“I can teach you how to use my blaster, but you might lose a shoulder or an arm… or all of ‘em.”
“Come onnnn, please? I promise I’m stronger than I look.”
@secondstringslayer-archive / secondstringslayer-archive.tumblr.com
“I can teach you how to use my blaster, but you might lose a shoulder or an arm… or all of ‘em.”
“Come onnnn, please? I promise I’m stronger than I look.”
“It’s nobody’s business but mine.”
“I mean, at least you know she cares? Still hilarious though, not gonna lie.”
Send 🌋 and my muse will blurt out the first thing that comes to mind when they see your muse | @secondstringslayer
“Back so soon? Let me guess… you’re here ‘cause you failed what I told you to do.”
“Hey. I don’t fail. Things have just been set back a little...”
“I’m behaving myself, I promise!” Faith nearly yelped, banging her head as she jumped out from under his ship.
“Do you need me to kill someone?”
“I think I can handle it, thanks.”
’ I am the one they call when things go wrong and things have, indeed, gone wrong. ’
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“ and here i thought this couldn’t get any worse. ”
“See, now I know you’ve been underestimating me. Things can always get worse.”
The thought of a mercenary having more of less a free rein of the base would make anyone in the First Order scrunch their face in disgust. Too much of a lowlife. No discipline. At least in their eyes. For Eron, he couldn’t care less, even knowing that most criminals only wanted one thing and one thing only – money and a lot of it. Not that it posed a problem for him in any way and he wasn’t paying them directly. Or specifically, paying this particular woman, who wasted no time making herself comfortable in his office space. Granted, they’d done business before. There was nothing less he expected of her.
He merely cast an amused look in her direction, arms folded over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. If anything, the question should’ve meant for Hux and not him. “You don’t really want to hear the answer, do you?” A dark brow slightly arched, his tone remaining indifferent as ever.
Sometimes he felt like laughing at the way she so confidently said his code name. Though to give her credit, nobody in the First Order itself had the knowledge of his real identity. Save for the Supreme Leader himself and the Knights of Ren. Reaching to the side, a hand grabbed a datapad, and he took a moment to study it before returning his gaze back on his acquaintance (a very loose term). A tap on the small screen. “Your payment. Half… until you get the rest of your job done.”
She shrugged at his question, still giving off the air of dark amusement. “Nah, but I figured I’d give you the chance to talk about the work you love so much.” She taunted easily in return. But then her wristpad beeped and she straightened up slightly, checking it to see the transfer of funds had gone through and then nodding at him.
“Have I failed you yet?” She asked with a grin while swinging her feet off his desk and standing up. Honestly this was easy, a simple assassination job. It couldn’t be tied back to the First Order but honestly that’s why they hired people like her. When an important figure was brutally murdered while visiting a dangerous rim world no one pointed fingers at anything but the usual outer rim lowlifes.
It had been another job for the First Order, another target to take out and the freedom to do so however she liked so long as it got done. That was honestly the best part of taking contracts from them. As long as the objective was completed she could do it however the fuck she wanted, follow all her most vicious instincts. So she was in a pretty good mood as she sat in the office of her usual contact, Agent Rhys, with her boots on his desk, a smirk on her lips, an a knife twirling through her fingers.
“So Rhys, how’s the exciting world of military dictatorship?” She asked, aggressively casual and grinning with all her teeth. She didn’t give a fuck who was in charge, but she couldn’t avoid poking fun at the idea of people falling in line like the First Order expected. She’d done that once in her life, but never again. Freedom and money were all she cared about now.
As soon as the speeder launched Eron was almost thrown forward and he would’ve been, if he hadn’t clung to the headrest. No time to complain about the rough driving – they needed to get out of here fast. Before he could readjust himself on the seat, a slew of blaster bolts flew past his head. Teeth grinding against one another, he stretched out a hand, knocking one of the speeders into the other with the Force. Maybe that would shock Faith later on. Now he had to focus on the task at hand, picking the pirates off one by one (too easy) until there were only a few left. “You sure you know where we’re going?!”
“Not usually no!” Faith answered with a laugh, taking another hairpin turn as they headed for the gate out of town. “But this time yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea.” She added after letting him hang for a moment, grinning wildly. Blasting past the guards at the gate she gave them a cheery wave and took the pair of them out into the woods outside town.
“We’ll have to live wild for a few days, but they won’t find us once I park this thing and lead us away from it.” She explained, finally slowing down now that the treeline could hide them some.
@secondstringslayer
“Oh this?” She holds up her vibro-sword so Faith can get a better look. “It is my father’s. He gifted it to me on my sixteenth birthday. Sword combat is one of my specialties as a result of my upbringing.” She is a warrior through and through because of her mando’a background.
“Not bad. I never did get to use anything as fancy as a sword myself.” Faith replied before smirking and pulling out a wicked looking vibro-knife of her own. The thing was almost too big to be a knife, as long as her forearm and wide as her palm, but she flipped it in her grasp as easily as if it weighed nothing. “Knives are a bit more my style.”
