What's new
  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 May and June 2024 are YE 46.4 in the RP.

(SetsunaSpecOps) Open Season

H

Harlequin

Inactive Member
The soft crackle of the campfire punctuated the natural sounds of the forest, the light cast from the flame playing across the weatherd faces of the two people seated around it.

One of them, a woman, wiped the sweat from her arm on the bandana tied around her forehead. "We're wasting our time here." She said flatly, picking up a blackened stick at her feet to stoke the flames.

"Are we?" Was her companion's response.

Looking up from the fire at her companion, she responded tersely, "Yes. We are. We've been here for four days and we haven't found anything."

"Give it some time. They'll come to us when they're ready."

"Tch." The woman remarked, inclining her head at some sound made by the living forest. "I hate this place..."
 
He saw them, the two off worlders whom dare tresspass in territory held by his masters. He made quite sure that no sounds came from him, though the two space people made more then enough racket he'd beable to hide without trying.

"Damn dirty space apes..." Small Shadow muttered as he crept closer, his twin reaver claws were out and held in his hands while he crawled. Slowly getting closer on the camp...
 
"You needed to get out more, Kwon. Enjoy life some, I mean. Psych is about a hair's breadth away from listing you as an agoraphobe on your profile. Not like you give a damn, right?" The man asked, smiling at his companion.

Frowning, Kwon stabbed at the burning logs with the makeshift poker and sent embers flying up into the air. "Not in the least."

"'Not in the least'." He mimicked. "How you made it through survival training I'll never know. Now stop playing with that fire and eat your...whatever that is. The guidebook says its safe to eat."

He poked his foot against a skewered woodland creature roasting on the fire, picking it up and offering it to Kwon.

She looked at it askance. "And what was wrong with the stuff we had on the Moon, again?"

"Not natural enough." The man said with a dry laugh. He so enjoyed pushing Kwon like this, just to watch her reactions. He'd been with her a long time, since that night on Nepelesia. She knew him and he knew her.

Knew her well enough to know what that sudden twitch in her features meant.

Without skipping a beat, he restaked the animal near the fire, ostensibly to allow it to cook some more as his fingers flashed the quick and silent message. 'How many?'

"I don't know -" Kwon said, pausing as she found something interesting about the inner lining of her coat and brushed the garment back to let in the cooler night air. "- Why you keep aggravating me like that, Heiran."

"All part of the job, Kwon. All part of the job." Sitting back, he rested his arms on his legs and regarded the fire once more.
 
He stopped, hsi ears twitching and picking up something different from the camp... They were onto him. His training told him as much when the camp became quiet for a quick moment, silently sliding his didgets out of his right claw, he picked up a stone and tossed it to his right, then quickly, he tossed another to his left.

"Let's see your response, off worlders." He whispered as he lowered his form closer to the ground and crawled forward some more.
 
Finally, Kwon gave in. Picking up the skewered creature, she took a bite out of it.

"Tastes like crap, Heiran." She declared, discarding the creature over her shoulder to where she heard two decidedly unnatural sounds.

Heiran nodded. "Well, I said it was safe, not that it tasted good."

Picking up the canteen at her feet, Kwon swished some water in her mouth and spat it off to the side. "Ugh. Think you'll be fine on your own? Girl's gotta go handle her business."

Heiran nodded absentmindedly. "Oh sure, go ahead. Don't let me hold up your biological processes."
 
Small Shadow waited for the woman to leave, making sure to watch where she went and crept forward some more, getting closer and closer still to the lone male seated by the campfire.

Heh, these off worlders think they're the best do they... He though as he crept closer and closer still to the lone male's exposed back.
 
Heiran coughed, rubbing at his throat as he nursed down some water from the canteen.

Replacing the cap on the container, he set it back down by his feet.

"You know, you're quite good." He said to nothing in particular. "The forest is still making noise and our perimeter sensors aren't, quite the bit of stealth."

"We could use someone like you. Someone with your talents."

