Duel Galactic Kaggath Round 1: Mercy vs Vyn Daldoure

[Mauve]

x

The arena floor rumbled and shook, the entire surface sliding open like a missile silo to reveal… an enormous Wroshyr tree rising up from the lower levels. It towered so high that its upper branches crested the arena and stood nearly eye level with the skybox. It sat upon a grassy, fern littered field. Amid the ferns, shapes prowled. Dangerous predators. Vornskrs. Force hunting beasts.

The boughs of the Wroshyr tree criss-crossed, forming limbs as wide as Coruscanti skywalks that the combatants could duel upon.

Droids hovered in the air around the tree, some with cameras, but many projecting interlinking rayshields so that the duelists could not interfere with the duels of the others. Of course… ray shields could always fail.

If any of the combatants fell to the ground far below, they risked being set upon by the vornskrs.

The announcers’ disembodied voice cut through as the combatants took their places on the boughs of the tree. “Honoring those who fell in the Battle of Kashyyyk between the One Sith and Republic, so many years ago, I give you the FIRST ROUND of the GALACTIC Kaggath!”

“She’s bad, she’s mad, and she’s here to make your champion sad. The Leviathan Slayer. The Mercenary’s Mercenary. The one, the ONLY, MEEEEERCYYYYYY.”

“And her opponent. The Iridonian Eagle-Eye. Here to do some business with a BIG IRON on his hip. It’s VYN DALDOUUUREEEEE.”

“CHALLENGERS! BEGIN!”

Mercy | Vyn Daldoure

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

Vyn walked along the Wroshyr tree's massive limb, boots tapped along the wood as he mentally drowned out the sound of the arena that surrounded them. Shouting, screaming, yet the only thing he heard was the blood rushing to his head. Sure he could play the Valachord, sure he could dance better than most at balls and make a good impression. Yet this. This is what he was good at. This was his spice, raw, unforgiving, and while he recognized it probably wasn't healthy, he do it until the day his body broke. Today was not that day.

He had no sponsor, he didn't need one, In fact, once he'd seen a Hutt was fighting the only thing driving him was rage. Memory of love lost to those who desired too much power, now he had at least one goal, make it to the slug. If he had the force his eyes would have been a bright yellow. Instead he looked calm, complacent, focused.

Vyn thought back to a few minutes ago, hearing over the speaker when Aether Verd , The Mand'alor, mentioned fighting gorillas. The Iridonian didn't think he was serious... this woman however was probably the closest he'd get outside of fighting the Hutt. "Great- that's just my luck."

In contrast to Mercy 's large frame, Vyn was slender, however when he reached up to the collar of the cloth shirt he wore and pulled it off, the sight was contradicting. Muscle, dense and covered in scars. Many from a blaster and blade, a good amount from sabers, some from beasts, and the rest were surgical. He pulled the vibroknife from it's sheath as blue plasma shot out from behind him, the thrusters in his boost pack warming themselves.

His knees bent, Vyn got low, his center of gravity was perfectly in line for a fight. He looked at the woman. "I wont kill you if you don't want to die, however if you fail to yield, don't say I didn't warn you." His voice was certain, that was not mercy that was an ultimatum.

Vyn's implants hit him with a burst of epinephrine- his pupils dilated, he began towards her.

 

[Mercy]

Mercy's head tilted at Mauve 's announcement. She liked her lips, clearly happy with how she was addressed. Older, slightly wiser, Mercy was still easily pleased as long as her ego was properly polished. So it was no surprise to anyone that she'd snap her fist up to the sky, basking in the roar of the crowd and the thrill of the moment.

This is what Mercy lived for.

"I wont kill you if you don't want to die, however if you fail to yield, don't say I didn't warn you."

That got a hearty laugh out of her. Her whole body shaking with mirth.

"Boy, I have torn through burgers more impressive than you." She rolled her shoulders, shifting her neck here and fro, stretching lightly while her eyes kept a light focus on the figure in front of her. Words and laughter put aside, Mercy didn't underestimate the soldier. Just one breath in told Mercy he didn't reek of the lightside nor smelled of the dark. So either he was suppressing his signature in the Force or he was supremely confident in his abilities.

She didn't rush towards the soldier. In the past she would have. No thought, no reason, just lung towards the man and try to crush him with her strength alone.

Mercy was smarter (ish) than that now.

While Vyn rushed in towards her, Mercy stayed put, a little smile playing on her expression. Then her shape suddenly blurred, moving faster than a creature of her size had any right to move. Her boot slammed into the tree trunk they were standing on. The Wroshyr was a tree of impressive size, each branch strong and sizeable. But her eyes burned amber and the force she used to slam into the tree was beyond that of regular men. It immediately caused a shockwave that crushed through the branch, creating cracks and making it shudder in distress.

