Private Skin in the Game

[Arris Windrun]

TYTHON
Mercy
​

The submersible docked with an underwater lab, hissing as pressure equalized. Arris walked through the old, empty corridors. Water droplets trickled down the walls. There was a musty smell in the air, and mold grew in every dark corner. If it weren't for the glowing lights and the unseemly sounds coming from deeper within, the cyborg might've guessed this place was abandoned.

'Just what exactly are you doing down here?' Arris thought to herself.

When Mercy had vanished from Coruscant again, the Triumvir decided to hunt her down before it turned into another excursion with the Blackwall Empress. Star-Arm had to be present, and Arris had only just returned from an excursion herself. It was quick, only a few days, but that alone was enough to bury the Covenant in a backlog. But that wasn't all. Arris Windrun returned a changed woman; that didn't go over well with a guard at the Temple, who didn't believe she was who she said she was until her barrel was pressed against his throat.

From the neck down, there was nothing but armor plating and cybernetics. That much hadn't changed, really, but she dropped the pretense of clothes and synthflesh where, as far as she was concerned, they didn't matter. Her face had changed, too - fairer flesh and a little less sharp, and in place of her iconic blonde ponytail was a dark-haired bob. It was her eyes... they stayed the same. Cold. Lethal.

Arris made it to the end, where the sound was loudest. She waved her hand along the door, summoning the Force to bypass its security. The old, rusted metal parted with a heavy, scraping groan.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

Mercy got word that Arris had returned from her jaunt.

But somehow the report neglected to tell her that the returned Arris didn't quite look like the old Arris. Maybe because nobody wanted to claim that piece of data that would make them look like a fucking idiot, if it turned out it wasn't Arris after all. All of that was to say that while Mercy knew Arris was coming, she would be completely caught off guard when she looked up from the surgery table and came face-to-face with someone else.

Eyebrow tilted up.

She breathed in. She listened. She took the sight in.

Then Mercy looked back to the surgery table.

"You smell like Arris, you got the same heart beat... white noise trapped in a waste pipe. Your eyes are exactly the same." She frowned as she picked out a particularly wicked looking butcher's knife.

"Different face though. So is this Arris with a fresh coat of paint or did someone take over my friend and being bold as fucking brass about it?"

Mercy sat back down in the surgery chair and ran the edge along her thumb. It seemed to satisfy her when blood welled up from a wound that immediately began to knit itself back together again.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

Her eyes fell upon Mercy's work. What an odd thing to stumble upon, but she paid most of her mind to the woman's words.

She hadn't had someone describe her heart like that before. It wasn't wrong. Just surprising.

Arris smiled a little when Mercy asked if it was really her or an imposter. "You would enjoy the attempt." She remarked. "Sorry to disappoint you." She stepped further into the room, hand on her hip, watching the Titan run a blade along her thumb.

"Hey, Merce."

Windrun's energy was different, too. A little on the mellow side, but not mynockshit depressed.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"Mmhm... it's been a while since I have tried to tear you from limb to limb, it's true." She murmured absently while putting her arm down on the surgery table and guided the butcher's knife on her skin. A slow light cut, making a line that healed as fast as it was made. But the blood remained, giving the perfect target line.

"What's the story, Windrun? You sound much less like you wanna kill yourself and everyone else in the room."

Eyes flicked up towards Arris again.

"I like it. Been too long since I heard the smile in your words."

It had been what had first attracted Mercy to Arris. Their duel had been brilliant for a multitude of reasons. But the sheer gumption from Arris, the bravado, the cheek.

That had told Mercy more than years of words would have.

It told her that Force or not, Arris had a Lord in her, as long as she was brave enough to take it. Maybe it had taken some pushing from Mercy, back when she had left the Black Sun behind and pushed Arris into a leading role herself.

But it had paid off in the end.

Because... look at Arris now.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

The story? She thought back to Corellia. The image of Jond Bel Numen's disappearing in a flash before the crack of her revolver finished echoing, to the gut-wrenching acceptance that Rox was, in all likelihood, dead. Even if she wasn't, Arris was no longer interested in chasing ghosts and maybes.

