Ask A naked man has few secrets

Kayden Skyler

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Die Shize
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The tough but tender skin of the Yautkan revealed little in the way of secrets except for what the inside of a Yautkan looked like. To some that was enough. It bleeds. If it bleeds I can kill it. Kayden’s enemies would all bleed the same.

“He makes no complaints but this one is even less talkative than the bounty hunter,” the mortician called back. “Might have something to do with a missing head. He also smells like…burnt bacon?” Might have something to do with the missing flesh.

The blade peeled, cut beneath and sliced away, each stroke of the knife no less precise than the stroke of a saber.

Was it a girl? Kayden looked left, certain he heard a voice, saw only darkness. Or a boy? Looked right, more black. Who? Looked up, saw two eyes as yellow as the Yautkan’s—or a Sith’s. Ask your sister, Skyler.

When Kayden emerged from the darkness deeper in the cave, stepping into the light of a cookfire, he did not come alone.
One arm hung at his side while the other led the way, fingers curled toward the headless corpse, flayed and floating forward as silently as the darkness.

“Our injured friend has some pretty sweet equipment; a remote explosive in his chest armor, but I guess a certain Sith beat him to suicide. The explosive is now in the chest itself. Might prove a suitable deterrent to not giving us what we want, and giving it to us alive."

Kayden offered a shrug. "Tacky theatrics, perhaps, but I say there is power in a gesture, and a flayed man has no secrets...except for what's inside his chest, I guess."

The cave was dark, while the night sky was creeping closer, and that darkness would blot out the sun and blanket the forest by the time the Sith would be creeping upon the Daggers.


@Sicadorito
 

Cheriss Ktrame

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The comparison of the smell of the dead Yautkan to burnt bacon was enough to cause Cheriss’ stomach to turn. Who in their right mind would make that sort of connection? Frowning, she went back to stitching up her jacket with some strange, leathery material the Red Hearts had given her. She didn’t bother to ask what it was— she’d made that mistake with the needle they’d provided. In that specific case, Ponboo had pointed to a creature so mutilated she had no idea what it was. There was a broken bone at the side, and she had nearly given up then and there before being reminded of the fact that she’d be looking like a zombie or something for the rest of their time here.

So, her tank top could wait. After today though, she would definitely consider getting some real armor so she wouldn’t have to spend time doing this.

When Kayden brought up the explosive, she already knew what he’d done with it before the words came out of his mouth. Knowing him, she hadn’t expected anything else, but it didn’t make it any less nauseating.

“You’re sick, you know that?” she commented with raised eyebrows, looking from the corpse to Kayden’s dark eyes. “Those Daggers are in for a nasty surprise, and I almost feel sorry for them.” She set aside the makeshift needle she’d been using and stood up, jacket draped over her arm.

“Let’s get moving.” With her lightsaber at her side, she had everything she needed. As for their Yautkan-bomb, she glanced at Kayden with a slight smile and flicked him lightly on his right shoulder. “You can carry our friend there, if you want. I, on the other hand, am not touching him.”

With that, she shrugged on her jacket and moved past him towards the entrance of the cave. The den of the Daggers awaited the two Sith, and soon their secrets would be as naked as the Yautkan they brought with them.

@Die Shize
 

Kayden Skyler

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As his Champion commanded, Kayden carried their floating flayed friend from the cave to the den, lightsaber lighting up the dark.

The Daggers’ den began with a great metal door leading to an underground compound.
“Looks Imperial,” the other Champion noted. “And forgotten. Like the Empire.” Whether anyone would remember the bunker's new owners was mostly up to them. But mostly up to me. “Can you please get the door?” Kayden offered. “My hands are tied.”

The door opened but blasterfire did not open with it. Anyone might have half-expected a barrage of bolts, but all was quiet in the corridor that sloped down into the earth.

“Hold up,” Kayden beckoned his companion. “He’ll lead.” The Yautkan moved along, the vanguard of the Sith party, a bright red light trailing behind him.

“Hear that?” Voices, these ones more intelligible to Cheriss than the language of Ewoks. Suddenly the other end of the corridor came alive with light. And a pack of dogs.

“What…What is that!?” A Twi’lek gestured his blaster toward the floating corpse with a stump for a skull.

“You don’t recognize your Yautkan assassin?”

A Rodian shook his head. A Bothan butted in. “What the farkle's a Yautkan assassin?”

“Oops.”
Kayden corrected his mistake by correcting the corpse’s limbs. In a matter of instants, bones break every which way. Knees and elbows snap the wrong way, fingers pop backwards and toes snap in two.

