Private Keep On Pushin'

[Mercy]

Iayn Dystraay

Iayn's mood seemed to shift.

Perhaps it was the conquering of her first horns. That must make a girl happy. Get a piece of herself back. "Mm, they might not forget, but they might not be interested in giving it up either." Mercy drawled as she leaned against the bar and watched her intently. Only to glance down to where her boot was stomping.

She had lived under the bar?

That seemed rather cramped.

But for Mercy most things were cramped. It was a consequence of being as muscular and large as she was. And she had practically been that way her entire life. Always too big. Not fitting the spaces she was supposed to belong in. Her mother had been in every state possible about the impossibility of raising her as a Young Lady.

"I could help ya though." Mercy smirked. "I am can be very helpful when I wanna be."

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Was Mercy being daft on purpose, or was she blissfully ignorant of the tightly-packed cells for the enslaved gladiators under the whole coliseum? If the latter, lucky her, but the true would worm its putrid way into her nostrils soon enough if she stuck around the younger woman. Iayn just hoped that she herself was still used to the smell of humanoid dereliction.

She shrugged as she stood up. "A wise woman in my life says try, or let that hope die." She glanced at Mercy. "You one to give it a try?" With that, she glided off into the crowd.

If Mercy caught up, she'd ask, "Not a stickler for rules either, I hope."

 

[Mercy]

Iayn Dystraay

"Oh, I dunno about hope, but I know a lot about desire." Mercy said oh so smoothly as she followed along with an easy-breezy stride. "I dun' do hope, too passive. I seize what I want, when I want and how I want. Far more powerful than hoping for something to happen in ya favor." She was done with that and had been from a very early age.

Otherwise she'd be married to a slick beanpole noble shitting out kids for their legacy every other year.

No thanks.

She asked her about rules.

Mercy laughed. It took a moment before those big shoulders stopped shuddering and the large woman had to pink away a tear. "Darrrrling. I rob museums in the middle of warzones. I punch out Sithspawn the size o' apartment buildings." She rolled her shoulders and yawned. "I walk into carnivorous forests and come outta it with their evil bitchy branches to make soup outta it."

That one was hella specific.

"No, I don't give a kark about rules. Cus I only follow mah own will... and I dun' got rules to play book by." Mercy leaned in there and ran her nose along Iayn's ear. "But if ya wan' commit to that with me... ya gotta be ready for anything, hm?"

Mercy shrugged.

"So, what are you gonna do next. Ya got yar head talons from t'a creepy lizard. What's next? Dun' tell me we gonna be walking around all day an' just talk to people. That sounds dreadfully boring."

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Mercy would be proud of the shiver she drew out of Iayn's ear as she withdrew, but it was impossible to tell what emotion had elicited it. The young woman's aura swam around her like a fledgling whirlpool.

"Wow. Colorful. Okay." Iayn cleared her throat as they continued through the crowd. "Was it, uh, good? The soup."

After the answer, Iayn would continue, "I'd better hone my desire next, I suppose." She glanced up at Mercy. "I want to compromise this place." She walked ahead, shouldering her way to a railing overlooking the raging fight. "Pull its foundation out from under it, brick by brick, but not so fast that it collapses..."

At a rate that they could repair as quickly as she could dismantle.

An endless, high-stakes game of Jenga.

 

[Mercy]

Iayn Dystraay

A chuckle in response but the smirk developed thoroughly after her shiver.

"The soup?" She blinked there, not expecting that question, and thought back to it. "Naw, it was garbage. But the point of it wasn't the taste, right?" Anyone expecting an evil sentient carnivorous tree to taste NICE was frankly fooling themselves. No, it wasn't the taste that Mercy had been after at that time.

"I took the branch because I wanted a trophy from surviving. Then when someone offered to turn that trophy into more power for me I seized the chance without thinking about it." The strength of those murder trees consumed by herself. It had come with... disadvantages. All consuming hunger that pushed her to eating and eating... and eating.

Her night dreams flared sometimes of their activities.

"Trust me on this, Dystraay. If someone tries to sell you power while claiming there ain't no price.. they are a lyin' piece o' chit. Power always comes with a price. Ya jus' gotta be willing to pay it, yeah?"

That one was a free lesson courtesy from the magnanimous Mercy.

She stretched as Iayn described what she wanted to do. Brows furrowed there and she eyed her up and down again. The little lady was a strange bird, wasn't she? "Hm okay. But why though. We could turn this place to dust come tomorrow." Mercy had never been one to hold onto spite and resentment for very long.

Burning bright and burning out quick again.

"Why all the effort?"

