Private Day One, Apprentice

[Arris Windrun]

CORUSCANT
THE EMPTY
Lily Rhodes

"If I'm on Coruscant, someone dragged me there against my will."​

Arris knew Lily wanted nothing to do with Coruscant. And yet, she asked her apprentice to come anyway. It was a real page out of Mercy's book. Especially with how little Arris gave Lily to go on - no notes, only a flight plan.

The flight plan took the apprentice past the center of Covenant power to an abandoned district on the surface. Eerily pristine and intact, showing none of the scarring still present along the rest of Coruscant's surface from the two recent invasions.

It was the Empty. Aptly named... save for one tower, alight against the darkness of the dead skyline. It had a single landing pad, large enough for a small freighter to park beside the skeleton of another craft that appeared to require extensive assembly before it was spaceworthy again.

Inside, Arris Windrun waited in the dim glow of her penthouse. She was sunk into a chair with an overflowing ashtray on a small table beside it, in a haze of cigarette smoke, as a holoprojector replayed fight reels from her younger shockboxing days... when she was only a few years older than Lily. The cyborg resembled that young woman - more organic than machine, back then - now more than she did when Lily first met her. The same dark hair and steel-colored eyes, though they were over a bed of light freckles back then. She was a lithe fighter, quick on her feet, and reacted too well to the moves of her seasoned barabel opponent. A sign of her force-sensitivity. Something Arris saw in hindsight, but never knew in the slightest back then.

Her place was a mess. More of a safehouse than a home. Tables loaded with weapons and cybernetics. An entire surgical station just left in the open, blood stains and all; a pair of deactivated medical droids stood on standby, beside a synthflesh vat that hung over the medical table. All across the walls were hard copy diagrams... mostly of the old Arris. The blonde one, but those were in the process of being taken down, with a whole heap of them stacked on the floor. They were very detailed, hand-drawn with guidelines and measurements down to the subtlest detail.

Somewhere scattered among it all was a holoframe of two young women in their late teens. A blonde and a brunette. Roxana Bel Numen and Arris Windrun. On the back, it simply read: To Arris: I wanted you to have a copy. - Rox

So consumed by the old footage and her memories, Arris hadn't even noticed the door open. She reached for another cigarette - lighting it and taking a long, slow drag.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

How many times had Lily sworn she’d never come back here? That Coruscant had nothing for her but ghosts and bad memories? She could have told Arris to go fuck herself, but she’d never told her why she didn’t want to come back here so it seemed like an unreasonable reaction. The buzz that came with an ecumenopolis pressed against her mind the moment the Relentless broke through the atmosphere, the dull ache at the base of her skull becoming more pronounced.

She grit her teeth against it, focusing on the flight path and not the wellspring of misery that rose up every time she glanced over its scarred surface. Eventually scars gave way to something untouched and pristine, it was like crossing over a border where the war hadn’t happened and with it the hum against her mind quietened.

The Empty was just that. Empty. No people, no lasting effects of a slaughter Lily had barely escaped. It was like someone had built a city and stuck a glass dome over it simply because they wanted something pretty to look at.

The Relentless came to rest beside the skeleton of a ship that drew Lily’s gaze as she disembarked before she moved to the landing pads edge, glancing at the pristine skyscrapers around them and lowering the guards she held up around her mind. Lily reached, finding minds below but their numbers were minimal.

How had this place not been hit in the hellfire that had rained down the day the Covenant came? She turned towards the penthouse, the loud static of the firewall that guarded Arris's mind unmistakable before she withdrew, stuffing her hands in her pockets and heading inside.

The haze of cigarette smoke made her nose wrinkle as Lily looked around at the mess that was Arris Windrun’s place. Cybernetics and weapons littered tables in chaotic piles, the walls were pasted with handdrawings of Arris’s last appearance. Lily’s head tilted as she scanned one of them that was resting on the floor, waiting to be scrapped perhaps? It took her a moment to realise they were schematics of sorts.

