BFtP: Cutting To The Quick

Posted on Sun Jul 29th, 2018 @ 5:17pm by Staff Sergeant Nyx'e'Trixe Valentine & Lieutenant JG Siobahn Fallon
Edited on on Sun Jul 29th, 2018 @ 5:22pm

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: New Earth

Getting down to the planet was the easy part and Nyx scanned around the dark alley to ensure that no one had seen her come down and began to stalk out, again looking to be sure she would be unnoticed as she exited the alley and began to move quite openly towards the place she knew Siobahn to be at or at least where she was last seen. It was more of a semi-circle than a straight run, because Nyx was looking for something, someone. A sentry. Any good mercenary would know how to spot one from a mile away, as would any good warrior, trained from childhood in war and nearly nothing else. She spotted two of them in the same square, each able to keep an eye on the other. She walked right past them, both of them, feeling their eyes on her back as she moved closer towards where their boss was.

Another one was a pair of blocks further on and he detached himself from the wall he was leaning against as she approached, "'Ey, you can't come down 'ere. Private property ya'now." When she didn't stop her approach, he stepped into her path and put a hand out against her shoulder, "Aye, wh-"

He never finished the sentence as she grabbed his wrist and twisted it, not fast enough to snap the bone, but slow enough for him to reflexively turn with it and go to one knee, hand above him and bent right to the point of breaking. The cold circle of a gun muzzle pressed against the back o f her neck, "I'd stop right there." The voice said.

"Why? Did I fail your test? You were following me since a block ago, gave this one a signal to stop me." Nyx didn't release her hold, but didn't press it further, "If you were going to just kill me, you would have done so, regardless of this one's predicament." She twisted another fraction of an inch, the man on his knees flinched away and gasped, the barrel pressed harder into her neck, "Since I'm openly armed, it means you think there may be some use for me, no?"

"'Emme 'p, gawds this harts." The man in front of her gasped out.

"Shhh..." Nyx whispered softly, "What'll it be?"

A few moments later and if she'd desired it, the man's life was no longer his own as the barrel released her, then she released the one in front of her,shoving him away to roll on the ground in pain for a minute, "Could be you're right." The gunman said, "Ostell, go take my spot. I'm going to go see if we can use her." The other man went back the way they'd come, the gunman shoved Nyx from behind in the shoulder and she ticked off another note in her head, "You know how to use those?" He asked.

"Wait and see." Nyx replied with a slight smile, not looking back, "I'm sure someone's going to want to be sure I do, before I'm hired, won't they?"

A soft chuckle from behind her, "You can bet on that." They continued on towards where Hailey had indicated Siobahn's transmission had come from. She may not have a chrono, but Nyx estimated that it had been twenty minutes all told since she'd left the Welington. Not enough time for a proper rescue mission to be mounted, barely enough time for a panicking Lady Weston to decide on it. That's what moving quickly did. She remained silent the rest of the trip, spotting another pair of sentries along the way to the door that she believed to signal entry to the building.

The goon behind her reached around with a hand and knocked twice on the door, a window in it sliding open, "Who's this, Benji?" The gal on the other side asked, "Well armed, she is."

"What's your name." Benji asked Nyx.

"Trixe." She said, "Here looking for work."

"Right... And I'm the pope." A sigh from the other side of door, "Actually, we are looking for some help. A latch clicked and the door started to open, "Come in and we'll see how well you use what you've got."

She let the door open a few inches, then made to step aside and around it to enter. Her hand at her side filled with a knife that she slid into Benji's side, then withdrew and threw it precisely at the closest sentry, a good twenty-five feet away, it buried itself to the hilt in his chest. Reflexively, Benji 0started to make sounds about the pain in his side and started to bring the gun around. It didn't make it as Nyx grabbed his wrist and snapped it, letting the gun start to clatter to the ground even while she brought a knee up to catch him in the jaw.

"Shit." The woman behind the door had the chance to mutter before she desperately tried to grab the handle to close the door, but Nyx was already half inside the door, another knife in her hand, "Fuc-" Was all the woman got out before it went in upwards through her jaw and into her brain.

