Savran Has sat in a throne made of black basalt with thin veins of kyber running through it, flanked by walls covered with murals that told stories of a forgotten world and a forgotten people. Prostrating on a floor made from hexagonal tiles of polished obsidian was a pathetic little man who had failed her one too many times – a fact that he knew, based on the fear that knotted his throat shut like a hangman’s noose, had sealed his fate. For a long while, the Shani with skin the color of burnt sienna let silence hang in the air, taking in the tension of the moment until it began to bore them.
“This is the third shipment in as many weeks that has been sabotaged, Lyall. I trusted you to capture this …face stealer everyone has been whispering about, yet you return to me empty handed,” they said while staring a hole into the crown of the man’s head with slitted amber eyes. There was no point in asking him to explain himself because Savi had already ripped all the relevant details from his mind. This was merely a formality.
With a sigh, they uncrossed their feet and tapped their foot on the floor; as if on cue, the man stood at attention upon hearing the sound of the stiletto clicking against the obsidian floor. Savi recognized the look of a dominated will in his eyes, and watched with a disappointed look as the man quietly removed a dagger from his belt, lifted it to his chin, and slowly pressed upward until all six inches of its blade disappeared into the soft flesh beneath. His limbs slacked before he hit the floor with a thud.
Why was it so difficult to find good help, these days? At least that was the last of the lackeys belonging to the abusive bastard whom they’d taken this operation from. Maybe a new recruitment strategy was in order … a fresh start. But first, they needed to find whoever was karking with their supply chain.
Without further delay, they rose from their seat and headed toward their chambers exit. On the way out, they glanced to a large Selenian man who had been waiting by the doorway. “Clean this up,” they said before continuing onward.
These people had such terrible jackets.
Stiff, heavy, scratchy, like some trousers. Who wanted these?
Dead bilgescabs, apparently.
They scoffed and threw another in the pile of trash, still riffling through the rest of the corpse’s pockets. Cigarras, gross, trash. A few credits, into the pocket. Comm, the use pile. Wallet too. The pocket knife she examined a moment before tossing it aside. Inhaler, trash. Holo of a loved one, trash. Lint, tra–
Actually, that was an interesting shade of gray.
Pocket.
She rose from the body, the last of four that had been hauling this slip of cargo, and looked at their haul. Three of four ident chits and credit chits, two comms, a small chunk of credits, a kazoo, a piece of lint, two hair clippings, one knucklebone, and four peeled faces, freshly harvested. Not deplorable.
But later would be the time to look closer at the identities. Now was time to go.
The changeling picked up the lighter from the smoker’s pocket and lit it, tossing it onto the enormous puddle of reeking fuel that had drained out from where she’d slashed the hoses on the undercarriage of the gangsters’ hovervan. It lit in a beautiful flash, rainbows before gold.
Red and gold and violet.
She watched them for a moment before turning away, satisfied whatever was in the rear would probably be karked by enough burning, and left the bodies where they lay in various states.
It wasn’t as though she had anything to fear from evidence or cams. She didn’t have fingerptips. She didn’t have a face.
Well, besides the four she dumped out another block away in the gutter, but they hardly counted. The point was showmanship, not collection. She didn’t need tokens when she could become facsimiles anytime.
-
Merging back into the flow of foot traffic heralded the frission of dermis sliding across bone, of cartilage cricking as it regrew. She became he, an amalgam of passersby, ordinary, unremarkable. He detoured into the first bar he saw, new infusion of pocket change a pleasant promise in his rucksack to the potent, ripping fire of resettling ribs. His grin to the bartender was all teeth and tremor.
Later, he’d trace back who these people were. Find his next hit, because digging his fingers and pulling fistfuls from their sulci had yet revealed none of them was the head of the operation under which the original sinner subscribed. Most memories involved a man, but also feathers. Maybe he’d kept a pet bird. She’d pluck it and shove the pinions under his skin one at a time.
But for now–
The bottom of this glass, and the next, and the next.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The rhythmic tapping of a tapered nail against a glass filled the space left by the break in conversations within the cantina.
