The streets of Sub-Korda never cease to amaze the young Kendis. She’d been prowling them for months on end and there always seemed to be something that could surprise her. Her latest encounter was with a group of evildoers visiting all the way from Kasiya, her mother’s old stomping grounds. The small group of goons was surprised to see a smaller version of their old terrorizer wielding a bow instead of fists, but their surprise wasn’t enough to keep them from fighting the vigilante.
The woman’s moves were familiar yet new all together, her punches placed in a similar fashion when she wasn’t using her bow as a blunt weapon and it wasn’t long before the quartet was either unconscious or writhing on the ground.
In a typical fashion for those in her trade, the vigilante approached the most conscious of the bunch and nocked an arrow against her drawstring, pulling it back.
“What are you doing in my city!?” She shouted, her voice modulated to be harsher by her helmet.
Work in Korda, especially the city’s lower district, never ended. It kept him busy, kept his mind sharp and his heart soft to the struggles of its people … his people. People who just wanted to eke out a modest living, to keep their heads low and avoid any trouble. But there were so many cuttthroat opportunists who had other plans for the city. They were trouble enough, but when Bril Teg Erinos caught wind of some masked assailant dispatching vigilante justice throughout the city, he knew he needed to put his investigation skills to good use and discover who they were before they unraveled everything he’d worked for. Korda was already balancing on a razorthin precipice, and he was worried this vigilante would inadvertently push it over the edge.
With his sharp mind and gift for connecting disparate details, it didn’t take him long to piece together a clearer picture of how this vigilante carried out business and what places they frequented. Tonight was one of those nights. Perched atop a small outcropping overlooking part of the city, he opened his senses to the Force. A melange of disparate emotions – joy, jealousy, anger, desire – flooded into his mind, and he quickly sifted through them in search of a clue that would lead him to the vigilante’s whereabouts. They were out there somewhere – he coulf feel it in his bones.
And then he felt it: somewhere in the city below, anger flared like a roaring fire, followed by a sudden spike in fear. He stepped off of the building’s edge and moved toward the source in a sprint.
-
He arrived on scene to an armored figure surrounding by unconscious men. They had a bow trained on the only conscious one there, an arrow knocked and primed to fire. Acting quickly, Bril projected the Force outward to knock the stranger backward just enough to prevent them from firing.
Bril arrived just in time to stop the vigilante from further harming the injured individual as she was a split second away from letting go of her drawstring.
Surprise washed over Lektra’s hidden face as an unknown force somehow pushed her to the right, almost like the wind. It prompted her to quickly pivot her body to the right, instinctively letting the arrow loose towards the only target in view.
Bril’s eyes widened just a bit when he heard the urgency of the Force’s whispers of warning in the back of his mind. He twisted his torso just enough to narrowly avoid being pierced by the arrow.
“Rude,” he said. Then, he dashed forward with blinding speed to hopefully catch the assailant off guard, reaching out to grab hold of her wrists to keep her from knocking another arrow.
He’s fast. Lektra’s thoughts immediately jumped to an escape plan as she realized just what kind of foe she was up against. With practiced speed and precision, the young Vigilante grabbed an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, and fired in one fluid motion.
The arrow in question had a cryoban explosive built into its head, something she found was perfect for slowing armored foes. If it were a normal enemy, Lektra would’ve waited to see the results of her attack, but she had no time. One of the first lessons she could remember was to never fight a force user if she could help it. So, she did what she was taught and immediately fired up her jetpack and tried to get away.
The masked stranger knocked and loosed an arrow faster than he’d expected; she had him dead to rights, but to his surprise, the sting of its impact never came. Had she missed? No. That much became clear when he heard the sharp hiss of something depressurizing at his feet, following by a different kind of sting: the frigid bite of frost and ice spreading across the ground and his feet!
“Cryoban…” he muttered to himself while making a mental note of it. Instead of taking a kill shot, she had chosen to slow him down instead. Perhaps the claims of her being some kind of crime fighter weren’t exaggerated, after all.
The sound of a jetpack’s thrusters seized Bril’s attention, causing his head to snap in the direction in which the stranger was fleeing. Reaching out with his mind to grasp the myriad threads of the Force, he stretched and twisted them into a web to ensnare the vigilante in a telekinetic bind. What better way to catch a stinging bee than with a spider’s web?
“Stop running!” he shouted at her.
By some miracle, Lektra was able to wiggle herself out of Bril’s invisible bind. The moment she was free, she didn’t even stop to look back, instead focusing on simply flying away as her heart raced. The vigilante was in no way equipped to deal with a threat as great as a force user, so she has no choice but to begrudgingly ask for help.