With how fast she was running, Eron couldn’t exactly tell if she was glad to finally leave the place or entertained by all the destruction they’d caused. If he really had to guess it’d probably be the latter, though this wasn’t the time to think of trivial things. They needed to escape. No doubt the pirates would send reinforcements after them, seeing as there were still grunts coming out from behind covers at every point and now making their way towards their bikes. Shit.
Looking ahead he dashed towards the speeder and jumped into the passenger seat, blaster rifle again in his hand. Faith already had the engine all fired up. “Drive! I’ll shoot!” He more or less shouted at his companion, his focus only on the targets, not hesitating to pull the trigger.
“You got it!” She replied, punching the ignition and sending them rocketing forward fast enough to at least briefly leave any pursuing speeder bikes in the dust. Hopefully she didn’t knock her partner out of the speeder as she did, but she had the feeling he’d be able to hold his own even as she whipped them around a corner and started the most twisting and confusing route possible towards the outer edges of the city. Hopefully they’d lose their pursuit entirely, but even if some clung to their tail they should be few enough for Eron to pick them off easily.
An amused snort was all that Eron returned, fingers instantly flicked the array of switches and toggles on the panels, and within seconds the TIE was hovering above the ground. Instinct told him to check on his companion - anyone flying one of these for the first time was ought to be confused by its system. Through the commlink he asked, “Everything alright there? Gotta hurry before they start getting suspicious.”
It took her a moment but thankfully she didn’t set off the weapons or anything else that would alert the people around them to the fact that someone was in the fighter who shouldn’t be. The little machine rose into the air beside his as she smirked. “All good, let’s get this show on the road.” She replied, waggling the TIE from side to side just a little to show her readiness and that she understood the controls. Once it was going it seemed to be pretty standard.
Somehow being attacked by pirates wasn’t the last thing Eron had expected to come out of the job. Taking them out was the easy part; he had picked them off from behind his cover and the ones left standing weren’t at all too happy over their losses. Everything could’ve ended sooner had he just used the Force, but that would mean attracting unwanted attention, both from the pirates and the unseen.
He pulled away from his sights at the nudge, turning to look at his temporary companion and nodding at her words. “Don’t need to tell me twice.” His eyes darted the direction she was gesturing - a getaway vehicle. Exactly what they needed. “Got it. On ‘three’ then we make a run for it. One, two-” he reached into one of his pockets and produced a thermal detonator, immediately arming it while barking out, “-three!”
Without hesitation he threw the detonator at the poor bastards and ran to the speeder, only sparing a few glances at the blast that it’d caused. “C’mon!”
She nodded, able to feel the seductive rush of adrenaline through her veins as she laid down cover fire. The minute he threw the detonator she was running, throwing every ounce of that rising energy into moving her forward at a speed that she shouldn’t have been able to reach. For all the regrets she had in life, she couldn’t regret this. The power coursing through her body in a fight was like nothing she’d ever experienced and she grinned even as she threw herself into the speeder and hotwired it with all the skill a misspent youth could give a person.
“Hop in slow-poke!” She called to Eron, eyes wild and maybe a little manic.
“Are you, now?” Not uncommon for some people to have confidence that far exceeded their actual abilities, but Eron would rather keep it to himself rather than saying it out loud; he was amused, to say the least. She was more than capable. “Commlink’s on. Y'know what to do if you need help.” He made his way towards the TIE fighter next to hers and dropped down the hatch.
“Sure thing Soldier Boy.” She replied easily, vaulting herself up on top of the fighter and then dropping inside as he did. Pulling the hatch closed she took a moment to look over the controls and compare them to the ships she did know how to fly before beginning what she hoped was a start-up sequence.
Born on a little-known world in the Outer Rim, Faith has known hardship intimately. In her teens she fell into a criminal element, gaining the attention of a local crime lord who liked his personal guard to be easily overlooked. Like the other young women he had in his employ Faith was ‘upgraded’, fitted with an implant that ran from the base of her skull to the small of her back which increased adrenaline production and released endorphins in response to violence, she became something of a terror on her world. But eventually the crime lord was defeated, and Faith was left drifting without any guidance for the violent instincts she’d been conditioned to embrace. Until a smuggler met her and helped her get the implant adapted to be less controlling and intrusive. He gave her a job and treated her like a younger sister. Though she still struggles with instincts she had learned to act on she’s in a much better place mentally as she helps smuggle things around the Outer Rim.
@secondstringslayer liked for a one-liner
“Know how to fly one of these things? If we stay in formation and do what they do, they won’t notice. Hopefully.”
“Not really, but I’m good at learning on the fly.” Faith flashed him a cocky grin over her shoulder as she started for the vehicle in question. The pun was honestly awful but she was kind of proud of it nonetheless.