Flash of Light, Endless Night

[Sybella]

Her world was painted in greyscale; all of the nauseating pigmentation of Nar Shaddaa void of saturation. Shadows dared to stretch further and light seemed to gleam brighter, flowing around her in perpetual fever pitch; a mad rush of buildings, species, and the resounding of her footsteps as she fast forwarded through the monochromatic chaos. The swiftness of her travels terminated at an intimate spot, the intricate details of 'that' alley having been etched into her mind by the whetted edge of betrayal. One moment, she strode the fringes of dark and light with all the confidence of a young and foolish upstart. The next, she recognized the wet and abrasive duracrete beneath her bracing hand and felt the cold knife of terror pierce her heart as she beheld the shadowed face of duplicity and the poised barrel of a custom DH-17 blaster pistol.

Take the shot, Sy.

A rational voice whispered in her ear. She held a weapon as well; a military grade hold-out blaster that she usually kept concealed in her boot. Color slowly crept into the scene, manifesting as scarlet, pulsating veins leading to the life center of the man looming over her downed frame. She could not see his eyes, that once looked upon her in what she had mistakenly judged as adoration. All she could sense from this stranger she had, admittedly, invited into her life was... murderous intent.


Take the shot, Sy.


Her breath hitched as that voice boomed in desperation. Her finger squeezed down on the trigger and the muzzle flashed in the encompassing darkness....


Sybella bolted upright in bed, a sheen of sweat on her brow and her fingers knotted in the thin comforter bunched at her thighs. The incessant beep attributed to her comm unit had roused her from the vivid recollection and she reached out a hand toward the nightstand to silence it, glancing down at the name displayed before answering it.


"Yes." She said coolly, as though she hadn't just been forcibly pried from a nightmare of her own design. Waiting for the encryption to take, the half-Umbaran swung her legs over the side of the narrow bed and tentatively dipped her bare feet onto the poorly carpeted floor. There was a bit of static from the comm as she rose and then an ambiguous voice warbled through.


"Meetings been arranged. Rendezvous in two hours."


"Copy that. En route."


The call dropped after the punctuation of her confirmation and Sybella stepped into the refresher; dialing the water-based shower unit to skin searing hot before stepping under the shower head. Twenty minutes later, she was zipped into her skin tight body suit and armed with the necessary weapons for the job. The case containing her rifle was too conspicuous for the streets and so she exitted the hostel via roof access. Her destination was several blocks away but she'd chosen her base of operations expertly, traversing the underworld from a high vantage. The custom visor she wore concealed a majority of her face but she'd already scanned this route for security cameras several times, so that was hardly a worry for her.


What did worry her was the location. Too many drunkards milling about, too many possible obstacles in the way of her shot. Propping a foot on the stout balustrade forming a worn perimeter around her vantage's roof, Sybella laid the weapon case at her side and then observed the diner below where the rendezvous had been arranged. It wouldn't be long now, she thought as she glanced down to her wrist chrono. Unfortunately for her mark, all of the hesitation that had previously plagued her trigger finger had died with Gunnar. She felt nothing when she killed now. Nothing at all.

[Grym Kandle]

It was good to be back. On Nar Shadda. Bespin was nice, and the Hutt presence there was not as rampant as it was in this corner of space but nothing beat the pulse of Nar Shadda. Traveling in space, as necessary as it was, was not one of Grym's favorite past times but overseeing the Black Sun's operations of product proliferation required his presence abroad. He walked down the way, gently humming to himself on his way to another one of his many meetings. Unlike his trips elsewhere, where he would typically enjoy a few days to himself, becoming acclimated to his surroundings and adjusting to the different environs, Grym felt no need on Nar Shadda and preferred to jump right to business.

While he typically drew stares elsewhere, on Nar Shadda, his mask was known and unknown and mattered little among the throngs of sentients ultimately. Nothing was stranger than everyday life to a planet that was the crown jewel of the Hutts' slums. Plenty of people parted way for him as he continued onward towards his rendezvous. Tall, long black coat with a high collar. A mask with an odd expression and simple markings. Black hair that in certain light seemed to have emerald strands in it. The basic description for Grym Kandle, Vigo of the Black Sun, former assassin, retired pit fighter, and one of the galaxy's finest connoisseurs of glitterstim. Also possibly one of the most advanced cases of sustained glitterstim overdosing in history.

Rumors of Grym in his days as a pit fighter on Nar Shadda were far and few between. Almost two decades gone by now. But there were stories. And no one survived the pits to crawl out of them and become something more unless they fought meaner and harder than the rest.