Clink. Clink. **Clink.**
Faint cracks spiderwebbed across the glass’ surface, yet no one seemed to notice. No one except the man who was supposed to see it, that was. Beneath the tilted brim of a wide hat, a pair of slitted amber eyes shot him a look that could cut durasteel – laden with a predator’s malicious curiosity. The saffron-skinned woman spoke with an eerie calm in her voice.
“That was very clever of you, stealing my men’s faces. But you don’t fool me.”
The drinking man went stiff for a moment before a bit of a wobble returned to his posture, and he looked sluggishly around as if unsure he’d been spoken to. When he seemed to noticed the figure staring at him, he pointed at himself, the finger swaying heavily to and fro, and then gave a drunken laugh.
“Me?” he slurred, “I dun'ow what…what ya mean, hat…hat-guy. hehehhuhhh. Cheerz.”
He lifted his bottle high as if in a toast, a beat–
And then slammed it down onto the bar in a shower of shattering glass and bolted for the door, elbowing past patrons and diving through the opening like a pod racer through a canyon.
“Hey!”
“Watch it, you mother fr–”
The sounds of panicked and angry patrons bled into a distant blur as the drinking man made his hasty escape. Try as he might to flee, to place as much distance between himself and the one who had confronted him, he could never quite shake the feeling of being watched. From the corner of his eye, a streak of red and black flitted in the background, creeping ever closer …
“I adore when they run,” came that same voice from before, resonating through air and mind with mocking power, like a predator taunting its prey.
I adore when they shut their bloody traps, thought the changeling as he stumbled through the crowds, though he did not project as much. No need to light a signal fire. Instead, he focused inwards, inwards to outwards, insides to outsides, viscera and dermis and blood.
They’d only gotten a moment to stare at their stalker from under the brim of that hat. But a moment could be enough, in the dark, in the depths. It had to be.
He turned a corner and in a cascade of cracks became someone else, tossing off his stolen coat and kicking it into an alleyway. Instead, quick fingers snatched up a rotting piece of cloth that could’ve been a sheet or blanket once but was now serving as a stinking poncho.
Savi lost the man in the crowd but persisted, tapping into the Force to locate him before continuing their search.
A multitude of muddled emotions, thoughts, and feelings quickly rose like murky waters in the Shani’s mind. Canto Bight was not the cesspool that some could be, but it was a cesspool still; one covered in a crown jewel of glamor to gilt over the gutted rot. Sifting through it took an effort of will and focus, particularly when one did not know what they were looking for exactly.
But the face-carver had a rather particular aura about them, one of smashed and broken glass, glittering, cutting, reflective, refracting. Clear and yet bizarre. It was this metaphorical scent the Shani followed as their tongue flicked out, tracing it back to hints of frustration, annoyance, calculation, an undercurrent of alarm, and change. Agony.
With that, it didn’t take Savi long to find them again. They were a hunter, after all, who had spent at least six decades making a life of tracking, apprehending, and sometimes killing, people far more elusive even than this one. The clicking of hard soles shoes heralded the shani’s arrival at the mouth of a dark, damp alleyway.
“Do yourself a favor and stop running.”
The words echoed outward with power that seemingly made the very air rumble.
For a heartbeat, the other figure advancing down the alleyway for the other opening froze, form moving stiffly into stillness. But then, with the sensation of slowly ripping cartilage, not just the sound of peeling fibrous tissue, but the feeling of it, between their joint minds warring dominance, Savi’s target tore themselves free. It was a burst of pain and willpower and defiance, a snarl of gnashing teeth that said with that selfsame power of rattling earth and thundering air, No. No, I am in control.*
They stalked forward, as if pulling out of a morass of quicksand, steps massive and laborious. A few feet, a meter at most, and then their gait was their own as they slammed down a foot and pivoted around in their heel. They stared back towards Savi, stolen sheetcloak covering most of them, and snapped back.
“You listen, now. Get on your knees…and toss me your hat.”
There was a glib malice to the latter portion of the command, an errant, spiteful fancy.