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Iayn turned herself over to lean back on the rail. "Because it's a lesser evil as far as I'm concerned." A shrug as she pushed herself upright. "The slave trading part of pitfiting's a hydra. Cut off a head, sure, nothing's stopping you, but it'll grow right back a few lightyears away.

"That woman in my life, I owe her mine because she didn't burn this chithole to the ground as soon as she could. And she could have, but what she did instead was she bought a slave." Iayn slapped a hand over her heart. "Shipped me, in a bloody pile, off to Coruscant. Because she did that, I have a chance now, Mercy, a chance to repay the favor, find other lost souls that would be lost for good if we don't keep this supply chain alive."

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Iayn Dystraay

Mercy didn't know much about the 'lesser evil'.

More often than not she picked the pettiest evil or the evil that was most profitable to her. Picking a path simply and only because it had the least amount of collateral damage? Frankly it was a foreign concept. So weird and alien that Mercy decided to stick around... just to see what would happen with it all.

She suspected it would blow up in Iayn's face. Good Samaritan works often did.

Brows furrowed as Iayn kept talking and the coin landed. "So, wait. Because that woman saved your life and - by the looks of it - nurtured you... you are now living by her ethos. Still loyal to her ideas even years later?" This... had not been Iayn's point at all. But Mercy's brain was ticking as she thought about that concept.

Do something good for a person.

That person would remain loyal to you.

Huh.

"Ya know, I never looked at it like that, Iay." She drawled as her arm slung lazily around the other woman's shoulders and squeezed lightly. "I dun' really go in for the whole 'help others for the sake of it'-mojo, but I dunno, you really got something there." What if they freed a whole army of enslaved pit fighters?

Maybe Mercy could get herself an army THAT way. You didn't even have to recruit them! They literally came pre-packed with it. Did Maijan Paisea knew about this method?

It seemed foolproof.

"Guessing first thing we gotta do is find out who runs these pits an' then figure out who they run it for. Cus' trust me, ya can rip off the head of the overseer, but like ya said- it will regrow elsewhere. If we grab the boss o' the boss by the scruff an' shake hard? I am betting we can get a list of all the overseers that ran through this joint too. Best way to track down yar hornssss."

Mercy grinned.

"Two banthas with one swat, eeeh?"

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

"So, wait. Because that woman saved your life and - by the looks of it - nurtured you... you are now living by her ethos. Still loyal to her ideas even years later?"

Point or not, Iayn was about to hop off track and chase this idea into the weeds. She wasn't blindly loyal to Malcoma and the suggestion that she was was offensive twofold.

But she stopped herself. The headmistress of Galactic City's Guesthouse had two conditions that she had asked Iayn to follow when she was making it alone in the big, bad worlds: one, don't drop Hesse or Inkari or Rackham or the Family's names, and two, whenever possible, call home or otherwise drop hints that you're safe. Maybe, if known, Iayn's desire to appease Malcoma would seem like blind loyalty, but both wood and oil fires let off smoke, yet their fuel sources were very different.

Instead, she listened to the rest of Mercy's response. At the end of it, she smiled. "Really? You'd help me?" Though the larger woman had already said as much, or at least suggested as much, the turnaround from fighting her to fighting with her was surreal. "Where would you start looking? Things seem to have changed a bit from when I was around last."

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Iayn Dystraay

It would have been funny if Iayn had dropped the Family's name in front of Mercy.

After all, Mercy was on first name basis with the Donna of the Family, having shared several drinks with her and some smoke too. This was more than most people could say that weren't directly part of the Family. But alas, it was not to be, so this little tasty tidbit would have to stay in the shadows for the meantime.

Mercy grinned.

"Sure, why not, sweet cheeks." This was Mercy. A woman who was eternally balancing between the urge to murder and the urge to be worshipped in equal measure.

Now that the murder train had (temporarily) left the station it made complete sense for Mercy to approach things from a different perspective. Besides, it was an interesting concept. Help someone help themselves and earn their loyalty. Mercy wasn't sure if she'd be able to stick with it. The idea of trying to do it all the time rather than simply getting people's loyalties because she deserved it... well, seemed exhausting.

But every once in a while? Why not.

"But I hope you remember who lend you a hand in yar trying hour." Murmured warmly in her ear before Mercy pulled back again and magnanimously shrugged her large shoulders. "We observe. I reckon dis place ain't much different from da fighting pits I performed at."

Except that Mercy had never been a slave, of course.

"So there be bookies 'ere. They earn money from da gamblers watching the fights. At the end of da day the bookies bring the money somewhere. That be our first link to the higher-ups. Makes sense?"