Nyx pulled it out and wiped it on the corpse as she listened for any response. Apparently, if there were cameras monitoring things, no one was watching, but that suited her nicely. She reached around and pulled out her collapsed bow and a few arrows from the sides of her sword scabbards across her back. She had eight shots, but it gave her a mostly quiet ranged weapon. She used a toe to ease the door closed behind her before setting off, edging around the spreading pool of blood to the first door in the hallway.

She leaned around, one eye past the edge of the frame and saw it was empty, it was the monitoring room, all the cameras and no one was in it. "Too confident." She whispered before continuing on. The next room held one guard in it, adjusting himself before he apparently was to join the guard woman at the front. He looked up at the motion by the door, then collapsed backwards, arrow through the throat, scrabbled briefly at it, then went still. It was when she was halfway down the hallway when it started to go sideways, she was reaching for the door when it opened in front of her, a skinny female running into her while backing out of the room, and bounced off of the sturdily built Tialan.

The arrow in Nyx's hand stretched itself out, it seemed, and entered the eye of the woman, jabbing through to the brain, then ripped out in the next half heartbeat, fitted to the bow and shot into the eye of the next target in the room, four feet away. Of the other two in the room, one was apparently a very quick draw and his gun was up and trained in a move that Nyx knew couldn't be matched by her. She threw herself in as the first shots crashed out of the weapons and into the hallway. Surprise was now gone. She came up, a large lock of hair swinging in the wind as she flung one of her 'decorative' hair needles at him. An attempted shot at the incoming projectile missed and it struck him in the chest. Seconds later, the gun fell from nerveless hands as the gunman tried desperately to breathe, but failed. The last guard in the room died when two and a half feet of Tialan rune-forged metal came out his back.

But surprise was outright lost, Nyx knew that, and that itself was a Very. Bad. Thing. So she went back to her training as a child: Attack. She knew she'd have one more surprise element in the moments she left back into the corridor, so she took a half second to remove two more needles from her hair decoration into her right hand, dropping the bow to keep her sword. She moved with deliberate speed, sliding out on one knee at stomach height to a normal-sized human, flinging the two needles down the hall to where three guards had already come out of a room with more emerging, looking around. The needles impacted two different targets and the entire group vanished into a haze of blood as they both exploded virtually simultaneously.

More shots rang out from the doorway almost purely across from hers, one of the guards falling from friendly fire as they flinched back from the explosion, but Nyx then bowled into him, using him like a shield to get into the room. Once she was in among them, it was all over, her blade moving among the three remaining guards in rapid succession while they couldn't re-aim them in time. The carnage lifted with another two needles gone, Nyx's hair mostly flowing freely and blood staining her once-clean clothes in messy streaks. She took a moment and gathered her hair and slid it behind her, tucking it under the strap of her scabbard, then pushed herself to her feet on the point of the single sword she had out.She pulled her second sword and in one motion flung it out the door to bury itself in the wall of the corridor. It had been intended to be used as a mirror to check out the hall, but the light hail of bullets that came from it's flicker of movement told her there were people out there, likely two.

She plucked her remaining contact poisoned needle from her hair, leaving a single hairpin in place, then moved to the door, checking the mirror-polished blade for a look, noting yes, there were two, one moving forward while the other aimed from in cover. Nyx rolled out into the hallway, flinging the needle at the one out of cover, then reaching up to grab her second sword, bringing it up in a precisely angled complement to her first, then charged down the hall. The first guard was already falling, the contact poison severing the nervous system's ability to communicate with the body. The guard in cover started shooting in a panic, but Nyx's blades were placed very precisely as she watched the barrel, always intercepting the bullets and deflecting all but one that grazed her bicep. Both of her blades went through the guards chest as his gun clicked four times on empty.

There was a single door behind this guard, more decorative than those before it and Nyx rolled back to her feet and barged through it with a shoulder, losing her balance but rolling through, coming to one knee and hurling one of her swords end over end, just missing the man holding a young redhead in front of him, but nicking his earlobe before ending up quivering in the wall. She came up and took a very quick glance to make sure there were no others before moving forward, her now free hand reaching up and collecting her hair again, now wild from the action, and wrapping it around the back of her neck to just over her right shoulder, "My Lady, are you all right?" Her question was for the woman, but her eyes were locked on him.

