Ask Iron Beastmasters

[Merek Vizsla]

Merek finished his macabre decorating as Beau’s slicing had completed. With a satisfied nod, he turned to regard the thieving whelp who tried to escape, growing eerily silent at the display. This was who dared try and peddle off their ancestral war machine technology? This thing could barely fend for itself, let alone be dangerous enough to make an enemy of the Mandalorians. The fact that this was what they had come to execute offended him, and he offered a silent prayer to Kad to forgive him for even wasting the energy in killing it.

His revulsion amplified when Beau pointed out that he’d evacuated his bowels, not out of disgust for the thing’s shat pants, but because the stench of fear and cowardice was so overwhelming to him. Merek stood stock still as Beau dragged the thief by its wing, beskad still in hand. He was sure he looked like something out of a horror story – armor and blade both dripping with the blood of the thief’s former guards – and that would only further serve their purpose here. He needed everyone to witness the horrors they could commit. It would ensure this never happened again.

The Toydarian whimpered even more pitifully as he neared Merek, but the Vizsla man did not even look at him. His focus on turned to Beau as he spoke. ”To the stage, then,” he said in the shared tongue of their people, ”Our audience awaits.”

The crowd was in a hushed panic, uncertain as to why everything had been sealed and plunged into darkness for so long. From what he could gather, the general consensus was, after the stage lights had been turned back on, that this was for theatrical flair. There would be a show, alright, but not the one they wanted to see. Beau and Merek would walk onto the stage, their quarry between the two of them. The murmurs of the crowd increased to a dull roar before Merek raised his bloody beskad into the air, silencing them.

”People of Toydaria!” he shouted out, his speech rough and his accent thick, ”Gaze upon this thief!” With his free hand, he would grip the other wing of the Toydarian, yanking him up on display. The crowd balked, returning to its murmur. Several people pointed in alarm, either directing attention to the blood-soaked Mandalorians or the injured auctioneer.

”A thief,” he repeated, ”Who stole from the children of Mandalore for his own gain.” The Toydarian began to weep pathetically as Merek continued, speaking in a mixture between its native tongue and Basic, pleading for mercy. ”But we have come for him, and today you learn the price of his crimes.”

If Beau hadn’t let the Toydarian go by now, Merek would rip it free from his grasp, then toss it onto the stage in front of them. It buckled and collapsed, looking up at the Mandalorians, but Merek was focused on the crowd. ”The fate of all who cross the Mandalorians!” he shouted out, bringing up his wrist-flamer and igniting it, engulfing the Toydarian in flames. He kept the gout of fire going for several seconds while the crowd shrieked in horror, only barely louder than the Toydarian’s own agonized wailing. The pitiful wretch writhed and rolled along the stage, burning alive in full view of everyone in the building.

It was a terrible display.

@Wit @Arcangel

 

[Beau]

Once they were on the stage Merek seemed to come into his own, taking over the crowd's attention like a natural. Letting go of the Toydarian once Merek had him, Beau stepped back, letting the Vizsla and his query take center stage. On a whim he started recording. He watched as Merek went about his act, though his attention was not on the other Madnalroan or the Toydarian, but the crowd. He could see the terror in their eyes, capturing the pure fear reflected in them.

As flames erupted from Merek's gauntlet Beau returned his focus to the stage, capturing the Toydarian getting burnt to a crip, thrashing about till the life finally left him. The crowd was screaming, panic taking hold, many started trying to run for the exit. The doors were of course locked, curtesy of Gett'se, and all they could do was bang wildly at the door.

Beau continued recording as he stepped forward and jumped off the stage, and a single shot was fired from his blaster, which hit the door leading out from the auction hall. The crowd parted, and he walked unobstructed to the exit.

