Private I Will Handle It

[Arris Windrun]

TYRANNY
AUDIENCE CHAMBER
Mercy​

Arris marched into the audience chamber with furious footwork.

Abregado-rae was on her mind. It was on everyone's minds. Humbarine was an unfortunate accident, but Abregado-rae? It was a catastrophe of their making. They almost lost; the Mandalorians had gotten the jump on them with their reinforcements; they even brought their great fleet to bear.

But a close call wasn't what angered her the most.

Some Sith officer was giving Mercy a report, or maybe a self-promotional speech; she didn't listen and didn't really care to make the difference of it. The cyborg grabbed and tossed him with the Force, sending him rolling along the grand hall until he slid out the door behind her. It slammed shut. The others in the chamber buckled as she passed them, reaching for their throats as if to pry an invisible hand. They all fell dead.

Arris looked like shit, all things considered. Better than how she left Abregado-rae, but not better than she had arrived. The scars of battle lingered, and she hadn't time to fully repair herself.

She stopped before Mercy, throwing her hand towards one wall, Abregado-rae somewhere beyond it.

"And just what the hell was that?" As usual, her tone was calmer than the anger beneath it.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

She squinted at the fanfare, but could only smile at the Hatred radiating from Arris.

Mercy almost said: A bit much, don't you think?

But then again, the both of them had always enjoyed making an entrance and then causing a scene. It was practically coded into their DNA. So really, Mercy couldn't blame Arris, not for this.

"And just what the hell was that?" As usual, her tone was calmer than the anger beneath it.

Her eyes slowly drew towards Abregado-rae or the wall that separated them from the vacuum of space and then Abregado-rae.

"A warning." Mercy finally said, looking back to Arris. "But it's a strange question to ask, Windrun. Since you were there for the planning sessions where we set out the campaign."

Mercy's head tilted there.

"If I recall correctly I even said something to the effect of... any objections?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

"Well, clearly I wasn't paying attention."

It wasn't a lie. She wasn't paying attention. She had practically walked out of every single session. Mostly, Arris remembered Madrona A’Mia and the quiet animosity when they looked at each other.

"Honestly... I thought I'd care about how disgusting that was, but really? I'd just like to know what the fucking point is."

She ran her hand across the back of her head in frustration.

"You say a warning - a warning of what? Not to fuck with us? Not to associate with our enemies?"

Arris groaned.

"You threw an unproven warship into battle, with an inexperienced psychopath at the helm, and worse yet, I received word that our fleets - the ones that were supposed to reinforce us, if the Mythic Fleet appeared - never got the memo!"

She rolled her shoulders, resting one hand on her hip, chuckling dryly in disbelief.

"And our whole plan hinged on what... a tree?"

Her eyes met Mercy's.

"Don't tell me the results speak for themselves, Merce. That was..."

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"Well, clearly I wasn't paying attention."

"You don't say." Mercy said while fishing her tin with cigarettes out. If Arris wanted one, she'd get one, otherwise she'd only light one up for herself. She didn't bother to address it further. Hiding behind not paying attention wasn't gonna cut it. Windrun knew it, she knew it. You didn't operate at this scale and be allowed to shirk your responsibility like that.

And Mercy respected Arris too much to allow her to continue degrading herself like that.

"That psychopath basically solo'ed the whole of their myth." Her eyes gleamed with pride. By all accounts Ceria Kesyk had even rejected the concept of requesting reinforcements. Atta girl. If Mercy had read the reports right almost half the fleet they had send to Abregado had been lost. "We make them to use them and I know you don't actually give a shit how many we lost, so save it for someone else."

"Don't tell me the results speak for themselves, Merce. That was..."

"Beautiful? Gorgeous? Fucking spectacular?" Mercy rose up while dragging from her cigarette, looking down at her friend for a brief moment, before stepping down the Throne until they were level. Mostly.

"What do you want to hear from me, Arris? You wanted me to lead, you wanted me to point the way. That's what I am doing. How many people did we lose on Humbarine? What should have been a simple regime change exercise by yourself turned into a whole mess because of those cretins. Then I find out they didn't just come here to poke at us, they are settling down, they are putting up roots."

Teeth bared there in a snarl for a brief moment before she checked herself again.

