Hellsent

[Luci]

Enjoy this weird M-Rated exposition post. Although sometimes it's subtle, Luci is addressing several different storylines with other pcs, including Harlan Higgs, Dr Doom, Yuki, Renji, and Jacket.

***

Luci opens her kaleidoscopic eyes and takes in the starkly unfamiliar surroundings of her small bedroom. Although she had gone to sleep in this very bed just one night ago, she had spent an unquantifiable amount of relative time in the Astral Realm, getting lost deep within the dream layers of herself and her companions. The journey has changed her; Luci breathes in, and the world seemed to breath with her. She observes that her already tenuous grip on reality is now hanging by a thread as the Astral Realm juxtaposes itself ever stronger into Luci's perception of Corruscant.

The stained and peeling wallpaper is lit dimly by her multi-colored bio-luminescence, projecting a softly shifting light show on her otherwise bleak living space. Luci sits up and reaches a hand out shakily for a cigarette stubbed out in the ashtray next to her bed and lights it. The smoke she exhales is a vibrant electric blue, and she watches it envelope her body. She runs a hand through her long hair, causing a small cascade of glitter to fall, and she stretches. She remembers that Yuki had spent the night with her, so long ago it seems, and she sees that he is not there, and she knows where he is.

Luci seems to stare off into the distance as she searches mentally for a concentrated ball of her power; a car bomb. She realizes it has been discharged, and sighs. She reaches into a drawer next to her bed and pulls out a sharp arrowhead, then cuts deep into her palm, causing metallic rainbow blood to pool in her hand. She then solemnly dips her three fingers into the blood and wipes three lines of glowing warpaint on her face under each eye.

The President of the Westside Knife Ear Warriors gets out of bed and picks out a cute blue spaghetti strap to throw on. The Astral Realm starts to grow louder in her ears, and she realizes she is hearing the thoughts of Weasel as she comes up the stairs to Luci's room. The President of the Westside Hufflepunks has a strange kind of emotion boiling up inside her; apprehension. Luci opens the door a second before Weasel knocks.

Weasel's pierced face registers surprise only for a moment, and the she takes in the lines of warpaint the mark Luci as the President of the Westside Knife Ear Warriors.

"Well," says Weasel neutrally. "I guess you've heard the news, President Perky Tits."

***

It seemed that assassination is not a dealbreaker for Weasel, inasmuch as Moss Illidian, the former President of the Westside Knife Ear Warrirors, was a fucking pain her ass. Luci is spiking Weasle's bright red mohawk, a cigarette hanging from her lip, as the punk rawk witch briefs her on the latest gang politics. Technically, Weasel and the Hufflepunks are a relatively ungoverned drug cartel that allies with the Westside against the Orc Mafia for matters of convenience. Unofficially, Weasel has become Luci's second in command, as Luci continues to make power plays to gain influence over the Westside council. Weasel follows the advice and sometimes the orders of Luci, and keeps an ear out for her on the street.

"So," Weasel continues as Luci straightens the mohawk. "We found the gang that wiped out the Metalheads. A new outfit, the Gentlemen Jacks. They're strong, they have a serious street presence, and they know how to work with the neighborhood, and they got good product. That Amaranth, it's not hard stuff, but it's fucking popular. So I sent Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dipshit to go check out the show, and the Jacks had an Ace in the Hole."

Stupid wordplay aside, Luci knows enough Corruscant street slang to pick up the reference.

"A Prime?" Luci asks curiously. Weasel nods, fucking up Luci's attempt to keep the mohawk standing, as usual.

"Yeah, a big one." the witch says. "Harlan Higgs. He's something else, his gang has a lock on Little New York, but he's not on good terms with the tusk fuckers. The twins weren't the only ones who decided to take a look at the Cody Chode show. A pack of Ork Warryorz came by too, looks like Gorgosh's gang, but we can't be sure, the corpses were pretty fucked. They tried shooting up the place, but the Jacks shut the down hard. After that, we managed to open up an avenue for negotiations. Part of that is taking care of that thing though."

