#alexis01

There was a process Lizzy followed when acclimating to new areas. Interrogate the locals for information, threaten a handful to establish she wasn't to be fucked with, hit the nearest dive bar, and then find a lass to lay with. She was on step three. Turns out the booze in Tranquility wasn't half bad (and neither were some of the local women, admittedly). She'd muscled herself a spot at the front bar and was about three beers deep when she spotted another human come wandering in.

They looked sickly, for lack of a better word. Or at least unwell. Really, if they weren't moving about Lizzy would swear the stranger was a corpse freshly buried. An eyepatch covered one eye, and the gaze they cast around the room seemed half vacant. Though she was tempted to dub the stranger entranced, their gaze was deliberate and had intent. Lizzy recognized the look of someone reading the room, for she'd perfected it herself. Scanning for exits, assessing threats, identifying opportunities. Sick though it sounded, Lizzy felt kin in this one.

She didn't try to get the stranger's attention quite yet though. Risk assessment went both ways, mind you. Lizzy saw no weapons on them, but that meant little to someone trained with their fist. Their stance was all wrong if they were getting ready to fight, though. Something still felt off. Just off enough that she didn't want to be the one to initiate contact just yet.

Instead, she spun around on her stool slowly and faced the rest of the room. Spreading her legs apart in a crude display of dominance, she leaned back and propped her elbows up on the bar behind her. And she watched the stranger make their way further into the crowd.

It feels like a joke to be stripped of her power like this. A cruel joke of the universe. Poor Delilah, having clawed her way to power, to unstoppable strength, only to have it stolen from her. Is the universe so desperate to knock her down, make her life a tragedy?

Hah. That she will not allow. She’s done this once, she’ll do it again. She’ll make her way back to the top and she will rend whoever did this to her to pieces. 

In the meanwhile, though, she must deal with what she has been given. And what she has been given is... a very frustrating bloodbriar. She stares at the vine with distaste, standing outside the Palilicium with it where it breaks through the street from the dirt.

It sways, leans towards her. She shoves it away. And then it quivers, and she knows that sign of approaching company. With a hiss, she smacks the vine and snaps at it. “No,” she growls, and then she whirls on the poor person leaving the building.

Hardwire had learned almost all he could of Nectar.  Not that there was much to learn, as the locals somehow knew about as much as he did.  He’d thought about resorting to extremes to see if they were genuinely ignorant, but he couldn’t attract attention like that.  Not yet at least.  So his other option had been to expand his recon to the other locales in this “ark”.  Crises was his first stop, and it had the feel of a nightmarish Coruscant.  The architecture was positively ancient to look at, but it was every bit as claustrophobic.  Too many people (or more accurately, rat people), crammed into too-narrow streets.  Far too many hiding spots for ambushes or aspiring assassins.  He hated it.

More than a few locals tried to sell him something he didn’t need.  A few tried to scam him.  And one, to their immediate regret, tried to threaten him.  None of them yielded any intel that could be remotely classified as “useful”.  All the clone really learned was that you’d be an idiot to ever fully trust any of the locals in Crises.  There was always some trick or jest or scheme hidden behind their smiles.  A younger version of Hardwire might have appreciated the subterfuge, but he was an old man now and very short of patience.

That patience was about to run out when he spotted something.  No, someone.  A human.  Short and lanky with hair kept in a braid and absurdly pale.  Now that was a lead, if he’d ever seen one. Hardwire cut his pace by half and let them get ahead, beginning to trail them.  All the locals were half his size (not hard, considering he was six feet tall and built like a tank), so he had to use buildings and objects to partially obscure him.  Every so often he’d duck into a nearby shop and pretend to browse for a minute or two when he thought he was being detected, then slip back out.  His eyesight was keen enough that he could afford to keep a great distance and not lose the target.

The painstakingly slow trail went on for what felt like an hour before his quarry turned right down an alleyway.  Hardwire checked the map on his holophone and noted that the alley spilled out into a courtyard, which was surrounding on each side by buildings.  Every other alley leading out of the complex was blocked by a fence.  He circled around and noted that one of them was chainlink and therefore easy enough to climb.  Hardwire made his way up and over, then into the courtyard.

Whoever this person was, they were just standing there in the center of the courtyard.  Waiting, maybe?  He’d been careful while tailing them, but he was hard to miss when he didn’t have a camouflage generator.  The clone was determined to find out now, and maneuvered himself so that he was crouching in a heavily-shadowed corner of the courtyard.

There are ups and downs about being a girl who is part dog. The ups usually involve the playing out of childhood fantasies and magical powers that the dog part has. The downs involve an array of things. One of those things is currently vexing her right now. A cat. An adorable little... kitty cat... who... she must... chase--

No! She has her humanity, she won’t do it. She can’t.

But it’s just so smugly waving its tail and it’s watching her and... and...

That’s how she finds herself dashing down the streets of the Palilicium, chasing a stray alley cat with determination. Down that street, phase through a corner she’s too slow to avoid hitting, and trip and fall onto the ground with a noise of surprise.

She looks up at the fleeing cat, and she barks at it. She can’t help it, it bubbles up from deep within. It’s a human approximation of a bark, then a growl. And then she gets ahold of herself. Wow. She’d really be embarrassed if someone had been around to see that...

Jade’s gaze goes to a pair of shoes next to her face, and then she looks up.