"And the Abregado natives invited them in. Welcomed them." She pointed towards the general direction of Abregado-rae. "So you are right, I put them down. Every last one of them we could get our hands on. And I turned their planet into a nightmare that I won't allow to recover for as long as I am in power."

A warning there. Mercy was never going to let the world rebuild, recover, become productive again for as long as she had something to say about it.

"Why? So we don't have to do it again. Now everyone knows the consequences of befriending our enemies. Not a battle or a war. Destruction of what they are and transformation into something less than." Her hand moved to settle down on Arris' shoulder. "From here on out, anyone who invites our wrath does it with Abregado in their mind. They will make their decision with their eyes open... and so you won't have to feel any guilt for what we do to them in turn."

She breathed out with a scoff.

"You'd know all of this if you paid fucking attention to the briefings."

Not that Mercy minded that much. She loved the sound of her own voice, so being allowed to speak at such length? That was just dessert.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

As it happened, Arris preferred her own brand of cigarette, so she didn't take from Mercy's case. She didn't draw from her own pack either. The other hand rested on her other hip, and she just sat there and listened as Mercy enjoyed the sound of her own voice, until there was enough of a pause for Arris to glean that the woman had finished.

"Okay, great," Arris chuckled again. "It's a warning..." She thought to scream, but refrained. "But we have to balance that, yeah?"

She looked around the audience chamber. 'You need chairs in here,' she thought.

So, Arris sat cross-legged on the floor.

"Between Abregado-rae and Humbarine, people are gonna start to get the wrong idea. Especially those suits you're trying to convince to drop their credits in the core, yeah? What was it you called it... Your... Dark Consortium?"

She wanted to groan. "We gotta make it look like we didn't just have a major tantrum, Merce. A little genocide here... some trade building there... Execute some Kestrans live on the HoloNet, a pay-per-view match playing on the side. It's something I learned running with the syndicates, or as my boss liked to call it - a gun in one hand, and their chin in your other."

The cyborg leaned forward, grinning.

Yeah, she was sick to her stomach, but Mercy was right... Arris did ask her to lead. Insisted on it. Mercy the Empress, the face.

"Abregado-rae can be a reminder. Okay. But!" She held up a finger.

She was playing it real-time. Banthashitting the whole way.

"If you make an example every time. The meaning will be lost... They'll stop thinking about the examples, and focus on the fact that you're a butcher. Which, between us, we know you are... but that's not the Empress, is it? They need to fear Abregado-rae if they piss you off. Not fear the butcher as soon as you arrive."

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

Mercy watched her best friend, really looked at her.

How quickly she moved on.

From fury, indignation, to acceptance and now trying to manage her. It should have infuriated Mercy, but all it did was make her happy she had Arris in the moment. As long as the cyborg thought she could manage Mercy... she would be there along for the ride with her. No matter how deep they sunk, no matter how brutal they got.

As long as Arris could rationalize it back to gangworld... she'd have her buy-in.

Arris sat on the floor, cross-legged, which amused Mercy... and then she sat her own arse down too. Leaning back against the steps that walked up towards Throne.

"We gotta make it look like we didn't just have a major tantrum, Merce. A little genocide here... some trade building there... Execute some Kestrans live on the HoloNet, a pay-per-view match playing on the side. It's something I learned running with the syndicates, or as my boss liked to call it - a gun in one hand, and their chin in your other."

She considered it as she leaned her head back to blow smoke towards the ceiling.

"One location on the surface, free from the plague, turned into a trade port." Mercy offered as a compromise. "We have to reward Astra Sadow and Leontis Antalis anyway. I don't know if the Chandrilan actually wants a piece of Abregado, but we can split the Port from the City and each can operate half, and fight amongst themselves for control."

And through their struggle they'd become more powerful, stronger, more ruthless. It would be brilliant.

"If you make an example every time. The meaning will be lost... They'll stop thinking about the examples, and focus on the fact that you're a butcher. Which, between us, we know you are... but that's not the Empress, is it? They need to fear Abregado-rae if they piss you off. Not fear the butcher as soon as you arrive."

She made a non-committal noise there.

