Boost THE FIRST GALACTIC KAGGATH - RUMBLE ON RUUSAN

[Kyric]

Within the Niki Priddy sponsored Kyric Karis locker room, the kiffar watched the final minutes of each fight at the edge of his seat.

In a surprising twist, the judges declared Arris Windrun the winner over the legendary Allyson Locke. To say Kyric expected to face the Spy Master in the semi-finals was an understatement. But a new challenger approached and the flames stirred within Kyric anew. An unknown opponent promised a thrill unlike any other; a new story to hear, spoken in the heat of battle, carried on winds of unabashed violence.

So close to perfect, yet still so far.

Kyric stood from his seat and activated his commlink. "Excuse me, Ms. Priddy. I've got a favor to ask of ye..."

Twenty minutes later, the Jedi Knight strode through the halls of the massive coliseum in search of the Bespin Gas—if you're not first, you're last!—sponsored locker rooms. The lack of security positioned throughout initially surprised Kyric. Then, he remembered this entire event was organized by criminals out to make credits. No competitor's life would be guaranteed with so many opportunists about. He quickened in pace at the thought, moving with quiet purpose until he stood outside his destination.

He considered the durasteel container propped up against his chest. It was rectangular in shape, perfectly smooth, and large enough to contain a battleaxe.

The kiffar knocked on the locker room door and hummed softly to himself.

---

Tags: Arris Windrun
Honorable Mentions: Niki Priddy

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris was ready to drift back into those fresh, dark memories, only to have her attention jogged back into the real world by a knock.

She perked up. It was still hard to tell what was real and what was a memory. Her experience of the world was distant and out of focus.

"Let yourself in," she groaned.

It was even stranger to hear her own voice, but she felt as if it didn't belong to her anymore.

Hopefully, it was her boss on the other side of that door.

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

"Let yourself in," she groaned.

Kyric considered the ache in Arris' voice for a moment. Between them, he escaped the quarterfinals in much better condition. A blessing, really. Her condition should've elated her opponent. A bloodied and broken woman like Windrun promised untold advantages in a life or death fight, but that within itself presented a problem all its own.

He pushed his way into the locker room and cleared his throat. His singular-eye settled on her, and for a moment, Kyric said nothing. The kiffar opted instead to consider her condition in full.

Metal fused to her flesh in blackened patches. He didn't envy that, nor did he envy the sense of confusion that haunted her. Something had changed in that last match. No. Not something, but someone.

Arris Windrun walked out of her fight battered and broken, yet she felt strangely whole.

"Here," Kyric approached a bench on the opposite side of the locker room and set the large briefcase down. He clicked a little button on the side and the top opened smoothly on its own. Within the briefcase, a cybernetic arm lay dormant and unused. It wasn't the most impressive augmentation in the world, but it served the purpose of any artificial limb.

"It ain't trapped or nothin'," he explained as he turned back to the door. His gaze scanned each corner of the room, lingering within the shadows as if he felt the presence of another. "Figured you weren't in the best condition for our fight. And I ain't interested in fightin' you if yer not in fightin' shape." The kiffar paused by the exit.

Again Kyric considered the locker room, then Arris. "You should be more careful," he offered. "Lots of undesirables slinkin' about these halls. And most aren't the type to play nice."

---

Tags: Arris Windrun

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris eyed the newcomer with suspicion. She recognized him as one of the contestants from the lineup. Her gaze followed his movement, but she otherwise remained still as he revealed what was inside the package.

Sure, at first thought, the cyborg imagined this was some sort of ruse, but then again... It felt kinda stupid to try something as weird as 'hey here's your new arm, oops it's remotely controlled.' Then again, the underground fights where she came from...

His gaze scanned each corner of the room, lingering within the shadows as if he felt the presence of another. "Figured you weren't in the best condition for our fight. And I ain't interested in fightin' you if yer not in fightin' shape." The kiffar paused by the exit.

"What makes you so sure we're gonna fight?" She asked.

It wasn't intended as a quip. She meant it. An organization like the Black Sun, with the way this whole tournament had gone, who knew if they'd even respect something so simple as brackets? It was entirely possible they'd do something crazy. Maybe a free-for-all, or maybe credits exchanged hands so many times by would-be fixers trying to get their perfect matchup.

"Yeah," she replied to his warnings.

