[Originally posted by Bastion] Basition Solus woke abruptly to the blaring sound of his chrono alarm. With a grumbled sigh, he shrugged off his blanket and slammed his hand down on the alarm. Giving out a heavy yawn, he slowly made his way out of bed , making his way over piles of dirty clothes and empty food wrappers toward the bathroom door to get ready for work. Basition never fully adjusted to getting up early to go to work. His previous job had him working all through the night gathering salvage on war torn Balmorria for the Republic war effort. The hours were long and it was dangerous gathering materials in warzone. Most of the gathering had to be done at night to avoid Sith military patrols, which made the task even more difficult. After the materials were gathered, Basition would break down the salvage to make customized battle droids and weapons. He was well known with the local troops for his work and more than a few Sith died because they under estimated the power of a blaster canon on what seemed to be a factory stock droid. The job might have been difficult but at least he had been his own boss, instead of now working as another lackey clerk at a czerka corporation store. Basition missed the freedom from his former life but not working for the Republic. As far as Basition was concerned, the Republic betrayed him and his family. Basition's family had lived on Balmorra for generations. His father worked as a droid engineer at the largest weapon factory on Balmorria, building some of the Republics most fearsome battle droids. His mother worked in Republic med centers, tending to wounded Republic troops. The Solus family were loyal citizens to the Republic and strongly believed in ideals it stood for. However the Republic did not show Balmorrians the same loyalty. For new platoon of battle droids produced, another platoon of Republic troops were transferred off of Balmorria, to somewhere else, that the Republic felt was more important. Where his father had once come home with an excited smile over his plan for a new advanced war droid, turned into disgust over troops being transferred to protect the Ithorians, who as far as he were concerned, did nothing to help the Republic and just wanted to protect their trees. In the end , it didn't matter how hard the Solus family had worked. With the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant, the Republic officially abandoned Balmorra and left them all to the malevolent rule of the Sith Empire. Basition made his way through the city of Bin Prime, to another day of work at the czerka office. Basition dreaded going into work. Each day he would have to deal with more idiotic Sith mercenaries or even worse, stupid imperial officers who wouldn't know a good droid if data probed their ass. The former would just harass him but the later could have him shot if he wasn't careful with his phrasing. He knew he would just have to deal with it for now. Hopefully the empire would have a opening on one their salvage teams soon. It would be very unlikely Basition would be able to make droids or weapons on Balmorra again due to imperial law forbidding unauthorized manufacturing. Most of the legal manufacturing on Balmorra was done by the czerka corporation, thanks to the monopoly given to them from the Sith Empire. Basition had originally signed on to czerka hoping to work at one of the factories like his father did but the Empire made it very clear that only those citizens who are truly loyal to the Empire are allowed to manufacture weapons or droids. So the only job opening for him was working as a clerk at the czreka office. As for his father who had worked at the plant for most of his life and was one of the planets top engineers, now worked as a droid repair mechanic fixing protocol droids. Basition's day was nothing out of the ordinary. Mercenaries hired by the empire, looking for replacement power cells for their weapons. Randar, the zabrakian stock room guy, showing off holovids he found on the holonet to the other employee's. Most of them featuring twi'lek show girls doing things more disturbing than any of the horrors of the war. It looked like it was just going to be another ordinary day at the czreka office until near closing time, when a rattataki mercenary named Vulkil and two gamorrean thugs walked into the shop. Basition had seen Vulkil in the shop before, he wore a heavily customized wrist launcher, which Basition admired, but Vulkil would only do business with the manager in her back office. He was glad that he hadn't had to deal with Vulkil before given his reputation for having a bad temper and being easily "provoked" into drawing his blaster. Basition still wasn't worried though, because the czerka office used two mark IV assault droids for security. Basition called out across the store saying "The manager has already gone home for the day, is there something I can help you with. " Vulkil facial expression remained calm but cold, as he walked to the counter and stared down Basition. "I'm here for my order" Vulkil said in his raspy voice. Basition looked to his data pad to find the order but a pickup wasn't listed. "I'm sorry I don't see a pickup...", Basition looked up from his data pad just in time to see that Vulkil had drawn his blaster and now had it pointed at Basitions face. Vulkil expression changed into a smile as he pulled the trigger. The blaster bolt going clean through Basition's right eye and out of the back of his skull. The last thought that ran through what was left of Basition's mind was " WOW...getting shot in the face REALLY f**king hurts." END PART ONE
Imperial Army 47th