Luci nods, thinking, as she hands the ciggarrette to Weasel. Weasel instead reaches up and passes a ticket into Luci's hand. Luci sees the Astral realm layer itself over reality, and a spiral pattern and glowing purple cross appear to pulse on the ticket.

"That's for you." Weasel adds. "He says you'd know how to get in contact with him."

Luci nods, then steps away from Weasel.

She shakes her trusty magic spraycan and then paints a cartoony icon of a rabbit in white on her wall. The rabbit's eyes blink.

Luci holds the ticket up to the painting, and the rabbit's nose twitches as it smells the ticket. Luci then leans in to whisper into the rabbit's ear. The rabbit nods, and moments later is bounding out the window, still two dimensional, a living painting scurrying to deliver a message. Weasel does not seem phased.

"And that's just the tip of the cock," Weasel says. "You won't believe what Chirpa got his hands on."

Luci sighs. "Is this what being President is like?" she asks.

Weasel grins and turns to face Luci, her eyes mischievous.

"There are perks."

***

The sex was good, Luci reflects as she watches the Hufflepunk shimmy into her jeans. The punk rock gangster was rough, but very eager, and very experienced despite her young age.

"But yeah," says the Hufflepunk casually, her face nearly as red as her hair, breathing heavily. "Chirpa scrounged up some new tech, some badass droid. He says he thinks he can make more, reverse engineer them you know? He wants to use them for that job in T6, but he says it will cost some money. He'll need at least-"

"Give it to him," Luci says without hesitation.

Weasel nods, her mohawk wobbling.

***

"So," says Weasel casually to Luci as the women walk down the winding staircase of the Hufflepunk Hideout. "Are you going to tell me why to have a dataverse device duct-taped to your hand?"

Luci just shrugs. "I'm expecting a visitor."

Weasel grins. "You got along with the last one pretty well, right? And now I see why..."

***

"What the fuck is this?" Luci asks reasonably. Five scantily clad women are passed out in a pile of drug paraphernalia in the living room. Two of them Luci recognize as Danny and Dungbomb, a pair of reasonably competent Hufflepunks. The other three are Twi'leks that Luci has never seen before.

"Some blow ins," says Weasel. "My goons gotta have fun too."

Luci claps her hands loudly, startling the women into groggy, head-achey wakefulness. Danny and Dungbomb leap up when they see Weasel and Luci's stern faces, and the Twi'lek take their cue and stand sheepishly next to them. All the girls are trying not to giggle. Luci eyes them suspiciously, particularly a green Twi'lek with Asain features and big scared eyes.

"Hmm," Luci says as she sizes them up. "I got some work for you girls."

***

[Kuzuru]

If there was anything that Kuzuru was, and he was many things, punctual would be it. He never much cared for or understood the desire to be fashionably late or the urge to procrastinate, especially when it came to something he truly enjoyed. Just as he never understood the allure to showing up unreasonably early, to him either extreme seemed unnecessarily rude. So when he arrived in Coruscant with time to spare it was this reason above all others that he didn’t head straight to Luci’s abode. Not that he wasn’t excited for their upcoming “date”, far from it, but when one was in the business of hunting heads one would be foolish to trade human politeness for overeagerness. Besides Coruscant intrigued him and this gave him a proper excuse to explore the crown jewel of the Empire.

Tier One, however, turned his gut over. One massive tourist trap covered in a sterile shell of authority and regulation. How boring. Tier Two wasn’t much better, though it did lack some of the pretentious nature that its big brother had. Tier Three and Tier Four was where the demon began to feel more comfortable. Big brother’s omnipresence began to dissolve and give way to the seedy eye of gangs and other miscreants. Sex, drugs, and a dissolution of human morality was on sale here, and baby, people were buying. As much as the demon would have loved to poke his nose around, his mark was deeper yet. Tier Five was his favorite yet, keeping the questionable ethics of Tier Four, but forgoing the wealth. Violence was in the air and it was positively electric.

