Glit-biter's Paradise. (Adar/Kressara)

[Ben Kenobi]

New Heights, New Highs


Sirens echoed in the distance as law enforcement personnel raced off to some unseen call. If they only knew the battle unfolding in the upper tiers of the cityscape involved a Jedi and a Sith then they would have stopped at nothing to rush onto the scene. For wherever the Sith tread, only a great darkness followed.

A serrated edge flashed out, a blaster pistol’s barrel discharged, Kressara had already been in motion as her senses picked up on the shot. Her blade slammed hard into Adar’s, he tried to flush her to this angle but she was ready for it the whole time. She smiled at him and frankly it freaked him out, her eccentric behavior honestly had him off balance in this ongoing situation as he did not know how to properly react. The Jedi had taught him the nature of the Sith and that their Warriors were typically savage and straight forward individuals. This Sith though was using every single action to confuse and contort every single thing he had ever been taught. Even her smile was a tactic. Adar paused for a split second and Kressara’s smile deteriorated into a scowl as she spat in his face.

The glob of saliva struck his face at the left eye and he flinched, she took advantage of the split second distraction and rotated her serrated edge to angle towards his left shoulder and from there she shoved forward. Adar felt the attack coming and he leaned aside but too late and the curved teeth flashed right through his left shoulder strap of his backpack sending the accessory off and to the right. Adar’s shirt did not even try to slow down the vibrocell’s power but thankfully Adar’s movement left only a thin cut horizontally across his shoulder.

She was extended now and Adar sent his elbow into her face, but he had eyed her prettiness and perhaps it was a Jedi’s chivalry but he angled his elbow lower and it struck her jaw rather than her nose. While the strike’s location did not much matter in the grand scheme it had prevented Kressara from receiving a broken nose and marring the beauty that came so naturally to her… a shame she was a glitter-head. Kressara’s face snapped away from the strike and she spun elegantly aside, keeping near perfect balance as she danced away. But Adar was not about to let this Sith regain herself and using Shii-Cho he put both hands into his next swing and railed it against her retreating sword. He had to drop his blaster to do so, but the strike was true.

With a shower of sparks the serrated sword was slapped aside and out of Kressara’s reeling grip, it spun end over end into the darkness below, stabbing into a large vertical I-beam. The Crow was cast aside from the blow falling to her back. Adar launched forward and thrust down towards her thigh, but Kressara was done with this letting her anger flood her mind. Twisting her hips she let the blade sink into the horizontal steel she laid on but she was already using her momentum and scissoring her legs around to spin around and come up to a graceful crouch. In her spin she swept out with her boot and caught the upper portion of the vibrosword. Being tempered steel against the leverage of structural steel, the blade lost the battle and snapped clean three inches from the hilt.

Losing his balance Bolner slipped in his footing and thanks to the pack that was swinging out to the right his weight was also displaced. He tumbled over. Instead of dropping dead away he turned into the fall and jumped for it. Reaching both arms out they slammed into a horizontal beam one level below but the impact was hard and he bounced off, now he was flailing into an uncontrolled fall. With the Force as his ally he reversed the grip on the broken hilt of the vibrosword and stabbed it out and right into the depth of a vertical beam. His arm stretched out and ceased the momentum immediately, he could feel the over extension of his elbow and in doing so he lost the grip on his hilt. Adar kicked back behind him and off the vertical beam, flowing into a somersault and suddenly his uncontrolled fall was arrested by quick reflexes.

Both feet together they found the surface of a lower beam, knees flexed and cushioned the rapid descent and his right hand extended to settle him comfortably into a three point stance. He did not have even half a chance to regain his composure when a body slammed into him from above. Kressara had followed him down and dove down on top of him, her arms wrapped around him and he felt a sharp pain in his chest. Reflexively he rolled his shoulders around and flung the crazy off of him but now they both fell.

Adar tumbled end over end, until his back came into contact with something solid. Flimsiplast wood that had made a temporary shed keeping tools from the weather. His fall demolished the shed and the walls folded in on Adar and in a heap of dust and chaos the Jedi in the shed fell silent.

Moments later his daze was taken from him, his mind focusing on what he could only define as a cackle. He groaned, pushing debris off of him. He noticed his pack was nearby and his droid was scolding him from within but he smacked it quiet. Climbing up to his knee he looked down to his chest and his eye widened to see the needle in his chest, it was broken. But his eye? Suddenly he realized he could not see from his other eye and it burned tremendously. He feared he had been wounded by the fall and slowly he touched his eye and his heart went cold to feel something wet and sticky. Pulling his hand away he wasn’t sure whether to continue to be afraid or be relieved. It was not blood, it was slimy spittle mixed with a glittering film. His head swam as he fought to rub the slime free of his face.

