3 01b: Purple Roses

Klara

Being a bounty hunter was hard work, but for Klara, being apart of the hunting circles only propelled her towards the target at the very top: Serro Crane. And everyone knew that in order to get to Serro, you'd needed to go through a whole host of enemies. It was a rogue gallery, pick and choose, and Klara made sure that she was going to hurt Serro where it really hurt. First, with Bost Litnum. But she couldn't quite think of that right now.

RUMBLE!

A large container rumbled down the hallway, like a giant boulder carrying infinite moss as it headed its way towards the hunter. Klara ran as fast and as far as he could, leaping over cabinets, over tables, and turning away to run down another hallway. But behind her, the galaxy-ridden container chased her like a slow hyena.

When she made a quick turn, she saw something that could get her out of this ridiculous situation.

Klara leapt off the side panel and skidded down into the gaping metal hole ahead of her, spiralling down towards the never-ending darkness. She stayed calm. Years of hunting high-profile targets and being able to put them on the hook had trained the young bounty hunter to be able to adapt to her surroundings. She wasn't the best, but she strived to be.

This was no different. As Klara slid down into the depths of black faster and faster, she tried her best to formulate a plan.

First, galaxy-ridden container's going to crush me. I'm not going to come out looking like a detestable meatball. Not my style. Secondly, I've got to use my brain here.

Klara whipped out her trusty hook-gun.

Or simply just use venge.

The trusty hook-gun seemed like a normal, all-servicing revolver with an extra claw hook stuck at the very top of it. The truth is that it is far from what it seemed. Venge, as Klara called it, is able to fire off repulsor shots that upon impact send enemies flying like a bale of turtles across an empty bridge. There are a total three switches on venge: the irritation lock, the rage lock, and one more button to enable venge's claw-hook. The irritation lock and rage locks are how strong the repulsor shots would be. For now, Klara always stuck to 'irritation'.

The claw-hook is able to be fired separately from the revolver, digging into places unseen and allow Klara to be gravitated towards it, or send the claw right back to where it belonged. A weapon like this allowed the right bounty hunter to traverse inner buildings by making short work of staircases, and making boarding of ships so much easier.

While Klara was trained in a shotguns, rifles and snipers, she wasn't that good with a pistol, much less a revolver. She had time to learn the gun, and it took almost sixteen months for her to be prolific in the weapon. Pretty soon, venge became the only thing Klara used on missions.

And if Klara took out her trusty claw-gun, she already knew what she was going to do.

JAG!

The claw flew and impaled deeply into a nearby wall. Klara could barely hold tight onto the handle as she slammed right into the titanium wall.

Shit, she thought. All this metal infrastructure… what's the galaxy-ridden point?! It just makes it easier to just do so much more–

Klara looked below. A shadow emerged. It got bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

What?…

It had seemed that the container also had an idea to climb down into the lower vents. The problem was that the container was coming straight at Klara.

Shit!

Klara looked back down. She was nearer to the ground, and had to make a decision fast. She gritted her teeth, and got to work.

SNAP!

Klara pushed down on the button on venge, and found herself flying back up.

Did I just make the wrong move? Shit shit shit.

She twisted herself, stretching thin, flying up and‒

SLIIIIDEEE!

Klara released all her breath at once, pushing herself up against the wall in the tiny gap, barely scraping through the container as it barely brushed up against her and fell all the way down to the metal grounds.

SNAP! Klara's handle re-attached itself back to the claw.

It was a close call, as Klara figured, but in her career of catching targets and skipping through death traps, this wasn't even a fairly close call. The container CRASHED! as it slammed straight into the metallic floors. The danger was gone, for now.

Klara pushed the glaive out from the wall and landed down into the vents below. Her eyes looking around for any other stragglers that may have been around.

On top, where Klara had leapt off from, a figure emerged to block the light.

"Thorn!" a female voice called out from above. "Are you okay?" The figure was back-lit but Klara could see the silver uniform, a silver gantlet and ever-flowing hair. She had recognised that to be her ally, Czyrian.

