5910/Black Sky: Stormclouds Roll In

Black Sky: Stormclouds Roll In
Date of Scene:	04 December 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Black Sky encounters her old mentor. It stirs things deep within her that she does not yet understand. And he? He says goodbye to a dream of a daughter he never had.
Cast of Characters:	Elektra, Stick
Tinyplot:	Black Sky

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Elektra has posed:
It had been weeks since Elektra's death, and subsequent burial. Life, it seemed, had carried on without her. Certainly, the Hand had been busy - what with the raids that had been enacted against them, as well as other jostlings for power as they dealt with those matters and the loss of their Fist..

Or had they? Certainly there were rumours, rumours that were louder now, that they had never lost a thing. That things, it seemed, had gone entirely to plan.

But that's how rumours often were.

Just like the rumours there were of a shadowy dark figure at many of those raids. Of bodies that neither side claimed. Bodies that had been killed with a frightening precision.

Some might find the similarity to past killings rather chilling, only these were not sai wounds that were found, but those of a blade. Blades, even. Wakizashi as it happens.

Still, who was this unknown killer on the street? And why were the Hand so unconcerned about them?

Stick has posed:
     Stick had kept tabs on the Hand while systematically working with others to crush them. But the killings had piqued Stick's interest, at least the style had.

  Stick had found one of these bodies, and took to investigate further. The smell of blood was thick on the air, and he was doing all he could to find anything he could work off of. Stick had his own theories, but they needed sussing out.

Elektra has posed:
The body told a tale, alright.

Nearly clinical strikes upon it. The precision utterly deadly. Not a single hesitation. And, oddly, at each of the locations, it was never more than one or two. Certainly, there were enough living, breathing bodies at each encounter that there should be more. Or could be more. Or, more to the point, whoever it was who was doing this could have entered into the fray and declared a side...

But no. Always only a body or two. Always on the periphery. Never a hesitation. And there didn't seem to be a deciding factor in who. It seemed any and all were sufficient enough to be victim. In fact, the only deciding factor seemed to be bad luck in being there at the wrong time.

Stick has posed:
     The old man has already started connecting things, but it was still curious.

  "It doesn't add up." He comments, looking over the body. Stick stands, looking around.

Elektra has posed:
This time, though, this time things were different.

Oh, the authorites had cleaned up and chased everyone out. Missing, in the chaos, that a body had gone awol, tugged neatly into a hidden alcove by the man.

More to the point, this time was different because the shadowy figure in black hadn't disappeared. Hadn't gone the way of the shadows they sliped out of and back into the way most things did in the presence of light. This time, this time the shadow remained.

This time, the shadow hovers in the darkened mouth of the alcove, having slipped there behind him. Having been watching him investigate.

The shadow is a stilled figure, arms at sides, each with a twinned blade, easily identifiable as Wakizashi; two paired and exquisitely balanced weapons that dangled like extentions of the flesh that held them. Silent but for a calm and grim regard of the blind leader of the Chaste, bent over the body before him. Waiting? Perhaps.

Stick has posed:
     The grey haired man felt something, that eerie feeling you get and you feel like you're not alone. He reaches out with his hearing, something he doesn't tend to do lest he be overwhelmed. It was much harder to filter everything this way, but it would pick up fainter sounds.

  When Stick turns around, he hears a subtle sound, bouncing off metal. "I guess this is your handiwork..." He says, looking towards those elegant blades. He was standing calmed, but ready to fight if need be.

Elektra has posed:
The figure does not move, immediately, merely holding the older man in.. well, the figure is most definitely a she, there is not denying the sculpture of those curves, even if they are a perfectly toned athletic curve.. in her regard. Alas, Stick's senses don't reach to quite that. Though they might note the lack of such usual things as a heartbeat. Instead there is an eery silence about the figure that goes further than her lack of addressing him.

Her position gives a slight shift, first one hand, and then the other, coming up into a guarded position, her blades swung easily about in her hands, and held in a silvered statement in front of her, though she is still not at the ready.

"Handiwork?" There is a calm note of confusion from the woman. "You mean did I kill him? Yes."

The voice - it's.. different somehow, somewhat halting and burred, but it's Elektra. There is no denying that.

Stick has posed:
     The grizzled man canters his head, the lack of heartbeat was telling, but what was even more interesting was the voice. "Elektra."

  He stands fully facing his old protege. "So...this is what you do now? Killing against both sides?" He asks, ever defiant.