Kressara’s fall had brought her down hard into sets of tool boxes, slats of wood planks and a stack of steel. She could not operate her left arm from the elbow down and felt a great pain about mid-upper arm. She cursed, a dislocation would have been higher up and every movement brought a terrible grinding with it. Wincing she starred into the sky and did not fight a sudden and uncontrollable urge to just start laughing. Bringing her right hand up she spotted shards of glass jammed in her hand, glit dripped profusely from the hand and she licked a portion off while the cackling only grew. Biting shards of glass out of her hand she spit them aside and climbed to her feet.

She saw stirring in the broken shed and began stalking closer. Left arm dangling helplessly at her side and the pain growing, she laughed harder letting her voice echo into the night while smearing glitter across her forehead mixed with her own bleeding hand. During her approach she spotted Adar’s discarded blaster and she scooped it up, laughing again and rubbing more glitter and blood over her right cheek.

With every step and every following cackle she took haphazard aim at the general direction of the tool shed and squeezed the trigger. Scarlet fire scorched the air and blistered craters into the weak wooden frame. Adar was quickly shaken awake from his predicament and he launched from his feet to the back of the tool shed, his hands grabbing onto a torque wrench as he went.

New colors he had never seen before started to burn his vision and his heart was racing so fast he felt it would pound right out of his chest. His right hand gripped his chest in vain effort to keep his interior muscle from bursting. He found a beam to lean on, his hands were trembling so hard he lost the grip on the wrench and it clattered to the ground which illicited random cackling fire from Kressara. The shots were harmlessly wide but to Adar they were rays of bright superlasers cascading off into the night… the night which plagued him. Building lights blurred and swam, those distant sirens blared into his ears and scarred his brain with an infernal ringing. He tried to get away but he fell onto his side and clawed his way forward. More shots blazed by, Kressara even stumbling against a beam and falling down…

When she hit the ground the pistol discharged and she shot herself in the hip. She screamed… and laughed. Discarding the pistol which she tossed right off the roof top. Rolling around and in unfathomable pain the glit-biter cried and laughed and laughed and cried. Soon enough unconsciousness would find her until her men also did the same.

Meanwhile Adar in a washed up and spiked euphoric world tripped over his backpack. Picking it up he fumbled his way back down the building as there was no way he could continue on and apprehend the Sith in this state. Hours later he would wake up in some alley beside a dumpster covered up by newspapers and two bad smelling hobos on either side of him.


Kressara Thryn VS. Adar Bolner


Victorious

Adar Bolner
20 EXP
40,000 cr


Defeated

Kressara Thryn
5 EXP
10,000 cr

[Kressara Thryn]

Eufornis Major
Sector 11, Alascer Residence
The Following Day




Bright light flooded the narrow openings of her now squinting eyelids, scorching her dreams away with the sound of cheap metal slat blinds shifting open. There was only one man alive in Kressara's personal life (Sith Affiliates excluded) who had the guts to rouse the sleeping darksider by bathing her in sunlight.

"Lorcan?" Kressara groaned, hoping with all her might that it was him and that she wasn't waking up to a Jedi holding cell.

A tall figure stood between her and the searing brightness, casting his shadow long over her resting place and allowing those sun struck hazels to adjust properly. Kressara blinked away the blurry spots in her vision and a familiar face came into focus. Lorcan Alascer was looming with tattooed arms crossed over his chest and a gladdened smile nearly touching each pierced, pointed ear. The man had the stature of a reception tower, black hair cut into a do it yourself, relaxed mohawk, piercings by the dozens, tattoos coloring his olive skin in every shade of blue imaginable, and eyes lit cerulean with the aid of cybernetic sight enhancements. His ears were nearly as pointed as his teeth, unusually tall, and hands webbed. Near human mixed with some aquatic variety, and lanky. The man was a walking oddity.

He stepped out of the light and dropped down to the edge of the bed beside his battered boss, then spoke with an accent somewhere between a Euforian ganger and Corellian intergalactic common. "Present and accounted for, boss. Congratulations. You are the proud owner of one, stylish, home crafted, autographed, new cast."

She craned her throbbing head left to see a bruised arm set in a cleverly rigged "L" shape plaster cast, wrapped in nylon and lined with a cut up blanket for comfort. Signatures and doodles from her hosts littered it's surface and forced a chuckle that jostled her brain a little too roughly.

"You outdid yourself this time." She mused, noticing a crudely drawn black bird over the top of her hand and "painted" fingernails which had actually just been colored on with marker. "Your kids do this?"

"Sorry about your hand. Aeyo did it before I noticed and got upset when I tried to wash it off. She wanted you to feel pretty when you woke up from your nap." He paraphrased his daughter and reached for a bottle on the nightstand. "They love you, you know. Wouldn't stop asking about you. Here, drink up. You're probably dehydrated."

When she lifted her right hand to grasp the drink, bandages reminded her of the glass, glimmering blood, and how it felt to freefall into a pile of steel, window panes, and nails.

"Where's...the jedi?" Confused, she uttered between large gulps of vitamin water and her associate's eyes widened.