As soon as he walked out the door, she spoke up one last time. "Oh, and don't forget--if you're not first..." She fired a finger gun. "Well, I'm sure you'll become intimate with the rest."

She struggled not to frown. No matter how much she tried, she just didn't feel herself. It felt fraudulent to try and slip into the role of Arris Windrun, and that just ruined her mood.

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

Kyric shrugged.

"Yer on my side of the bracket, so you could call it a hunch. If I'm wrong?" He grinned. "It ain't doin' me a disservice to make yer next opponent's life a lil' bit harder. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind seein' you in the grand finals. You tied with Creed, after all."

The kiffar found it within himself to chuckle at the Bespin Gas advert and stepped out into the hallway.

Simple statistics suggested the likelihood of facing Windrun over either Antar or Mercy was improbable. Kyric knew the tournament's hosts weren't interested in playing by any set rules. The crazier the fights the crazier the payout. But he didn't much care, either. What he wanted more than anything else was an even greater challenge than the last.

Be it Arris, Antar, or the dreaded Mercy, they all represented a chance to overcome the limitations of today and soar ever higher. All great warriors were forged in the fires of battle, hardened by immeasurable pain. Suffering was an inescapable truth for men like Kyric Karis, and when he considered the other semi-finalists, he felt a kinship birthed within that simple truth.

Rather than idle outside the Bespin Gas—if you're not first, you're last!—locker room, Kyric began the short walk back to his locker room. There wasn't much time before the next match and he needed to take stock of his dwindling supplies.

---

Tags: Arris Windrun
Honorable Mentions: Antar | Mercy | Drystan Creed

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Arris Windrun //:
//: Mention: //: Kyric //:
//: Attire //:

It sucked to lose, but she'd rather lose to someone she found respect in. Allyson fixed herself up with some bacta and a few shots of stimulants.

She cleared her throat a few times and gathered the equipment she had come in with. Luckily, she didn't lose something that she was married to, but still, the tech that came with the bow and the contacts would help someone in the long run.

"Good?" She asked the medic, and the man nodded in response. Allyson left the med room of her private suite. She was named the champion of the Sith Order; at least, she was the last Sith knocked out. The thought made Allyson chuckle as she left the suit and headed towards the Bespin Gas locker rooms. Her intention was to check on Arris; what she had gone through wasn't an easy feat.

Allyson felt responsible.

She had access to the Bespin Gas Locker room for other reasons. Still, she walked in and made her way towards where Arris and another contestant were talking. He had brought a gift, and she looked at Arris, who seemed slightly better, but Allyson knew she could improve her further.

Allyson waited, letting the two have their moment. Kyric exited as she passed by him - his features familiar, but she didn't want to waste time pondering.

Took her only a few steps to reach Arris. What happened in their fight was something that would change both of them forever.

"Hey," she said, her voice strained from her own pain. "You fought well, I think you and I are the same - I can help you, get you fixed up, it's the least I can do after…"

Allyson paused. How would she even explain this?

"After everything. You're force sensitive as well, and it seemed to decide to show up at a good but kind of bad time."

Boy, did she suck at this.

"I-" she wasn't a Jedi, but Allyson didn't fully feel like she was a Sith, still, how was she going to explain herself?

"I'm the same, but where others have control over living organic beings - I can feel the force through machines, your cybernetics. I think I can show you the rough and dirty intro to it - will help you control things a bit better, and defend against people like me."

Looking at the arm, Allyson tilted her head.

"I can help get you into fight shape if you're interested - would be a good introduction to Mechu Deru and a bit of Mechu Macture."

She tossed her leather jacket onto the bench next to Arris, "This will look good on you, not mad you get to keep it."

 

[Isar]

"What'shappening." She exhaled in a rush, stricken by the foreign, heavily manufactured sensory overload.

The air sparkled around them. No. It glittered.

Isar blinked slowly, tilting his head back to look up into the sky where the glittering dust filtered down. He stuck out his tongue, felt the burn as the glitter landed on it. Then the rush. A smirk carved up his cheek and he tossed aside the bottle. It shattered on the ground. He flicked the joint off into the seats. Didn't think the Syndicate cared about littering. Not even with corpses.

"That. That right there. That's the spice of life, love."

