((OOC: It is 0445 hours and there is light rain on the streets of lower Coruscant. The perpetrators of the heist (Kou, Saki, and Grit) make their escape from the Fortune's Fools cantina with their hoverdolly of loot.

Meanwhile, Red Flare agents (E'cho and Catra) are en route to pursue the robbers. Unbeknownst to them, another assassin, Vande, has been sent to complete the job.))

[Jiro Kou]

Kou didn't trust anyone else to pilot the speeder. His knuckles were white as he gripped the controls, adrenaline still running high but not as high as he wanted it. He was tired from the debacle with the Weequay thieves that he and Saki had dealt with before, and his lack of sleep for the passed 48 hours was beginning to catch up with him. He gritted his teeth and swung the speeder around a sharp turn, navigating a narrow alleyway between two derelict buildings.

Kou was barely feeling the blaster bolt that had grazed the outside of his calf muscle. But that stim pack would wear off soon, and then he would be wailing again. Luckily that was the worst of his injuries, and the others were holding up okay too. He was glad he didn't have to drag any corpses home with the loot.

"Still clear behind us? No one following?" Kou asked one of his three companions. It was too good to be true. Some jackhole probably saw them leave the cantina, he was sure of it. And Kou didn't like not being in control of fighting off any pursuers almost as much as he didn't like being in control of driving the speeder. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm his nerves. "Why the hell is the base so damn far from that cantina?" he grumbled to himself.

((OOC: this is an edit on the original post which was in error))
[Jenya Dae]

"Fierfek! Where did you learn to fly?" Jenya gritted her teeth as they made a really sharp turn into an alleyway.
"If you hadn't rushed me so much maybe the alarm would not have tripped hmm? But no time is of the essence you have to be quick and get it done now...if we're lucky we might come out of this chase alive."

Yes Jenya was in her I'm annoyed at everything mood cause she hadn't gotten it right the first time...why in blazes did those codes not work? She felt the only way to stop falling into self pity was to yell at someone for being incompetent whether or not that was true.

"Well Mr and Mrs muscle why don't you have your guns out blazing anything behind us? You think they wouldn't have sent anyone?" She sighed, if it weren't for the considerable amount of pay she was recieving she would have passed this one....wait what was she saying she never passed an opportunity like this no matter how insane...

[Vande]

This has gone on farking long enough.

He stood on the edge of the balcony of the rental room he had purchased for just this purpose. It was a very particular view he needed, for this very last mission. He could see the speeders traveling closer to him, one erratic, one in dogged pursuit. They weaved through traffic, but the enforcement didn't care. Even troopers didn't get mixed up in gang business for a dumb thing like this. Not for anything less than a full-blown base raid.

Vande Nua spit the toothpick out of his mouth in contempt and turned over a package he held in his hands. There was the orders recorded for him to review. There was the remote detonator. And then there was something else.

Forty thousand? He owes forty-nine thousand. Fix the numbers and keep him on call.

And before that,

Thirty five thousand? He owes forty thousand... We need him, no I won't tell you what for...

Vande grinned bitterly. So they wanted to use him. Fine.

But it had gone on long enough. He turned over the remote in his hands and waited. He could see the specks in the distance, those bobbing and weaving and shooting blotches. Both were targets: one was Contardi's target. One was his. Farkle Contardi. It was over.

And all he had to do was sit and wait. The hard part was later, when it was all over.

He hated what he was going to do, but he hated the past more. So he didn't frown like usual. He smiled.

I'll be free.

[Saki]

“No one right now but you can bet your ass they’re on their way!” Saki shouted to Kou. She picked up her rotary cannon and set it on the speeder so it was pointing behind them. Saki adjusted herself so she could start firing at anyone who followed them too closely. She held it and focused on any speeder that seemed suspicious. The hairs on the back of Saki’s neck stood up and she lost focus a little. Her stomach turned a little, something felt a little weird. She shook it off and went back to looking for any Red Flare members.

