Invoking Putin Was Not Your Best Move (Tionne)

[Ashin Varanin]

GRAND ARENA
RATTATAK

Ankle-deep in hot sand, lightsabre heavy in her grip, Ashin had a senior moment. She couldn't remember why she was going to kill the ginger.

Perhaps the venue was at fault. She'd spilled blood here so many times. Perhaps it was the familiar old outfit: loose trousers, vest, ragged shirt over breast band. More or less the same thing she'd worn when claiming the Sith Empire's throne, leading the Fringe, and so forth and so on. Or it could be that the culprit was her opponent: this one looked so much like others she'd killed. The motives all blended together. Maybe the kid was here to bring Ashin to justice or something; that might be it. It had been a while since a good arrest attempt.

Fortunately, losing her grip on the Dark Side's power wasn't in the cards. She might not exactly remember why she was here to kill the kid, but she had plenty of other reasons to be pissed. First and foremost, the recent torture of her wife at the hands of the One Sith. Then there was Odium, who'd reawakened her Force Drain addiction and thoroughly wrecked her last serious shot at a good life.

Ashin rolled her neck and shrugged, then settled into a loose and noncommittal stance. Her lightsabre hissed to life, casting burnt-orange light over the pale mottled sand.

"What'd you eat?"


[member="Tionne Thanewulf"]

 

[Zonia Kalranoos]

Memory loss was the first sign of dementia. Transferring one's consciousness from one body to the next had some profound effects on the nervous system; one could remember what they had for breakfast three thousand five hundred and eleven years ago, but not why they traversed across half the known galaxy to brutally dispose of a pretty sarcastic former Jedi Knight. Surely, [member="Ashin Varanin"] - the crusher of Sith skulls and bane of all dark and vile - could've orchestrated a duel somewhere closer to Sullust. Instead, she chose a planet dangerously close to Sith space, to put Tionne's life to a proverbial end. At first such a decision seemed highly irrational, given the extra travel costs incurred for the Galactic Alliance. However, when one studied the galactic map in greater detail, Panatha was just a few parsecs away. Without a doubt, Varanin would continue her bloody march on [member="Darth Vornskr"]'s home planet, stabbing him in his sleep until there was nothing of him left but a puddle of minced DNA and a phrik gimp mask.

Thanewulf had recieved just enough funds to buy herself a third class ticket on board a freighter ferrying nerf between Outer Rim worlds; she had spent a solid week amidst cattle and acquired a lovely stench that reminded of [member="The Revenant"]'s barn on Sulon. Upon seeing that Varanin was too a fan of haute couture from the underbelly of Coruscant, Thanewulf felt right at home whilst wearing a dirty grey assemblage of clothes soaked in bodily fluids that weren't necessarily her own. Either way, the raggy shirt and pants provided much needed cover against sizzling sun of Rattatak, lest the Hapan suffered first degree burns as she forgot to purchase sunlotion. On her head she wore a pair of goggles and a turban, appearing as nothing more than a kyphotic Gand to the untrained eye. The electrum hilt of her lightsaber was clipped to her belt, shining in the sun like a spare part of a protocol droid.

When Ashin first spoke, the ginger-haired woman scratched her head. The question was far from understood, yet Tionne opted to reply in a literal, albeit casual manner -
"Uhm... - a pretzel?"
A quiescent sigh left her lips.
"It was just a joke." she replied, referencing to her tacky comment about a despot in the Outer Rim who had little sympathies for same-gender marriages.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tionne Thanewulf"]

Between campaigns in the Chiloon Rift and the Tyus Cluster, walking the accretion disk of a black hole and subjugating the Maw, Ashin was a little fuzzy on her own age. Well into middle age, certainly, her facial transformations the result of advanced surgical attempts at bodily renewal. She'd had Transfer Essence performed on her once, many years ago after malignant cancer and a series of punishing battles. When push came to shove, she figured her senior moments were probably just the result of a lifetime of Dark Side corruption. Some people got bruises, others got wattles, a large and growing proportion of modern Dark Side leadership got sickeningly attractive in the most exaggerated ways -- Ashin got a little achey, a little forgetful. She'd been contemplating switching bodies. This one had been through enough over the years.

Pretzel: simple carbs, no long-term energy, not a warrior's food. Ashin ignored the half-apology; she'd taken this trip and knew that scenery. She noted with some displeasure that Tionne hadn't bothered to draw or activate her weapon, nor take a stance. An indicator of disrespect, perhaps.