Rumors of Grym as an assassin were more prevalent but often seemed too fantastic to be true when discussed and then compared to the recent sightings of the man. The stories varied from how Grym somehow predicted a series of perfect events that inevitably offered him the perfect opportunity to kill his targets with ease or that the masked man would somehow manage to infiltrate a compound full of cronies, where some stories would say he defeated each and everyone of them, and others that he went unnoticed all the way into the target's bedroom. They made great data novels. Grym had read one of them and had a good laugh that time. Not too many of those around anymore. Grym the Reaper had retired many years ago. Seemed longer than it was when he thought about that. That mask had not seen the stars for some time.

"Oh, Mr. Kandle! Welcome back!"

"Bella-bella!"

The mask's voice gave nothing of inflection away but the waitress of the small diner was more than familiar with that. Seven years had the slip of a girl from Ruusan been working at this diner, The Closet Cafe. Seven years that she had seen Grym Kandle come and go. His appearance had dramatically approved in those seven years and she had heard enough on the street some time ago to know who he was. She knew why the thugs did not come around pressing her boss for the usual tax. Or why she made it home every night and never ran into the same creep twice.

"Right this way, Mr. Kandle. Have a seat here in your normal booth, right in the back. What can I get you? Anything to eat this time? Some caf perhaps?"

"Caf will be fine, thanks, Bella-bella."

"Comin' right up!"

[Sybella]

She'd had plenty of time to set the scene in the days prior, having been made aware of the rendezvous point by her contacts in advanced. While her primary method of assassination seldom left her wanting, she had been trained to take extra precautions; particularly when her target was someone like the fabled Grym Kandle. By the time he came around, she had already removed her Verpine sniper rifle from its case and assembled the custom parts to its matte black exterior; propping the weapon at the stout balustrade by its bipod and canting her low-power mode visor to the scope. The advanced, crimson reticle was steered sideward until he came into the center of her focus at the end of the block and she watched with rapt interest as the crowds of people loitering on the street seemed to part around him. She had presumed he'd be comfortable in this area, as he had agreed to meet at the Closet Cafe without resistance, according to her sources. It was for this reason that she had planted her nanite trackers on the pavement just outside of the establishment.

As soon as his shoe had planted itself in the indiscernible sticky substance on a duracrete panel just before the diner and his back was officially to her, Sybella activated her visor. Red lighting flickered into existence, not unlike the many eyes of a spider in their placement across the assistive HUD. While a great number of individuals had stepped through her nanites, the advanced technology was programmed to track whoever last did so upon activation of the visor. Each step he took pinged, not unlike the blip on a radar, on the left most panel of her HUD. It was one of many measures she'd taken to bring down her target. Should he prove to be interesting, which was a seldom case in her line of work, she had a gauntlet of other traps lying in wait for him.

For now, Sybella activated the transmitter she'd planted on the underside of the diner's bar counter; fine tuning the frequency with a series of blinks and taps to the outer controls on her visor.

Right this way, Mr. Kandle. Have a seat here in your normal booth, right in the back. What can I get you? Anything to eat this time? Some caf, perhaps?

Bingo.

Sybella reached up and thumbed the zoom on her scope, scowling somewhat as her target's frame disappeared behind the shiny metal paneling of the establishment's siding. No matter. The half-Umbaran sneered somewhat and tilted her face away from the scope, annoyed with having missed an opportunity as the waitress departed his company to fetch his caf. No innocents caught in the line of fire had been one of the stipulations of this mission. Now that she wasn't quite certain where her target lingered, it was time to do something all too familiar for someone in her line of work.

Wait.

[Gunnar Dryden]

“Hey Doll.” Gunnar lifted his mug, giving a little shake of it towards the waitress as she departed Grym’s table and rounded the ‘bar’ of the café. She stole a glance his way at the all too familiar pet name patrons gave her, and flashed her most genuine yet fake smile she could muster. “Comin’ right up!” She cheerily proclaimed. Quite the actress. In that moment he drained the last of his caf from his mug and set it back before him to await the refill. Alone for the time being, he turned up the data pad that lay face down on the countertop. It had buzzed only moments before.


Earlier that day


The streets were packed with people, some wandering home from the graveyard shifts or whatever late night events kept them out until the sun was up, and others wandering in to begin their day of work or errands they needed to attend to. Gunnar’s errand was something that required a delicate touch, but the on going wave of people that acted as a shield to Sybella’s actions also acted as his means to hide in plain sight and tail her.