Lily picked her way carefully through the chaos, pausing when she caught sight of the holoframe. She untucked her hand from her pocket and picked it up with a frown. On one side was a younger version of the Arris she knew now and the other…the other was the Arris she’d first met. Lily blinked in confusion, turning it over to read the back.

To Arris: I wanted you to have a copy. - Rox

Lily blinked.

When she looked down at Lily, there was only one face in her mind, staring right back.

'Rox.'

The memory struck with clarity and she drew in a sharp breath, her eyes looking up at Arris who seemed to not have noticed her arrival, sunk deep into a chair watching a holoprojector, a thousand questions swimming through her mind. Was Rox a former love or a friend? Was this why she’d sought Lily out, because she reminded her of Rox? What had happened to Rox? And why, in all seven hells, had she been wearing her face?

She didn’t ask any of them, she just moved closer to Arris, placing herself in the cyborgs line of sight just behind the holoprojector, holoframe still clutched in her hand.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

She continued to smoke as the image played out before her. Otherwise unmoving until the sliver of a shadow crossed in front of the projector beam.

Arris paused for a split second - she fought an even briefer instinct to grab the gun sitting beside the ashtray, before she remembered.

"Oh, it's you." She said quietly, without looking behind her.

Then, Arris sat up and walked around her sitting area. Her torso was opened up. The bones were completely covered in a metallic material, and her organs were hidden beneath cybernetics and protective casings. Tubes and wires ran from the opening, snaking along the floor where they connected to machines further across the room. She yanked them out without much care and walked over to the medical table and laid down. The machines beeped angrily for a few moments after the disconnection.

"Admiring that old thing?" Arris asked about the holoframe in Lily's hand.

She had an inkling of what was on the young woman's mind, but she wasn't about to answer questions her apprentice might've otherwise been unprepared to ask... Or maybe the cyborg was just buying time because she wasn't prepared to answer.

After lying down on the table, the pair of medical droids came to life, and they began to put Arris Windrun back together. They reconnected synthetic fibers and fitted small armored plates until they formed the shape of a woman's body.

"Well - speak your mind."

The holoprojector continued to play in the background - flickering off the walls, casting the room in an eerie white light.

The synthflesh vat came next, pouring the putty-like substance onto her bare frame. It was dark and completely indistinct from her cybernetics except in texture. It looked soft, because it was, but otherwise lacked synthskin; that which covered her face and gave it humanity. It would've been a more disturbing concept had it approximated closer to the real thing... But, thankfully, her synthflesh lacked the vessels and dimensions that gave meat its organic appearance.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

When Lily had first met Arris, someone had shot her in the face and her synthskin was melting from her face, she didn’t seem to notice until Lily had pointed it out and that had been slightly unsettling but this? Lily’s mouth fell open, eyes drawn to the exposed torso, the metal encased bones glinting in the light from the still rolling holovid, she visibly flinched when she ripped the wires away, causing something to beep angrily.

For a long minute she said nothing, fingers adjusting on the frame as her eyes dropped to the floor and she took a breath shaking herself out of her shock and looking back at the image in her hand as Arris settled on the medical table. She moved closer, watching the medical droids as they set to work restoring the cyborg.

“Rox,” she said finally as if saying the name would help her navigate the tangle of questions in her mind, she could make some assumptions…like the fact that she was probably dead, why else would Arris run around wearing her girlfriend's face.

“There’s too many kinds of fucked up here and I don’t know which one to look at first.” She passed a hand over her face.

“Arris,” she said finally, “you wore her face?”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

'Rox.'

Rox.

That name was damage.

Arris lay back on the table, looking up as the medical droids continued. Lily shot straight to the point, after calling the situation all kinds of fucked. Arris didn't disagree... if anything, she was just plain over the angst after what happened on Corellia.

"Yeah," she answered. "I did."

The last thing the droids did was install her chest plate - a piece of flexible armor that molded perfectly over the sculpted shape of her body. A few sparks flew as they sealed it into place, and after that, the droids returned to their stations and reentered idle mode.