Suddenly the surface that Vyn was running on began to shatter, creating rends in the thick bark and crevices. It would take more to completely snap the branch they were fighting on, but all that Mercy was aiming to do was disrupt Vyn's focus and force him to reposition his footwork as to not fall on his face.

Her form blurred again and now Mercy was upon him, attempting to take advantage of the moment she created. She had no weapons except for her fists, glowing a strange blue light as one fist the size of a shovel launched at his head.

Vyn Daldoure

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

Vyn kept onwards, his pace was steady. He wasn't in a dead sprint towards her, but a steadied run, his cybernetic retinas flashed as she moved. Her leg lifting and falling like it jumped into hyperspace for a moment, his eyebrows raised, this was one fast gorilla. The nervous system installed in him fed the information to and from his head faster than most people could blink.

As the ground cracked towards him, Vyn instead picked up speed. Force users. They were all the same in Vyn's head. Sure ideology differed between each individual, yet the way they fought with the force practically mimed one another, controlling external objects with a power they believed to be superior to anything tangible.

As the shattered ground of the tree branch reached him, he almost seemed to glide over it. His J.A.M.R was releasing a steady low-powered burst of plasma that changed his center of gravity with each step, the jet nozzles articulating to account for each error in his own missteps. What followed however, was a bit more surprising. She was fast, to much even for him to track fully, and yet while Vyn couldn't follow her movement from place to place. It was the little things that his eyes picked up which gave her away, a flex in a muscle, a shift in stance. Those he had been picking up on since he was a child.

Her fist came down like a meteorite, Vyn however was the lightning bolt. His pack expanded the last of its primary charge in a violent burst. His torso twisted violently. He rocketed up and over her arm. Vyn was now inverted hovering inches from her face, the crown of his Zabraki horns angled downwards. The burst of plasma which died out with an electronic beep mid air

"Eating razors is a health hazard." He landed on the other side of her, low to the ground, and in a flash thrusted himself upwards, not driving his knife, but his closed fist towards her ribs in a body focused upper cut. One consisting of bones reinforced with metal and backed by a body full of artificial muscle.

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Vyn Daldoure

His fist impacted flesh, thick muscle, bones beneath. It crunched under the force of his punch and he could clearly feel bones snapping in response to the force.

Mercy did not cry out or even grunt in pain, but the feeling was unmistakable.

Perhaps it should have felt odd that a woman this large who could move that quickly allowed him to close the distance. The reason became clear the moment his fist hit her mass. She whirred around immediately, eyes burning bright with joy, as her shovel-sized hand grabbed for his wrist to lock him in place and trap him in her direct vicinity.

Her skin suddenly shone bright blue just as her fist had a moment ago.

This close, Mercy took full advantage of her speed, her strength and weight, attempting to hammer him with her fist from multiple angles. Whatever was exposed, she'd try and smash. An open face, an exposed throat, solar plexus. It felt indiscriminate, but the hits were targeted and precise. Trying to hit multiple points in a row to do as much damage as possible while having him this close to her.

Usually people made that mistake only once with Mercy.

They didn't live to make it again.

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

This was good, as his fist sunk inwards it confirmed what he needed to know. He could produce enough force to break her bones.

Pride however usually came before a fall, and while Vyn would take the first tumble feeling her paw wrap around his wrist. A smile tugged at his lips, he'd taken that fall thousands of times as a boy. Humbled by a father who beat him to death on a daily basis, not cause he was a drunk, and not because he hated his son, no these beatings happened in a private combat arena, meant to forge a war machine.

Vyn got used it. The epinephrine flooded body again. Being a Zabraki was perfect, he had two hearts, and after having the implants longer than he could physically remember, those hearts built up a resistance to the natural enzyme. Those dual beating organs funneled the endorphins like a combat stimulant, and he could run on the stuff for hours.

He went to block the first blow, but didn't fully make it as Vyn felt her fist connect with his orbital, his head shot backwards, however the grin didn't fade as blood pooled from a cut that formed near his brow exposing the metal lined bone which he figured had to suck punching on her bare knuckles. He made a strained look when he once again failed to block her fist driving into his abdomen.

Yet that stupid grin didn't fade. This wasn't confidence, this was fun, and the force behind her blows? Well that kinetic energy didn't exactly all go to waste.

Vyn then grabbed his own forearm and shut his jaw as tight as possible. She wanted to hold on to the lighting, that was her choice. His gauntlet whirred and whined, Then in a crack he unleashed thousands of volts of electricity into his own body, it would be like getting hit by a Sith Lords force lighting at full ramp. However on the nape of his neck steam funneled out of his body. Another implant dissipated a majority of the electricity that reached his hearts.