It was a jarring bit of recollection given Mercy's twisted party act. Did Arris even want to ask?

"I like it. Been too long since I heard the smile in your words."

"Is that what it is?" An honest question, but she didn't need an answer. "So..." Her eyes drifted over the blood red lines and rapid-fire healing. "Is this a bedroom hobby of yours, or what the hell am I looking at?"

Couldn't have been a simple 'Why?' from Arris.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"It is whatever you want it to be, darling. That's what it means to be Lord."

Then Arris asked the inevitable question. The way Mercy smirked, it was clear she had been waiting for it. She wasn't always a theatrical schutta, but when she decided to go for it, she certainly committed towards the bit.

Case in point.

With her eyes still on Arris?

The butcher's knife came down hard and severed her hand from the rest of her arm. Mercy hissed in pain as amber slowly infiltrated her sight, sulfur and full of mania.

"Oh, my bedroom hobbies get more intense than this." Mercy said with a bit of fever in her tone as she watched the severed limb. "This... is an experiment. Then again, I am not the one showing up with a whole different face and look, so I think you still are topping me when it comes to the Freak Show Games."

The seeping of blood trickled down to stop.

But Mercy focused, halting the healing process beyond that, not allowing a regrowth to occur just yet.

"You didn't answer me. Whose face are you wearing and why?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

The suddenly severed hand netted a reaction from Arris. The rest was weird, but tolerable, but this? Arris took a step back and tightened her jaw. Her eyes followed the hand as it fell with an unceremonious thump, then to the wound, which sealed itself in a matter of seconds.

It felt perverse to call this body-horror show an experiment. But then Mercy had tapped into her rare talent of reminding the cyborg that biggest freak in the Covenant was a hotly contested title.

"Mine," she answered.

Mercy had asked the wrong question. If only she had known just whose face Arris had been wearing before, then the Tionese might've reacted similarly, or worse, than Arris did to the severed hand.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

Eyebrows going up there.

As if that admission was more baffling than the act of severing your own hand without making a big deal out of it.

"Yours? Then who was the fucking blonde I have been talking to since we met?" The heat suddenly entering into Mercy's voice surprised even herself, but it worked out well enough. The severed hand twitched and that got Mercy's attention. "Oh, good, you are with us." Speaking towards the severed hand as it made an awkward flopping gesture... and fell over on its back.

It was having a hard time getting back up to its fingers, but Mercy seemed content to let it struggle.

Attention shifted back and forth like that. Between her struggling hand and her Arris.

"Hmm, I do like the new hairstyle, I will say. The pony-tail was cute, but didn't quite scream 'I can fuck you up and eat your liver', you know."

The hand somehow managed to crawl back onto its fingers and began to explore the surgery desk. But it was having some difficulty not palm-planting with all the residual blood making the surface slippery.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

The question was just about to pull Arris back into those fresh memories when the hand started to move on its own. At first, she thought it was just a nervous reaction - that happened sometimes if the cut was clean enough. Usually not so delayed, however. But when it flipped itself over and tried to crawl? Arris grimaced.

Her eyes met Mercy's again, despite the aching, primal urge to keep an eye on that thing.

"I liked the ponytail." Rox's hair was long and beautiful, and Arris remembered the joy of watching her spend an hour carefully braiding and tying it. "But yeah. New look, old me." She shrugged - more like it was the other way around.

That, of course, hadn't answered Mercy's original question. And she had already left out the 'and why?' portion of her last one.

"I'm a brain in a jar, and you can put me in a doll. That's all these bodies are. Don't get used to the idea that I had been anything else."

It wasn't entirely accurate. Arris Windrun had more realflesh than just her brain, but the point - deflective, perhaps - was that she could change her body whenever she wanted, for whatever reason she wanted. It didn't have to matter why.

The hand moved again. Crawling on its fingers, which was odd and grotesque.

"Okay. This is weird as hell, Merce."