"There is a price to be paid for crossing a Mandalorian, remember that." The words rang out over the din, and a hush fell over the panicked crowd as it parted like the seas before Bendu, the Mandalorian walking unobstructed. "Remember what you saw here today," he said as he reached the door, and a kick sent it crashing open, the prior shot having hit at exactly the right spot to weaken the lock that held it closed, "remember why you lived, and he didn't."

With that he turned around and started walking back towards the stage. The patrons nearest the exit hesitated, expecting a trap of some sort. But when he made no move to block their exit they started rushing out, others following their lead soon after. «That should keep any prying eyes occupied,» he switched back to the private comm channel, «head out the way we came?»

@Arcangel @Painus

 

[Gett'se Vizsla]

Gett'se watched the action on stage from the point of view of the cameras in the auction hall, his eyes flicking from the performance, the hallway camera, and the progress bar that was slowly crawling across the top of the screen. He could somewhat hear Merek, the warrior shouting loudly. He winced as Merek engulfed the Toydarian in flames, and could hear the terrified screams of the crowd as the Toydarian thief writhed and rolled on the stage in agony.

It was terrifying.

Gett'se wondered if he would have gone with such a display if it was him doing this. He shook his head. No, he probably would have just cut the thief's head off. The cruelty certainly got the point across, though the human inside of him shrunk from the violence, there in the vault, alone and watching through a screen.

No one would ever know his doubts however.

He was a Mandalorian, and the iron skin of the Beskar'gam protected more than his body. The shell that he wore shielded him from the horror, granting him a heart of beskar for he was not a man. He was a Mando'ade. A child of Mandalore.

Those strangers that shrieked in horror were not his kind or kin, none of them wore the iron skin. All of them had been willing, eager, to steal from Mandalore this night. Aruetti. Outsiders. All of them enemies, or potential enemies.

A flash of movement from the hallway camera showed one of the mercenaries that had been security for the building approaching the vault. Gett'se turned his attention from the screen and drew his blaster, aiming it at the doorway. The face of a Weequay peeked the corner before exploding as he pulled the trigger. Holstering his blaster once more, he looked at the screen to see the progress bar hit the end of the screen and disappear. All done.

He popped the datachip from the slicing tool and popped the seal on his helmet with a quiet hiss. He watched Beau kick the door open, watched the aruetii hesitate, and then flee. Lifting his helmet slightly, he put the datachip in his mouth and moved it to his cheek with his tongue, the coppery metal taste similar to blood. Sealing his helmet once more, he pulled the cable from the data module. Grabbing the file storage device out of the vault, he tapped his helmet and unmuted his comlink as Beau's voice came through it.

"All done here." He said, stowing the signal trace back in it's pouch, continuing to speak. "Yeah. Out the way we came. I'll wipe the camera bank so they don't know exactly what happened here. We want to leave a message here, not a record of our tactics for the aruetii to study" Business concluded in the vault, he turned and walked through the door, down the hallway where Merek had left another savage show of violence for what would come to all who crossed Mandalore. A hallway lined with bodies, a Mandalorian skull of red blood dripping on the wall. Gett'se turned his head from the display and continued down the hall where he would meet the others at the crossroads.

@Painus @Wit

 

[Merek Vizsla]

Merek’s chest rose and fell with heaving breaths. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, drowning out the screams-turned-gurgles of the immolated Toydarian, whose body bubbled and crackled with the flames. Beau provided the crowd the means to escape, and they surged from the building likes bats out of hell, shrieking and weeping.

He felt no sympathy for them; each one was conniving and cutthroat, seeking to lay claim to ancient technology that none but the Mandalorians had employed for millennia. His was a dark heart for wretched outsiders and they would see nothing in the way of mercy from him. These were not his people, nor would he treat them with the compassion he would show his kindred, but there was no glory in slaughtering unarmed whelps. They would flee in terror and spread the tale of their horrors, and none would doubt the swiftness of Mandalorian justice.