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Vyn Daldoure

Her hand was the perfect bridge for the lightning to jump from Vyn's body onto her.

A scream tore out of her throat as it surged through her.

It took a moment to register. It wasn't a howl of despair. Mercy was laughing. Maniacal, ragged laughter, her amber eyes burning hotter as the pain built inside her. The electricity met the blue barrier wrapped around her body, the one that let her tank blows that would kill most sentients. But the heat build up, causing her skin to sizzle, to burn. The smell of burned flesh putrid in the air around them. And still Mercy did not let go of Vyn.

The tattoos on her arm began to crawl. Years ago, a Force-wielding tattooist had etched them into her skin, binding her to something else. Somewhere else.

Since then, her arm had sometimes moved with a will not her own.

Apparently all it took to be unleashed was lighting powerful enough to rival that of a Sith Lord's lightning. The area immediately around them began to shift slightly. The bark of the Wroshyr tree, already rend and ripped in places, began to rot. The laughter emanating from Mercy was muted and moved to the background, almost as if pitch itself shifted to a different tune.

Something began to reach through Mercy- a corpse like image with a face like a hollow star. It screeched, it clawed around them. It changed the very fabric of reality right around it. But most importantly... it wanted to step out into the world. The Force writhed. It whispered. And every bone in the arena felt like it had been knocked out of tune.

Mercy's arm exploded, right towards Vyn, not just with the energy from his own lightning, but with the kind of heat that belonged in the void between realities. All that stolen electricity, warped by something beyond, came crashing back through her fist. The air cracked. A pulse of power slammed out towards him, raw and writhing, howling through whatever it could reach. Circuits and servos. Meat and bone. Wanting to rip and tear, and grow inside this reality it didn't belong to.

Then it all but vanished.

The branch creaked beneath them. Steam curled from Mercy's skin, hissing out from burned and crisp skin. Her lips split into a slow grin as she exhaled smoke from between her teeth.

She took one step forward, boots grinding against scorched bark. The bark beneath her heel gave slightly, soft with decay. The air hadn't cooled. The Force hadn't settled. Whatever had reached out was still watching. The skin on her right arm blistered, peeled, half-cooked from the heat trapped inside it. She flexed the hand anyway. Her eyes glowed with something more than fury now.

"Keep feeding me, razor boy." She said low. Voice cracked and ragged. "See what else wakes up."

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

That chit eating grin didn't exactly fade, one of the corners of his mouth dropped, but the other one seemed to be hung up by a wire in his jaw. His eyes tracked the force horror that clambered out of her. His strength lies in the fact most people underestimated him, and he'd use that to come out swinging. Yet he realized that his blow to her ribs earlier should have been led by the blade of the Vibroknife, the handle of which he used instead like a make shift knuckle brace.

Vyn made the mistake of not trying to kill her immediately and it gave her room to move, something else stepped in. Though if that would be all it took to scare the young man he wouldn't have crawled out of a hallway with three Tuk'ata. His free arm, the one with the gauntlet came up, the energy that was headed for him, on a base level, was just energy. The unseeable singularity in his palm swallowed what it could, all of the power he'd expended electrocuting the two of them replenished, what wasn't absorbed cascaded away like he was using force deflection, directing it away from his most important parts.

His finger tips singed, his pants burned as he felt his legs warm to an uncomfortable degree, his shoulder split with with burnt skin. Then when the torrent of energy ended, His eyes darted around her body before slowly crawling back to meet hers. What he saw? Flesh, skin, and muscle, all structurally compromised from the burns.

Vyn let out a sigh. "You're holding on too tight." He stepped forward once into her space. Then his free hand snapped forward trying to grab her free wrist, his HUD was giving him warnings about his severe burns and possible bone structure failure. He ignored them. If he could manage to latch on, the sound of his metallic joints would sing as he clamped down on her wrist. If he couldn't find purchase, then the one hand Mercy still held onto him with would do.

In a flash Vyn would drop his center of gravity, twist the wrist she still held onto, as his flesh rendered beneath her grasp, and jump. His boots coming up to the height of her own torso, then he'd kick outwards attempting to plant his feet against her chest/ribcage.

The impact would be a bonus but not the focus. What Vyn was trying to do was anchor himself with her own torso as a base. He would drive every muscle in his legs, back, and arms to extended if his feet landed. Using the damage he'd caused alongside she'd done to herself as a failure point. He was trying to tear her arm off or at the very least dislocate it.

"Things crawl out of the dark all the time, clambering for a host. I just have to break the vessel."

Sure, going airborne while another fighter had their opponent in a clinch was never Ideal. Vyn however, wasn't just any opponent. He blew hot air as his body lifted off the ground trying to enact his plan.

Mercy