The distance he was forced to keep kept him from noticing everything she did at every stop, but the last thing he was left with was her stop before the café. At that point he stopped trailing her, letting her continue on while he inspected just what she had done. He remained for a good half hour before he discovered the presence of the nanites, gathering up a sampling of them to study.


Present


The frequency the nanites communicated had pinged his data pad, his time studying them not in vain. It was the key to informing him who her mark was, after some careful thought over why she would place such a thing. All signs pointed to the origin of the signal pinging the corner of the café. His eyes barely passed over his shoulder towards the man seated in the back of the café. The place he chose to sit spoke of a man used to looking over his shoulder, and made him wonder if he’d set up some sort of contingency himself for a trap.


His waitress topped off his mug, and while her back was turned he eased a healthy addition from a flask before stowing it in his left jacket pocket. He rose up, tugging his collar higher to shield a portion of his face in the periphery. He took up his mug, lifting to sip from it as he passed before a window with a sideways glance directed to as many rooftops as he could scan in a moment. He stopped at Grym’s table, easing into the booth across from him. “You stepped in something when you came in.” He stated, tossing his data pad atop the table facing Grym for the man to see the frequency that pulsed at their location on the display. “What you’re looking at, is a complex tracking system that can lie dormant until activated, and it’s since been activated but only on you.”


He brought a hand up, rubbing his jaw and glancing in either direction. “Now, you’re a familiar enough face, or mask…whatever you want to call it. Probably used to having a few enemies, so the question is what kind of contingency did you plan for today?”

[Grym Kandle]

Quietly, a gloved hand snaked out and tugged the datapad towards Grym. Bella-bella brought the small bowl of caf for Grym as he preferred to drink it. The top and rim of the bowl was a dark green.

"Here you are, Mr. Kandle. Oh, I'm sorry, Sir, didn't know you were a friend of Mr. Kandle's! Much obliged, let me know if you need anything else!"

She did not stick around though, scurrying off after another customer.

Grym looked at the datapad and then up at the man sitting across from him. His voice remained flat lined, removed from all inflection, making it difficult to tell if his next question was serious or not.

"You know Deja Vu? That sensation when it feels like you've been here, done this already? Said these exact same words?"

The masked man slid the bowl of caf, steaming directly in front of him. He produced a white cylinder, unscrewing the cap before fluidly upturning the tube and sticking it in the caf, swirling it around. The black caf took on a greenish tint. Grym lifted his mask just enough, revealing a strong jaw line, the skin tinged green with black veins. The lips revealed were black and green, cracked and hardened. He lifted the bowl of caf, breathing in deeply, before drinking several full gulps of it. Setting it back, a gloved hand resettled the mask. The voice was slower, but more purposeful somehow through the modulator.

"Give it a moment, good Sir."

It's not like this was the first time that Kandle had received one of these semi-fortunate warnings. Some would say that luck had seen him through it. Others said there was something to the mask. It was simpler and more obvious than all of that but stories liked to tell themselves sometimes. Grym's head tilted back slowly, his cracked eyelids closing behind his mask.

He walked down the way, gently humming to himself on his way to another one of his many meetings... Plenty of people parted way for him as he continued onward towards his rendezvous. Grym stopped just outside the diner. He looked down at the ground. It was pulsing red. He looked up toward the roof, as the world spun, and he was suddenly staring at himself through the scope. Bang.

Bang? Grym sat in the back of the bar, it was dark outside, and not a soul was in sight, inside or outside the diner. Red lights under the counter. Red lights, footprints all over. Spiders hanging from the ceiling.

Grym's head tilted back down, regarding the man sitting before him. The surety of the voice was replaced with something more solid, something more definite and tangible, like that feeling when your hand found that weapon you were grasping for.

"Five seconds. Imagine I already know your answer as soon as you say it. Are you part of my contingency now or are you with the sniper?"

His right hand reached into his high collared jacket, grasping something there as he spoke.

[Sybella]

Hey Doll.

She had just lowered her head, canting her orbital socket back into the padded rim of the scope, when she heard that voice. Breathing suspended, heart rate rapidly falling into dangerous stillness, eyes clouding with blackness. It was not the first time her mind had played tricks on her but her reaction to the illusion was no less impacting than it had been the first time the ghost of her past had come knocking. When Sybella finally managed to inhale precious oxygen into her deprived lungs, the sound rattled with her obvious disorientation. Colors bled back into focus and the quivering of her hands solidified into an iron grip that would have surely bruised flesh. Fortunately, it was nothing but cold, unfeeling chrome-moly alloy in her unyielding grasp.