"Yeah!" Klara shouted out. Or, rather, Purple Thorn did.

"I'll head down this way," Czyrian shouted. "We can surprise him if we split up!"

Klara nodded her head. "That's a good idea," she shouted back, and began sprinting along the dimly lit hallway.

Purple Thorn, at first with an initial 'The' before dropping it, had become somewhat of an alter-ego for Klara. This wasn't to say that she was now absolved with all the blame of what made a bounty hunter professional in the sense of the word, but if it weren't for being two people at once, one made-up, then there was no way she would be risking herself to fight off her enemies, and eventually the one atop the tomb of evil.

For others around the galaxy, Purple Thorn was a myth. Probably conjured up by a religious man who took the occult too seriously, or perhaps it just became a space joke to have Purple Thorn inserted everywhere. For Klara, it was a form of identity. It was the way she lived, the way she fought, the way she was known to the galaxy. And no better way to introduce yourself as an assassin to the galaxy's biggest juggernaut: Serro Crane. Or in the case of the mission, to Serro's right-hand man, Bose Litnum.

The galaxy had been split apart into separate regions, such as Scarlet Skies and Verditer Lands, just to name a few. Serro was one of the biggest conquerors of the Verditer Lands. He had taken the mantle from his dying father, sat on the throne that made him immediate king, and displaced his superiors with those he trusted. From then, he was an unstoppable force, moving from one planet to the next, taking their reigns as people bowed to him, worshipped him and sang his name even in space shuttles and tiny homes. Klara shuddered at the thought.

He needed to die, Klara thought, and that was what she was here to do. She had infiltrated Dieragon, one of Bose Litnum's trusty ship, but it wasn't easy. Bose wasn't just Serro's right-hand man and trusty advisor, he was also a gem connoisseur and was used to travelling the galaxy to market his 'gem conventions'. Of course, this meant his ship would have to have been protected by either the most powerful people, or some of the most powerful people. And yet, she had so easily snuck in and gotten through most detections.

How is this possible? Klara had thought earlier when she had rappelled down the vents. How had a right-hand man to the galaxy's most incredulous titan not have enough protection to surround himself with?

Klara's operation to infiltrate Dieragon was easy. First, she had boarded Czyrian's ship, a tiny little scout ship that looked similar to the escape ships on Dieragon. Secondly, the guards on patrol were also lesser than she had imagined. Since entering the ship's vents a half-hour ago, she had only encountered about what seemed to be a dozen or-so guards. That was weird. Klara chalked it up to a number of reasons, one being that Dieragon was also a cargo ship. It is a host to a many gems and crystals, and even magical stones. Being the gem connoisseur Bose was, Klara could hardly see why a man would even need that man gems and crystals. Most of the shinies were kept in the ship's hull, and due to its twisted shape, some sort of a ring attached to another ring, it disallowed blithering, a term more commonly known around seekers than hunters. All Klara knew about the term was that if a gem was to be blithered, it would activate the powers harnessing inside a tiny stone, possibly letting loose hell that would be unfathomable. Fortunately for the hunter, she wasn't very much in dodgy stones and stupid pebbles. She was here for the man behind them, so that she could acquire information which will lead her to Serro Crane.

Still, she wasn't so sure why Dieragon was so easily infiltrated. If Bose was indeed Serro's right-hand man, shouldn't he be a much more protected target? Either way, Klara wasn't complaining. She just needed to get to Bose, and that was the most important thing.

Klara lifted her head up at the lights above from where she was, pacing herself well so that she wouldn't resort to using too much stamina. Up above was where all the main rooms were, and where she was sure Bose would be. Down here, where she fell, was where the basement lines connected.

She moved towards the walls and placed her hands onto the wires. This was a trick that she learned. Most of the gems got shipped and carried down here, in tiny tunnels that funneled away to factories and storage facilities and kept the stones cold for another day. If she could track the sound or the physical contact within the walls, she would be able to follow it, bringing her closer to Bose or to something that she could use as a way to get Bose to talk. After all, a seeker's main reason for crying is losing a gem that would be worth thousands and thousands of credits. It was a probable plan, but Klara was already thinking of the 'after'. After getting to Bose, after getting the information.