The Shani’s teeth ground together, eyes narrowing in contempt for the frakker whose command rippled through the Force in retort. There was anger in those eyes – slitted pools of honey that broiled with renewed malice. Try as she might to resist, the weight of the stranger’s order pressed against her psyche with the unrelenting pressure of a hydraulic press, wearing her down until it brought her down to not two, but one, knee. That was a victory and a defeat in equal measure, a small symbol of defiance and will that left her too weak in that moment to stop her hand from tossing the hat over to the stranger’s feet.
“I bow … to n-no one. You understand?” she stammered through clenched teeth.
Reply you bitch even if you can’t think of anything cool and so if feels like ur doing ur themgals a disservice in lame
“How glorious of you,” sneered the stranger, a twist of their fingers summoning the hat like a shot to their hand. They fit it snug over their scalp, hood falling back in a dramatic fashion as they raised their head again. When they did so, a face was finally once more revealed.
Not the generic man from the bar. Not whatever face the Shani may have pictured. But her own.
It wasn’t exact. The angles were smothered by darkness and the slapdash edge of rapid work; the jaw was still shifting, visibly distending skin. The tattoos were vague estimates of dark lines. And pinions were growing as they watched, slowly sprouting canary feathers.
“Understand in turn: I take no commands. I take no knee. Try to twist my mind again and you’ll find an equal match to thee.”
Savran craned their head just enough to get a proper look at the stranger’s countenance. But when they did, the shani felt the feathers on the crown of her head bristle. This person had stolen her face – conjured some cheap imitation of that which had no equal in all the galaxy. Sacrilege. She’d pay them back for this, in time. But first, she needed to know more. More about this person who had defied her so effectively.
“Who the hell are you, and why do you speak in riddles?”
“I am who I choose to be,” the face-stealer answered cryptically, watching how the Shani’s crest flared with obvious interest. As their own pinions finished growing, they ran a hand through them, then flexed them in the same flaring motion, feeling how the scalp pulled and pressed. A smirk curled further, revealing gumline and shifting jawbone. “Bit rude of you, is it not, to question such a thing? Why do you speak as you do? Is it the ways which you were conditioned? To present a farce perhaps, for all your scurrying, ingrate little minions to follow? Do you speak as your ancestors spoke? My riddles are a rule, as is my reciprocity.”
Savi disliked their tone. The flippant, defiant manner in which they spoke was as irritating as it was familiar. She had made a lifetime of bucking authority and “acceptable” norms, after all.
“And why, pray tell, have you chosen to harangue my fledglings and business?”
“"Harangue’ is a rather polite way to put gut, garrote, and graft their faces, but I do respect a clever tongue turning phrase.” They dipped an exaggerated, fanciful bow, taking off Savi’s hat in order to sweep it behind them while they were at it. It plopped right back onto their head after, though now full feathers were visibly sprouting. “Your fledglings wronged me first, thus the repayment. It is only right and balanced.”
So, they were a vengeful one. Savi’s lips stretched into a toothy grin, offering a glimpse of the pink, nearly white flesh between her upper and lower jaws—the buccal flap. Adding to her reptilian look, it often served as a source of curiosity and repulsion alike in those unfamiliar with her kind. Yet, for the mimic standing afar, it was an opportunity for them to refine their mimicry … had Savi shown them on purpose?
“Surely, nearly six weeks of this is more than enough to satiate your desire for revenge. If not, then I suggest you and I strike a bargain, so that my people can return to what they do best … making me money,” she replied, briefly turning their head as if to say she’d grown bored of their little power struggle; in reality, she was scanning her surroundings for anything that looked heavy, yet easily moved.
A curious sort of stillness took hold of their opponent at the word bargain. It was akin to petrification, the movement of those stolen feathers frozen, their eyes unblinking, muscles cold. They were not breathing. It was quite possible they had not been breathing their entire conversation thus far.
Three heartbeats passed as Savi searched for a target, and then the imposter cricked one finger, the arm snapping up to their mouth in a shushing gesture in an eyeblink.
“Neither your flight’s blood nor all the eons are enough to quench what burns in me. But if you speak of bargaining, then pray thee; speak clear and speak true of what that might mean to you.”
