9/17/0030
She paced with an unhurried rhythm, her boots echoing in the cavernous hall. Rust stained the corroded pipes that bled steam into the air, coating every surface in a greasy film. The atmosphere was thick enough to taste—stale oil and the metallic tang of decay that settled on her tongue like grit.
Through her light eyeglasses, her emerald-green eyes were locked on the master, the 
Jandakotian bore, on his throne above her. Her heavy tactical armor overlapped the short green fur of her compact frame, while her ever-present purple scarf lay wrapped around her neck, its loose end stirring whenever steam hissed from the corroded pipes. In her bare hands, two orange, luminous 
Varunium Steel swords seemed illuminated from within, held with the practiced, steady expertise that made them look weightless.
She turned, the end of her purple scarf trailing across one shoulder as she paced back the other way, her right shoulder now to their king. Her eyes lifted to the grandstands filled with large, fat, half-naked, greasy bore hollering down at her, thrusting their crude rifles and blades into the air beneath the shallow lighting from above. Their ivory tusks, broken, dirty… she noted that they had no care for their own upkeep, but instead were just ravenous beasts. The type she had grown up with. The type she spent a hundred years taming. These beasts were no threat.
Tapping the tip of each sword softly just once against the oil slick metal grate under boot, she closed her eyes with a slow inhale, and listened. Her swords, one katana she called Hölle, and a straight sword she called Himmel. Their contact with the steel beneath her, the resonating of the metal. They were alive. They talked to her, and they told her that this was no different than any other time. “Heed not the threats of a beast unclean.”
Her long green ear twitched. She turned her head to the leader upon his rotten throne while her dark green and white hair flew over her shoulders, some landing in between her eyes.
“Are you even listening to me, Krowen.” The oily fur’d ugly bore pointed a sword at her. A chipped, crude thing. His voice was slow, heavy, matching the age of the heavy beast. “The only power you have here is that thinking you can march in here, a 
Shrike assassin, into these halls… Your balls are bigger than most of my greatest warriors,” he laughed, and many in the loud thunderous stands joined in. “Your 
Systems Alliance,” he continued, “… you know what we call them in the deep warrens? The Soft Hands. All contracts and clean boots. They have never bled for anything they own. They look at 
Jandakot and see labor. Backs and claws to be priced and scheduled. No,” he chuckled quietly shaking his head. “They will not just drop one knife at our door and suddenly we, what, roll over and show our bellies? Dismantle ourselves for their ledgers?”
She watched, motionless, listening to the ugly thing. Small beings, clinging onto their small things. Their small territories and their small pride. This man, she didn’t even need to remember his name. He did not work for what he has. He inherited this, this disgusting ruin, from the sweat of his ancestors.
He leaned forward, looking down at her from his elevated throne above the rim of the pit. “Are you listening, assassin?”
She nodded, but when finished she kept her chin down a tiny bit, watching him over the brim of her glasses.
“Good, then know this. When we are done with you, you’ll be permitted to return to your masters, broken, ruined, and mutilated to the brink of death. We won’t let you die, though. We want you to tell your Alliance masters that are honored that they find our mineral resources worth enough to send this…” he waved his hand, gesturing dismissively at her “This so-called diplomat, but if they want what we have then they can come to the table themselves, and we’ll negotiate a real deal. One that will be greatly in our favor.”
A long slow inhale through her snout, closing her eyes and finally raising a sword upward at him. The room responding in silence, in disbelief, and amusement at once. Their excitement to watch it pop off. Patiently waiting for their permission to storm over the railing, into the greasy metal pit, and tear her to shreds.
“The Jandakot Empire,” she finally spoke, “Possesses no fleet beyond a meager planetary defense patrol force for your trade enforcement. Your planet is dying, your resources being sought elsewhere, but still your pride clearly knows no bounds.”
The bore’s eyes peered, he leaned forward with a smirk.
“The Systems Alliance would steamroll this planet like an unstoppable supernova and turn this ugly castle into a crater, if it didn’t damage the goods upon which it stands.”
“Fuck your Alliance, woman,” he said with a dismissive gesture of his hand. The salivation from the stands wetted the floor beneath them. “If that were true would they need you here, then? If their weapons aimed at us from orbit were enough to shock us into just giving our resources to them for free, they wouldn’t have sent you. It would seem that all these years, in our refusal, there is safety.”
In one swift, practiced move, she lowered her sword, swung it once, and drove it downward into the rusty floor. The orange blade stood upright before her, quivering slightly from the force. Turning her head toward the impatient onlookers, she walked a slow circle around the embedded sword, her other blade held loosely at her side. Her breathing was even, her shoulders relaxed. She listened.
The beast slammed a balled fist into the arm of his throne. “Say something!”
She finished her orbit and stared at him again. “It is considerably more easy to bend the will of those like you over a stone, instead of a mountain.”
The bore scoffed in disgust as he processed this. He clearly lived a life where nobody would ever talk to him like this. He had heard enough. The pride he hides within his fat insides had been identified, and now exploited. Anger upon his brow, he raised a fist and flattened his other fat hand on the throne as if to push himself to a standing posture.
Before he could give the order, a shadow detached from the chains high above the throne. A glint of steel crossed the space the king occupied, and he went quiet. He sank back into his seat, eyes wide, his arm falling limp. With the wet sound of separating flesh, his head dropped into his lap. A foul mix of pus and fluid erupted from the wound, overtaking the initial spill of blood. The pig.
The room fell silent, then erupted in a roar. They stormed the railings, leaping into the pit and charging. She kept her eyes on the throne, where the second figure now landed lightly behind the corpse, having dropped from his perch in the rafters.
The figure was another Amber Krowen, like her, this one much younger, yellow fur with white highlights and short white hair on his head. His armor matched hers closely, and like her, had two swords. Though they were not made of the exotic materials like hers they were clearly still capable, as the katana he still held dripped the blood of the dead king onto the floor beside his ruined body.
She was watching him. Even with the thunder of the oncoming horde of bore, beast, their blades, their pets of battle, and their rage, she maintained her gaze at her pupil for a moment until they exchanged a quick nod to each other.
The large drainage grate would flow with the blood of beasts into the sewers below for hours. Another world won for the Systems Alliance, not with treaties or armies, but with two assassins in a darkened, greasy, hall.
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