"I am not a butcher, darling." Mercy murmured up to the ceiling. "A butcher's purpose does not extend past carving the meat."

Then a pointed glance towards Arris.

"We each play our role, but we both know the actual game we are playing... even if few others do, correct?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

"Yeah."

Arris squeezed one hand into a fist as it rested on her thigh.

"But I've been thinking..." And here was the gambit. "If you're not the butcher, then give me the knife. Let me carry the message of what the Empress does to her enemies. Let me lead... I... I didn't do you wrong in Tapani. Or on Coruscant. And fuck, we turned Humbarine around, didn't we?! I won't have that lingering as a failure!" There it was, some of her anger she tried to keep contained.

She chuckled again.

"I understand, I agree with your warning... but Abregado-rae. Even you have to admit that somewhere in that, things got carried away, Merce... I've always had more self-control than you have. Not much," understatement, "but your fury is best when your enemy's throat is personally in your hand."

What Arris asked for was crazy. It was a thing never meant for people like her, she thought, but then again. How far she had come. Who the hell even was she anymore?

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

The way Mercy smiled at Arris... told the cyborg everything she needed to know.

Mercy had seen through her.

The fury on arrival. The slow-rolled come down. The metaphorical elbow rubs, as if they were back at the Red Hand, with smoking rafters. Then finally the shot under the bow, the true purpose.

"You have never disappointed me, Windrun." Mercy finally said after several long, strangled beats, with their eyes locked on each other. "Tapani was gorgeous, Coruscant was beautiful, Humbarine was..." She scratched her jaw at that one. "Well, that one was pretty fucking messy honestly, but as you said... we turned it around and it wasn't your fault anyway."

For the most part.

Even you have to admit that somewhere in that, things got carried away, Merce

Mercy hummed at statement.

"Do I have to admit that?" She asked casually as she took another drag from her cigarette. "Our people needed a crucible. Something to push them to the extreme. Something that would either break them or force them to commit. For the outside world, it was a warning, but for us it was a rallying call. All of us will carry that planet as a carved wound in our minds from now until the end of time."

Another beat and maybe Arris thought her gambit had failed. That she lost it there. That the only way to get what she wanted, would be to fight Mercy directly, until one of them was in the ground.

"Sure." It came out of nowhere, the approval. "Pick up the knife, babe. Lead our armies... drag Varin Mortifer with you, he truly impressed me with his handiwork over at the factories."

Varin would balance out Arris' natural caution and lack of brutal instinct.

"Be my Butcher." Then she gestured towards Abregado-rae. "Not every world should be an Abregado. I agree... but some of them will be. Every once in a while... I will take the butcher's knife back to shed so much blood the Dark Side itself cries out. If you can accept that... we have an agreement."

How else could Mercy break the wheel they were all stuck in?

How else could she unmake the exhausting existence they kept repeating over and over again, like bad copies of worse copies?

But Mercy would grant Arris this much, because she could not imagine herself playing this game alone, and she knew the cyborg would not accept a Mercy unchained... they'd fight and one of them would die. Mercy was not concerned about death or even the destruction of the Covenant. But she didn't want the party to stop.

They had just arrived, after all.

Why stop all the fun now?

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

There was a brief spike of resentment when Mercy paused. As if a second later, something might've happened, until the Titan kept on talking.

Varin? She knew Fire Boy had his uses. She'd seen him in action. He was a tank made of fire and flesh, as far as she was concerned. But sure, she could do that. Though she wouldn't let him touch her guns anymore.

Then, as Mercy accepted Windrun's bargain, it came with a caveat. Some fine print that disgusted her.

But.

"Can I accept that?"

She looked around at the fresh corpses littered between them. Then, as if the point wasn't already made, Arris drew her gun and blew the head clean off one of them.

"Yeah - I can accept that."

She slid the gun across the floor where it stopped at the steps that became Mercy's makeshift seat.

The word Out was etched into the songsteel frame.

It was hot every time it fired, and steam continued to roll out of the barrel.

"Your cigarette's getting low... Thought you might need a light for your next one."

Even if Mercy saw through Arris, it felt good to take the keys away. Mercy could be the Empress, and Arris the Butcher.

Fuck. What happened to being a gun?

Was this just a little more honest?