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

It didn't skip Mercy's notice that Arris was being incredibly illusive about it all.

All the more reason to keep prodding at it.

"You are being a shitbird again, Windrun. If you can't be honest to me, who can you be honest too in this fucked up little Galaxy of ours?" If it wasn't for the hand she would have paid more attention to the prodding. Right now it was more half-hearted. Part of her was curious, but not enough to invest too much of her energy into it.

Besides if Arris dug her heels in, not even a Mountain would be able to dislodge her.

She was a bantha like that.

"A doll, huh?" Shit-eating grin came and passed again. "Something you wanna tell me?" Maybe naming her Princess of Empress Teta had hit closer to home than Mercy had realized.

"Okay. This is weird as hell, Merce."

It probably didn't help that Mercy was cheering the hand on as it was making a loop around the surgery desk.

"What, this? You have literally seen me fight in the Netherworld and regrow my skull after it got smashed by that mace. And this is what gets to you?"

That would explain why the aides kept being annoying about it. Maybe Mercy had to recalibrate what normal really meant.

"I want to see how far I can push my body." Mercy finally explained after watching it do a little hop before it landed on her shoulder. "It heals, it adapts, but in a Galaxy that regularly spits out Lords that create Black Holes or entire realities like its popcorn, I have started to suspect... that I can do much more than I have been able to so far."

"Say hi to Dark-Haired Arris, Handy." The hand popped out three fingers and did a little awkward wave.

"Isn't that cute?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

Arris rolled her eyes.

This was an unbelievable conversation. Maybe it was better just to get it over with. But thankfully, Mercy hadn't exactly pressed too hard and was more interested in explaining to Arris what the hell she was trying to do in this underwater lab.

Stress-testing, then? Trying to find new angles of survivability? Okay, that didn't surprise the cyborg at all. Just the methods did. Especially for someone like the Champion of the Galactic Kaggath, who could've been jumping off skyscrapers or boxing with bull rancors for a more entertaining route to the same ends.

The Talusian had almost accepted the unpleasantry... almost...

"Say hi to Dark-Haired Arris, Handy." The hand popped out three fingers and did a little awkward wave.

Until that.

Arris drew her revolver and fired. When a full second between draw and discharge had passed, Mercy's little sidekick was a smudge around a bullet hole on the floor.

It was probably (definitely) a stupid idea to fire that thing in an underwater facility, of course.

"Oops."

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

The only reaction Arris got at first was a raised eyebrow.

"Like I said, you are being a shitbird."

Then the horror really began however. That smudge began to twitch and contort and soon enough what had been one hand... was starting to split itself up into clumps of meat. All of them starting to crawl towards Mercy, towards the desk, and in a general way into the direction of Arris. Mercy did not seem very disturbed by it however.

Ignoring as the gore started to claw its way up the poles of the desk.

"So, like I was saying, if you can't be honest to me, who can you be honest to? Just spit it out already, we both know I am not just gonna drop because you decided to be a rude little shit to my former hand."

Part of the meat clumps started to leverage themselves onto Mercy, finding their way to the still attached arm that was handless. The others... had no eyes, but there was a distinct impression they were staring at Arris.

Why did it seem like they were eyeballing her?

 

[Arris Windrun]

Mercy
​

Her brows bent down with deep concern at the sight... It was still moving? The giblets were still alive?

Oh, for the love of! And now Mercy wasn't dropping it, either, and her shredded meat was somehow looking at Arris like they were a kicked puppy. She would've been sick to her stomach if such a thing were possible.

Arris sighed. Or was it a groan? Something between the two. She reholstered the weapon and crossed her arms.

"Okay, fine," she resigned. "Your violent blonde bestie? Yeah, that was the face of a young woman I used to know. We were..." Friends? Lovers? "Close."

It was a special bond, romantic if you wanted to frame it that way, but to them? They were all they had. Both prisoners, in their own way, searching for fleeting moments of normalcy and connection. Using each other to answer aching questions and fulfill a deficit of desires.

But Mercy didn't get to know that. No one had a right to that part of her past.