A speeder behind them sped up and weaved in and out of traffic. Saki squinted to get a better view on them and then started firing. She hit the vehicle and watched it spin out of control and explode. That was one down.

((OOC: Saki just blew up a random Red Flare Member speeder that doesn’t matter. Feel free to do the same.))

"Great shooting, Saki." Grit smiled, an easy, friendly smile. He mentally noted how appealing Saki looked in action. His liking for her only grew. He knew Kal'Buir would kick his shebs for this kind of
distraction, but that was a lifetime ago. It had been a while in happening, but More and more Grit was noticing he was glad to be free of the military. "Two more, joining the chase from sidelanes." He said to Saki, as two more speeders inserted themselves into the traffic pattern and began moving up toward them. There had to be a command speeder somewhere here, that wasn't being obvious. "Look for one trying to blend in- these guys have to be getting directions from someone." He though for a moment. "If we did something drastic to lose em, the leader would have to show himself to keep up." He suggested to Kou. "Pull a Torrent fold." Kou's look told him to explain himself. "It's a GAR pilot's evasive trick- come round hard and loop back on our old path, but then head off on a diagonal past it."

"Yeah. Catra. I'm going to have to do some dancing, so," E'cho paused to slam the acelerator and dip the speederbike gently to the right, then dropped steeply down two skylanes, hard dodging traffic. "Hold on."

The air filled with ringing sirens and the screaming horns of pissed off Coruscanti. Up ahead and a lane below them, E'cho saw a speeder belonging to Red Flare--the people he now worked for, he reminded himself--explode in a cloud of flames, debris, and pieces of... something he didn't want to identify. His foot jammed the stabilizer and dropped them out of the current skylane.

His hands jerked at the controls, the repulsors of the bike roaring in argument as he leveled them off in the correct skylane. Almost immediately, blaster fire ricocheted around his head. It took a few dodge and weaves of cars and angry drivers spitting insults before he realized that the fire came from both ahead and behind. He leaned over the side of his speeder, causing the bike to tilt 40 degrees to the left, and heard Catra shout something.

Whatever it was, he was pretty certain she had the back handled.

And anyway, it didn't matter. He had to handle his half. His left hand wrapped around his sniper rifle, and yanked it from it's hiding space under the speeder. He then jerked the handle and straightened out the bike. The weapon slapped against his shoulder as he looked down the sight. He breathed, and then fired off a round. His shot hit the engine of the speeder holding the Scourge firing down on them. The fire in the tank quickly engulfed the rest of the vehicle in flames.

In his rearview screen, he saw a second Scourge vehicle drop out of the sky like a dying Maze-fly.

"Nice!" he shouted. "But we can't keep this up. We gotta get ahead of them."

He glanced over his shoulder, and then jerked the bike to the right, out of the lane. Continuing to ignore the horns blaring around them, he jammed the repulsors of the bike and bumped them back up a skylane. From there, he slammed his weight down on the accelerator and cut through the traffic.

[Catra Shaadlar]

Catra held on tightly to E'cho's waist with one arm while her other hand gripped to the rocket propelled grenade launcher she had ganked from the Red Flare armory. Catra's arm got tighter around E'cho's waist at his request, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She had always wanted to ride a bike like this, but the circumstances were coming together to end in getting sick in her helmet. The gravity pulled forcibly at her stomach, and she swallowed a wave of nausea and remembered the RPG launcher.

Somebody needed to use it.

There was an explosion somewhere below them. Catra ignored it. She could see another vehicle pull up behind them from the panoramic view in her buy'ce, and this particular speeder definitely wasn't filled with angry Coruscantii partygoers. Catra squeezed her thighs to the bike, handled the launcher, and turned as much as she could at the waist so she was aiming the launcher behind her. Targeting systems popped up on her HUD and she followed the line of calculated trajectory, constantly altering and shifting with the movement of the bike. Catra breathed out of her nostrils. Steadied her hands. Made an estimate, and fired.