Arris sat up, but didn't get off the table. She looked Lily's way.

"She and I were close... and I was in a bad place," Arris smiled weakly. "I grew up on Talus, one of the twins in Corellia. Ran with an outfit called the Sneaky Shens - just one of many gangs that worked under the Syndicates."

The cyborg slid off the table and walked towards a lift in the back. "C'mon, we can talk and move at the same time." She said, stepping onto the lift and making room for Lily to join her.

She continued as they descended. "Rox... Roxana Bel Numen, was the daughter of Jond, patriarch of the Bel Numen Family and recently Chairman of the Board. Consider them the referees for the Syndicates. They resolve the disputes, and it's their blessing you need if you wanna expand your business, or take someone else's turf."

The lift reached a few floors down and opened. Arris stepped out. "A couple months ago, I returned to Corellia and wasted him."

They walked into a large, open space. A bona fide training room, based on Jedi designs, from the height of their power. It was a modular space, with moving platforms, variable gravity, and environmental controls. Right now it was just a blank space, though, the inside of a veritable cube.

She paused in the center, near an equipment table with a pair of shockmitts resting.

"Back then, he ordered the death of the Shens - sent his own private army to bomb our building. Rox was inside, and I ran. I watched the tower go up in flames, and I didn't even bother to go back to see if she lived."

Arris picked up the mitts and tossed them to Lily. "Put these on. You need to get stronger, and I only know one way."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Arris didn’t deny it, she didn’t try to mask it with some deluded justification. She just owned it. Lily didn’t interrupt, a frown creased her forehead as she listened, setting the holoframe down as Arris moved towards the lift, glancing once more at the picture before following her, arms folding as she leaned against the wall of the lift, eyes settling on Arris as she told her story.

Syndicates, gangs and people with power to decide which of them lived or died. It was a story duplicated across the galaxy in one way or another, they were just cogs in a machine meant to chew people up and spit them out.

A couple of months ago, the wasting between Humbarine and their last conversation on Sacorria. Whatever question she had next died momentarily on her tongue as they stepped into what Lily could only call a bright white box. She’d never seen the inside of a Jedi training room, her training with the Nagai had always been outside and Malum taught her wherever they happened to be.

Her attention was brought to the equipment table in the centre as she moved up next to it. The shock mitts she absolutely recognised. Shockboxing fights had been prime pick pocketing locations in the undercity, people were so engrossed in the violence they never noticed her slipping through them.

She caught the mitts and slowly pulled the first one on, still too wrapped up in the mess that was Rox to even argue or question it. Guilt did strange things to people, made them do all kinds of messed up things, and self flagellation seemed right up Arris’s street after all, how else could you punish yourself when you couldn’t feel pain.
How long had she been wearing her face for? How long had she looked in the mirror every day to see the face of her dead girlfriend staring right back at her?

“So,” she began, struggling with the second mitt “at what point did you decide I reminded you of her?”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Arris was surprised by Lily's question, but she didn't miss a beat.

"As soon as I saw how pathetic you are," She replied dryly.

She kicked the wheeled table with force, sending it rolling towards the side of the room, where it would be well out of the way. Her eyes cast down to the mitts on Lily's hands.

"You know your way around these?" Arris asked.

Then, the cyborg took a fighter's stance. Legs a little apart, right foot forward, left hand slightly behind the right, elbows bent.

"Mirror me."

She looked beyond the sight of her metal hands, staring down at Lily with thoughtful eyes. "So what's your deal with Vess? Why are you two playing it coy?"

Her head tilted to one side. "Turn 'em on, and be careful with the arc. They like to pull together, and you don't want 'em touching unless you enjoy a good shock."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily gave a snort of laughter. “Fuck you.” she said lightly with a small smile.

Balosar was just a run of bad days and bad luck, Arris caught her at her worst. That was her story and she was sticking to it. Besides, in the grand scheme of pathetic, wearing your dead girlfriend's face was far higher up.