“WHAT THE KARKING KARK!?” Cried some horrified this that or the other.

“KRIFF IS THAT!?”

“SHOOT ‘EM! SHOOT ‘EM ALL!”


Nope. Lightsaber held up to block stray bolts, Kayden opened his free hand and made his floating friend fly. The corpse crashed into a howling pack of dogs, Daggers as they called themselves, and exploded, fire and blood.



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Cheriss Ktrame

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Cheriss would walk beside Kayden, keeping in mind to stay a good distance away from the flayed corpse in front of her. As expected, the so-called Daggers were all bark and no bite upon seeing the gift the pair of Sith had brought with them. Kayden tossed the body at them, it exploded, and the champion moved right past with her blade extended at her side.

Before long they were confronted by a second group of mercenaries, whose faces promptly turned pale upon seeing the lightsaber in Kayden’s hand and the bloody mess behind the two Sith. She didn’t give them much time to react before she lifted a Duros up with the Force with her free hand and began to squeeze. She pulled him back until she was holding him right in front of her and Kayden as if daring them to shoot. For a group of criminals, they did seem to care about their comrade, and they lowered their blasters.

“Where is Dr. Sawin?” Cheriss’ voice was cold. First the uncooperative bounty hunter, then the Yautkan, and now more gutless wrenches in their way, she’d had enough from these Daggers. Whatever pity she had for them before was as gone as the corpse of their assassin.

“He’s on the detention level. Please, let him go!”
Raising an eyebrow, she couldn’t help a glance in Kayden’s direction.

“That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” She squeezed a little harder, heard a crack, then dropped the Duros.

“Throw your blasters down and take us there,” she ordered. They would have little choice but to comply, with two lightsabers ready to end them at any moment. Once the remaining two mercs nodded shakily and turned around, their blasters clattering on the ground, Cheriss would follow them to wherever they kept their prisoners.

@Die Shize
 

Kayden Skyler

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Kayden couldn't help but admire Cheriss' form and technique, the power in her hand as predator clamped prey between jaws, and of course her other form as he blinked up from her lower half.

“Like old times,” one Sith answered the other. Blasters greeted the ground just then before boots kissed the floor.

The two guards looked ready to piss themselves by the time they arrived at the detention center. “Open the door,” Kayden commanded.

“Our boss will have our hides if we do!”

Kayden overlooked the irony there and simply tilted his head. That guard fell to the floor after his neck popped and left one guard standing. “Open the door, please.” That guard complied in a heartbeat.

Another corridor opened up, shields of crimson energy lining either side, and blaster bolts soaring toward the Sith from a lone jailer at the other end.

Kayden once again cast Force Shield in the form of a squealing guard floating in front of his body. He had opened the door only to get riddled with blaster burns, allowing Cheriss to deal with the jailer.

Present threats eliminated, the Sith combed the prison cells, counting nameless numbers, drawing closer to the package.

“Ah, familiar faces!” A curious Cerean rose from his cot and stepped toward the barrier. Dr. Maff Sawin looked quite serene under the circumstances. “I have so much to tell you.”

“Tell us on the way. We’re getting you out of here, doctor.” The sword of Kayden cut away at a console and freed the bird from its cage as boots thundered toward the party of three. They were out of earshot for now but he could hear farther than his ears.

"This bunker knows too much. We need to kill everyone in it, set fire to the hive and watch the smoke from the sky." He looked around the walls, saw through them all the evidence that had to melt away. "Only way to be sure."


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Cheriss Ktrame

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Cheriss couldn’t help rolling her eyes as the two guards fretted about the wrath of their boss. After all they’d seen, that was what they were worried about? Kayden soon put them in their place, however, and the remaining guard was more than happy to open the door.

There was one more small obstacle in the way, and this time it took the form of the jailer. As Kayden used the body of the fallen guard as a shield, Cheriss would deflect a bolt right into his chest, sheathing her lightsaber after she saw that he wasn’t moving.

When they found their scientist, Cheriss was already looking for a way to get rid of the evidence. Fortunately, there was an answer to that in the jailer’s hand. She could see it from here— a remote that would initiate a lockdown of the entire compound, locking each and every single door from both sides. It could be overridden, but by then it would be too late. Before the Sith made their exit in the halls, she would pull the device towards her and put it in her pocket.

The footsteps were coming closer now, and she turned back to Kayden.

“I’ll take care of that. Let’s get the doctor out of here first.” She would trail a little behind them as they moved quickly through the halls, facing little opposition as they retraced their route. Prisoners banged on the walls, begging to be let out, but she paid them no mind as she recalled a room with a warning mark she’d seen on the way in, close to the entrance.

