#the exact reason he survives long enough to be a professional nuisance during sith intel days

[tiredassmage]

*walks into your inbox, plops down* so what's the deal with tyr and alucren. :^)

Sksfkdslnfd. I love them because they would not get along personally, lmao. Professionally? Tyr's too much of a professional to let it to completely disrupt the work they need to get done, but it's still a nuisance. xD

And they also have something of a... dichotomy might not be the exact term, but there's a disconnect between what each of them would say of themselves and present as versus who and what they truly are. And that makes them incredibly interesting to stand side by side and chew on like a Twizzler.

First, a little background on our latest Cipher.

Tyr and Alucren are around about the same age; Alucren is slightly older (by maybe a couple years, at most) and started his career of service to the Empire in the Ministry of Propaganda in a role working closely with the Imperial Diplomatic Service before his track record of charisma and wooing several populations back to the tune of the Empire's control had him re-evaluated to bolster Imperial Intelligence's Operations division and he was re-designated Cipher Eleven, becoming an infiltration and information specialist with supplemental training as a sniper. Him and Nine are active in Operations in tandem, then, but likely don't necessarily cross paths on-duty - such being the nature of their specialization and general assignment of Ciphers.

Their deal then, in short, is Eleven is one of the loyal operatives that survives the dissolution of Operations and is reabsorbed into Sith Intelligence based on his history of loyal and effective service to Intelligence and their Sith masters. Tyr and Alucren butt heads based on... operational differences.

Officially speaking, Tyr maintains the rank of Commander under protections of the Ministry of War and ends up reporting to Lana. Unofficially, Lana essentially adopts him as her right-hand man. Lana learns fast and it's not that she doubts her own abilities, certainly, but Tyr has field experience that becomes invaluable in assessing, training, and managing operatives for the budding new directives of Sith Intelligence. So, Lana often asks for his assessment on their recruits in addition to pulling him to plan and manage operations.

Eleven, to paraphrase Tyr's thoughts on the matter, is effective, relentless, but entitled. Alucren's a product of a rich history of Imperial nobility, a long family history of service in roles ranging from the Diplomatic Service to some of the Empire's key architectural projects. He walks around like he's hot shit and, on paper, that more or less does hold up. But it grates at Tyr, who is very much a "the good of the whole over the reputation of the one" type.

Their weird little... dichotomy of sorts then is that one of Alucren's favorite covers, games, whatever you'd like to call it, is to present himself as relatable, as sympathetic. He employed it to great effect to secure deals and silence whispers of unrest and rebellion in his previous service tracks and continued to do so as a Cipher. But it is a front to the bone. Because Alucren does genuinely think he's pretty hot shit. It's not exactly that he doesn't think Nine is. But Alucren also delights in seeing a facade crack and he finds out that he can needle his once-former coworker Cipher and now, in a sense, commanding officer and he enjoys taking it to the bank. Alucren is a product of wider Imperial beliefs on areas such as strength, slavery, and the place of aliens in the Empire. Tyr and him sit on rather polar opposites of that spectrum.

And Tyr has a reputation for taking heat for the rest of Operations. Keeper/the former Minister favored him, in what little ways you could in Operations. There's whispers of what happened on Eradication Day. Some of the military still stands a little taller when he walks by because of his service on Corellia. No one he served with misses Lord Razer and plenty of them admire his brass for holding the line on operational standards even as Imperial Intelligence was stripped away around them. Nine is more that every man, in a way. In his role as Commander, he's very carefully considerate - you tell Nine the truth so he can handle the upper management. Tyr goes to bat for his operatives when push comes to shove.

Him and Minister Beniko have locked themselves in her office several times to "discuss" operational protocols and deployments. Their voices rarely carry enough to be heard, but sometimes they raise just enough to hear impressions. And he's one of the few that can make Beniko storm off with fire in her eyes without getting dressed down or entirely dismissed from the agency.

And Eleven's heard of this reputation. It tickles him that he can tweak on it. Nine's far too disciplined to ever slip from his precious decorum, but sometimes there's this muscle that feathers in his jaw when Eleven gets "cute" during briefings. Nine's eyes narrow slightly as he calculates the most professional dressing down of the tweaks of insubordinate and disrespectful behavior he can come up with. To Alucren, it's a game. To Tyr, it's a nuisance he begrudgingly tolerates because when Eleven decides to focus on his assigned task, he's effective - too effective to cut loose or reassign.

I suppose, in short, boys will be boys. xD There isn't exactly deep bad blood between them so much as a groaning professional distaste for each other. Alucren thinks Tyr's a little too uptight - which is a little hilariously ironic from the one that's far more loyal to Sith orders of the pair of them. And Tyr thinks Alucren is a bit too big for his britches and a tad too entitled, but gratingly just self-aware enough of his hubris that it probably won't bite him in the ass. It's just enough to be an annoyance.

That all said, if Eleven did ever find out where Nine's loyalties truly lie, they'd have a hell of a lot of bad blood. Eleven is unerringly loyal to the Empire and willing to accept a lot more as cost in the service of its goals than Nine ever was or will be. It'd be naughty indeed for an operative like Nine, pride of Intelligence, to be harboring Republic sympathies, wouldn't it?

Disclaimer: this is written like a threatening plot point, but I don't intend to let them at each other in this manner... at least for the foreseeable future. But it's a good card to have in the deck, yes? ; -)