Kuzuru sniffed the air and grinned. This was the kind of humanity that got his rocks off. Those living so close to their true nature. They fight and they fuck and they live life to a more visceral degree than their posh counterparts. For a long while the demon simply wandered about, blending into his environment and observing with reserved excitement. Something subconscious pinged at him and forced him to stop. His eyes were drawn to a couple of punks. It was hard not to notice them they were skeezy peacocks decked head to toe in bright colors and sparkling metal. Kuzuru posted up across the street from them and leaned against a graffiti covered wall.

They turned into an alleyway and sparked up. For a while they stood there talking and making frantic motions with their hands. They’d glance over at Kuzuru and he’d pretend to not notice them. After a bit Kuzuru noticed a well dressed man walking down the street. The man was carrying a battered suitcase and looked to be rather haggard. As he passed the alleyway the two punks stepped out and blocked his path. After a few seconds of heated arguing a switchblade flashed into existence and found its home pressed against the business man’s throat. The other punk ripped the suitcase from his hand and the duo bolted. They didn’t make it far. The suit reached inside his blazer and drew a chrome-plated handgun. He fired without hesitation, striking both punks in the back with a series of shots. It took a few moments for the sudden shock and bloodloss to do the trick, but they went down before the man holstered his gun. Kuzuru watched as the man grabbed his suitcase, searched the ground for bullet cases, grabbed them, and dipped out.

“What a great appetizer,” Kuzuru smiled to himself and checked the time.

It took him the better part of an hour to arrive. He chose to walk, partially because traffic was shit, and partially because he hoped to see more acts of random violence. Much to his disappointment he saw little else worth seeing. Tier Five was punctuated with bright and colorful acts of violence, but the space between the brutality was a grey and mundane experience. The place looked rather unassuming. It certainly wasn’t a fortress carved into the side of a mountain, but rather the sort of depressed looking structure that one would expect of a rough city. However there was a splash of life to be found in the smattering of spray-painted graffiti and art that covered its otherwise muted walls. The demon adjusted his hoodie and ran a hand through his hair. He popped a mint and knocked on the front door.

“Anyone home?!” he shouted with a sheen of sarcasm, “your order of one badass bounty hunter has arrived in the flesh, better hurry up, he’d be disappointed if you kept him waiting too long!”

[Luci]

The lock to the front door of the Hufflepunk Hideout clicks open.

***

Kuzuru's smile does not falter as he wanders in confidently.

Broken bottles of Butterbeer litter the creaking floor of the living room, mixed here and there with odd bits of drug paraphanelia. The walls are alive with moving graffiti, both from Luci and the Hufflepunk gangsters who have learned her tricks. What furniture there was in the room has been pushed to the sides, the old decaying couches blocking all the doors except the front. The windows are boarded up, the only light comes from a buzzing florescent bulb in the ceiling, and of course, Luci.

She sits calmly in the center of the room in a tiny pink plastic chair, her elbows on a tiny pink plastic table, her bioluminescent glow swirling weirdly. She smiles at Kuzuru when he enters and waves with her right hand, then motions for him to sit in the adjacent tiny plastic seat.

Kuzuru notes that duct-taped to Luci's left hand is a Mobile Dataverse Devise.

He slowly sits down.

***

The fake tea gets old fast.

"Where's the Deathblades?" the demon asks of his prepubescent fan club. The gang of anime orphans were huge fans of the Ashen Blades, and would have been overjoyed at the opportunity to meet the leader, Kuzuru.

Luci sips her nonexistent tea. "They have business to attend to," she says without exposition.

Silence. Kuzuru can feel the strange, druggy tentacle of Luci's astral presence trying to worm into his mind, but he shakes it off.

"Hey," he says suddenly. "If I helped out you and Foghorn back in that dream shouldn't I get some kind of cut?"

Luci nods. Her eyes focus and unfocus, tracing strange geometric symbols across her pupils.

"About a hundred OM," she says breathilly.

Kuzuru pauses. "This isn't about the money, Luci. You can't buy your way out."

The psychedelic girl shrugs. "I know you're not about the money," she says as she cracks a wide smile, revealing a set of sparkling diamond encrusted teeth. "Because I AM about the money."

Luci chews on her finger lightly as turns her strange gaze towards Kuzuru, her iris's fluctuating extremely fast. The demon returns a cocky smile.

