Private Not Your Mama's Fight Club

[Aver Brand]

Coaching. Like this was a sport.

But the insinuation of mentorship rankled less than expected. Aver had gone through a few apprentices, back before she’d been Aver at all. And after, well… situationships, maybe.

Given her abrasive nature, she’d amassed an impressive fleet of ships over her lifetime. Of course, most of those were sunk now, so to speak. Many even by her own hand.

She looked from exposed circuits to Sam and tried to imagine Sage Bane in her stead.

No beard on either, but the man had boasted the sort of delicate bone structure that would crumple like paper under a fist. Which is why he’d taken to Mentalism, a path that led him the long way round to bleeding out on a derelict Star Destroyer some three decades later. All over chasing formerly-brainwashed skirt who’d happened to shack up with a freshly revived Sith-cum-logistics-coordinator (weird that that happened twice). That man happened to have a ‘brother’, who happened to have a ‘sister’, who happened to have a mate, and thus did the figurative brick stove in the literal face.

No such worries on the dim horizons of Sam Rodarch, surely.

“You definitely need one,” Aver said at last. “But that only works if you follow their advice. Now hold still.”

For a prison job, the wiring wasn’t even that much of a mess. Didn’t mean it allowed for the sort of fine adjustments that would fix a few milliseconds’ lag. The merc still made a show of applying her borrowed tools.

Beneath the fiddling, Aver listened to the brawler explain her chin-first, hit-second, dodge-never philosophy.

Beneath the listening, Ygdris spilled a few drams of her Force presence over the lip of the implanted suppressor and into the disobedient circuitry.

And beneath the machine manipulation, Aver again asked “What’s the plan for when hitting once doesn’t work? When you can’t tank the hit?”

 

[Sam Rodarch]

"Hm."

In what would be a surprise to absolutely nobody, Sam had nothing on the table to respond. Comebacks weren't the speciality of the permanently concussed. That, and there was nothing to come back to. She had needed a coach; it wasn't wrong, but she had needed that coach two decades before when she was full of piss and fury. Might not have ended up here, might have been on the major circuits, might have been dead already. She didn't think about it, lacked the capacity for ifs and buts.

At the very least, she obliged, holding as still as she could while the woman, whose name evaded her, was deep in the weeds of circuitry. Sam could feel the tiny vibration in her bones, or more specifically, her humerus where an anchor had been hammered in.

"Dunno," she again helpfully offered, cementing a catchphrase in not knowing, which was more honest than sin. "Hit 'em again."

The weight of the grit crash was starting to really bear down, compounding all the misery into a body that felt too aware of its flesh, too sensitive to the world around it, and most of all, just fucking exhausted. Sam let her head hang forward for a few seconds that lingered, eyes closing just to escape the light for a moment. It didn't seem improbable that she would fall asleep, but absolutely inadvisable on a brain that wouldn't remember this entire conversation.

"If I can't tank 'em," she began, dispelling the myth that she'd fallen asleep mid-fix, "den dat's dat. Don't matter what happens."

Everybody was going to eat shit and die eventually.

"'Til then, just keep hittin'."

 

[Aver Brand]

Pit fighter, street rat, bottom feeder: Aver had known or been one for most of her life. She had the credits now to put on airs, clothes, luxuries, but it only held up to a distant, cursory examination. All her sharp edges and hollows glare obvious to anyone who spends more than five minutes in her company.

“I get it,” she said at length. She dropped her hands in her lap, allowed a crooked smile. “And I got it.” A nod at the cybernetic limb. “Give it a go.”

Aver stood and stretched. “Think about the offer, yeah? Now I dunno about you, but I’m hungry.”

 

[Sam Rodarch]

Sam didn't need to be told twice.

She turned the arm over, watching the exposed guts of the scrap arm in action. Couldn't have told you the name of a single part or what made any of it work, but she stared as if she did. What she did know was that the response time was better, probably right on the money if her brain wasn't fighting through a percussive soup. The four remaining fingers flexed into a fist, the wrist rotating without the burden of lag holding it back.

Good. Not slow. That was all that was needed. That was all she needed.

"Yea', 'dat's betta," Sam grunted, hopping off of the cot without further thought.

Bad move. Further thought required.

The motion slammed a knife right between her eyes, splitting her skull. Real fucking deep. The kolto did as much surface work as it could; nothing was leaking any more, but the rest was still a wreck. She grimaced and lurched forward toward the door. Didn't know where the fuck the door was going. Didn't particularly care.

Something about hot dogs?

"There you are," Dobb announced brightly before Sam had even cleared the doorway, standing up from the bench like she was the guest of honour. "Sit down, love, you're grey. No, that side, away from the light."

She obliged. She usually did when it came to the Ugnaught, and didn't think much about why.

"I've ordered for you. Plain one, nothing on it," she said to Sam, gesturing at the litany of hot dogs and a solitary bowl holding a plain dog on the table before defensively turning to Aver and... a man that Sam had a vague recollection of, who seemed less like a person and more like a shape. "She's not fussy. It's her teeth."

By the time she sat back down, Dobb had the bowl in front of her, a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. She did not clarify what she was doing. The Sundry's demolitions expert was just running on autopilot, resuming her conversation with the man from before. "So then he says to me, 'Four days is excessive.' Four days! And I said, 'You've never dried a nuna in your life, pet.'" She was cutting the hot dog into smaller and smaller pieces. "And then I says to him, 'You can taste the difference; you can, you just have to know what you're-' there. That's you, love."

Dobb pushed the bowl across without looking at it, and carried on talking, her own hot dog (Annajan spice and blue meat, as recommended) now taking priority with her hands.