Soon enough they’d passed it, and when she opened the door, she found the inside to be a large storage room crammed with barrels of fuel for starfighters and freighters alike. Perfect. Whether Kayden stayed to help or not, she would extend a hand to push one after the other onto the ground, breaking the locks and the lids, watching as the fuel pooled out onto the floor.

“Time to go,” she warned both Kayden and Sawin as the liquid slowly spread closer and the group made their way out. At the very last moment, she activated her lightsaber, lightly touched the tip to the fuel, and didn’t stay to watch as the entrance suddenly burst into flame behind her. Just in time, too. The footsteps were running now, and she could hear shouting turn into screaming just as the blast doors began to close and the ground shuddered with the force of an explosion.

“All the evidence, gone,” she commented with satisfaction, sheathing her lightsaber and putting it back into the inner pocket of her jacket.

@Die Shize
 

Kayden Skyler

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Outside the ruins that became the bunker, Kayden looked back and listened to the dead. They were trapped behind a door that would never need to open again.

“They thought they found a hole to call home.” Even through the door he could still hear their screams. “They can have it.”

“They wanted my research,” voiced Sawin, looking somewhat irritated as he peeled the wings of a butterfly. “Wanted to sell it instead of fund it, the fools!”

“What else do you have to tell us?” Kayden inquired, studying the good doctor as he studied the sky. For a moment, Kayden could only wonder. Does he think it too? Can we fly without wings?

“They had a buyer, Thur Rashnik, a Trandoshan businessman funding research of his own.” Sawin looked between his two partners, reconnected the two wings, held them up. “To amalgamate life and death.”

So, Kayden thought. We have a rival. Rivals were enemies, of course, and enemies were made to bleed. “If this is true then this Trandoshan’s data could very well be combined with our own. Where might we find him?”

“Hmm,”
Sawin stroked his chin, turned back to the stars, pointed. “There. That system, that world.” Apparently he knew his astronomy. “He is stationed on Thila.”


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Cheriss Ktrame

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Cheriss leaned against a tree as she watched Sawin pick at the wings of a butterfly. He was quite similar to Kayden, she thought, and not for the first time. Both were mad scientists in a way, but both had much to give. While their methods were questionable, the results couldn’t be argued with and that made them valuable.

This competitor won’t be competing for much longer. Their plans would not be put to a halt because of some rabid lizard-man— in fact, his data could be an asset, and Cheriss nodded along at Kayden’s statement. “What is his will be ours,” she confirmed.

Soon, the revelation came that he was on Thila. That was good— it was no-man’s land, not heavily involved with any faction, so they wouldn’t have to worry about encountering any major authorities there. Even if other Sith were to find out, including her own apprentice, she was certain that they would want some part of it for themselves.

“In that case, it should be smooth sailing there for Kayden and I,” she said, meeting the eyes of the other Sith before turning to Sawin. “Once we drop you off at the lab, of course. And this time, please let us know if you’re going out. We would hate to lose you.” Again.

Sawin smiled at that. “Of course, whatever you say. I go where the money flows.” Accepting his answer, Cheriss gave him a nod and the group would continue on to their destination. She could almost see what they would create, what new powers would be discovered after their research was complete. It hovered just out of reach, what she and others had been searching for millennia, but it was close. It had to be. They just needed more time, and time they had.

For the best way to predict the future is to create it.

[Exit Cheriss]

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Kayden Skyler

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Cheriss the Champion was, in a sense, not much different to any other Sith Kayden had crossed paths with, and he had not crossed paths with many. Such encounters tended to go either way when either hunter considered itself the apex predator.

For half a heartbeat, however, as the two Sith’s eyes met, Kayden saw fire in his future. In the flames he glimpsed those bold, brown, beautiful eyes gazing back at him, felt soft skin, heard himself laugh, heard a woman's voice scream his name, felt something tear at his flesh like claws across a back, and he wondered.

The moment passed and the present came back. In it was one certainty: Cheriss was not your everyday darksider. She was after something more, something greater, whether she knew it or not. Kayden was too. If he wasn't, their relationship would not have lasted this long.

Of late, the captain of Silence had given his companion a glimpse of his darker side, with a hint of madness. Yet, the man knew no bounds to building the future, and that included both of theirs. It is already written. A sea of blood will drown this galaxy. And I shall sail it.

“Come along, doctor,” Kayden sighed as Sawin found another butterfly. "Must you peel apart every living creature you come across?” He shook his head as the party made for their ships, one with a wall to drape a Yautkan’s skin. “I mean, what are we, savages?”

[EXIT KAYDEN SKYLER]

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