Immediately, well as soon as rational thought was a viable thing, she deactivated the visual aspect of her visor and moved her face away from the weapon.

You stepped in something when you came in...

She shuddered, removing her bracing foot from the balustrade and staring in disbelief at the solid wall concealing the man who spoke with her mark. This was not how it was supposed to go. Why now? An annoyed exhale, in the form of a hiss, heralded her movement. Her heels bit into the roof's cracked surface and she gave a sidelong glance toward her weapon case, making a mental note to come back for it later, once the job was done.

Kill the ghost. Kill the man. She could do this, that voice was only one more objective.

What kind of contingency did you plan for today?

Five seconds.

One. Her footsteps quickened until she broke into a full run. She jumped from the edge of the building. Two. The Verpine Sniper Rifle sagged in her right grip as her left arm shot out, the grappling device affixed to her forearm expelling a hiss of steam as the port slid back and projected the trihook. Three. She free fell, activated the visor, swept her gaze across the interior of the cafe, and influenced the traction of the grapple wire all at once. Four. Her body careened forward as the hook found purchase, her feet directed toward the face of the building parallel to the diner's eastern wall, with a mid-air spin given at the moment before touch down. Five. Spikes ejected from the bottoms of her soles, drilling into the metal structure now supporting her in a suspended, prone position. The sniper rifle was leveled off, the tension of her grapple wire against her arm providing no distraction.

Take the shot, Sy.

"Target acquired." The weapon whirred as it dialed to full power and a silent, verdant blast loosed from the muzzle; penetrating walls, eating up air, and seeking out the aligned individuals with little regard given to whatever obstacles were in the way.

[Gunnar Dryden]

Gunnar really loathed that mask. He stared into the expressionless visage who’s monotone voice and impertinent question seemed entirely out of place given the dire information he had so casually dropped on Grym. The questions felt mostly rhetorical and so he impatiently sat and waited to see where Grym went with it, but it never really went anywhere. The man seated across from him stared back at him, until he procured a small vial from a location Gunnar hadn’t noticed and tipped it up over his mug. In the moments following he got the briefest glance at why Grym wore the mask he did, or at least the hint of a reason why.


Gunnar realized he should have been more forthcoming instantly about his information, instead of playing things in that aloof manner to pique curiosity. He had failed to make note of the transmitter beneath the table, no doubt recounting their entire conversation to the Sniper that waited for a clear shot. Knowing her plans were in jeopardy of collapsing, she was likely to abandon the patient approach for a more direct method of seeing the job done, and neither of them would be safe from her ire. Gunnar spun the data pad around while Grym settled back into the cushions.


He’d seen that sort of lackadaisical posturing before following imbibing of a foreign substance. He wasn’t certain if the man was prepared to accept death, and if the dosage had been so great that he wouldn’t snap out of it promptly, but he wasn’t going to let his coming out of the shadows result in being shot by her again. Gunnar’s gaze swept the diner, searching for cover points, escape paths. Grym was quicker to snap out of it then he imagined, and did so with a focused intensity he had yet to see thus far. “Contingency, but I’m not gonna hold your hand out of here.”


The map pinged a different position from the frequencies source, and Gunnar knew better than to delay. He didn’t know what she was up to specifically, only that she was on the move. “Down!“ He threw himself down onto the booth, then rolled off of it to the floor. Debris splashed down atop the table with the sound of crumbling rock, well before the sound of the shot reached them within the diner. Hopefully for Grym the man had taken his warning, and movements, and echoed them. If not, Gunnar had no plans of looking back. He moved low towards the counter and behind it to the waitress‘ side of things. The bar itself was unfortunately not made of the more resilient durasteel, but just a steel he wouldn’t count as reliable for ballistic protection.

[Grym Kandle]

"Contingency, but I'm not gonna hold your hand out of here."

That spared the newcomer's life for now at least. Everything seemed relatively genuine, even his efforts to warn Grym before the incoming shot. If the sniper was as good as this man seemed to be concerned, then she would follow through on her shot and have watched as Grym tilted just to the right of her shot. The torrential momentum of the shot had torn the shoulder of his jacket some with superficial damage. As he had gone to cover, the motion was fluid and almost too quick to notice, but he took two fingers, pointing at his eyes, then turning them and pointing them at the direction of the incoming round.

