Private Sold As Is

[Mercy]

ATRISIA
THE SITE OF THE DEATH STAR III'S WRECKAGE
Arris Windrun
​

A message had been send to Arris to meet an old rival and colleague and ally and perhaps friend to Atrisia. Back to where they had had their last great triumph. Mercy didn't feel that triumphant, the annihilation had been rather boring and she didn't get the glorious duel she had wanted. But they jumped out of Hyperspace with the Throne-Spire with the assistance of Hasuras Na-Gerra 's fleet and missed the destruction of the Death Star entirely.

But soon enough Mercy returned again. Her own people, the Graspborn, requested it and that had intrigued Mercy. They didn't ask anything of her, ever. Too scared that Mercy would reject them or disband them by force.

It had been different this time.

In the wake of the battle and with Thronegrasp's influence, the contagion of the Graspborn was beginning to spread through the Galaxy. It had been the flu before, desperate coughs and sneezes, nothing too dangerous. But now it was becoming a virulent plague. People were waking up after falling asleep to the HoloNews, walking out of their home and finding the first shuttle, being drawn to places they never had seen before.

The site of the Death Star wreckage was one of those meeting places. It was here and above, in space, that the Graspborn turned from a cult into something... more. They had begun scavenging the remnants of the fleeting battle. Picking over ships, patching what they could, breaking apart and welding new forms where they couldn't. And then they called for Mercy, so she could bear witness to their offer for her.

It was that offer that Arris would pass by in her ship as she made her way surface-side.

There was now a fleet in orbit. The Alliance was busy licking its wounds, trying to hold its territory together, they had better things to do than try and fight a fleet that currently wasn't targeting them whatsoever. It was cobbled together, but already there was a golden gleam coming from it. Burnished with rough brands on its hulls, of Mercy's arm.

At the heart of the wreckage Arris would find Mercy herself.

Sitting on something that resembled a throne, also cobbled together, salvaged. She looked... odd, her expression difficult to parse.

"Arris," Mercy inclined her head to her... friend, perhaps. "-Atrisia looks different from the surface, compared to seeing it from orbit." This wasn't like Mercy. Usually she cut straight to the chase, like a knife or perhaps like a tank. Here, however, she almost sounded sheepish. Oscillating between trying to hide a smug, proud smirk and having seemingly second-hand embarrassment about this scene her Graspborn had forged for her.

They had known exactly how to ply her ego... to make her tempted to accept what they offered.

Not just a group of slaves that got out of the way during missions so Mercy wouldn't trample them. But something... more, something that reeked of responsibility, which she had been able to avoid even as a Vigo.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris passed by the sight of battle wreckage on her way down.

For Mercy, it may've been a trophy - an offering to her power, proof of her place in the galaxy. For the Talusian? It was that unshakable feeling that lingered. She could remember it clearly... on the Death Star... plugged into the system. So at risk, and helpless as her very consciousness dissipated between the ones and zeroes.

Just like how it felt to have "died" on Ruusan, she now carried the same doubts.

"Am I alive?"

"Is it really me?"

"Is this my body?"

Doubts that she could only believe away, for there was no definitive proof to her answers, as any philosopher would say.

Still, as soon as she landed and found herself face-to-face with Star-Arm, Arris slipped back into that mercenary's mindset. She kept her feelings closed like a folded hand; better to be discarded than revealed.

"Arris," Mercy inclined her head to her... friend, perhaps. "-Atrisia looks different from the surface, compared to seeing it from orbit."

"Shit, Merce... you don't care about this rock."

She leaned against an eroded support beam. "Nice chair, though. Never considered it your style until now."

As always, her tone was a difficult thing to assess underneath the near-perfect modulation. She could even emulate Mercy if she wanted to.

"So, I take it that fleet in orbit is your doing, yeah?"

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

She had the decency to look even more sheepish when Arris called her out on her utter nonsense. It was true, Atrisia didn't matter to her whatsoever. Could have seen it explode for all that Mercy cared for.

Except it was the start of the rest of the story for Mercy.

"One of the few people who can call me on my shit and I don't even feel the need to tear your head off." Maybe because they had beaten each other to chit during the Galactic Kaggath.

She already had had the insides of Arris staining her hands.

Then a nod.

