Chapter Text
The planet was hot, oppressively so, and Kylo Ren found himself struggling to breathe in the thick, humid air. But the irritation only added to his strength, he told himself, and he needed to be strong for this mission, if his quarry was as dangerous as the officers stationed on this world believed her to be.
If Kylo Ren was being fully honest with himself, he thought they were all cowards. The way they spoke of this woman she sounded more like some phantom than a woman. That she could appear without warning, trick you into failing to notice her men until it was too late. That she could become invisible. The Militia they had no respect for, these officers, but they held its leader in a sort of superstitious dread.
Their cowardice did tell Ren one thing, though. Something he suspected going into this mission. The Commander was Force Sensitive.
“Here, Sir,” the officer said, handing Kylo Ren the memory drive. The Knight took it and plugged it into the computer, watching as the information was brought up on the screen.
“Mustela Cazador,” Kylo Ren said, reading the woman’s name. It struck him as faintly familiar, at least the first name did, but he couldn’t remember where he had heard it before.
“That’s her name, sir,” another officer said. “Near as we can figure. It could be an alias, though.” Kylo Ren scrolled through the information, silent as he tried to learn about his foe. Her age was a guess, probably in her thirties, as was her weight. Her height they did seem to know, and the record indicated that she had been their prisoner at one point, years ago when she was only a girl. A pity they hadn’t been able to kill her then, before she became a threat. There wasn’t any images of her, however, and Ren frowned beneath his mask before rounding on the officers.
“Don’t you have a picture of her?” He asked. “I can hardly hunt for someone if I don’t know what they look like.” The officers shared a glance between themselves before one spoke up.
“At the bottom of the file there is a video, Sir,” the man said. “Several, in fact, though you only need to watch one to know what she looks like, and what type of woman you are dealing with.”
“This one, sir.” Another officer stepped forward, silver-streaked hair out of place on such a youthful face. The woman moved with a careful assurance, but not unflinching as she reached out to bring up the holovid, bringing her closer into his orbit than most would dare.
It was an impressive show of bravado, even more so that she only barely registered how easy it would be for him to rip out her throat.
Ren turned his attention back to the holovid that was selected, the footage grainy and of poor quality. The Knight watched impassively at the sight of one of the officers, bound and waiting on an operating table in the middle of a small, non-descript room and facing directly in front of the camera. A few seconds later a woman walked in, and this he realized had to be the Commander. The harsh lighting of the room caught the silver shine of the machete in her hand, glinting with cold, malicious intent.
The Commander herself was stone-faced and almost clinical as she started, adjusting the vividly colored earplugs before swinging the blade. It was methodical, slowly working from the extremities as she dismembered the officer, fingers, then hands and arms, using a mixture of the Force and mundane means to keep the officer alive and conscious. Her face betrayed no emotion, she may as well have been butchering a bantha for all she reacted.
Ren, grateful for the mask, was somewhere between impressed and vaguely nauseated by the sight. It wasn’t so much the action itself that bothered him, but rather how… cold she was while doing it. She was a Force-User, that much was obvious, and she should feel her actions, should be reacting to them somehow. But this? This reminded him of something Hux would do.
He was grateful for the lack of sound with the vid.
Abruptly, something shifted. The first flicker of emotion across her face as the Commander circled around the table and grabbed the officer by his hair. She pulled back, vicious, and it didn’t take the Force to know where this was going. With a snarl and a savage grin she bared his neck, bringing the machete down in one, two, hacking chops. Blood spattered across her face in an arc, and as soon aas the head was separated from the body, a few chunks of visceral matter and vertebra visible, she brought it close to the camera.
The last thing Ren saw was her bloodthirsty smile before the video cut out.
Well… at least he knew what she looked for. It had been a long time since he’d faced an opponent of this caliber.