The tattooed man held up his arms to either side and spun about amidst the rain of glitterstim, laughing as he breathed freely. Too freely. Too deeply. The world spun around him, fuzzed and hazed. His vision kaleidoscoped and he swayed wildly, a mad grin slashing up beneath his mustache.

His senses stretched on and on and on, forever and away. A whole chorus of emotions and thoughts roiled around him. Oh. Not his thoughts, their thoughts. Their feelings. Their little ticks that tocked, the whirling clocks that made them them. All these thems. Who knew so many silly skulls could carry so much sentiment. He wondered what would happen if he dumped them upside down and shook really hard, would they pour out into puddles? Little thought puddles. Would he splash through them. That sounded fun, didn't it. Splashing through the empty-skull thought puddles.

All of those, in his mind's eye, in his thought cage, that crazed dream catcher. He felt he could trap them there, if he wanted. Trap them in dreams. If he chose.

We're already all trapped in dreams.

Blood trickled from his nose. He brushed it away.

Isar stopped spinning to try to focus on Sael . Incredible. She was incredible. He reached up, cupped her cheeks with both his hands.

"Ever felt anything like this? Anything ever? In your whole life? In this whole wasteland of reality?"

The violet stare, normally so dead and vacant, searched with longing for some sort of meaning in the emotions writ upon her face and eyes and thoughts and in the way he could feel her in the Force.

 

[Sael]

​

Sael's body, mind, spirit, reeled. Sunk into her seat, she stared unblinkingly at the technicoloured block letters that attached themselves to her neon-bright threads. If she squinted, she might have been able to read them and recognize they were something akin to labels.

Each thread now pulsed with a thrum that wasn't her creation. They sang in new octaves, discordant and divine—little arias of grief and want and terror braided with reverence. The glitterstim pried her awareness wide open, a second and third set of eyes behind her eyes, each blinking in opposite directions.

She could taste the bitterness of an old man's regret three rows down. Feel the slick, sensual hunger of a woman envisioning Mercy's mouth around her throat. Someone had been hiding something sharp in their boot and thinking about using it.

The letters danced so vivid, so detailed they became tactile. She could thread her fingers through each one if she tried. Tug on them. Reweave.

She opened her mouth to..

.. to what? What had she meant to do? Speak? Her voice box barely buzzed and she felt closer to simply tasting, another sense overrun by the sheer magnitude of the emotion that floated all around them.

Her teeth clicked together, mouth shut, and she swayed. Just in time to be gathered up in Isar's hands.

"Ever felt anything like this? Anything ever? In your whole life? In this whole wasteland of reality?"

Utterly boneless, she blinked up at him owlishly. He was a rush of vibrancy and intensity. His hands were warm, too warm, and her skin felt too thin to contain the tide of feeling that shimmered beneath it.

"No." She whispered, but couldn't understand if she made any sound at all or if she was simply sharing her thoughts directly from her brain to his. Threads seemed to appear and grow from her right to him. "Never."

His eyes weren't just eyes. All her rows and rows of sight saw more than that, she saw mirrors above his moustache on either side of his nose. And in them she saw the unthinkable: herself. Not surviving. Not enduring. Living. With colour. With meaning. With desire and want and everything she'd never been allowed to feel before.

"This is beautiful." She mumbled, and dared to quiver out a hand and reach up to his face, beyond the stache, his brows, and right to the centre of his forehead, placing her fingertips there and pressing gently. As if the skin might fall away and reveal a labyrinth inside. "You're beautiful."

Nausea haunted the back of her abdomen.

She shuddered.

"How do we use this feeling. I want to let go. Get bigger.”

____________________________________________________________

Isar
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

She let out a low sigh when Kyric finally left.

The cyborg was about ready to prepare for her next match when suddenly, Allyson Locke entered the locker room just about as soon as the Jedi had left. She was about ready to defend herself before her once-opponent began to talk.

"Hey," she said, her voice strained from her own pain. "You fought well, I think you and I are the same - I can help you, get you fixed up, it's the least I can do after…"

Arris said nothing as Locke began to explain herself, though she did glare. Her expression only began to soften as the Sith approached from a place of relatability--a kneejerk part of Arris didn't want to accept it. She wanted to bark back in denial that they could possibly have anything in common.

She held her tongue. Confused as to where that feeling came from. Sure, they just fought, it made sense for there to be a little bit of hate and violence left over... but for a split second, she felt herself losing it.