"I'm not guaranteeing anything," he says fairly. "But you might be able to fuck your way out."

Luci giggles and bats her eyelashes. "I dunno, I think you might be too rough for me, cutie."

Luci lights a cigarette awkwardly, with one hand.

"What's that for?" the bounty hunter asks finally, pointing to the Mobile Dataverse Device taped to her hand. "Gonna call my Mommy?"

Luci's eyes unfocus for a moment, the kaleidoscope widening, as she seems to stare off into space. It is several seconds before she replies. "Yes," she says simply.

Kuzuru frowns. "I'm bored. This tea party was your last shot," the demon says as he cracks his neck.

Luci calmly shakes her head, causing little bits of glitter to fall from her hair. "No Renji, this is YOUR last shot."

Luci tilts the screen of the Mobile Dataverse Device so he can see it.

***

BOUNTY

Subject: Kuzuru/Renji Kiyomasa

Reward (Dead): 1000 OM

Last Seen: 76 West Hover Avenue, Teir-5, Corruscant, 3:30 PM

Status: Pending Activation

***

Luci leans back in her seat and blows out a thick cloud of rainbow smoke.

"Because I'm ALL about the money, and so is the rest of the Omniverse," she says as she stretches. "So here's my offer."

Luci's eyes focus, stop fluctuating, and become the glowing orbs Kuzuru remembers from the Astral Realm.

"600 OM for a treaty. That means you, and every member of the Ashen Blades, agree to never attack any Westside Gangster, and vice versa, forever."

Luci's eyes shine brightly through the cloud of smoke.

"If you decline, I'll press this button, give you a 1000 OM bounty, and I'll vanish," she says. Her face and tone seems apologetic. "And you'll never ever catch me, because I'm just too fast for you Renji. So please, for everyone's sake, fuck off, and stay fucked off?"

[Kuzuru]

The demon paused. His narrow eyes rested on the screen of Luci’s dataverse device. That was a lot of OM, every jackoff looking for a payout would be on his ass. Furthermore there was that sloppy tendril of hers pawing at his mind. He locked eyes with her and she just smiled politely. Kuzuru exhaled and leaned back in his plastic chair. Outside a commercial truck rumbled past, rattling windows and shaking the floorboards. The demon gripped his teacup between two fingers, pretended to take a sip, and stood up.
 
“You’d do well to be careful snooping around in other people’s heads,” he said, his voice adopting a serious tone, “you never know what you might find, plus it’s quite rude.”
 
She shrugged.
 
Kuzuru waved away the remnants of another cloud of rainbow smoke. The room seemed to breath, pulsing with painted life. A snake slithered across the wall, its body a menagerie of colors. The demon turned his back on the dreamer and walked over to the painted serpent. He studied it for a moment before pressing his thumb against the snake’s skull. It writhed and thrashed against his pin.
 
“You think you’re the first person to try running away?” he asked, and continued without waiting for an answer, “I can catch you.”
 
“You underestimate just how fast I am,” she replied.
 
“You underestimate my persistence, and the chase will just make me want you that much more,” he said, keeping his eyes on the wriggling cobra beneath his thumb.
 
“In half a second I can be five-hundred feet away from here, and you’ll never find me afterwards,” she smiled as the paint melted from her face. It shifted and melded into a more mundane face, one that was unfamiliar to Kuzuru.
 
“You ever hear of a vita compass?” he said, “It sniffs out your essence, and no matter what mask you wear darling your essence doesn’t change.”
 
Another truck trundled past. The snake shuddered and fell limp, its body melting into an unrecognizable blob of colors. Kuzuru pulled his thumb away, revealing a small hole punch into the wall where the snake’s head had been. An inch-and-a-half long spike jutted out from the pad of his thumb and after a few seconds it receeded beneath his skin. He glanced at the dataverse device and for a moment he considered trying to lop her hand off at the wrist. If she was reading his mind, he figured, she was playing it pretty fucking cool.
 
“Either way you’ll never be fast enough to actually catch me, you’d just be wasting your time.” She shrugged.
 