She flexed her fingers within the mitts, testing her movement and making sure they were secure.

“Kinda,” she replied with a nonchalant shrug. Whatever she didn’t know she would pick up quickly enough. She was, if nothing else, a fast learner. She mirrored Arris, the fighters stance familiar enough, though she was used to something far lighter in her hands.

Lily frowned at the question. “I don’t…” she trailed off. She and Vess never spoke about it, they never labelled anything they just…were. Everything with her was easy.

The mitts hummed to life at Arris instruction.

“She’s my girlfriend, what’s coy about that?”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Arris rolled her eyes.

"Oh, don't fuckin' deflect, woman." She said. "You know what I mean..."

She watched as Lily mirrored her stance, and the mitts electrified. She gave an affirmative nod. Something that said 'good job.'

Arris dropped her stance and walked over to Lily. "Keep it up," she said calmly, not wanting Lily to drop hers, too.

The cyborg circled the apprentice and pressed her hand into Lily's back. "You wanna mind your core. Last thing you need is to throw out your back because you kept your muscles too tight. Most people neglect their shoulders and their lower back."

She circled back around and stopped in the front and brazenly reached out to grab the mitts. The electricity arced around the cyborg's arms, licking her with stray bolts, but Arris didn't seem to mind. She gently adjusted the way Lily held them, until they were just close enough that she'd have to fight their natural inclination to join together like magnets. It caused the electrical impulses to strengthen.

Letting go, she grabbed the dial on each mitt and turned them up to near-lethal until they were zapping and crackling and itching to touch.

Taking a step back, Arris returned to her stance.

"Try this."

She displayed a succession of jabs. First slowly, then quickly.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

“What?” she replied, eyes tracking her as Arris circled her. She suddenly had an itchy nose, but she ignored it as Arris pressed a hand to her back, she did her best to relax her muscles at her instruction. Trying to find words to answer her question about Vess.

She wasn’t surprised when Arris grabbed the mitts to adjust them, she’d seen her standing upright with a hole in her gut leaking coolant all over the place, what was a little electricity. But the micro adjustment to bring the gloves close together made an instant difference to Lily’s attention.

Her eyes watched them a little wider now as Arris cranked up the dial, suddenly realising that this lesson was going to hurt, one way or another. The fight to keep them apart, to keep the stance and not tense her muscles too much completely absorbed her for a moment.

Then came the jabs. She followed, slowly getting a feel for the movement, the brief relief from the mitts trying to pull together as she struck out with each fist, before bringing them back to the same place without them touching. It took all of her concentration for a moment until she found a rhythm and she let herself answer.

“What do you want me to say, Arris? That I’m madly in love with her?”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Are you?" She asked. "Hadn't noticed." There was the slightest smirk.

Arris was pleased to see Lily getting the hang of things, and decided to throw another move into the mix. First a left hook, then a right uppercut.

"You're slippery, that's good. Just like how I was when I fought. That'll be your advantage." Arris noted.

"But keep in mind that during a fight, you don't really get to mind your stance, yeah? So you gotta practice this. Every single day. It has to be daily, or else it won't become natural."

The cyborg began to move, staying light on her feet and continuing the two series of attacks she just showed Lily. Picking up speed every time, until Arris was able to swing them out lightning fast, hopping side to side and circling the room, keeping her footwork fluid but never losing command of her core stability.

"Do you do stims?" Arris asked.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Lily rolled her eyes, pausing in her movement to shoot a glare in Arris’s direction. “We’re not being coy.”

They hadn’t explicitly said love. Maybe because each of them knew it was complete and utter madness, that everything they felt came so naturally and so quickly, but it was there. They both knew it.

At least Lily thought they did.

“Fine.” She said though it was less than enthusiastic, she was already training daily to remind herself what it felt like to hold a lightsaber, to remember everything Sonere and Velok had taught her.

The extra moves made it harder, her rhythm stuttered as Arris shifted around the room, light and fast.