Elektra has posed:
If there is recognition within her, it does not show. Not a flicker nor a pause of it. Merely the same steely stare of unfathomably dark brown eyes.

"You use a name I do not know."

Her gae flicks between him, and the body he had just been bent over.

"They were living. Now they are dead. It is of no matter."

And if there was no recognition to his naming her, there is even less emotion to her voicing the fact of the man's death. It truly is that simple: He was living. Now he is not.

Whatever it is she is, or whoever it is she works for, it seems that for the moment, they do not care who she culls, only that she culls. Death, it seems, would be the greater matter here, not whose side the victim is on.

Her blades remain in that perfectly poised position, her body equally at the ready. It isn't that she hesitates (that would require an act of volition; an emotion of some sort), but more as though she waits for some signal known only to herself. What does seem certain is that unless something changes, the woman is likely to strike. One does not draw blades lightly, not unless one intends on paying them the honour of blood.

Then again, do the newly risen from the dead still hold to such things?

Stick has posed:
     Stick's breathing slows, and he holds his katana to his side. "I'm not gonna suppose you're back to help my cause..." He says, reading Elektra for her next move. He wouldn't strike against her, but would certainly defend himself.

Elektra has posed:
It would seem, for the moment, that Stick's holding creates a detente. As he holds, so, too, does Elektra.

"What is this cause you speak of? I am not for causes. I am Perfect Death. The Black Sky. You speak small words." If by small words she means he talks of philosophies, and the Chaste.

Stick has posed:
     Stick raises an eyebrow. "The cause of destroying the Hand." Perfect death seemed to encompass her quite nicely.

  Perhaps it's worth a word to her. "Black Sky, legends have been told of your arrival." He adds in, hopefully these small words have an effect. If not, this could get very ugly.

Elektra has posed:
"I do not care of the Hand. I serve she who wills my nature."

It was true. Elektra wasn't rightly commandable by just anyone. She deferred singly and absolutely to Madame Gao. And barring that? To herself.

Adding, "I do not care for legends."

He is considered, again. Too, the body past him. Elektra seeming, if not confused, at least given pause as to her next move. Stick was not her target, and he did not move against her. It left her poised on a precipice, waiting for the fall. She had not tired enough, yet, to take the decision into her own hands past that.

"Why do you continue to speak. You have weapons."

Stick has posed:
     Stick raises his head to meet Black Sky. "Because I do not wish to fight you." The bit about legends gathers his slight chuckle. "Figures..." He comments to himself.

  He holds himself steadfast, steeling himself up, releasing the katana to him. "No more weapon. I'm just an old geezer that saw a body."

Elektra has posed:
There it is, the first mark of hesitation. The first place where she does not know the correct response. Training would say to strike out, strike first and hard. But he not the target. Was not the target. The target lay dead in the alcove behind this man. This man had lain down his weapon, and left her the only antagonist in the equation.

"An old man who carries a blade and speaks of legends. You are not so simple. Why should I not strike you down?"

It was, she knew, a daring forwardness. Not within the scope of what she'd been allowed prior. In fact, were she asked, Elektra could not say what prompted it, the question welling up from within her, from recesses she did not know she had. The question defiant, even. A lash of words where up to now she has been nothing but calm.

Stick has posed:
     "Because this death doesn't mean anything to you. Nothing perfect in killing me." He comments, holding his hands outstretched towards the side. "I offer you no fight." His glossy eyes keep staring towards Black Sky.

Elektra has posed:
He has it in one. His death, outside an order to kill him, means nothing. There are no fires it stirs up. No release. No surge of tension to dismiss. Not even a curiousity. There is literally nothing that entices her to take a step forward and pierce him with her blades.

She could. She could so very easily. She just.. doesn't.

"Then we are at an impasse. You offer no fight."

His hands are what she considers, then, not his eyes. "They are the hands of a warrior," she says softly. Another thing she knows without knowing. The callouses on his palms and fingers fitting perfectly into visions that cross through her mind of exactly what weapons would produce them, and the strikes that would best follow. Entire katas flashed through her inner vision one moment, then gone the next. "And yet, you are blind." Now. Now she sees those dead eyes of his. How they stare off at nothing. "Tell me how."

Stick has posed:
     An impasse, exactly what he needed in this situation.

  When his hands are commented on, Stick can only give a shallow nod. "One doesn't need to look, to see." It was stupid sounding, he knew, but the truth wasn't that far off.