"Slana'pir!" Catra shouted at the Scourge scum as her shot landed more or less on target. With a grenade "more or less" was pretty much "spot on" when it came to the radius of explosion.

Catra faced forward again to relax the muscles in her torso, just in time to watch E'cho take out another speeder--with his sniper rifle. "Wayii!" she praised him excitedly. Now that was skill.

Catra turned in the other direction and readied the launcher again. Their second pursuer was much closer but driving erratically, firing at them without really taking aim. Catra swore and fired off three consecutive shots, the second of which knocked the Scourge speeder into the trajectory of the third.

"E'cho?" she asked in a shout over the commotion. "I didn't bring a whole lot of ammo for this thing. We need to--" Catra cut off as the bike pulled up into another skylane, causing her to throw her free arm around his waist and concentrate solely on not falling off.


[Kou]

"I've seen a war holovid at least once in my life, so I know what a Torrent Hold is, dicksqueeze!" Kou shouted at Grit without taking his eyes off the skylane. He braked hard and swung the speeder out of the alleyway and back into traffic. "Why don't you shut your stupid hole and shoot somebody?!"

"Okay, hold on to your pants!" Kou warned. He checked over his shoulder, accelerated, braked, and did an about-face with the speeder. He threw his weight onto the accelerator and pulled up and over the oncoming traffic, the bottom of the speeder scraping against the top of an unsuspecting travelers' front. He turned the speeder hard to the left, causing crew and cargo alike to get jostled as the speeder turned almost sideways to squeeze between another set of buildings.

Kou accelerated to the end of the alley and zig-zagged across the skylane to cut through another set of buildings before returning to a course back in the general direction of the Scourge base. "We can't have anyone following us back!" he said needlessly. "Take out those Red Flare assholes and somebody call for backup!"

[Vande]

And there it went, Vande observed. Right into the alleyway. The one place he could not see from the balcony, but that was the point. He couldn't see the Scourge speeder, and neither could anybody else. Fewer questions, fewer witnesses, less shame.

He felt the remote, sweaty from his grip. A bike was weaving around down there, too. Yes, he concluded. Those are the target audience. They'll hate me for this, but they will never be able to ignore me.

His smile was thin and tight-lipped. Goodbye, Contardi.

And he pushed the button.

Boom.

((Vande attached explosives to the Scourge speeder and now he's detonated them-- but the extent of the explosion is up to you. Run with it, folks! This is meant to halt the chase, but feel free to detail what happens just before the explosion if you wish. I kept this vague on purpose.))

E'cho watched the speeder below them screech to a near-stop, do a sharp 180 and then disappear out of view.

"Son of a chaavla shabuir," E'cho hissed, and jammed the controls. The bike bounced above the skylane they were in, cutting through traffic to jog in the opposite direction. He scanned the lanes below, followed the steady stream of insults and roaring horns, and saw a glint of the back of the speeder as it jerked into an alley.

His mind worked quickly, and decided their best bet was to cut them off at the other endof the alley. He grunted, dropped the bike out of the skylane, and accelerated towards one of the buildings. At the last moment, he jerked the controls, dropped and veered them around the tower of durasteel, turned harshly, crossed the opening of the alley...

For a second, everything fell silent. Bright light. He had enough time to wonder of it's origin, as alleys are rarely well lit, when the blastwave threw the bike end over end. Chunks of the buildings ricocheted around them.

A series of thoughts flashed in his mind. His hands hurt from gripping the bike's handles so hard. His face hurt, and he recalled forgetting to take his regular shot of pills. He was somewhat hungry.

He lost control of the bike.

The ground rushed up at them. He pulled uselessly at the controls. The bike spun in the general direction of an open area blocked off for construction. Time seemed to slow down. He saw glimpses of droids, going about their business. He saw the gaping hole of an unoccupied building, skeleton of durasteel. He vaguely registered dropping his sniper and pushing off the bike, taking Catra with him.

The last thing E'cho remembered was giant, massive blue plastic tarp, and the odd view of the sky from inside of a half-constructed building.