He was low to the ground and behind an adjacent booth for the moment in cover, keeping a respectful distance from the other man and the waitress hiding back there. His other hand, which had remained in his jacket from his initial warning to the man, finally withdrew, holding a slim white tube. Grym paused for a moment, only long enough to tilt his head back, revealing the scarred mess of his throat once again. Pressing the tube underneath his jaw, he depressed the release and the syringe injected a full dose. He gave it no time to build before he called out to his new contingency partner.

"Well? What can you do?"

Grym was bent over, moving quickly as if he had been hunched over working in the Kessel Mines his whole life. He passed by the man slowly, waving him forward with him, waiting for the next shot to nail his last position. As he headed back to the kitchen area through the open access, he glanced back at his boots sitting alone where he had initially gone to cover. Shame.

"C'mon. Let's get out of here. I like this place too much to let her keep beating on it."

His voice remained dull and dead behind the mask, and the full dosage of refined spice had blasted his emotions with about the same effect. All of it was as intended and desired. His Echani-ingrained background embraced this peace amongst the storm like an adrenaline junkie might enjoy repulsorless sky diving from the heights of Nar Shadda.

[Sybella]

"Damn." She exhaled the expletive and applied pressure to the heel of her boot, causing the spikes anchoring her to the wall to retract. She adjusted the tension of her grapple wire and slowly began lowering herself along the building face, ignoring the uncomfortable pull on her arm and shoulder in doing so. The light weight of her custom Verpine rifle more than made up for it and she maneuvered the weapon around into a tighter hold, loosing another fully powered bolt through outer wall of the diner where her target was supposedly positioned. Her HUD chimed another failed shot and she felt a streak of white hot anger race down her spine. Two shots wasted on this man? Who the hell was he? How did he know how she operated? Gunnar's ghostly voice echoed in the recesses of her mind and her grip tightened on the rifle.

A series of blinks initiated the command to disengage her HUD, the three independent panels sliding away from her face and coming to rest at her crown. She had a feeling her nanites were no longer in play, thus her eyes would serve her better; their ultraviolet capabilities painting her targets in vivid red veins that thrummed with their pulses. She had other aces to play, as well; having been very thorough in her set up of the area before the rendezvous was scheduled. Thus, Sybella was expecting the open window on the third floor of the building she spanned.

She dropped onto the jutting sill and detached the grapple hook, holding her arm out until it had locked back into place. Then, the tool was stored on her utility belt and her weapon snapped back up. She watched the front door, the only exit she hadn't rigged with a trap of sorts. Rear exit promised a healthy dose of nerve gas, unleashed by the flickering red switch affixed to the side of her rifle.

[Gunnar Dryden]

The sound of her next shot tore another hole in the diner, one that might have muffled Grym’s first question enough to ignore it. In reality he saw no need to answer it. His skills, while he believed them considerable, were irrelevant until they could get somewhere to escape playing the defensive. Grym passed by him into the kitchen, a destination he had considered. What he knew of the layout, there was only the front and rear exits, but she probably knew that. Even still, he went back into the kitchen after his masked accomplice, sliding around the corner and seating himself back against a metal table with cabinets holding all manner of cooking tools.


Gunnar’s eyes caught from their periphery the lack of Grym’s shoes, which stopped him from having to recommend he leave behind the instrument of her tracking them. Other kitchen staff were huddled in the kitchen, their waitress within the meat cooler with the door cracked glancing their way, then past them towards the front of the diner. He leaned over, whispering to Grym. “She’s too smart to leave us a backdoor that’s unprotected in some way.” He glanced around at the other staff, before making eye contact with a four armed, almost amphibian in appearance species that he could only assume was also a male. “Go out the back, we’ll make sure no one’s coming in the front.” He moved to the side, like he was getting ready to peak out towards the front of the diner.


The large figure nodded, then moved for the exit. The door swung open, prompting the alert Sybella had for the rear exit. Right on time a trap went off, though Gunnar had been expecting something other than a gas agent. He cursed unintelligibly beneath his breath, throwing open a cabinet beside him. He retrieved a fire extinguisher, scooting just a tad closer to the exit to use the dry chemical based extinguisher to smother and disperse the nerve toxins away and hopefully render it inert enough for them to use as an escape. “So you’re attached to this place, huh? Cause an explosion or fire would really help mask our movements.”


He glanced towards the exit, considering further. “When we get out, we should split up, then double back. She had to have a clear line of sight to where we were, so anticipate an opposing building. If we approach from two different sides, we might be able to pin her down.” He waited for Grym’s acknowledgment before he made any movement outside, or to set the building ablaze.