“What about your little base here? Are you going to just forfeit it? What about your gangsters? Are they as fast as you? What about the Deathblades? You think I’m above killing children?”
 
She looked away, “they can take care of themselves.”
 
Kuzuru stepped closer and waved his hand across the room, “Then why aren’t they here?”
 
He frowned and sat back down across from his quarry. He tapped out a quick little beat on the table and then leaned closer to her.
 
“Bottom line is your ass is mine, your actions have consequences and you’re looking right at them,” he said, “why are you so afraid of dying anyways? You’re a prime aren’t you? Death is more of a vacation than anything for us, and hell I just want to kill you, what are you gonna do when someone badder than me comes along and wants to banish you for the extra cash?”

[Luci]

Luci giggles, flashing the glittering diamonds on her teeth again.

"Someone badder than you, come after lil 'ol me?" she asks innocently. Her gold eyes pulse as she again begins to loose contact with reality. Simple geometric patterns start to appear where her pupils would be, gradually becoming more complex. "Well I just don't think I'm worth the effort. But for a thousand OM, I think you might attract the deadliest players in the Omniverse. You can run around Tier-5 chasing shadows all you want, but meanwhile the clock ticks, and the wolves close in."

The bounty hunter leans back in his chair, his limbs loose, but ready. "Can't collect a bounty from a dead bitch," Kuzura offers. "And we've gone through too much together for me to let you live.

"You've come a long way, Kuzura," Luci acknowledges, affecting a tone of respect as she uses his chosen name. "But if you cave into your impulses to kill now, you may never go any farther."

Luci pulls out a brightly glowing wad of cash from her bra. The wad wasn't large, but its brightness indicated its worth. In one hand, she holds the 600 OM; in the other, her mobile dataverse device. Her eyes are again a shifting kaleidoscope as she drifts mentally into the Astral Realm. Across from her, the demon tenses.

"Make the smart choice."

[Kuzuru]

Kuzuru frowned and picked up a plastic tea cup. This wasn't as fun as he had expected.

"Once upon a time a scorpion asked a frog to carry it across a river," Kuzuru began, "naturally the frog hesitated, 'you'll just end up stinging me' she says, well the scorpion replies, 'no I won't, we'll both drown if I do' well after considering this the frog agrees to carry the scorpion across, halfway across the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both start to drown the frog cries out 'why, why would you do this?' the scorpion solemnly replies 'I'm sorry, but it is in my nature'"

Luci nodded politely and watched as Kuzuru stood.

"You see as much as I'd love to accept your offer I couldn't do so in good conscious," Kuzuru said, "I gotta be me darling, and all the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll in the world couldn't stop me from doing what I'm made to do, and right now baby the blood has got to flow."

And with that a series of blades sprouted from his forearms, ready to draw blood.

[Luci]

Fight starts!

Luci is far away from the conversation. Strange geometric shapes pulse in her eyes. She hears voices whispering to her. She struggles to focus as the Astral Realm appears to layer itself over Coruscant. Her latest foray into the land of dreams has changed her. The strain it constantly requires to keep her mind in the present, instead of pinwheeling off into the Astral Realm, is enormous. The tiniest distraction is all it takes to sever that final thread keeping her connected to reality.

When Kuzuru conjures his weapons, Luci blinks.

***

Luci activates Hyper Blink

***

Luci breathes a sigh of relief as she shrugs off the burden of sanity and the Astral Realm imposes itself fully over Coruscant.

Everything is still. Everything is silent. Everything is running at the speed of Dream.

Luci is in a castle, in a gown. She is at a beautiful oak table on a marble floor, sitting across from Kuzuru, a candle between them. The flame on the candle is frozen, its shadows like paintings on the walls. There are a pair of golden chalices on the table. Kuzuru is poised to strike, the long sword blades that grow from his arms catch the light of the frozen candle flame.

Droplets of Kuzuru's blood hang suspended in the air between them. Kuzuru himself is moving faster than the rest of the world, but still so slowly, as if held back by invisible hands.

Luci rises shakily to her feet. Her head starts to spin, the world seems to undulate. A brief flash of reality hits, and the graffiti from the Hufflepunk Hideout starts to bleed into the Astral Realm. The detritus of the gangs crashpad materializes on the floor.