[Originally posted by Bastion] BEGIN PART TWO ----6 months later: CHAPTER ONE Basition Solus woke abruptly to the blaring sound of his chrono alarm. With a grumbled sigh, he shrugged off his blanket and was about to slam his fist down on the alarm to turn it off but the alarm wasn't there. Basition then realized that he wasn't in his room and that he couldn't see out of his right eye. Basition looked over with a stunned expression at his mother sitting beside his bed with tears in her eyes, wearing a smile and holding his chrono alarm. He then realized where he was. He was in a medical bed in a hospital. "I'm so glad your finally awake" his mother said as she reached over to hug him. Basition's last memories before he went unconscious flooded back to him. He remembered Vulkil coming into the store and drawing his blaster....then nothing until he just now. "Mom, how long have I been out" Basition muttered. His mother looked at him with a sorrowed expression and replied "You have been in a coma for 6 months, I brought your alarm hoping it would bring you back to me and it did!" Basition couldn't believe that he had been unconscious for that long. His thoughts then came back to his right eye. "What happened to my eye Mom?" Basition asked. "I'm so sorry but your right eye was completely disintegrated by the blaster bolt, it had to be replaced by cyborg components" his mother replied. Reaching over to the side of his face, Basition's mother enabled the cybernetic eye and face plate on Basition. At first the process of having his right eye being turned on was startling and made Basition somewhat dizzy, but was able to adjust to the eye fairly well. "Czreka replaced your eye with one of their prime models" his mother remarked. "They will want to see you to find out what happened." With a distant look on his face Basition coldly replied " I know mom... I know" CHAPTER TWO “Your fired and that's that” snarled Taya Foltress, the Czerka corporation representative. “ But I was robbed at gun point and shot throught the head” Basition replied. “Only because you didn't arm the droids” “But I did arm the droids” Taya let out a deep sigh and ranted “If they were on, then this store wouldn't have been robbed and you would still have your right eye. We honored our commitment to your employee benefits by giving you the cybernetic implants that you needed to stay alive, but you didn't honor your commitment to us by keeping up with your responsabilites. Your damn lucky that we weren't sure of what happened when you went into surgery. If we had known then that you didn't arm the droids, believe me, we wouldn't have bothered to cover those new parts in your head. Especially with all the money you have cost the Czerka Corporation, not just with the missing stock and your surgery, but the credits used to put a bounty on this Vulkil's head, who would have been shot dead by the battle droid guards if you would have just DONE YOUR JOB!!” At this point Basition was tired of arguing and fed up with the Czerka Corporation, so he stormed out of the Czerka main office. Basition was broke from being in the coma for 6 months and losing his job just made it worse. He knew that he wouldn't be able to find another job in the entire city due to his newly gained reputation as a screw up. His mind drifted back to what Taya had told him “ ...credits used to put a bounty on this Vulkil's head.” Basition then knew, how he was going to earn some creds, prove himself competent and get revenge all at once. First though, he would need to go home and get a few supplies he had stored away. …............................................... Yssanne Targ hurried home after work. She was in a panic and frantically headed for the lift to take her to her apartment. “I can't believe I was so stupid, I should have left months ago but NOOOO, I wanted to stay to ease suspection” Ysanne said to herself in the lift. Ysanne finally reached her apartment door, went inside and headed straight for the comm terminal. “COME ON, answer the damn comm you id.......” Ysanne voice trailed off as she felt the barrel of blaster pistol at the back of her head. “Hello Ysanne, long time no see” Basition said coldly. “Basition, whaa what are you doing here” , asked Ysanne “ I came by to see my old manager and to ask you how you got away with it ”, Basition asked “I don't know what you...” Ysanne was stopped cold by Basition nudging his blaster against her neck. “Come off it Ysanne.”, Basition explained,” You were the the only other one with the override codes for the droids. You were also the only one who Vulkil would ever meet with when he came into the store. I know you had something to do with it, but what I don't understand is how you were able to convince Czerka that it was all my fault and how you were able to keep Czerka from taking a second glance at you.” Basition pressed the blaster pistol deeper into Ysanne's neck and said “I would tell the truth if I was you. I have been wanting to try out this blaster for some time.” Ysanne thought for a moment and then with a sigh declared, “ Alright..Alright...just don't shoot. For months before you were shot, I summited complaints about your job performance to the head Czerka office. Missing deadlines, lost credits and reports detailing your failure in enableing the security system at night. Officially you were to be fired later that week, but we had other plans for you. We needed someone to take the fall for all the missing Czerka stock. Vulkil paid a highly discounted price for the equipment and instead of the credits going to Czerka, they went to me instead. On the night you were shot, I had already put in the override codes into the security system, along with a dummy program to make it look like the droids were enabled. The idea was for Vulkil to come in, shoot and kill you, then destroy the main computer and clear out all the stock before Sith patrols arrived. With no one left alive to link Vulkil to the robbery, the Czerka investigation concluded that it was your fault for not enabling the security system again and the robbery was done by underground anti-sith resistance fighters. The only problem was, you didn't die. We would have killed you months ago if we actually thought you would wake up. We knew if you had an “accident”, then that would raise suspection and everyone thought you were just going to die on your own anyway. Even Czerka thought it was going to regain some of its loses by taking out your cybernetics after you died. When you woke up and told Czerka it was Vulkil that robbed the store, then I knew it would just be a matter of time before Czerka would start looking toward me. Still even if you recorded this conversion by holovid, I could always plead distress since you have a blaster at my head. I will claim that Vulkil was just using me to find a weakness in my security and you will still be held responsible. Besides a few of your former