Chapter 1: Happenings of Late

By Dunkelzhan (can be reached at elminster1342@yahoo.com)

Inhale deep, exhale deep, inhale deep, exhale deep.

Callelle’s instructor had always told him to relax in such a manner whenever in an extremely stressful combat situation. This definitely qualified. He had to fire in a few minutes and perfectly nail the high ranking Kei pirate giving the speech or he would be completely screwed. Silver had spent seven hours casting anti-detection spells on him and those would only be effective until he fired. If he missed he wouldn’t have time for a second shot, adamantium barriers would be raised in an instant if he didn’t hit the first time.

“You can do this”, the young man in the fedora and black trench-coat assured to himself as he took a moment’s glance down the barrel of his solid black sniper rifle. The view he caught was that of a sprawling multi-colored city stretching past the 111 mile horizon, starships and hover vehicles filling most gaps in the sky that weren’t already displaced with mile tall skyscrapers. He looked back into the scope aligned the cross hairs onto his three miles distant target and fired. Direct hit. The young woman’s extravagantly colored robes became quickly stained pure red with blood as she fell to the ground.

*They’ll never know what hit her* he thought to himself as he moved away from the edge of the skyscrapers gravel covered roof which he stood upon and began to disassemble his rifle so he could set it back in it’s case. He did so in a hurried manner, knowing that someone would notice him if he stuck around too long.

“Another successful job”, he noted cheerily to himself as he stepped towards the elevator that would take him to the bottom of the 3,023 foot high Dre’lek city tower. Dre’lek was a special city in the fact that it covered it’s entire earth sized planet. That’s right. There are all of ten square miles of bare dirt on Dre’lek, all left for one little park. Most of the planet is covered by vertical miles of structure. But I’m off the subject. Back to Callelle...

A few minutes after he had pressed the button the elevator reached the rooftop with a successful ding and the sniper stepped closer to the opening doors. Not a foot wide was the gap between the doors when a massive firey explosion blasted out of the elevator directly into Callelle. The young man just barely had time to activate his wrist mounted energy shield before he would have been burnt to a crisp. The trench coat clad assassin was still knocked on his back-almost to the building’s edge- by the shockwave. He erected himself just in time to see seven of the some-what deadly Kei pirate ninjas tumble out of the elevator and towards him. “Ah hell!”, he exclaimed to himself as he neared the building’s edge-rifle case in hand- and prepared to jump.

As the ninjas moved in their bizarre bobbing style towards him- their metal claws swinging- he leapt. Did he have a parachute, or jump jets? No. Was he insane? No again, but some would say so. Why did he jump then? Well, those caster guns can do the most amazing things...

In his fall he tossed his riffle case off in a particular direction knowing it would only hinder his fall and that it could easily survive the impact after more than 3,000 feet. As his trench coat flailed about in the wind his black fedora was flung off, revealing black hair that that had been dyed blonde and jelled into hundreds of little downwards spikes (much like Tidus from Final fantasy X), in addition to pair of furry, black c’tarl-c’tarl ears. After two thousand feet of descent he loaded a particular shell- a #7 to be exact- into his blue caster, aimed straight down and fired. His descent immediately began to slow and he replaced the caster into it’s shoulder holster and drew his back mounted katana. The repulsor shell had worked well.

He glanced up to see the ninjas quickly nearing his altitude. As they did he swung his blade in a perfect circle, slicing each of them into little, blue ribbons. “Why do they even use those weak things?”, he asked himself as he fell another 500 hundred feet while sheathing his blade. He drew his caster gun again and loaded it with another #7 shell, firing just 300 feet above the ground. He slowed to a few miles per hour just as he reached the dura-crete sidewalk, nearly landing on one of the hundreds of passing pedestrians.

He caught his fedora on his head before he had his caster back in it’s shoulder holster. As the c’tarl-c’tarl walked calmly over to the direction of a wailing car alarm to find a car that had been crushed by his fallen rifle case his ears pricked up, recognizing the distinct clink of heavy powered armor, specifically the combat variety. He turned just in time to dodge the razor blade fist of a massive Kei pirate armor suit, piloted by a little boy with outlandish markings on his face. “No one kills a Kei pirate without meeting the consequences!”, he screamed at the sniper before beginning his spell chant.

His voice was quickly drowned out by the near-screaming female voice of a young human woman clad in a silver rune covered black cloak with silver hair in a single long braid. As the female mage finished her chant a light streaked across the busy street, causing a massive explosion to erupt around the armored Kei pirate. “Silver! You usually do end up saving my ass”, Callelle exclaimed as he picked up his briefcase and ran towards her. “Artanis is on his way with the ship, we’ll have to hold everything else off until then”, she noted to him. “I hope he gets here soon, I don’t want to be dead before we reach Heifong for the race”, he said while loading his caster gun with a #12. Silver noticed this action and remarked,”Watch how many of those you use. They’re not exactly easy to make ya know.”

“Yeah yeah...”, he was cut off by the arrival of his ship, the Sun Gem, and the lowering of it’s boarding ladder. Just as they made it to the bridge another explosion rocked the street. A lightning bolt spell had narrowly missed their ship. Noting that everyone was in their proper seats- Gog in the secondary grappler arms seat, himself in main grappler arms and pilot seat, Marigold in the ship maintenance seat, Silver in the projectile weaponry seat and Artanis in the navigator’s tank- Callelle strapped himself in and piloted the ship towards orbit and a warp route towards Heifong.

*For all that our client better pay up soon* he thought to himself as he sent the ship into hyper space.

To be continued...