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

 

[Mercy]

Vyn Daldoure

Mercy probably should have taken offense.

Break the vessel, he said.

As if the powerful physique she had crafted over the years was nothing more than a shell of something more potent. But Mercy was too far gone into battle-mania now. At the very essence of her being she was a predator, one that had learned over the years how to control herself and became more dangerous for it. In these moments the witty back and forth was discarded for something else entirely. But she was still grinning. Smoke still trickled from the rents in her skin. Her arm was cracked and cooked but already knitting itself back together, muscles crawling over bone in slow, determined reconstruction.

Then he launched himself at her, wanting to grab at her, which managed to surprise Mercy a touch.

Fool. He'd come back for more.

His boots slammed into her chest right as she stepped in to take away some of his momentum. She didn't try to dodge it. Because the moment he left the ground, she saw the opening. That jetpack rig humming with power, struggling to account for its own user's weight. The J.A.M.R. system, with all its clever articulation and compensation, made to keep him dancing even when gravity didn't want him to. Welded to a spine even. Mercy would never understand why you'd ruin perfect flesh with metal and wires.

Mercy's arm blurred. Her right hand, raw and blistered, still infused with the remnants of unspent energy. She slammed it in with full-body torque behind the strike. She opted to crush the jetpack where it sat and take away some of his mobility that let him stay in the game for far too long already. She'd crush it into him. Against him. Into his vertebrae if it came to that. Whatever it took to rip away his wings. Not out of spite, no. All this time Mercy had been weakening the structure of the branch they were on.

All for this moment. It was time to snap this branch and end it once and for-

Then it happened. Far above, the crown of the tree began to fall. Another fighter's directed chaos. But now it was their shared problem.

As pieces of the crown fell down, their branch gave out in an instant. Snapped like a bone through old meat. The force of the impact and the collapsing treetop above were too much. Everything dropped at once. Bark. Leaves. Dust. Two fighters. To the ground below where the monsters laid in wait.

Mercy fell like a comet. A blur of copper and blood and fire. The air screamed past her ears and still she laughed, wind-whipped and wild.

She twisted her body mid-fall, aiming to take the brunt of it shoulder-first. The impact would have killed a normal person, but Mercy was far from normal. She had punched a leviathan straight in the face and walked away with only a few broken bones and that was in her youth. She was a monster herself now and that blue hue wrapped itself around her right at impact. The ground shook where she landed, creating a Mercy-sized crater. In other words, it was big and obvious, and already attracting the attention of dark predatory hunters let loose by their hosts.

They howled and Mercy smiled, this was exactly her element.

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

Great... She had brawns and brain, or at least enough to keep his combat effectiveness manageable, her stepping inwards was a clever touch, but one that let him get a better foothold, the metal cuff of his boots digging into her chest. Then he noticed it the muscle in her neck twitching right near the shoulder, neurons fired, she was trying to rip his jetpack away. Vyn was going to let her, his spine could take the trauma, even if she broke it he had an implant that would right the damage long enough to get in a bacta tank.

Vyn was going to let mercy hit him, sure the J.A.M.R had guided screws that locked it into his bone. But the guy didn't live with the thing on and could bail it off at any time, he'd give the J.A.M.R one last command, dump both charges, the primary and the safety, launch her off the stage, let the dogs feast. That's when he snapped back to the moment before a second had passed, unfortunately, his own call was overridden by the detection system of the pack which was working on an electronic level instead of a nervous one. It detected her movement for him before even his augmented systems had had informed his brain, the jets were already angled, he received a warning in his display.

[Kill Vector Detected]
[Prioritize Safety of Primary Function]
[Brace for Automatic Compensation]

"Chit." He didn't even have time to get the words out before the thing worked against him. Thrusters firing off their safety charge. The jump into her, wasted movement. His plan, foiled by his own tech. His footing against her, well lets just say there was no footing.

Vyn's thruster had launched him upwards into they sky even further, putting him zero-G inches from her, clean off the ground, clean off Mercy as he felt the air underneath him bend from the force of her strike. He didn't know whether to be miffed he lost his leverage, or thankful his tech was faster than the both of them.

Screw it, time to work with the chaos. He was going to try and mount her shoulders, flipping the vibroblade into reverse grip. The plan, drive it into the top of her head. Good old fashioned Zabraki Lobotomy. That was until the leaves entered the picture. It took Vyn a micro second longer than it usually does to figure out what was going on. He was still in zero-G, and it only click when he felt himself go even higher, no that was just his own sense of perception. She was sinking. Groundward, hell the whole fething tree was, some saber jockey or another decided it would be fun to knock down a mighty Wroshyr.

Branches screamed past him, his thruster cut out and he fell, twisting his torso, he'd jumped out of plenty of ships and freefall was always a fun time. His gaze centered on her as she wrapped herself in that blue energy, and much like his earlier analysis slammed into the ground like a meteorite. Unfazed.

"Ughhh- What is it going to take." Vyn was still falling, his eyes locked onto the Vornskr, and for the first time he formed a full smile and left out a laugh.

The J.A.M.R kicked in slowing his decent into the beasts as he landed with a thud, some of them turned to him. Vyn got low on all fours, one of the Vornskr approached, snarling. He just growled back bearing his sharpened canines. "Oh don't look at me... your favorite snack just landed a few feet away." His hand snapped outwards grabbing the beast by the nape with a constricted grip. The others around him halted their advance. He angled it's head in the direction of Mercy but kept watching the beast with his eyes. Then it worked with him, looked right towards her. He let go, and stood.