Luci finds her balance. In her right hand is her Mobile Dataverse Device, firmly duct-taped to her hand. In her left, the wad of cash. She fumbles with the money and produces a 100 OM bill which she lays on the table. Scrawled on the bill, in Luci's glowing handwriting, is a message.

Imperial Savings and Loan, 1 am, Tonight

The world wobbles again, and the goblets are again the pink plastic tea cups. Her gown is gone, her threadbare hoodie and jeans again appear.

She looks desperately into Kuzuru's eyes, and finds nothing she is looking for. She looks down to her Mobile Dataverse Device, poised to issue a bounty on him, then back at the demon.

"You saved me," she says sadly. "I'm sorry about this. Until we meet again, little scorpion."

Luci turns and walks away quickly from the demon as his blood droplets start to fall just a little bit faster. She does not look back as the blood hits the table, or as her tear hits the floor. The peeling wallpaper of the Hufflepunk Hideout now covers the castle walls, and the marble floors creak like decrepit planks of wood.

Luci hits the wall phasing at full speed, as velocity and gravity and physics all snap back into place.

***

Hyper Blink's effects end

***

Luci activated Hyper Blink costing 1 SP.

Hyper Blink-Tier 1 Defensive Supermove-(600 OM) (Requirements- Speed 5+, Burst Movement, Phasing)

Luci blinks her eyes. In the time it takes to finish blinking, Luci walks one hundred feet in any direction.

Luci is moving so fast that to her, time seems nearly frozen. However, she cannot affect the world around her. Luci cannot take any action other than walking, climbing, jumping, and other ways of moving herself. She can use no moves or attacks or powers except for Phasing. She cannot move objects other than herself and the objects she is already in possession of at the time she starts Hyper Blink. She cannot open doors, or push a bullet out of the way, or stab someone, or even press a button. While Hyper Blink is active, Luci cannot affect the world around her.

At the end of this move, Luci is moving at her normal top Speed.

This costs 1 SP.

495 words according to word counter

[Kuzuru]

Just like that the painted girl was gone. Kuzuru blinked a few times and looked around the room. The blades that lined his arms retracted below the skin. He noticed the bill that Luci had left and picked it up. As he read his mouth grew dry and his stomach tightened. Just what was this girl’s endgame? A thin smile crossed his lips as he crumpled up the bill and tossed it across the room. There was no way in hell he was going to wait until one in the fucking morning to catch his quarry. After all a demon’s gotta sleep you know?

“Well, can’t say I didn’t expect this,” Kuzuru muttered.

The demon sniffed the air and took in the scent of everything around him. Where he had once been able to distinguish a specific odor in a sea of thousands his nose now mingled with every errant scent that crossed its path. Kuzuru grimaced. Renji’s body was still more or less human and despite the demon’s best efforts it seemed intent on staying that way. Well, more or less. He held out his palm and willed an orb of omnilium into existence. Kuzuru closed his eyes and brought the multicolored orb to his face. He exhaled until his lungs were empty. In one long breath the demon inhaled, filling his lungs with the rainbow-colored material. For the better part of several minutes Kuzuru stood still, breathing in and out in a slow and methodical rhythm.

Once all was said and done the demon opened his eyes and inhaled one more time. An entire world opened up before him. Scents both strange and familiar assaulted his augmented nostrils. It took a bit of concentration to isolate a singular smell, but it was like riding a bike and after a few minutes of practice Kuzuru’s sniffer was as accurate as a bloodhound’s. He stepped through the den of druggies and found an abandoned tank top on the floor. He picked up the loose garment and took a good whiff of it. The scent of paint and drugs filled his head with a haze, but it also refreshed Luci’s scent in his mind. He grinned and started walking towards the door.

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the hideout. A singular blade sprouted from his right forearm and he turned away from the door. For the next few minutes the demon trashed the place. He carved into couches, chairs, and walls alike. He smashed windows and chucked bongs across the room. He even tipped over their refrigerator and smashed open cupboards. Once he was satisfied he stepped towards the door and snapped a picture of the destruction with his phone. He tapped through the Dataverse app and uploaded the picture.