“Something tells me this path of vengeance of yours goes beyond the petty grudge you have against my people, so I have a suggestion: we help one another.
"You have abilities that could be useful to me, and I have the resources and connections to help you get back at whoever has pissed you off. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
Golden eyes a shade off from her own narrowed back at her at they bit into their hushing finger with monstrous teeth, nearly taking the tip clean off in a few considering clenches of jaw. The blood ran free down their hand. In the neon smog, it glinted strangely, overly metallic in sheen.
“An equivalent exchange?” they questioned, radiating all the suspicion and twitchiness of a wild animal. Their gaze darted about, landing on the same crate Savi had chosen as her weapon if needed before darting away again, looking her up and down. “What do you mean, resources? I’ve skinned dozens of your men. What could you give me?”
There was an edge to the tone, as if they were saying something else. Perhaps something closer to, what makes you think I can’t do it myself?
The Shani’s eyes narrowed, studying the stranger standing across from her. Those scarlet eyes, like tiny motes of fire cutting through the darkened veil of the night sky, studied the unfamiliar form in search of what lie beneath it. And the silence born from that moment of scrutiny persisted for a time, until the saffron skinned woman pursed her tattooed lips to speak once again, speaking with the same cool indifference she had before their brief squabble:
“I offer you … companionship.”
“‘Companionship?’” echoed the thief, incredulity pealing across the stones between them with the heavy bell of their hooting laughter. “Companionship?! Goddess! Bleed and gag me. What under all the Matron Moons makes you think I need companionship?”
Their voice had changed, along with the cadence of their speech, their expression opened like a cracked bottle, as though Savi’s suggestion was so ludicrous it had actually shocked them into sincerity.
“I know a lonely soul when i see one,” they replied, sounding as if they had personal experience with it.
The stranger bared their teeth, taking a step backwards even as their hands flexed forward, a dagger gleaming in one, as though caught between two visceral needs to flee from the very suggestion or rip out Savi’s throat.
“I am not lonely,” they hissed. “And you can offer me nothing, you insolent, loathsome little louse. Your house is in ruins, your servants bleed and burn. Resources? Connections? Pah! The only lonely rotter here is you!”
“Your reaction suggests otherwise,” Savi responded coolly, because she knew that someone who found no truth in her words wouldn’t have reacted so angrily to them. This stranger, with their scathing tone and insults, sounded exactly like someone who had something to prove.
To their analysis of her business’ standing, Savi said nothing, for she knew that it would continue to thrive in spite the momentary setbacks caused by this face stealer’s meddling.
Mustering the strength to rise to her feet as the stranger’s telepathic hold faltered in the midst of their outburst, Savi tilted her head while stepping forward, watching her closely while maintaining a less-than-threatening posture. “Perhaps I am. Perhaps that’s why I’m best suited to give you what you’re lacking, and what I can sense you desire on some level, even if you haven’t realized it yet.”
Then, they shrugged. “Or you can continue living your life, if you can even call it that, as you have been. It makes no difference to me.”
“You know nothing about my life,”*snapped the shifter, their stolen feathers rising to ruffle where not pinned under their stolen hat. Savran rising caused them to stiffen further, to take another bracing step back, lifted on the balls of their toes, that dagger raising in a guard now. Their eyes, saffron, but not like Savi’s, darted about. Then they seemed to catch themselves retreated, and borrowed nostrils flared in rage, jaw gnashing as they tried to cool their expression, to stand straight and not crouched. “And you know nothing of *me. What dare you to demean it?”
“You can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to.me,” Savi replied with a scoff before turning. “The offer stands You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
She started to walk away.
Savi would miss as the shifter’s version of the Shani’s own face briefly spread and purpled with near-apopletic rage at being so dismissed. Their arm raised to throw their dagger, their power coiled rash and snapping in their gut.
But then, in just a flash, their counterfeit countenance dawned with something else, and then spread in a long, slow grin, practicing unhinging the newfound jaw.
“Oh, that I do,” they hissed to themselves, and lowered their arm, tipping the brim of their new hat as they slunk further back into the alley, into shadows. “That I do.”