employee's will gladly confirm my reports if they are worried something might happen to them otherwise and the Sith wouldnt give a damn to protect them unlike the republic.” “That might be true Ysanne, but I didn't have to record this conversition. You thought of everything but erasing your comm records. I'm sure Czerka would just love to take a look at them and I'm sure Czerka would give damn about that”, Basition explained. With the realization that there was no other way out of this, Ysanne slowly moved her hand to a vibroknife she had kept hidden, and then made a swift stab at Basitions left side. Instinctively, Basition fired his blaster pistol, putting two holes through Ysanne's chest, one of which went straight through Ysanne's heart, but not before Ysanne was able to stab Basition in his left ribcage. Basition screamed in pain as Ysanne hit the floor dead. Fighting through the pain, Basition applied a med stim to his wound and staggered over to the terminal. He then forwarded all of Ysanne's communication history to the main Czerka corporate office. While looking through the records, he traced Ysanne's last frantic call to a warehouse near a space port. Basition now knew where Vulkil was hiding. “ When I see Vulkil, I'll tell him you said hello”, Basition said toward the body of Ysanne as he ran out of the room to escape the security patrol that he knew would be coming his way. CHAPTER THREE One good thing about having a cybernectic eye was the built in targeting computer that made blasting gamorrean heads off fairly easy. Not that Basition needed much help considering gamorrean's almost exclusively used vibroaxes, which really can't do much outside of melee. The heavily modded blaster Basition was using, easily cut through Vulkil's thugs. Basition couldn't believe that out of all the fighting he had done so far, his worse wound was from a 90 pound paper pushing manager with a vibroknife. Basition made it through the guards and into the warehouse just in time to see Vulkil boarding a transport loaded with cargo crates. Quickly, Basition reached into his satchel and tossed out a frag grenade that exploded on impact shorting out the repulser lift of the transport. “That’s it, I'm going to chop off your head and f**k your face”, Vulkil snarled. Vulkil then launched a mini-rocket from his wrist launcher toward Basition. Basition was able to dodge most of the blast but the shock wave still threw him a couple of meters. Basition then took cover behind some crates and retaliated with another frag grenade thrown at Vulkil. Vulkil went behind his own cover and launched another rocket, this time at the crates that Bastion was hiding behind. The blast destroyed half of the crate as it exploded in a fireball. Basition knew his cover wouldn't survive another blast and he doubted that he would win a battle of explosions against Vulkil. In a desperate move, Basition ran from what was left of his cover, providing himself cover fire with his blaster, while reaching in his satchel for a sticky grenade. Basition had hoped to stick Vulkil with the grenade and end this fight quickly but Vulkil was a experienced mercenary. He returned fire, by launching a missile right at Basitions feet. The blast breached the casing of one his grenades in his satchel. In a desperate attempt to not explode, he free tossed the sticky grenade and the satchel behind the downed transport. Had Basition been a half of second slower he would have died right there. Instead the the shock wave sent Basition flying, shattering his body and severely burning his right side. Vulkil smiled sinisterly at the sight of seriously being broken and crisped. He holstered his blaster and pulled out his vibrosword as he walked slowly over to Basition's body. When Vulkil reached Basition, he turned him over from his side, so that he was now flat on his back. Basition looked to be seriously dazed from the explosion. Vulkil raised his vibroblade up high in a stabing arc and said “Time to finally die you piece of.....” Vulkil's voice stopped cold as terror crossed his face with sudden realization. He slowly lowered his head to look down to see the barrel of Basition's blaster pistol nudging against his crotch. With a sly smile Basition pulled the trigger sending Vulkil hurdling backward and howling in pain. Basition awkwardly got to his feet and staggered over to Vulkil. Vulkil facial expression was a mix between rage, fear, and pain. Vulkil screamed at Basition, “ I'LL KILL YOU!!! ” “ I don't think you have the balls ”, Basition cooly replied and shot Vulkil in the head. Basition then removed Vulkil's wrist launcher to keep for himself and started to limp toward the door. Basition was half way to the door, when he stopped, seemed to think for a moment and then turned around and let lose a barrage of blaster bolts are Vulkil's head. “ I got to make sure ”, Basition said to himself as he exited the warehouse. CHAPTER 4 one week later..... Basition sat at home nursing the wounds he suffered from the fight with Vulkil. The kolto bath that he was now able to afford thanks to his newly found credits, helped speed up recovery immensely. He was applying one of the last med stims he would need, when he noticed he had a new message on his comm terminal. The message was from some old bald human that Basition didn't know. “ Hey kid, I heard about what you did to Vulkil, that was some nice work. My names Braden and I have a job opening for someone like you. I'm not going to lie to you, there is a lot of risk involved but there is also a mountain of credits to be made from it. The bounty you got from taking down Vulkil will be nothing compared to what you could earn. If your up for it, I can have you on the first transport to Hutta.” Basition thought to himself “ I have been shot in the head, stabbed and blown up because someone sought to make a profit off of my spilled blood. I'm not spilling anymore of my blood so someone else can make credits from it. The galaxy is a big place full of gangsters, monsters and an entire galactic war. I'm just a disgruntled store clerk with a gun, and you know what........... I almost feel sorry for them......almost.” Basition then sent out a reply message to Braden stating “ Alright old man, I'm ready to be rich, when can we start.”