Elektra has posed:
Elektra had fought without the advantage of sight. She knew it was possible. Others, though? It was not a skill cultivated in many. It had been to her advantage. Still, she seemed to know intuitively that this was not what he meant.

"You are back to small words and prophecies. You seek to trick me. Your hands are a weapon. You are a weapon."

Her words certain and succint now.

Stick has posed:
     Stick shakes his head to Elektra. "No prophecy. No bullshit. I can see, without eyes. Someone I knew understood that before. And there are more like myself."

  The comments of weapons only garner a small chuckle. "My hands do many things, not all as a weapon." He's healed wounds with these hands, and not all his own for that matter.

Elektra has posed:
Elektra's response is a surprise even to herself, her hands lowering, letting her blades relax at her side, the faintest drop of chin directed at Stick. "Prove it."

An odd sensation welling in the middle of her chest that she does not understand. A thing born of defiance. And something else. Something not unfamiliar, but that even before her death Elektra would not give words to: Hurt.

She understands it even less now than she did before her death.

Stick has posed:
     Prove it. Two simple words with a much more difficult answer. He looks over Elektra and kneels in front of a simple cut. "Fine." He removes a small cone of incense and lights it.

  He sits in the lotus position, and inhales the smoke, eventually lifting the cone and wafting the smoke to the cut area. Something this small will heal very fast, but it's definitely something that proves what she asks.

Elektra has posed:
She heals quickly. And by that, we mean, she heals wuickly without this intervention. With it? The cut, a 4" slash along the top of her left hand, doesn't merely heal with a visible slowness, it effectively melts away. One moment, an ugly red line across her hand, and then, blurring both in and out of healed flesh and angry red, suddenly the wound is gone, with nothing more than lingering trails of smoke curling around her legs, hands, and drifting off away from her body.

All the while, she holds still, not even a tremor of motion in play. Her wakizashi held just as still.

"You are a healer." The words are a simple statement, but softer than the rough husk of her voice as it currently is. "You are a warrior and a healer. What is the word they give you?" For she knows one in another vernacular, though she also knows instinctively it does not fit here: Paladin.

Stick has posed:
     The incense used up, and Stick stands again.

  "The word they use for me, is Stick." He says, putting away the incense and wiping his hands clean. His breathing calmed, and evenly paced. He hoped that perhaps she would recognize the name, or at least decide to just let him be. He already knew what Black Sky was, it was the weapon he had hoped for, and of course, it wasn't in his hands.

Elektra has posed:
"Stick," Elektra says softly, letting the word fall across her tongue and fill the inner recesses of her mouth. She can taste and feel the thing, and there is something to it.. it's just something that she can't...

"I knew a Stick," she says suddenly, again in a manner that seems to surprise herself. She can't pinpoint the memory, or why it is she is saying this, but it does not jar within her as an untruth. Indeed, it has a warmth to it that gives her a sudden thrill. Only as suddenly as the thrill comes, it is gone, and with it the barest hint of possible memory she may have held.

The incense, though, the smell of it lingers about her. It is a thing she will return to later. Later when she is resting, and Madame Gao is finished with her. It will be later this moment will return to her, and she will try to recapture it, only she will not know why. All she will know is that the name and the scent are connected, and she to them.

"You are Stick." She repeats herself, then adds, "I am Black Sky."

Stick has posed:
     Stick bows to Black Sky, looking up as he bows. "Black Sky..." He says, sadly coming to terms with this, what was once his pupil, turned exactly into what he had wanted. And the thought of it was slightly sickening. This wasn't Elektra. A killing machine in her body, as if she was possessed, it was harrowing.

Elektra has posed:
"I do not bow to anyone," Elektra intones coolly. Calmly. But she does take Stick's bow in her stride.

"We are done, then?" His sorrow is noted as a thing of curiousity. Enough, that she returns to it. "You have regret. Why?" Because while there was a finality to that bow of his, to his naming of her, there is that unknown something within her that can not let the other go without acknowledgement.

It is as though there are bits of her warring within herself, and she is the battlefield. All the while having to play along the role she has been given, for she knows no other.

Stick has posed:
     Stick chooses his words carefully. But he does make it known. For the first time, he couldn't look at her. "I said goodbye to someone dear to me today. Like a daughter I never had." He comments, placing his katana sheath down and sliding the blade inside.

Elektra has posed:
At that, she turns. She does not know why, but her body must. It must move. It must create motion. It can not stay in place. She turns. She turns and slips away, becoming part of the shadows, and then.. gone.


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

    The Second Coming (S1), William Butler Yeats.