He chuckled and gazed at her, his eyes probably looked just like the Vornskr, he was an apex predator, and he just found a pack. "Vornskr... we fell into a pit of the one animal I have experience with, training, to hunt people like you. Just me, I'd be dead, but." He shrugged towards her and then gestures to the beasts around him barking, no hissing and moving forward. "I can't exactly control them like some of you saber jockey's, but, the force is so Intune with these creatures, they know what they want. They hunger for one thing: flesh, coursing with the force. And that ink of yours? I'd venture to say it's overflowing."

That animal smile of his held firm as he looked over at the beats

"So much so, I wonder" He glanced back up to her "Would they take a force-laden command from you?"

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Vyn Daldoure

Mercy... blinked slowly.

For some reason the soldier got on all fours and barked at the predators surrounding them both. Now she was concerned that she had misjudged the the fall and had actually hurt her head. But no, there he was, going at them like he spoke their language. It was so out of the blue, so utterly from the left field that Mercy couldn't do more than stare for a moment.

"Hey, pal, if this is like... your thing or something, don't involve me, okay?"

The beasts growled at her and that was enough to get her head back in the game. Eyebrow raised at the animals slowly shuffling towards her as if she was a tasty chew toy just ready to be devoured.

She sighed.

"And here I thought we were kin." Sigh turned back into a smirk as she glanced towards him. "Training is nice, great really. But lad, you are either born with it... or you ain't." She had been inspired by Avalore and her antics with the Akure beast years ago. With just her mind and a touch Avalore had managed to take control of it after she had softened it up.

Mercy doubted she'd ever be as good as that. But a pack of vornskrs who operated on the same 'eat or be eaten' principle? Child's play.

Her presence raged through their animal minds like a thunderstorm. It was too much. Too aggressive, too violent. Half of them just collapsed where they were, eyes blank, brains melted from her unsubtle intrusion.

Three remained.

There was no hesitation in them as they suddenly whirled around and immediately leaped at Vyn to tear him apart limb to limb. They moved as if possessed. There was no subtlety to it or even real domination. If they somehow managed to end Vyn they would not revert back or wait for more commands. They would just keep clawing at each other, the stone, the ground, anything to satisfy that raging beast that had invaded their minds and left nothing but fury in her wake.

Mercy didn't join the carnage. Not because she was feeling generous. She just didn't want to miss the show.

 

[Vyn Daldoure]

Vyn looked at the beast next to him as the rest dropped. It was barbaric. She wasn't influencing them to attack him, she was breaking them. By nature they were great for hunting force users, their desire to hunt force sensitives was their primary and highest function, so when he was in the Navy one or two would be brought along and used as an equivalent to hunting hounds. Then caged again once they broke their prey.

Mercy however seemed to snap that crucial function, they weren't hunters anymore, they were just killers, for the fun of it.

Vyn brought his leg up before the first could even turn, and slammed it downwards. Crushing it's head under his foot. It sucked he had to put them down, but at this point it was a courtesy.

The second lunged, he jumped over it and landed on the third. Plunging his vibroknife into the top of its skull with surgical efficiency.

Then he snapped his head back to the last before he even touched the ground. The last beast was circling back, snarling. His hand wrapped around the muzzle of the mutt he'd just stabbed and as his feet found purchase, Vyn picked up the limp body and swung.

The sound was blood curdling, bone snapping against bone, the second yelped under the impact of it's packmate being used as a cudgel. It wasn't dead though.

Vyn had stopped the swinging the corpse, and removed his blade before he pointed to her with the blood slicked edge. "Born to throw a tantrum maybe..." He let the blade hang there, almost to drive the sting further. "That wasn't power, that was desperation. You took the one thing that made them dangerous. Focus. And you broke it."

He stepped over the last beast who was laying there still alive, petting its head. Blood was tricking from the flesh around his wrist that had been wrung by Mercy's grip. The Vornskr tried to nip at him but Vyn just pushed the jaw away and shook his head. "Sorry about this." He whispered to the mutt. Then looking to her, the sun was setting behind her head. A plan. It was bad... he didn't like it. It would probably work. His mind became clear. The only image in his head. Her death, the rest faded. Vyn was running on instinct now.

His hand wrapped around it's muzzle as he lifted it much like the other. Its appendages had been broken, but that jaw would still pack a punch. He picked up the animal, then his eyes dilated again, overwriting the pain he felt from the injuries he'd been experiencing.

Then he ran towards her full sprint. Picking up speed. As he got close Vyn dug his heel in. Placing his gauntleted hand against the beast's sternum, spun, and launched the Vornskr towards her.

Assisted by the function of his gauntlet, it wasn't a throw, he used the repulsor tech to create the equivalent of a force push sending it towards her. Vyn followed it. He began running as soon as the beast left his grip. Picking speed up instantly, then he slid. Coiled, changing direction again slightly, and as he and his dog got close to mercy.

It flew past the woman's side.

He'd angled it to not hit her, but fly slightly past her side

And Vyn? He'd been hidden the whole time, trailing the Vornskr like a shadow, he jumped, his J.A.M.R kicked in mid air. He vaulted over the beast.

For her, she'd probably see the beast coming, but the thing was so large Vyn could use it like a wall for hiding his movement, then, he'd shoot up from the blind spot the Vornskr created, mere inches from her side. And launch his Vibroblade downwards towards her carotid artery, and this wasn't just muscle and gravity assisted. He'd used his Jump pack to not only provide upwards, but rotated his hips mid air for it to then provide downward thrust.

To add insult to injury, his gauntleted palm was braced against the hilt of the blade, and with a Thwump he propelled his own hand forward with the repulsor. It would have made blocking a blaster round with a light saber look like hitting a ball with a stick.

Mercy