After that, I'll kill him. Probably, Klara thought. If she was going to leave behind a marker for Serro, killing Bose would be the perfect opportunity to get him to notice her.

But that would set me back. That would put me in the crosshairs of Serro. Too early and it would cost me. Too late and he would have the power to conquer planets.

Disgusting.

It was a tough choice. Klara had followed Serro Crane since the beginning, since he had started ruling Tetoid, the planet Klara was from, and was in a way the creator of her now known alias: Purple Thorn. She was, after all, part of Incident Roolboar from almost ten years ago. That event had left a scar like no other, and for some as hardened as Klara was, she would never allow herself to speak of it, much less think about it.

When Klara had reached the next room, she found herself surrounded by screens that showcased monitor feeds that examined into the nitty gritties of the entire ship. Even the tiniest rooms like a janitor's store room had contained a spy camera, and that was both great and extremely worrying. This was bad for a lot of obvious reasons, but for Klara, when she had managed to find a camera and a figure in a silver uniform dash across the screen, she knew that she was on the right track.

The figure, known as Czyrian Myss, was a hunter that Klara had very much admired. They had both come from the same academy, trained with each other on what a bounty hunter should do, the adaptability of the situations, and had become good friends through camaraderie and wanting to change the galaxy for the better. Klara had noticed her will to carve out her own destiny and it deeply resonated with her. But most importantly, it was their same ideals to rid the galaxy of Serro's footprints that eventually brought them together on this quest. Without Czyrian, Klara's hands would have been tied behind her back and her chances shot. Now, she had a companion that she could count on, and she was going to look forward and never back.

Klara placed a finger on her right ear to where the mobile comms, comms for short, were. The comms enabled her to speak to anybody on the same feedback as her which was Czyrian.

"Czyrian," Klara said as she watched her partner move from screen to screen, trying closely to follow her steps. "I believe I'm in the surveillance room. I can see everything."

"What? Down there?" Czyrian said, stopping in her tracks.

Shit, Klara thought to herself as a few troopers began running down the hallway that was next to Czyrian's.

"Troopers, just ahead of you, coming down your side," Klara notified her partner immediately. "Back up to the wall."

"Got it," Czyrian replied, immediately pulling her entire body away to the wall.

She backed away to a wall as the troopers carrying pulse rifles began to shuffle her by, not noticing she was there. In the dark, nobody could see nobody, but Klara was the all-seeing eye.

"You're good to go," Klara said as soon as the guards disappeared from the camera feed.

"Where is Bose?" Czyrian asked, ducking out from behind the wall.

"I'm locating him."

Klara shifted her eyes through every screen possible, sometimes looking back at them twice to make sure she hadn't missed a drop of detail. On one of the screens which were placed much higher than others, she found him. Black top hat, a sleek black suit and an unforgettable lucid look, there he was: Bose Litnum. The scrawny man was dressed for an occasion, and Klara was ready to spoil his tinpot party.

He must be heading for a trade or a convention, Klara thought. But he's so close. No more slips this time.

"He's down six rooms from you, straight all the way. He's about to leave," Klara said.

"This direction?" Czyrian asked, pointing her fingers forward knowing that she could see her. Though, Klara did admit on the screens she looked like a little fool.

"Yes, just keep heading straight. You'll run past the storage room filled with shinies, and up ahead, you'll meet a patrol of guards."

"How many?"

"I'm seeing five."

"Alright, that's a battle I can tattle with."

Up above, Czyrian's rattle and thumping of heavy footsteps took Klara's notice.

She's just up there. Then it clicked in her head, and she started running off on her own.

"I can get them off of you," Klara said as she tried to follow the sounds of the running footsteps above. "It should give you enough time to go up ahead and get to Bose before he leaves."

Bose was on his way to his tiny escape pod, Little Numb, but as the name suggests, it wasn't all that tiny. In fact, it was a cruise ship and a speeder rolled into one. It was small, gentle, not to mention also fast, and capable of flying under the radar of warships for a few minutes without being detected. Though, those who have stalked Bose have also claimed that Little Numb could go under radar for as long as a full hour. In the eyes of a seeker and a hunter, hours were impeccably long for a ship the size of Little Numb.