The question caught her off guard making her look round at her instead of focusing and the mitts touched. The crack of electricity arcing between them was nothing compared to the pain that jolted through her, tightening muscles, clamping her jaw closed.

With effort she wrenched them apart and bent over to rest her hands on her knees with a groan.

“Ow.”

She looked up.

“No. Why would I?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Careful!" Arris barked at the shock show.

She watched as Lily managed to pull the mitts apart, and wasn't surprised to see her needing a bit of rest after that.

Yet, without missing a beat again, she answered the question. "Because they help. If you're smart about it," she said.

Arris sauntered over to the equipment table, opening a metal box that looked fit for tools. Inside, however, were a series of vials and an injector.

"Mercenaries use them. Fighters use them. Bounty Hunters use them." She looked at her apprentice. "I use them."

Though in her case, it was a carefully administered dose via an implant. They ran around her system to the point that it was natural for her. Part of the way she lived. It's why Arris Windrun never slept, actually. Maybe not a fact that most people knew, Lily included. If at any point the blonde managed to find the cyborg's bed, she'd note it was the cleanest, least touched area of her penthouse.

She inserted a vial - it hissed audibly as the device primed the serum.

"Are you shy about substances?" She made sure to set it to the lowest possible dose. "I won't lie... It can be very addictive, but if you're smart, you can avoid developing a dependency. It'll help your body keep up with the training, your reflexes, too."

Arris walked back over to where Lily recovered, holding the injector. "Can go in your arm, your thigh, or your stomach. Of course... You can say no."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Lily straightened, shaking the ache from her arms as Arris spoke and rolling her neck and shoulders. The initial pain faded quickly but the ache lingered and it was deep set in her muscles. Her fingers flexed at her sides and she shook her head at Arris’s question.

“I just never saw the appeal.”

That and she stepped over one two many overdose victims' bodies as a kid. The fact that Arris used them wasn’t much of a comfort, if truth be told, but she had no reason not to trust her. Thus far, she’d only ever advocated for Lily.

She eyed the injector warily as Arris approached before lifting her gaze to the cyborg's face. Arris didn’t force it, didn’t tell her she needed it, she just offered the facts and two choices, the same as always.

Do, or don’t.

Lily gave a nod, offering her arm.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Arris glanced at Lily, her only acknowledgment of the affirmative and looked down at the woman's arm. She pressed the device gently over her arm and gave it a click.

For most people it felt like a pinch. Not unlike receiving a vaccine. However, that feeling was quickly superceded by the rush that began seconds later. All the senses - sight, hearing, small, taste, touch - were heightened. There was energy, too, a second wind that made lethargy a slippery proposition. And then there was the mood... This was usually where things differed from person to person. Arris, for example, was driven by violence and anger. But during a fight, when her body pumped her full of the stuff, she felt excited - more than that, she believed herself invincible.

Practically any emotion could be heightened, but the sort of chemical manipulation that stims provided usually resulted in a mood boost.

As this was the first dose, and a fairly low one at that, it was highly unlikely that Lily would become addicted to the stuff. The extent it all worked depended on how much of a light weight Lily was.

The cyborg stepped back. "Give it a moment to settle in your system. Take a deep breath."

She walked back to the table, setting the injector in the box and closing it.

When she turned back to Lily, Arris eyed her with caution, searching for any sign of how sensitive the woman was to this high end cocktail.

"How do you feel?" She asked.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily barely noticed the scratch that followed the audible click as Arris administered the dose but what came next made her eyes go wide.

Sensation flooded her, the lights seemed brighter, she could hear the soft whine of servos in Arris’s arms as she lowered them and the hum of the lights above them, there was an almost clinical smell that hadn’t been there before. Then there was the sudden race of her heart as the stims hit it, like she’d drunk too much caff but far worse, it was loud and in her own head and came with a touch of nausea and a tremble in her fingers.