“How bout you show me yours now,” Saki told Grit as she focused on the what was going on behind them. While Kou and Grit discussed how they should be driving... she concentrated on picking off more speeders. These guys were too easy, so where were the tough ones? She watched a bike behind them take out a few of their own guys. Saki leaned in closer to get a better aim.

"Okay, hold on to your pants!" Kou warned.

Saki grabbed onto the side of the speeder as Kou changed their direction. She clenched her jaw tightly. She could have gotten them if she just had a moment longer. Saki felt around for her com to call for back up. She found it and held onto it tightly. Right as she was bringing it to her mouth she felt the speeder jerk up. There was a loud explosion and the speeder started to head towards the ground.

Saki stayed as calm as she could. Her heart pounded as she watched smoke coming from part of the speeder. She looked over the edge and waited for them to get closer to the ground, there was another smaller explosion and the speeder shook again. The wind whistled in her ears and she jumped out of the speeder. For a moment there was a sick weightless feeling in her stomach. Then she hit the ground. She rolled and stopped on her stomach.

Stay down, you don’t know what going on. Saki remained motionless but looked around the alley. She felt scratched up, but no unbearable pain. Now she just needed to know what the hell was going on.

[Catra]

There's always a surreal lift in one's heart when it comes to her attention that she is going to become a victim of gravity. It's that little flip in the stomach, then a dreadful pull felt in the back of the throat. Catra whimpered and clung for dear life to two things: the RPG launcher, and E'cho.

The ground or something close to it came upon them, and Catra felt it with the side of her helmet, then her shoulder, then her back. The scraping of durasteel made her clench her teeth hard. She tasted blood--tongue got in the way.

Finally, they stopped moving. Catra felt her heart pumping in her throat and she swallowed. "E'cho?" she asked with a strange lisp. It hurt to move her tongue against her teeth. "E'cho?" she asked louder. She dropped the launcher and disentangled herself from her companion.

Oh, this was special. She felt like crying.

"E'cho, please don't be dead! Don't be dead, E'cho! Okay. Uhm." Catra knelt beside him and patted his cheek with the back of her hand. "Wait here. And still be alive." Catra fumbled for the launcher, stood, and hurried to the edge of the building. They were two stories above the wreckage of the Scourge speeder they had been following--it was a heap of flames and scrap metal on a skywalk below. Sirens blared in the distance.

"Sniper! Need the--" Catra looked over her shoulder. No luck, he hadn't held on to it. Catra contemplated firing on the survivors with the launcher she had managed to keep a grip on, but there were bystanders injured around the speeder. For two seconds she stood, muscles tensing to raise the launcher, then she strapped it onto her shoulder. She took cover behind an exposed beam and took out her blaster. Best not give up their position until E'cho was awake.

"Catra?" a voice came over the com.

"Yeah, Dabri?" she asked in a shaky voice.

"We're closing in on the Scourge scum. Where are you?"

"Construction site above the crash. E'cho's out right now."

"We'll engage. Cover us."

Catra watched as the speeder landed on a landing pad above the crash, and the Trandoshan and Gran leapt onto the skywalk where the Scourge survivors were regrouping.

[Jenya]

"Wha....arhgh" Jenya moaned, for a brief moment she felt nothing and was worried she might have broken her spine, till a sudden wash of pain almost caused her to faint.
Last thing she could remember was Kou trying a crazy military maneuver and them Boom. Everything else was a daze...

She slowly turned her head to try and get a look of where they had crash landed, that simple act caused every muscle in her body to scream, she had to force her mouth shut incase anyone was nearby enough to hear it. She couldn't expect help from outsiders...not in this situation. My blaster! She scrabbled around desperately in search of her weapon and only defensive option...she couldn't find it...

THE OTHERS!!! She'd completely forgotten about them, rolling onto her stomach she crawled slowly to the nearest one, she recognised her as Sakki.
"Sakki...." She whispered "Sakki are you alright?"

[Vande]

No.