If Klara, or in this case Czyrian, couldn't catch up to Bose then her efforts in the last half-year or so would have been thrown down into the drain. Bose seemed impenetrable, always escaping at the slightest chance, and she couldn't let that happen again. This time, with a partner available, there was no way they were letting Bose off the hook that easily.

Still, Klara figured that there was just something amiss with the whole thing. Bose seemed… too easy to capture now.

"Where was it you said?" Czyrian said through the comms. "Straight ahead?"

Klara followed underneath Czyrian's footsteps. "Yeah, straight ahead." She dashed forward a little more, and when she heard the thudding sounds of heavier footsteps, she looked straight up.

She pulled on her large purple cloak that acted as both disguise and armor, tapped onto the Tetoid gem slung around her neck as it brimmed a bright profound purple. She unsheathed venge and pointed it right up to the floors above. With a pull of the trigger, the claw shot forward and embedded itself onto the other side of the metallic floors. Now, she was ready.

Klara jammed her finger into the button, sending her flying high up and preparing her posture as she landed into the ceiling.

AND… SMASH!

Klara burst through from below the floors like a kraken, throwing the guards off their footing as the bounty hunter spun with grace in the air. She immediately placed the claw right back to venge, acting as both a long-range killer and a close-range bayonet and primed her targets on the guards.

Five, she saw immediately, and five will fall!

Klara dragged herself forward, heading first straight for the leader. She lead with a punch across the face, a right-hook to his neck and fore a sweeping kick to lift the guard's feet off the ground. Flinging the rifle off his arm, the leader hit face-first right onto the metallic floor.

SLAM!

Alright.

Now, it was the two guards behind the fallen one. Before any of the two could bring up their rifles to fire, Klara's alter-ego, Purple Thorn, struck first. As is tradition.

She slid her knees forward, bringing out a dagger from her tiny pocket located on her knee. As she slid, it gave her the opportunity and the speed to stick the glaive into the knees of one of the guards, and her dagger-wielding hand did the same to the other. As she got up from the other end, she thrusted her elbows into the back of their heads and trained her eyes on the remaining guards.

SLICE! SLAM!

BANG-BANG!

"Shit!" One of the remaining guards yelled as their comrades dropped to the floor like bullet shells. They turned and ran for their lives, letting their feet bounce up but it didn't seem to be enough.

Not on my watch.

Klara angled venge to the wall. With her targets acquired, she pulled the trigger on the claw, lining up against the wall before bouncing and slicing across their legs.

SPLICE SPLICE!

The remaining guards dropped to the floor like their fallen comrades. The claw that had been spinning forward spun a full arc before jamming right back into place of the handle. Making sure that they don't come back to haunt her, Klara walked forward with two fists, and landed them directly into the back of the guard's heads.

That should be enough.

There was a sigh from Klara, not because it was done, but because it was just not worth that much. Guards these days are only trained and paid to do one thing, and most of them are incapable of even doing the simplest of things. It would make sense for Bose to have guards on his ship considering the fortunes of gems and crystals he hoarded, but it seemed as though the guards were just not expecting any sort of attack, much less an attack from Purple Thorn.

Or were there just not enough guards in the first place?

Klara had wondered, upon the facilities of Dieragon, surely Bose would be wise enough to afford more guards?

Whatever. I'm almost onto him.

From behind her, Czyrian caught up. She was visibly awed by the display of action, and also slightly disappointed that she didn't at least have a bite of the cherry.

"C'mon," Klara said. "He's just up ahead."

Czyrian nodded, and both hunters took off at incredible speed.

Klara heard more footsteps approaching her on the right, but now was not the time to lose focus, or to lose momentum with the target in sight. Now was about catching up to Bose, and then catching him. Catching Bose would mean nothing on another hunter's kill score or point system, but for Klara, she was spearing for bigger fish, which she has to go through the little one to get to.