With that done he stepped outside and made his way back to the main street. Even through her Astral jaunt the demon could track Luci’s movement, or the vague pattern of her movement. His nose wasn’t one-hundred percent accurate, but it let him know she was still in the city. She had moved a considerable distance in only a half-hour and Kuzuru began to second guess his own abilities. However there was nothing to be done for it, and as a brightly colored toucan once said, “follow your nose, wherever it goes,” Kuzuru had no choice but to trust his bloodhound-esque tracking.

Once again he held out his hand and called upon that miracle substance omnilium. This time he called something physical into existence. After several minutes, and a few sideways glances from strangers Kuzuru’s desires took a physical shape. It was nothing fancy, just a simple motorcycle with a helmet to match. As much as he would have loved to craft something more elaborate and badass he had already spent a lot of daylight mucking about inside a druggy’s house. He threw on his helmet and mounted the bike. It roared to life and just like that he was down the road following the trail of a painted girl.

Summoned a Vita Compass and a motorcycle

[Luci]

The soles of Luci's worn sneakers grip the sidewalk as she phases through the wall and executes a hairpin turn going north on Hover Avenue, the Hufflepunk Hideout fading behind her as she slips the heavy Coruscant traffic. She comes to an intersection, and her psychedelic eyes focus. The world seems to slow as she contemplates her path, then return at full speed as she dashes diagonally through the intersection, dodging through traffic with ease. All the drivers see is a pretty yet approachable rainbow blur.

Luci sprints into the parking lot of a liquor store, a local hangout for kids and junkies, and right through the front door. She turns and flips off the security camera as she phases through the freezer and out the back wall into an alleyway. She slips a little on the dumpster water but regains her composure, diving headfirst through the opposing wall and phasing into an apartment building.

Luci lands in a crouch in the living room of apartment 119, and looks up to see she is surrounded by five identical, beautiful blonde women. They do not seem very surprised to see her. Lucy wastes no time.

"Fuck the plan" she says, panting. She presses a tiny button on her mobile dataverse device as she unwraps the asinine duct tape from her hand. "Get Jacket to the Library, like, now."

The five women nod, not in unison.

They also ask five different, stupid questions that Luci ignores as she walks out the front door.

*

A security camera would later show a middle aged man in a cheap suit closing the door of 119 behind him and walking down the stairs rather quickly.

*

Luci drops the disguise of the man in the cheap suit as soon as she can, turning down an alley on Hades Ave and phasing through the wall into a Twi'lek-Chinese fusion restaurant.

A security camera would later show the man turn right into an alley on Hades Ave and never reappear. Security footage from the restaurant would show an unknown green Twi'lek woman appear in a food cupboard and walk out the front door casually.

*

Luci, now in the disguise of a middle-aged green Twi'lek woman, continues pushing north. She takes a shortcut through the high rise apartment buildings, the haphazardous fire escapes and alleyways making a natural path for her. She runs on the walls freely, embracing the vertigo of the looming buildings, and quickly loosing any concept of up or down or gravity, the windows and fire escapes and bricks all blurring together as she gains speed. She thinks, idly, that it feels nice to run.

*

Luci enters Teir-5 Central Park as a pretty blonde elf girl in a leaf-green hoodie. She hurries through the darkening park, her eyes downcast, veering off from the sidewalk and into the deep forest.

She searches until she sees a glowing blue toadstool with yellow spots, and jumps on it. She is propelled ten feet in the air, at which point she hops onto another toadstool, and is propelled to a viney section of the tree that she can climb up. After a bit of scaling, and some light puzzle solving, she emerges from the trap door beneath the Westside Knife Ear Warriors treefort.

A motley collection of elven gangsters stare at her for a moment, and Luci drops her disguise.

*

She stands in their clubhouse, her face streaked with three lines of warpaint that mark her as their President. The elves do not move. Their faces are hard.

"You don't have to stay a Warrior," she says. "But if you're in my gang, you obey my commands or I'll have you killed."

The elves do not move.