Coughing again, Heiran picked up the canteen.

"Interested?
 
He was caught. Standing, the mouselike being walked forward, his reaver claws still held tightly in his hands as he stopped right behind the Geshrin.

"What would you have me do?" Small Shadow asked. His stance was relaxed, but he was also ready. Incase anything were to happen he'd beable to react within seconds.
 
"Just like that?" Heiran asked and checked over his shoulder with a disinterested glance.

"Well, no sense being rude. Have a seat, maybe you'll find this cooking more palatable than Kwon does and I hate wasting food."

Putting his fingers to his throat again, Heiran rasped out in a colume slightly louder than what the subdermal subvocal pickups needed for the newcomer's benefit. "Go cold. Finger off the trigger and come on back."

With a russle of shrubbery not too far off Heiran's side, Kwon emerged tucking her pistols back into their holsters. She gave the newcomer a quick nod and resumed her place around the fire as if nothing happened.

Motioning to a stump near the fire, placed there in expectation of company, Heiran sat up and ran a hand through his thinning hair.

"Come, please, sit. I'm sure you're just as curious as we are. We'd like to think of ourselves as polite guests and it wouldn't do to grill our hosts for information, so let's have a polite exchange, shall we?"
 
Looking over at the woman who walked out of the brush and her gun, Small Shadow made a slight snear. "You breathe to loudly." He muttered plainly as he watched her.

"i'm sorry, but I must decline the offer for food. I'm not a carnivore. So meat won't appese my pallate." He uttered while walking around the camp and sat down on the stump. Driving his reaver claws into the wood at either side and rested his arms on his legs.

Looking between the two, Small Shadow raised his gaze to Heiran. "My name is Small Shadow, I am a member of the Shadow Hunter sect of the Sha'Nai Tribe and I am also a part of the Cult of the Closed Fist," he raises his hand and making a slight motion to Heiran, "and who are you?"
 
"You keep telling yourself that. It might come true some day." Kwon verbally riposted, as she took up a stick with one of the more patable pieces of cooking flesh and bit into it noisily.

Heiran smilled faintly and turned to the new arrival. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Small Shadow of the Sha'Nai Tribe. I am Heiran Jiang and that's Kwon, my companion. We were sent here to find a unique talent."

Taking a soft pack from his coat pocket, Heiran gently tapped out a cigarette and lit it with the campfire.

"The way you move, all stealthy and such. That seems like the talent we're looking for." Heiran contemplated something momentarily, before taking a drag off the cigarette. "How'd you like to see the rest of the galaxy?"
 
"I am but a simple Fenyaro," Small Shadow said with a tilt of his head, "I would assume someone from the stars would have found one of your own kind to hand this task too."

He paused for a second to stare into the campfire. Before looking back to Heiran. "I am humbled for this request. However, I must know what I shall gain from this, aside from freedom from this world."
 
"Assumptions are a dangerous thing, but the fact of it is that we're looking for the best. We needed someone comfortable with the outdoors, who had practical experience with it, so we came here to the last, and really only, unspoiled planet in the Empire."

Heiran snuffed his cigarette against the stump he was seated on and gesticulated while speaking.

"Someone comfortable with their environment, able to percieve things that no lesson can teach. There's very few natural areas left within the Empire, but in the work we do we tend to spend a disproportionately large amount of time in them. And that's why I'm here talking to you."

Listening to the second part of Small Shadow's question, Kwon laughed. "Sounds like it wants to get paid too, Heiran."

Heiran let a smile form on the edge of his lips. "No, I don't think the Fenyaro are as mercenary a people as we are, eh Kwon? I can only promise you three things, Small Shadow. Training, travel, and the uncertainty of 'adventure'. You want anything else, within reason of course, you could always ask."

Sighing, Heiran stretched his legs.

"It never hurts to ask, just remember that."
 