In front of them, a sealed door had begun closing real fast.

"Just like what the academy taught us," Czyrian said, trying to keep up with her running breath.

"To think you still remember," Klara said, trying not to.

"We're going to have slide through it."

"No galaxy-ridden shit."

As they neared the closing door, it had begun to close on them much faster.

Galaxy-ridden, Klara thought. Are we going to make it?

"We're going to have to try," Klara said, as they reached nearer.

Their hearts pounded and their legs stretched. And just before they reached the door, their bodies came straight down onto the floor.

SKID!

Klara and Czyrian barely got through as the door almost clipped onto Klara's large cloak. That didn't happen often, the clipping of shirts or cloaks or any of that, but she figured that taking chances like that ended up in suicide, or not catching Bose, which in her eyes, the latter was definitely worse.

When Klara reached the end of the hall, she had reached the storage room that she had told Czyrian about. In one of the other storage rooms, cracked open in the way that a hunter would: with no evidence of a clean break, with shotgun pelts embedded into the thick walls, and with no idea of how to leave the lack of trail like a clear-thinking seeker. The door had been blasted onto the ground, the gems in the room robbed, and in the puff of thick smoke, there was no trace of Bose.

Shit. Shit shit shit. Shit!

"He's near the end!" Klara yelled and continued running.

"Hold up!" Czyrian shouted from behind.

Klara couldn't quite pick up Czyrian's words, but in her mind, she knew what she wanted.

As Klara ran up ahead, she had reached the room filled with escape pods. Her eyes searched everywhere for any signs of Bose, or any sign of his men, but there was nothing. Panting as she entered into the room, Czyrian placed her hand on her knees.

"Where is he?!" Klara shouted, looking up and into the escape pods.

There's no way he escaped. No way.

"What if he's in the other dock?" Czyrian said. It was a possibility, too.

No, no, no. "No," she said. "I know him. Little Numb has got to be here!"

ZAP-ZAP!

From behind, shots began firing. Klara and Czyrian immediately ducked for cover right behind a lowered wall. It seemed that the backup patrol, late on all accounts, had arrived.

Shit.

"There's no way we're getting back out there!" Czyrian yelled to Klara as she pulled out a plasma pistol and began at the guards behind them. In the thick air of lasers, it was hard to even notice what the hell was happening.

"Bose is still out there! We can't come so far just to give up! We'll be worthless!" Klara yelled back, struggling to place a shot with her claw at the guards behind her.

Can't get a galaxy-ridden hit on them!

"Is it worth risking your life to get an information to the big man?!"

"Of course is it! If it isn't I would've stopped years ago!"

"But you'll die before you get to Serro, do you understand?!"

Of course I do, of course I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to him. But the only way is through Bose. If I can't even do that, then I've truly failed.

From outside one of the windows of Dieragon, Klara could see the shape of a familiar ship preparing to take off.

Little Numb. The size of Little Numb, the impeccable red stripes and blue engravings that clearly marked out Verditer Land symbols, there was nothing else to provide proof that it wasn't Little Numb that Klara was seeing.

"I see his ship!" Klara shouted as she switched from cover to cover as soon as the guards readied to reload. "We need to get into the escape pods right now!"

"You go," Czyrian said, shaking her head. "I can't. I'll hold them back for you while you get in it."

What? What galaxy-ridden hell was she saying?

"We're going together. What do you mean you'll hold them back?" she asked, her eyes flipping between Czyrian, the guards and Little Numb.

I hate situations like these. Even if I were to adapt properly, adjustments will still cling onto me like little droids.

"There's three pods left, you'll get in one of them as I hold them off, and if it's up to me, I'll do the same," Czyrian suggested. It was a plan, yes, but not a plan Klara was in favour of.

"We need to stay together, take down Bose and Serro together, do you understand?"

"They're finalising their reloads. If you want to catch him, then you best be getting on the galaxy-ridden pod."

Shit, Klara thought. Czyrian was right.

Klara half-turned to one of the ships, and then back to her partner. "Make sure you get on it, do you understand?"

