair waiting to devour all who dare enter the domain of decay.

There are many different speculations to what Hell is. Many think it to be a nether-world of scorching flame in which the sinners of existence suffer the tongues of the everlasting flames, ever wreathed in the agony they brought unto themselves. Others believe it is a realm of nothingness, and world parallel to our own, but never merging. The denizens forced to traverse the galaxy in an immaterial existence, desperately trying to fight off inevitable insanity. Thousands of others have their own opinions.

They are all wrong.

Hell, isn’t another plane of existence, it is a twisted wreckage of ancient splendor and glory of the past. A place where the demons of the mind become reality, the monsters of children’s stories are born into existence. Warped steel and duracrete form a labyrinth of terror where every shadow contains a new threat. A place where the sunken city of city of R'lyeh has manifested and the laughter of the elder gods rings in every mind.

Only the desperate, despicable, and hardened have any chance of surviving for any length of time. An absolutely perfect place for the Inquisitoriate to make their own attempt at playing with the laughing gods and send their own in for perverse sorts of ‘training’. Those that survive playing with Cthulhu end up as a terror to their enemies; however, this number is relatively few.

With luck, the prospect currently wandering the decadence of millennia past would be molded into one of the soulless creatures calling this urban Hell home, albeit one completely under the Inquisitoriate’s control. But of course the will of the gods are fickle an individual here and there is ignored……

*FLASH* In the tangled mass of ancient power conduits, a pair of azure pin-pricks briefly illuminate the brown-red encrusted pipes before disappearing in a silent flurry of spider-like motion. Only to appear again, in another place, but always trailing its hapless prey.

……and more often that not, the lords of the Inquisitoriate send their own hardened demons to terrorize a prospect…..to push the hapless soul to their well past their physical and mental limits.

[Danni Reyok]

Danni snapped the lid shut with a small click while taking a much needed drag. She immediately felt the effects; adrenaline pulsed in her veins and her paranoia was gone, like it had never been there. After taking another drag, Danni let the cursed thing drop to the already polluted ground; she never smoked too much of anything nowadays when she needed to be on top of things. Being high on the job was not a good thing especially now, since she worked for the dominant power of the galaxy. But getting into trouble was the least of her fears; in fact she could care less. Her whole life before now had been all trouble and whatever she had done in the past, she didn’t regret it now that was for sure.

Her past profession may not have been the most glorious job ever but it had paid well. Some assignments still haunted her, in dreams and hidden memories that shouldn’t be resurfaced. Every so often Danni would wake in the middle of the night, a bit shaken by the memory of one of her more torturous killings. Although she would never admit it to anyone, her nightmares were a weakness and she should not fret about them. Why her past wanted to plague her, she did not know but nevertheless it was the past and should be forgotten.

Shaking her head, Danni stepped out into the dead deserted street. Nothing…this place was empty. No screaming aliens, no screeching speeder engines, and no bright mesmerizing lights. The Lower City was a dead place, no sign of life, except for a strange wind that occasionally would gently whip Danni’s loose hair across her face.

A quick glance around and she was off; briskly walking through the maze of hollow buildings and empty dying streets. It amazed her how Coruscant hid such place, how two levels were above this one. This wasteland of a place.

A glow in the distance caught her attention, as soon as it appeared it was gone. In reflex, Danni grabbed the handle of her blaster settled at her hip. Cautiously, she made her forward, one foot at a time. It seemed like the murky air was deepening, she could barely see her feet beneath her.

Moments passed and the environment only got worse. The small hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Something wasn’t right, her old assassin senses could tell. Her stomach rolled in unexplainable excitement and it really didn’t help her that she was also blind to the area around her.

Why in the frelling hell did the god’s have to be testing her now?