Silent, Merek turned and gestured for Beau to follow him. He strode past the grim effigies he had erected of the corpses, reverently dipped his head to the bleeding icon of his people, and began to head towards the intersection in the corridor. When they had met with Gett’se, he would nod his head to the man, then beckon him to follow as they vacated the premises.

”Hold no doubt in your hearts, brothers,” he remarked to the other two, ”This day was grim for the people of this settlement, but such is necessary to further our people.” He stepped over a butchered corpse, leaving behind warm, bloody boot-prints in his wake. The back halls of this auction house had become a charnel den, indeed. The cloying stench of death and decay hung in the air like a fog, and already the bloatflies and other insects began to swarm over the corpses, gorging themselves. ”For the glory of Mandalore,” he repeated again, reverent.

He stepped out into the sunlight, quickly panning his head around to scan the area. The authorities would surely be arriving soon, now that the panicked crowd had gotten out and hysteria was beginning to spread. He could hear muffled sirens in the distance alongside shrieking citizens, and he knew that this was their cue to promptly make their exit.

@Wit @Arcangel

 

[Beau]

«This is the way.» The words escaped Beau's lips in response to Merek tried to convince them of the necessity of his actions, or was he trying to convince himself? Or was the Vizsla's mind so different from his own that he was completely off point and simply couldn't comprehend what was going on that fucked up brain of his.

He hadn't been opposed to be spectacle the man had put up, but like Gett'se he had to wonder if he events would have played like they had without Merek's presence. Either way, he did agree that the spectacle would serve its purpose, it would remind these fools they were not to be messed with.

Following the others towards the exit, he paused near the janitor's closet Merek had discovered earlier and turned around to stare down the corridor. He pulled out his blaster and took a single shot, hitting the fire alarm on the ceiling. As he stepped out of the fire alarms started blaring, further adding to the chaos of the aftermath of their visit.

The left the building and started walking away, and as they reached the first fork in the road Beau raised a hand to bid farewell as he turned down one side. It was best if they found their own ways back to their ships, in case anyone tried following them from the auction house, they would have to follow three paths instead of one.

«Shoot straight brothers,» he said as he started moving, «till next time.»

@Arcangel @Painus

 

[Gett'se Vizsla]

Gett'se joined his battle brothers outside the building, noting the time as they exited. The operation had gone well, they had entered with stealth and then executed their objective swiftly and with a brutality of violence that would send a clear message to anyone who wished to steal from Mandalore again.

"This is the Way." He repeated as he listened to Beau and Merek, taking the laters advice. He would leave his doubts behind in the bloody corridors of the auction hall, the necessity of their choices burning firmly in his mind. The Children of Mandalore above all else. Our people.

He realized in that moment of clarity that there was no action he wouldn't take, no blood he wouldn't spill for Mandalore. Even if that meant spilling his own lifeblood on the fields of battle, he would do so with pride, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brethren against their enemies.

Leaving Beau and Merek with a nod, Gett'se would make his way to a safe position not too far from the auction hall. Crouching, hidden in a walled alcove, Gett'se pulled his slicer rig out. Still in range of the signal booster, he saved a few images and video files from the database. A record of their actions for the Mand'alor. Once he was satisfied with what he had kept, he wiped the video tapes from the security systems memory.

He watched the authorities enter the building through the cameras. Watched their reactions to the violence they had sewn. One Toydarian vomited at the display of violence on stage, sickened by the shriveled and burnt husk they had left behind. He watched the shocked reaction of the authorities as they entered the hallway where Merek had left his art project. Watched them become fearful at the sight. Then, when they reached the security room, he pressed a button on the signal tracer. Inside the security room, the signal booster popped, its delicate workings vaporized by a miniaturized explosive that left not much to recover but a melted piece of junk.

Satisfied, Gett'se stowed his gear one last time and walked away, their objective secure in a pouch on his belt. There was much more work to do. Much more blood to spill. He would not rest until Mandalore, and House Vizsla, were whole once again.

For the glory of Mandalore.

/exit threat.

@Painus @Wit