"As last meals go, it's a little uninspired."

Opening salvo: time to get the measure of the kid, without undue commitment of energy or focus. Ashin's loose stance was left-side-forward; her left hand disengaged from the lightsabre's hilt and made a crushing motion in Tionne's direction. She brought a precise Force choke to bear, precise in the sense that it wasn't meant to damage through brute force windpipe trauma. It was, instead, a blood choke, the kind intended to induce rapid unconsciousness.

 

[Zonia Kalranoos]

Thanewulf was an energy-conserving being, which affected both the way she approached conflict and her chosen lightsaber form. An avid practitioner of Form Zero, the redhead tried to escape conflict at all cost. Surprisingly enough, the strategy had worked against a considerable number of dark siders, but it soon turned out Varanin's name was not to be added to the list. For a moment, Tionne struggled to understand Ashin's motivation. Weren't they fighting in the same side, against the hegemony of One Sith? Why kill a woman who will lead an opposition against the dark side in scope rarely seen in the pains of this realm? Neither women knew the respective roles future would cast them in. If they did, no swords would ever be crossed.

"Watching my weight to fit into a coffin." the redhead retorted dryly, eyes squinting in the baking sun of Rattatak. She kept the goggles on, for various reasons. Keeping the light away from her sensitive Hapan pupils was only one of them.

The sheer force of Ashin's iron grip lifted Tionne slightly up in the air, her feet now barely touching the sand. She gasped heavily, trying to rid herself of Varanin's blood choke. A thousand thoughts swarmed in her mind, distilling into a single course of action in a matter of milliseconds. While others were bestowed with better cards in the cosmic game of life, Thanewulf excelled at playing with the hand she was dealt. The technique of blood choke required proximity, which meant Varanin had to stand nearby. The Hapan had but average skill in the art of telekinesis, but nothing more than a simple whiff was required. Varanin had selected the sandy planet herself, probably motivated by many battles she had won here. Like an experienced tactician she was, Tionne decided to use the terrain to her advantage.

A few scant moments before she was about to lose consciousness, the redhead reached to the Force and swayed her hand outwards from the wrist, motion tossing up sand towards Ashin's unprotected eyes to distract her. The maneuver was akin to a children's mischief in a sandbox, nothing elegant nor overly forceful. Tionne's hand slid down to the hilt of the lightsaber, Solari-imbued blade springing to life in a cascade of brilliant orange-gold hues.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tionne Thanewulf"]

Nostalgia kicked in hard. Rule number one when getting choked: break the choker's concentration. And after a lifetime of fighting in this very arena and serving as Jedi Watchman of Korriban and hiding in the gritty wastes of Trevel'ka, one lesson had sunk in. Everyone, everyone, tried to throw sand in your eyes. Sometimes they flicked it with a sword's point or a toe. Other times they conjured winds or full-sized storms. Commonly, they used minimal telekinesis, often with a gesture involved. So when she saw the gesture, Ashin firmed up her focus and closed her eyes. That's all it took. She'd choked people through video connections, or while they were standing behind her. Keeping up one basic choke without visual contact was child's play.

At that point, as sand scattered over her face, she heard a sabre hiss to life. It wasn't ideal to be at these relatively short ranges with your eyes closed, not when her waifish opponent might rely on her previously demonstrated telekinesis to render her sabre combat stylings effective. Thus, Ashin opted to capitalize on the momentarily intact Force grip by using it for one simple, merciless move. Her gesturing hand flipped, palm up, and the existing grip aimed to yank Tionne straight upward. That kind of sharp velocity could snap a non-Forcer's spine, but the girl was a Jedi Knight, or so it was said. Ashin had relatively little doubt she'd survive the process and just get tossed pretty far into the air by her neck. If that worked as intended, there were all manner of things they could both do while the girl was skyward bound.

The upward jerk served another purpose: to prevent a potential telekinetic lightsabre attack, by forcing Tionne to focus on mitigating a gallows treatment. Ashin was no Mikhail Shorn, who'd been known to shatter Master-level opponents' legs or make ball bearings into mass driver rounds, or Siobhan Kerrigan, who'd been working on her sixth Muntuur Stone for a while now. But when she put her will behind a command of go that way, she'd been known to put people through walls.