"Thanks. They heard about the battle and came after it was over." It was rather obvious who the they were. Up in the sky the fleet gleaming, on site, an army gathering and even then only a fraction while the rest was building in space.

"Theirs actually. They asked me to come and presented it to me as a gift... With strings attached to it, of course."

A slow stretch there, uncomfortable while being comfortable at the same time.

"I have been ignoring them for a long arse time, Arris. While playing games in the Black Sun, fighting Jedi, fooling around in the Sith Order, toying with an Emperor..." Mercy licked her lips.

"In the meanwhile they have been building, growing, and now they ask that I acknowledge them. That I lead them and accept myself as their ruler."

There her nose scrunched just a little.

Mercy was probably one of the few Sith who seemed to have double feelings about having to rule.

 

[Arris Windrun]

This was not a side of Mercy she had seen before. What was eating her?

"One of the few people who can call me on my shit and I don't even feel the need to tear your head off." Maybe because they had beaten each other to chit during the Galactic Kaggath.

Arris forced a smirk. Mercy earned it, and in the past, it would've come naturally.

"A gift?" She clicked. "And here all I get are a set of pistols."

She figured the champion would elaborate on what she meant by "strings attached," and so didn't press to ask.

The way Mercy continued - explained her situation, it was very much the kind of talk one gave before going on a journey. The life-altering kind with no promise of return. The scoundrel could sense it... maybe in the force, maybe from experience. The Titan had her foot halfway out the door, and Arris knew it.

"In the meanwhile they have been building, growing, and now they ask that I acknowledge them. That I lead them and accept myself as their ruler."

She pushed herself off the eroded pillar and took a few more steps towards the edge of the makeshift throne. Grey, cybernetic eyes looked up at her with a defiant glare.

Arris made a point to look around the room, for lack of being able to stare at the fleet in orbit.

"C'mon, Merce..." She gestured at all that space. "I sure as hell don't know what this is all about... but rule as a burden? That's just shit people say to convince themselves that they're born for it... Or, or... Destined for it."

The street rat saw it all the time on Talus - lived it, in fact. Local crime lords toppled each other all the time, and some graduated to the big leagues. Point is, power was a sticky thing, and the more that it stuck, the easier it was to pretend all that weight was no longer a choice. That it had to be them, because they just couldn't pry themselves free.

What Arris wished she knew how to say was: "C'mon, Merce. You're full of bantha shit and you know it. You get off to their freak worship - you just want it to mean more."

Those were the words she felt in her gut, words that stirred like poison inside her.

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

Maybe that's why Mercy called Arris here and not Quinn Varanin or any number of people who had more experience with rule and leadership.

Because they believed exactly that. That ruling was a burden they carried, that they wished to do it but not because there was a hungry craving in their gut. No, it is because they could make a difference, or because they were born to do so or a meriad of reasons that Mercy could never identify herself with.

Not when for her it was so simple.

"I adore their worship." Mercy finally said simply, shamelessly, acknowledging the hidden sentiment in Arris' words, even if she hadn't been able to fully voice them.

"I love that it is me. I love that they will die for me. I love that they will break for me." Her arm, golden, eldritch, terrible, lifted up and Mercy watched it slowly unwind into the tendrils that made up the sigil of the Graspborn.

"I was never good at being a Vigo or a crime boss." Mercy admitted as she got off of her makeshift throne and came down to meet Arris.

"The stakes weren't for me. I don't enjoy the politicking or the negotiations, I was right shit at it honestly." That terrible golden monstrosity settled on the cyborg's shoulder, wounding back into a hand from those tendrils.

"You have been struggling with something ever since we went up to that Death Star. Are you looking for something, Arris? Something more than endless enforcing and bodyguarding people that think they are better than you?"

Eyebrow going up as Mercy waited for a response.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Admittance stung her like a shiv in the bank, a shiv she never saw coming. Arris guessed denial was Mercy's problem and was proven wrong.

With each and every word to follow, the champion's intentions became clearer, and with clarity came insecurity. It chiseled away and revealed a weakness that has plagued Arris longer than she had steel. It showed in the way she struggled to stay still; needed to emote and express with her body.

Responsibility wasn't Arris's fear, and power never her vice. Not that kind of power, anyway.

"I like us side by side, Merce." The fear revealed in the kernel. "Kattada... Desevro..."

She glanced up, looking past the wreckage to imagine that thing that was up there. That thing that changed them both.