Lily closed her eyes and obeyed Arris’ instruction breathing in once, exhaling slowly and then again. Each breath eased the nausea, the initial overload settling into something steadier. The ache left behind by the shock mitts was gone, she rolled her shoulders as if to test them. Beneath all of it there was a distinct buzz, not the hazy brained buzz that came from one too many drinks.

No, this was sharper, more energetic and for a person that struggled with restful sleep at the best of times that was mind blowing.

“Like I slept for fourteen hours and then drank the whole jug of caff.”

The corner of her mouth tipped upwards in a small smirk.

“Been a while since I had energy like this.”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

She walked back to the center of the room, grinning at Lily's reply.

"Yeah?"

Then, retaking her fighter's stance, Arris narrowed her gaze and added another degree to the moveset. A few low blows and a feint into a rapid right jab.

"Try that," she said.

Arris crossed her arms as she watched Lily practice the next. "Keep moving!" She called out. "Don't stop moving - never stop moving. Just let your feet do the talking, get eager, excited!"

Her arms fell back down, a hand resting on each hip as her grin returned. This time, however, it was more spitefully determined than pleased.

"When you're ready... Come at me."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Lily shifted back into the stance, light on the balls of her feet, an unmistakable buzz at the base of her skull, not uncomfortable but very much there. She took the new move into the rhythm, her strikes faster, cleaner even.

Arris' encouragement rang in the training room and Lily moved, bouncing on the balls of her feet, shifting around the room as her focus sharpened. Excited and eager had never been emotions she’d tied with fighting. It was always with reluctance, not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t like what came out of her when she did.

But there was no escaping it, the galaxy demanded it of her time and time again, even before Arris and Humbarine. Light brown eyes settled on the cyborg, her arms relaxed, the grin giving her eyes a spiteful sheen.

She wasn’t a fool, the invitation to attack was a trap, Arris could beat her without Lily so much as grazing her, but whatever trap she was setting had a lesson in it. Her jaw set with determination and she moved forward, eyes flicking to the hands resting on Arris’ hips before settling on her face and striking with the first succession of jabs she’d been shown.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Even as Lily rushed in, quick to show off her learned moves, Arris didn't appear combat-ready at all.

One jab hit... then two... Each crackling with violent electricity that arced unnaturally around the cyborg's body. Arris wasn't particularly resistant to electrical attacks, and at some point the energy should've been grounded somewhere, and yet it didn't.

By the third, Arris reached out and grabbed the gauntlet directly. She'd yank Lily towards her rising knee. Despite the force of her movement, Arris was still careful not to hurt her apprentice too much. An impact that wouldn't risk bruised ribs or tear muscle.

And if that connected, the cyborg would simply toss Lily back, reestablishing the distance between them.

"You're expecting me to teach you something in that." Arris huffed. "That's wrong. I said come at me." She threw her hand aside, sending the collected energy into the ground as a single bolt. "You saw me on that table - you can't hurt me in any way that matters."

Her eyes steeled upon her apprentice. "Like I said... come at me."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily knew she was answering the request in the wrong way the moment the first hit landed, realisation dawning as the energy travelled through the cyborg, just as unbothered as she had been when she’d adjusted her stance at the start. The second hit, and then Arris caught the third, the dead stop jarring Lily’s shoulder as she was yanked down towards her knee.

It connected with enough force to wind her before she was shoved back. Her hand moved to rub her diaphragm where the knee had connected before she remembered she was wearing shock gloves and that would have been her dumbest move yet.

Her forehead creased, head tilting at Arris’s words. In any way that matters?

Something in her shifted, defiance glittering in her gaze. “That’s not entirely true…” she began slowly before mental fingers reached out, slipping past the angry firewall as she had before and finding Arris beneath it.

<< “because this matters and I can hurt you here.”>>

She reached deeper, looking for anything she could grab and pull to the surface to distract Arris, a memory or an emotion that was easy to snag, things she’d glimpsed behind the firewall but never sought to touch.

Then she moved, using the mental assault as a distraction to strike again.