"Meet me at Chirpa's. You got an hour," Luci says. She does not wait for a response, but when she exits the clubhouse she is a portly, aging elf man, and she starts running North.

*

The elf man is replaced with a Klingon after Luci walks into and out of a bathroom at a Bob's Burgers.
*
Luci thinks the Klingon draws too much attention, so she bends down behind a Hover-Prius and rises again as a curvy woman in a wide brimmed red hat.
*
The disguise suits her until her route takes her to a drainage ditch beneath a bridge. It's an ugly neighborhood, so Luci enters the ditch as an Imperial Storm trooper.

*
She walks confidently under the long, dark bridge, ignoring the angry glowing eyes of the trolls, and emerging on the other side as Vanessa Harmon, a mature Imperial bureaucrat in a tight skirt and tighter bun in her hair.

Luci trudges up from the drainage ditch with dignity and dusts off her skirt. She heads confidently towards the Teir-5 Library, her high heels clacking on the sidewalk as she goes.

***

[Kuzuru]

Kuzuru’s bike sat silent at a gas pump. The demon flipped through his phone with one hand and pumped fuel into his bike with the other. A series of snaps and crackles filled the air as the bike’s exhaust pipes cooled and contracted. He had lost track of time. By now the 1000 OM bounty on his head had been verified and made public. No doubt every bounty hunter in the Omniverse was preparing to collect. Kuzuru sighed and pocketed his phone.

His nose crinkled as he got another whiff of the girl’s fragrance. She was all over the damn city, moving through the concrete jungle like it was made of water. No matter how fast he went, the girl was still miles away. It was like playing the world’s most frustrating game of hide-and-seek. There was no release, no climax to be had. Any thrill that he had squeezed out of the chase, if one could even call it that, had evaporated. The mere thought of her escape gave him conniptions.

With a sigh he hung up the gas nozzle and went inside to pay. Once inside he spent a few minutes mulling around the aisles of the convenience store. He grabbed a candy bar that was branded as an “O-bar”. It was covered in a black wrapping and had an artist’s depiction of Omni’s grinning mug on the front. It would do little to fill that insatiable bloodthirsty void in his gut, but a caramel center would do well as comfort food.

The clerk was a balding south asian man, probably Indian, but who knows when it comes to the Omniverse. He sat on a barstool, soaking in the breeze from a desk fan and watching an old CRT television. Kuzuru laid his O-bar on the counter.

“Gas on pump six,” the demon said as he started watching the picturebox.

The clerk nodded and peeled his gaze from the TV. He tapped a few keys on the register and the total appeared on a digital screen. Kuzuru fished out his wallet and started to pay the man, but was stopped as a picture of his own face appeared on the TV. The mugshot was accompanied by a newscaster that was all teeth.

“And this one is for all you bounty hunters tuning in,” the man began, “in an ironic twist of events a whopping one-thousand OM bounty has been placed on Kuzuru, the leader of a relatively new mercenary group known as the Ashen Blades,while our experts say this isn’t the first time a bounty this large has been issued it is a rare case of a bounty being issued by a private party rather than the Empire.”

Kuzuru and the clerk locked eyes for a moment. The pangs of recognition fired off behind the man’s brown eyes. His hand drifted below the counter. Kuzuru’s pupils turned to pinpricks and the hair on his neck stood at attention. Danger, that sort of sixth sense that one develops when exposed to constant conflict triggered alarm bells in the demon’s head. A claxon call that warned him of the sawed-off hiding beneath the counter. A few more seconds and his head would be nothing more than red pulp. A flash of steel erupted from the demon’s forearm. A curved blade sprouted from his flesh and reached across the counter, stopping right over the man’s shoulder.

“You think that bounty will be enough for a new arm?” Kuzuru asked.

The dark-skinned clerk smiled sheepishly and brought his hand back over the counter. He broke the demon’s bill and handed back the change. Kuzuru smiled back and retracted his blade. He munched on his candy bar and walked back to his motorcycle. He threw on his helmet and started his bike. Perhaps this bounty thing wouldn’t be such a bad time after all. And with that thought in mind he headed towards the exit gatr and plotted a course back home.