Her eyes dwindled back down with less resolve than before. "Side by side. The others?"

Be it a princess, a mad warlord, an apprentice, a legion of cultish followers, or just someone Mercy plucked for a job. Those others.

"They can't do it like we do it - and never will. They might follow, they might praise your plans, but they'll never step with you like I do."

It sounded to her like Mercy had to step up, and that Arris had to stay here. She was sick and fucking tired of watching others move on when she couldn't. Tilon hated her for what she had done; that was on her. Mauve believed she hated her, and maybe that was on Arris, too... at least Arris felt to blame. Mercy was on to something bigger and better, but she had to stay behind... Was that also on her? Did something go wrong?

"Why do they always move on?"

Arris sat down at the edge, with her back to the scrapthroned queen.

"I'm sick of everything. I don't know what I want."

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Her hand settled on Arris' head when she sat down. Softly stroking the cyborg's mousey hair as Mercy glanced over her and to her followers.

They were milling about now, scavenging the wreckage for crystals, technology, more metal to use for the fleet above.

Useful or trying to find use.

"You and me." Mercy agreed quietly as she thought about it. "Nobody ever took my fists as good as you have without breaking fully or being a pain in my arse about it."

That was as good as friendship, wasn't it?

And if you couldn't trust your friends. Who could you trust?

"Like I said, I loathed the crime game, at least trying to act like a boss that the Sun understands rather than what I am." Again giving Arris a stroke of her head, a bit of a ruffle really.

"I bet you'd enjoy it though. Your own crew, business, credits rolling in. No longer having to follow people with credits around."

She paused at that last bit.

"Not follow everyone around anyway." Then Mercy smirked, the idea taking root now.

"I got a criminal enterprise and you want direction. Take it off of my hands, Arris. You will be a boss, the enforcers and thugs will follow you." Fingers curling into the back of her neck next if allowed.

"I won't interfere in whatever you want to do with it. Run it as you like, but if I need something from you, or from them, I get it. And you give me my cut."

Seemed fair enough to Mercy but Arris might disagree, of course. Stepping away from her Mercy looked at the throne again.

"I'll be around if you need me to support you or your plans. But it's time I start embracing what I am, don't you think?"

Arris Windrun

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris leaned her head back and sighed.

"So you're still gonna pass it all off, huh?"

It wasn't what the cyborg wanted to hear, but she realized that within the honeyed offer was another hint at the truth. That she was beginning to grow tired of following people around. Sooner or later, Arris thought, they would move on and leave you behind. Because where Mercy was going, Arris reckoned she couldn't follow.

But.

Arris clenched her fist and banged it against her knee, metal to metal. She tilted her head further back and looked up at Mercy, the synthflesh tightening in the Titan's fingers.

"You're fucked, you know that?" She looked back down, sight cast at the wrecked floorspace.

"You already left me in charge of training those acolytes. Which, by the way, I am deeply unqualified for.

"And now you want me to step into your Black Sun boots and start stomping around?" Arris laughed. It was bittersweet.

She rolled off her seat and stumbled back onto her feet.

"I'll be around if you need me to support you or your plans. But it's time I start embracing what I am, don't you think?"

The scoundrel recalled a day, more than ten years ago, before her first implant. She was different back then, nigh unrecognizable to the woman she was now. She remembered Talus, the streets of Nashal, running with a gang of shipjacking racketeers. Different time, different boss, different Arris, but the conversation rang the same, and maybe she was in for the same ending, too.

"I think..."

"I think this is going to end badly."

"But yeah. I'll do it."

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"You're fucked, you know that?"

A smirk full of teeth, happy and free.

"Don't sell yourself short, darling. The whole reason I put you in charge of those kids is because you understand something fundamental about this life that most Sith do not." She thought back to her own upbringing, first as an Imperial Princess and then as a brawler on the streets of Nar Shaddaa. "You are teaching them that life is screwed up, that nobody is gonna give them anything they don't take themselves, that they aren't entitled to anything not even if they call themselves Sith."

Mercy shrugged there.

"You are shaping a generation that will be better than the Jedi or the Sith of now. They will be as hungry as we are, but twice as effective because they didn't have old decript men and women trying to control them into doing their bidding. That's what I wanted to see, that's why I picked you for the job, nobody else could have done it."