Czyrian nodded. "Now go! I'll take care of these shitheads!"

Klara breathed in deep. Then she took the leap of faith. She whipped out venge, and with a trained eye, shot the claw at the nearest escape ship she could catch her eye on. The burst rifles began firing at all areas, and she was sure that Czyrian would do her best to keep her partner out of the line of fire. Just the tiniest pin drop of sound meant that the guards had to act on instinct as they were not able to get an eye onto the escaping hunter.

As soon as the gunfire stopped, and the guards reloaded their rifles, Klara took the opportunity given. She pressed on the other button located on the handle, finding herself speeding along the floor with her padded shin on the ground. This time, she was controlling the momentum, the force and the way she moved. The harder she pressed down on the button, the quicker it would be for the handle to reconnect with the claw. Even with years of practise, she never could quite perfect the whole process. For now, it was the perfect way for her to get out of a galaxy-ridden situation.

Klara jammed her fist into the side of the ship as soon as she entered into the pod, closing up the doors. She watched Czyrian with solemn eyes. The firing was fast, hard and unrelenting.

I'm a piece of shit, Klara said to herself. I'm going to chase Bose and let my friend stay behind to cover for me? I'm really a piece of shit.

Klara shook her head. No, now is not the time to fathom about what could have gone wrong. I'm still on the right path, and that's all it matters.

With another punch on the buttons inside the ship, the doors slid shut. The process of un-docking a ship was always the same. First, you begin the engines, unhinged the braces, throttle the jet and the rear engines and then bam! The ship would be undocked. As a non-pilot, it was one of the hardest things in the world.

Thankfully, Klara was a capable pilot, but capable would also be an understatement. In the world of hunter pilots, she was one of the worst. While she could get from place to place alright, she was never able to arrive on time. She never practised this area of her craft. After all, she never owned a ship, and being able to count on your feet in the nastiest situations were what separated life and death, not whether you can tap your feet to laser beam sounds in the cockpit.

With a calm head, Klara managed to extract the ship from Dieragon. She let herself breathe, but the thoughts still swirled.

Czyrian is a capable hunter, she thought. She'll definitely get out. She will. I have trust.

Before her, Little Numb began to fly like a phoenix risen from the ashes. The ship was mighty even in dismal size, and perhaps it was only something that Serro and his right-hand man can do.

There's the signal right there.

Klara pushed up on the engines and the speed increased. She locked her target to Bose's ship. She was not going to let him get away, and if all was well, she'll have Czyrian back before she even knew it, fighting alongside together as they extracted the information to Serro and take down the mad conqueror.

Of course, it wouldn't be easy, and of course, she's not taking anything for granted. She's made hard choices before, choices that needed a heart stronger than most, choices that only someone like her could make. And she didn't make most of the choices. Now was the chance for her to right the wrong, for her to finish what she started. There was no lingering thought that could stop her. She trusted in Czyrian's ability to get away and find her soon, and so she left that out of her thoughts.

Klara was going to make sure that her aim was always Bose first, and then Serro, and whatever stood in the way, whether it was a bunch of guards or an incinerated door, it would mean nothing.

Maybe Klara would flake a little, maybe she would crumble. But not Purple Thorn. Not the galaxy-known assassin.

She pushed up on the engines, flying right behind Little Numb as the blinking lights of that ship began to speed away from her.

No more, she thought. I'm going to get you once and for all.

"Warning," the ship's artificial intelligence responded as Klara barely got the ship flying steadily. "Ship running low on fuel."

"What?!" Klara yelled out from the cockpit. "You must be kidding me!"

Purple Thorn wouldn't fly a ship that was low on fuel, would she?

Klara played around with the buttons on the dashboard, trying to get a feel before she crashed into a nearby planet or just a big slab of meteor.

"How far will this amount of fuel take me?" She asked.

"I'm sorry, I can't answer that question. Fuel low. Fuel low," the AI said.

Klara sighed. She continued to watch Little Numb as it flew further and further away, but still she watched with great intent.

Screw you, escape pod, Klara thought. This is why I galaxy-ridden hate ships.