Looking up to Kwon, Small Shadow sneered again, baring teeth at her comment. "I am not an IT." He snarled as his right hand slid down to grip one of his reaver claws. "You should watch your mouth Off worlder, You may have stronger weapons..." He trails off as he points up to the tree top. Where two other Sha'Nai rest, crossbows notched and aimed. "But, I have better preperations." He finished, a smug smile on his mousey features, as he waves his left hand and the Sha'Nai hunters lower their weapons.

Releasing his grip on the claw, he regards Heiran. "Training, I need little of, Travel is something I don't really fancy either. But 'adventure,' is it's marid of meanings, is always something I like." He said with a smile. "Tell me, Heiran... Where do I sign up?"
 
Kwon cocked an eyebrow. "You all just show up out of the woodwork, don't you? Tell your little buddies to go on home, they can't come with us."

"Down, Kwon." Heiran said, "cessez de l'aggraver." (stop aggravating it)

"The situation or...?" She asked skeptically.

"You know what I mean." Turning to Small Shadow, Heiran said, "I'll give you tonight to think about it. Decisions like this shouldn't br rushed into. Besides, this is a working vacation for Kwon and I, we'd like to enjoy the rest of it."
 
There was a soft russle of leaves over head. The two hunters already running off through the boughs, having been releaved by Small Shadow after that little act of bravado.

"I shall see you tomarrow then. High Sun, at the Spring fall ravine. Five leauges due east of here." He said pointing off to the east. "I shall wait for you there with my response." He said while bowing and half turning to retrive his claws.

Walking to face a tree, he paused and turned to bow once again, before leaping up and climbing the tree. Shortly there after, there were no further sounds fom the tree.
 
Kwon watched the Fenyaro go before turning to Heiran.

Tossing the stick she had been using as a poker into the fire, she stood up and brushed herself off. "Are we sleeping out here or in the Red Moon?"

"The Red Moon, of course." Heiran said, likewise rising with a tired look on his face.

"Too good to sleep outside? No wonder they call you 'le roi en jaune'." Kwon said teasingly.

Frowning at the nickname given to him by some flippant dog at Setsuna, he momentarily frowned, "Go get the ship ready for us, mon ami."

"Oui, commandant. Ou préféreriez-vous 'mon roi '?" Kwon added with a smile as she headed off towards the clearing where the pair had parked their spacecraft, the retrofitted gunship Red Moon.

"Oh, Kwon?" Heiran called out as he doused the campfire.

"Hm?" Stopping, Kwon looked back.

"Arrêt. Votre Français est terrible."

Kwon grinned wryly and gave Heiran the middle finger, to which a smile formed on his features.

The next day...

Cruising at treetop height, the Red Moon slowed to a halt above a clearing at the canyon mentioned as the meeting place the night before. As the sound of the engines turbines whining down subsided, the landing ramp lowered to allow Kwon and Heiran off their ship.

"Well, it's time." Heiran said, sniffling. "I certainly hope that Fenyaro is here."
 
"I am here." Small Shadow said while walking out of the underbrush. "I have made my decision. I will come with you."

"However, before we leave." He said while turning Back to the underbrush. "I would suggest you scout around here somemore. There are many more Fenyaro who have skills like mine. And others whom are more skilled in certian areas."
 
"Your suggestion has been noted." Heiran said, tossing the butt of his smoked cigarette off into the side. "But our initial scouting reports didn't account for too many possible talents down here."

Kwon sat on the edge of the landing ramp, tossing playing cards into a helmet at her feet. Every card had, on one side, a black spade and on the other a scythe-wielding skeleton astride a horse with 13 on the bottom of the card.

"Command has us on a time-table." She said, tossing card after card into the helmet. "They have to find -us-."
 
"We gotta move on now." Kwon said, having tossed her last card into her helmet.

"Mm." Heiran said with a nod. "Into the boat, everyone. We've got another stop to make on the Kodian homeworld. Kwon, take the helm, please. Get us there fast and don't spare the jumpdrive."

Picking up her cards, Kwon nodded and gave a quick 'aye aye' before running up the boarding ramp to the ship.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top