Even as Arris stood up, Mercy sat down, but with the height discrepency, the difference was almost neglible.

"You will be fine." Mercy said lightly. "You will have my strength behind you to scare away the big dogs sniffing around you for a quick take-over and you can handle anything else yourself.

But then the Sith glanced to the side, meeting Arris' eye.

"Turn your feelings off when it comes to Mauve. I like her, but she is a Vigo of her own, she will always prioritize her own power and influence. But you are about to step into shoes that will make you her equal and a rival. I don't want to it to come back to me that the organization I am giving to you, is slowly becoming a subsidiary of New Vertica. Deal?"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Damn.

Arris wasn't expecting the whole pep talk - that was something. Even if Mercy was trying to appeal to her, she wasn't wrong, as far as Arris could tell; these Sith were each a mess and a half, and reeked of entitlement.

When the conversation came around to Mauve, her gut instincts fled in the opposite direction. Sure... things with the Zeltron were always shaky at best, given that woman's erratic nature, but she was also the one who gave Arris her start in the Sun. She helped Arris fight her way almost to the top. Yeah... That last part still stung.

"Damn liar."

"Yeah, I won't pass her the keys."

"So, how does this work? Dontcha need permission from the Prince?"

As far as the street rat knew, you didn't just change chairs like that without some sort of ceremony or approval. Loyalty meant a lot, and this could be perceived as insubordination if approached casually.

Mauve du Vain Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"I know you won't disappoint me."

There was no purposeful threat in that sentence, not implicit or explicit, but there didn't have to be. Arris had seen first-hand what happened to people that disappointed Mercy.

The question reared its head about the Prince and Mercy shrugged.

"I will stay on as Vigo, that is how my protection over the organization continues, but you will have operational and representative control. Once the facts have changed on the ground, once you have had your own victories... the title will be yours too, the Prince can complain to me personally if he is unhappy about that." Mercy didn't add the fact that it would give Arris some runway, let her get used to control and leadership.

So far she had been a powerful enforcer and operative, but being a leader was something else entirely.

It was the same thing that Mercy had to go through, but Arris would have to do it without the benefit of Tionese formal education. It would be a hard lift, but the Sith hadn't picked the cyborg for no reason.

She'd be able to handle herself.

"Let's go." Mercy stood up there herself. "I want to show off my new fleet to you. You saw it from outside, but there is more to see."

 

[Arris Windrun]

"You mean you'll be around to step in if I make you look bad?" Arris teased.

That was to say, she didn't buy the whole transition period angle one bit. Maybe Mercy had enough sentiment, or foresaw some kind of need that meant keeping her Black Sun assets safe, but it was clear from the get-go that the champion meant to move on.

As she stood up, the cyborg followed.

"Alright, then. Let's see what these freaks built for you."

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Arris Windrun

"Oh, darling, not even your colossal-sized fuck ups could make me look bad." Mercy teased right back without skipping a beat. "But no, I simply do not abandon my allies, if you have need of me, I will be there." And for once there was no tease or joke or rib in it. Mercy was completely straightforward and Arris knew she wasn't lying, because Mercy had never lied once in her life.

The mere idea made her teeth itch and she never abandoned an ally neither.

"Come now, these beloved freaks have a name. The Graspborn they call themselves." Said with a bemused purr as the golden arm, the one that inspired the cult's name, wrapped around Arris' shoulders.

"We will take your ship up? I figure once we are done here, you will want to head to Nar Shaddaa to survey what I am giving you."

 

[Arris Windrun]

"Oh, darling, not even your colossal-sized fuck ups could make me look bad."

Arris rolled her eyes at that.

"Graspborn?" She chewed on the name and found it acceptable. "They chose that?"

At the suggestion of taking her own ship, Arris shrugged and walked with Mercy to where she had landed. The cyborg was less than an even okay pilot, if Star-Arm needed reminding; not that the Champion had many opportunities to find out.

The ship she arrived in was a junker of a light freighter, scraped together from off-brand parts and sketchy backwater retrofits. The chairs in the cockpit were shredded as if a clawed animal had gone to town at some point... smelled like, too. Arris half-assed her preflight checks and brought the ship to air, where it rattled and popped before finally ascending through the atmosphere back into orbit, where battlefield debris glistened like many new stars in the galaxy.

The cyborg then transferred the controls to the co-pilot's console for Mercy to take over.