Vande gritted his teeth as he put down the electrobinoculars. The couplings on the charge he had set had been... duds!

He cursed under his breath and swept back into the apartment building. He had failed his last mission; the speeder hadn't exploded at all. Crashing had a chance of survival, and he simply didn't know if he could be safe with that chance.

He had to find protection from Contardi. And fast. He locked the door behind him and stepped into the lift down.

Contardi would catch on quickly. Those charged were supposed to have been set on Red Flare speeders. She knew he had them. And if the drivers survived, they would go back to her and...

He had to go after them now, but if more than one had survived he wouldn't be able to take them all down at once. Not before they reached Scourge territory.

He left the lift and threw the key to the woman at the desk. The sky had fogged over gray since he had been on the balcony, and the draft from the streets seemed worse. But weather aside, he had to move. And quickly.

And if he failed this one, he needed a contingency plan, because Contardi wouldn't waste tears over him. Spy or not, it was difficult to run forever.

He mounted his stolen speederbike. Yes, there really was only one option, he thought.

Enemy of my enemy.
Might still be my enemy.
But enemy or not
the first one wants my head.

He almost laughed. Now was not the time for poetry. There was work to do.

((OOC: I'm sorry, my posts seem so... wall-of-test-y. I can't really find a way to shorten them. Also, an idea of what he looks like w/o the jacket, thanks to the HeroMachine thing-- No Jacket E'cho))


*Flashback sequence oOoOoOo*
E'cho hadn't slept for a long time.

He sat on the floor of a tall narrow white hall, his back pressed against one curved wall as he stared past the transparisteel windows to look outside. It rained.

It always rained.

His arm hung in a sling at his side. It hurt, but at that stage of insomnia hurt was a very relative term. So he just stared, and popped a sweet-coated pain pill into his mouth.

"Meg demago'gota dinui gar jate goorar. Me'vaar ti gar?" That monster machine gave you (a) good toss. How are you?

E'cho looked up at the Kiffar woman standing over him, her round green tattoos marking her out as different, as if being a dark-skinned human female in a facility filled with tall, pale, long-necked aliens wasn't unusual enough.

"Naas," he said. I'm fine. He looked back to the transparisteel windows, and suddenly wondered why it felt as though the rain passed through the closed window to land on his face.

- - - - -
*Return to our feature presentation*


"Don't be dead, E'cho! Okay. Uhm. Wait here. And still be alive."

Dead? He didn't kriffing feel dead. No. He felt very much alive.

"Sniper! Need the--" Pause.

And it hit him. He dropped his Merr-Sonn. Shab. Things just go from bad to worse. That was his pride. His baby, practically. Why would he do that?

For the girl. That's right.

E'cho opened his eyes and stared at the hole in the ceiling. He could see through to the cloudy sky. A few droplets of rain plopped on his face. He flinched, wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and sat up.

He wanted to kill something.

The clone pushed that urge to the side. His left arm hurt, but for the most part he still felt whole. He gently shrugged off his bantha hide jacket. One look at the article clothing and he knew there was no saving it.

"Well. Fierfek."

He shook the jacket, emptying out the contents of its pockets, and dimly noted that his painkillers were missing.

His bike. His sniper. His jacket. His fix. Someone was going to die.

Taking it slow--he wasn't yet sure if he was completely whole or that was the adrenaline talking--he made his way over to Catra. Her back faced him, and she seemed preoccupied. He looked past her, and noticed the two separate trails of thick black smoke coiling into the air. One was closer that the other--he assumed that was where his bike landed. The other came from a broken up speeder, one that looked as though it was barely intact, for the most part. Still usable, though.

He saw remnants of the Scourge members crawling out of the vehicle. He couldn't quite see how many though. He couldn't bring himself to care either. He reached down, rudely jerked the RPG from its strap on Catra's back, lined it up with the speeder, and decided to finish off what was left of the vehicle. If he took out civilians, innocent bystanders, and Scourge members, then so be it.

He lined up the weapon and fired.