"So that's who roughed you up? A jedi traced you here?" There was obvious concern written all over his face and it reflected in his tone as he answered, "We didn't see anyone on the scene. Figured he fled. When I sent some boys out to look for the culprit they came back empty handed. What did he look like? What species? When we find him that Jedi is gonna be eating concrete!" But to his surprise, his boss shook her head and swallowed the last of her beverage. The rage building within him simmered, then settled.

"Don't focus on him. That's my job and I didn't do it well enough. I got cocky...didn't take him for such a threat and I figured I could wipe him out and be done in time to kill the- CRAP! What about Brenshot? You didn't kill him did you?"

Lorcan's expression settled into a Do You Take Me For An Amateur? scowl.

"Of course we didn't. Brenshot slept soundly last night and the boys went home. Falon might need some talking to. He's disappointed and angry that you'll probably want to reject the contract…" Kress furrowed her brows. "Why would I want to do that?" He stalled out, unable to find the right words. He knew his boss would be furious once she found out what kind of leader she almost placed in office for another four years.

"Governor Lysnader Oben-Sha...umm...I'm sorry boss, but our informant discovered something today about him on her shift during some office snooping…"

"Spit it out, Alascer!" She hissed, and he winced out the words. "Lysander dipped his coffers into an off world child slave ring. He's been taking youths from poor sectors of the city and selling them to fund his campaigns…"

From outside the bedroom door, Lorcan's two children overheard Kressara shouting a string of words they knew better than to repeat.




Eufornis Major
Sector 7: Business District
Jarol's Place, Bar and Pazaac
Four Days Later
Ink Still Won't Wash Off





Electronic thumping and the shrill tones of live performers filled the bar with lyrics in a language Kressara wasn't fluent enough to understand. Condensation dripped down her scarred up hand from the cold glass, swirling the melting ice absentmindedly while her associate sipped off of his. Lorcan licked the taste of hard liquor off his lips and side eyed the blonde at his side. She was still brooding over the whole Lysander business.

His unique voice rose over the music and an elbow gently nudged her side from the stool beside her. "Hey, cheer up. At least we know now. All we have to do is make sure the other guy wins."

Lorcan, always so well meaning. She set her glass down heavily against the bar and tapped the rim with her nail. Their bartender rushed over and filled it with amber liquid before wiping up accumulated moisture from the stone top they were resting against. Her flaxen locks, half pulled up into a messy bun and held in place with three ornamental hair sticks on the back of her head, waved side to side in a show of disagreement. She glanced his way with thick liner framed eyes to meet his cyberoptics. "That won't help. It'll make it worse. He'll just increase 'production' until he has enough to buy his way back into office. HE has to be stopped if we want to put an end to his disgusting side hustle and run this place the right way…"

Drug peddling and professional killing wasn't exactly benevolent work. Kressara Thryn was no saint and her plans for an expanding drug cartel could potentially sow a lot of wicked seeds across the planet and beyond, but one thing she couldn't stand was people who hurt kids. Particularly, people who sold them as slaves. If she still had one genuinely kind bone in her body, it was for children. Only real monsters preyed on younglings.

The azulian punk leaned in closer and whispered, "You weren't really going to sell his kid out to the sith, were you?" and Lorcan's boss snapped her head towards him fast enough to put a kink in her neck from the sling that supported her broken arm. Indignant, her reluctant admission slithered off of her tongue. "She's not even force sensitive, you idiot. I was bluffing...it worked didn't it? We've got him wrapped around our fingers now because of it. For a guy who sells kids, he must care about his own daughter enough to entertain our influences."

She straightened out and Lorcan moved back into an upright position for another sip of his alcohol.

"Besides, it's not like that matters now. His hobbies have thrown my whole plan out the window. No more immunity, no more shipyard, no more safety net...we're at square one and it's all because the guy promising us these resources is a foul piece of bantha sh-"

"Sure it changes things…" Kressara was interrupted by the buzzed, sharkish miscreant. He finished both his drink and his sentence with an extended hand to his much smaller employer. "But you'll think of something and I'll make it happen. Come on. Dancing makes you less prone to violent outbursts." She scoffed in return and pointed her chin at the crutch propped up beside her. "You forgetting something? This leg hurts like crazy."

But Lorcan rose from the stool, not that he was really rising. Even sitting on a tall chair those long legs still touched the ground while Kressara, supposed evil of the galaxy, dangled her legs almost a foot from the floor. As he did so, he issued a challenge with a saucy hip sway. "Boohoo. Want me to cut it off for you?"

"You know. I could kill you for that."

"I'm gonna request that song you like and dance without you."

Kressara glared dangerously at the punk. "Stop it."

"Can't. The music's got me, spoil sport." He shimmied towards the dance floor and Kressara rolled her eyes, then snatched up her crutch and glowered,

"You just want those Twi'leks in the corner to notice you."

Feeling less and less like the powerful, fear inspiring killer that she was supposed to be, the black bird of the sith climbed down from her stool and hobbled onto the dancefloor.