[NPC Post - "Vengeance"][Passageways]
He was wearing a long brown jacket over a single piece Starfleet physical training suit. No boots. No one was looking at his feet, anyway. He looked like he was headed to the holodeck, or maybe the lower promenade to gamble or visit the Landing Strip. He certainly didn't look like he was about to apprehend a dangerous criminal.
"Hiya, lieutenant." A happy voice said.
"Hello...Oakley." He said, surprised. He rarely saw Ensign Oakley outside of work. Her catching him could equal very bad juju. He'd have to weigh his options, see how this omen felt after he'd gotten rid of her.
"You ok? I didn't mean to startle you." Oakley said. She was a young, fresh faced woman. With sharp features, dirty blonde hair, and a trim and petite figure, she was considered beautiful if one cared to look. He wasn't.
"I'm fine, Ensign." He said, still recovering. He hadn't been interrupted on the way to change since he'd started. Definitely a bad sign.
"Ok." Oakley said, and smiled kindly up at him. She was a shade under 5 feet, and he was easily six and a half. His height and build had always worked against him in engineering. They tended to run trim and slim or short and squat. The better to fit into compartments or tubes. He was forever banging his shins or head.
"Where ya headed? You want to grab a bite? A few of us are meeting at the Rose and Thistle now that work is done." She asked in a friendly way.
"No. I mean..." He said. He searched for his charm, and found it. He smiled, a handsome man, dark hair, brown skin, white teeth. Flashing dark eyes. "I'm going to the solarium. To...to think."
"Oh, sure, Lieutenant." Oakley said so kindly that his heart nearly broke. She cared for him a great deal, that much was clear. But not enough to make him uncomfortable. She even reached out as if to touch his shoulder in a kind way, but stopped. "Take care."
"You too," He said distantly, already gone. He moved on.
[Supply Room A139-1]
The suit was right where he'd left it: crammed into the the emergency parachute compartment of a spare escape pod. It wasn't rigged, otherwise the entire thing would have blown up in his face the moment he'd opened it.
He stripped quickly, down to his skivvies. The suit was gunmetal gray and black: the color of the Station's shadows. Around the neck and up the back and through the wrists were the plasma jets.
"=/\=Vengeance is mine.
" He said. The suit activated with a soft hum. He pulled the hooded mask over his face:
He spoke the words, and he hovered softly in the supply room, and spoke more and dropped to the deck. The antigrav worked.
He threw his head forward, like a horse chuffing. The infrared vision worked; he could cycle through a half dozen other spectrums too, should he desire. He cocked his head like a quizzical dog: he suddenly heard a young enlisted man 20 meters away complaining about his supervisor. Audio was good to go. He threw his head back like a great beast ridding itself of a fly: his vision and hearing cleared back to normal. The final test: he extended his hand dramatically.
"BLAZE!" He shouted and a jet of superheated plasma shot out of the mantlet at his wrist, scorching the bulkhead. He flicked his wrist, sketching out a smoking
V onto the wall. He nodded in satisfaction. He was online and ready to go.
It had taken him the better part of six months to build his new duds. Trading with the smugglers and merchants who called the Columbus home, filching parts during his shifts. Acquiring the special cloth, the metal buckles. And the mask: that had been especially problematic. It was a custom job, done by an artist who worked metal. He'd told the man it was for his son's Halloween outfit. All told, it had costed him more latinum, lost sleep and time than anything else he'd ever undertaken before. Ironic that his life had been taken from him in an instant of carelessness and that it had taken half a year to prepare to exact revenge.
The high price of success, but it was worth it. He had a hot date tonight, and he didn't want to be late.