Everything had happened so quickly. One minute she was sitting in her seat being berated for not eating breakfast when it was being offered, and in the next moment she had been hauled to her feet, her arm twisted painfully behind her back, a sharp knife being held at her throat. She could feel the blade painfully digging into the outer layers of skin as she was spun to face the newcomer. Blinking once or twice, Siobahn finally registered the familiar face in front of her. "Nyx'e'Trixe..." she paused for a moment before speaking again. "You changed your hair... it suits you..." she finally said stupidly before being pulled back sharply.

Carlos laughed throatily as he pulled Siobahn in tighter to him, pressing the long bladed knife against her throat, not caring that he was drawing blood. "I should have known Hailey would try something like this, more fool me." He grinned like a cheshire cat as he glanced around the room. "But her army seems to be greatly lacking, can't she find anyone better than little girls to fight for her?" He raised one hand to his mouth, giving a sharp whistle, summoning his security team.

Nyx cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, listening to hear where this security team was coming from, then smiled as nothing was heard, "I'm sorry, but your soldiers won't be coming." She wasn't using titles with him, he didn't outrank her, he didn't hold any sort of military posting at all. He was nothing and from what she had seen, the way he held Siobahn like a shield, he was just garbage. "They had a mischief a few minutes ago, some... Little girl, you would say?"

"Ruebin! Vasquelez!" Carlos shouted his summons, clearly not believing Nyx. When they didn't answer within a moment, he shouted again. "Garvey, Humboldt!" He took a few steps sideways, dragging Siobahn with him, ignoring the small trickle of blood coming from the wound at the side of her neck. Finally he turned an angry gaze back toward Nyx. "What the hell have you done to my men," he demanded, pressing the knife harder against Siobahn's neck, causing her to cry out in pain.

Nyx's eyes narrowed at him, "If you release her now, I will let you live." She said, "That is the best offer you are going to get." She spun her sword around her wrist, the other hand remaining at her side.

Carlos released the pressure on the knife for just a moment. "I'll kill her before you do a damned thing," he shot back viciously. "Let's see who has the last laugh when you take her lifeless body back to Hailey," he laughed gutturally as he pressed the knife in again.

Siobahn closed her eyes and bit back the urge to cry out or pull away. Finally after a long moment, she opened her eyes and looked across at Nyx. "Tell Hailey I'm sorry," she whispered softly, the tone of her voice sounding utterly defeated and broken.

It took a heartbeat for Nyx to judge the reactions of the man and the possiblities she had. Yes, she could end him easily enough, but her primary goal, more so than her own well-being, was the freedom of Siobahn alive and preferably unharmed. Her finger slid up the needle in her hand and she flourished her sword again, motion intended to draw the eye and in that moment, her wrist flicked and the last silvery sliver of the needle whipped the eleven feet distance between the two of them and into the back of his knife hand.

The knife in his hand clattered to the floor, followed a fraction of a second by a stunned Siobahn who landed hard on her knees, shock jolting through her body. She stared at the knife laying on the floor between her hands for what felt like a small eternity, seeing her own blood staining the edge of the blade. The fingers in her right hand twitched ever so slightly before her hand covered the handle of the knife as she rose to her feet with surprising grace. In one swift movement the knife slid up under his sternum, the blade piercing into his heart.

Siobahn could hear the rattled gasp escaping his lips as she shoved the blade a second time, this time even harder until she could feel the vibration of the knife scraping against bone.

Nyx was at her side in a matter of seconds, hand on her opposite shoulder as if giving her a one armed hug, "My Lady," She gently tugged her away from the man with the light leaving his eyes to let him fall to the floor, "We must be going before this place draws attention." She reached out and plucked her sword from the wall and replaced it in the scabbard with the other.

Allowing herself to be pulled away and hearing his body fall to the floor with a dull thud, the last raspy breaths leaving his body, Siobahn caught sight of the blood that had stained her hands, drawing in a deep sharp breath. "The blood..." she murmured quietly, as she was guided away hurriedly.

"Washes off, My Lady." Nyx said softly, "It washes off."

OFF:


Staff Sergeant Nyx'e'Trixe Valentine
Marine NCO
USS Wellington

Ensign Siobahn Fallon
Medical Officer
USS Wellington

Carlos Rivero
General Bad Guy
New Earth