Why am I like this? She shook the feeling and exhaled again, only to perk up at the mention of teaching.

"I can help get you into fight shape if you're interested - would be a good introduction to Mechu Deru and a bit of Mechu Macture."

Arris caught the jacket with her one good arm. She glanced between the leather fabric and her opponent, who looked about as roughed up as she was.

"Thanks..." The Talusian muttered. There was a small pause as she gathered her next words. "I'll put it on if I can get this arm to work," she turned her head to the gift Kyric had left. Wasn't her brand, and honestly might've been a little shorter, too.

It looked like her focus was entirely on the arm. In truth, Arris was considering Allyson's offer. She had never been taught anything in the Force, aside from high-level lessons by Tilon Quill . But those were just explanations, not actual training.

"What is Mechu Deru?" She asked. "And... right now? I doubt they're giving us much of a time extension between these fights."

It wasn't difficult to assume it had something to do with controlling machines, especially given Allyson's previous words.

 

[Isar]

"How do we use this feeling. I want to let go. Get bigger.”

"You dream it," he whispered into the air, into her mind. The racing of his heart, threatening to burst from his chest, faded as he pulled them both into a world of illusion. A world made of the fabric of belief and memory and wishes. Ruusan faded away, so too did the stands and the arena and all the people. All faded into nothing. Nothing except thoughts and dreams and memories. He felt them swirling around, a sea of emotion.

Their minds swirled around one another and he held out an ethereal hand, the fingertips of his consciousness sliding across the skein of her essence, across all that made her Sael. Memories welled up and flitted before him. Fear, fear, and more fear.

If her mother hadn't been born into bondage, maybe she wouldn't have woken each morning to the same burden. Maybe if her life had begun in anything other than chains, she might've learned something richer than survival. And maybe then, the fear wouldn't have grown so large. Fear of the next loss, the next silence, the next taking. Maybe, then, when it finally came, the vanishing wouldn't have felt so complete.

Days in chains. Nights in iron. Starving. Pain. Hurt. Loss. Fear. Again and again, unending, until that red-haired savior appeared. But still the fear lingered. Even now, even still.

Shhh. Shh. Don't you see, Sael? They were so small. So meaningless. And you? You're a universe.

Colors EXPLODED into being around them, a nebulae of reds and pinks stretching off in every direction.

See. That's you. You paint with the wild bursts of star dust from their dying suns. They could never understand you. Could never understand this. Don't forget where you came from, but there's so. MUCH. MORE.

Isar's presence expanded, a spiral, six-armed galaxy that shimmered with indigos and violets. He could do anything, be anyone.

You're powerful. And because you're powerful, you're free.

The galaxy collided with the nebulae and there came a great flash as their minds melded. She could see with his eyes. He saw with hers. And they could feel the power of their combined potential. Limitless. Unending. As infinite as existence. No. Greater - they could join everything into the void. All these gawking insects, these silly little people. They could drag them all into their event horizon and crush them, shatter their minds beneath the awe of their presence.

Breathless laughter sounded in Sael 's mind.

Can you hear it? The sweet endless song at the edge of existence.

 

[Mauve]

"And that behaviour seems inconsistent with a being who could collaborate with Lord Dissero to steal your entire archive, Adekos. So, no."

"Hm." Stolen archives, interesting. She would file that one away for later.

Mauve waved at her droid dismissively, "Go tell that whiphid he needs to bleed somewhere else, thank you."

The protocol droid toddled off to do as instructed.

Velok Brokentusk

 

[Niki Priddy]

Weapons: ''Revy'' | 2 -''Demo-keys''
Equipment: Priddy Plates | Attire - See Right | Wristwear | L&R Middle-Finger Rings | Belt | Keyring | Dasmi's Pendant | Coal Nail Polish | Transition Glasses | Glasses Charm | Lipstick - Not being Worn
On Person: Yellow Vipers
Augmentation: PGEM-SAP "Amber Eyes"
Tags: Kyric

A pair of yellow orbs stared at Kyric when he opened his locker room door.

The lights shut off as his sponsor stood waiting in the dark for him to return. Armored and her presence seeming altogether annoyed. The glasses she wore unable to hide the yellow glow of her eyes that outshone even the orange hue of her viper as she inhaled.

The crackle of tabac filling the otherwise quiet room.

The glow from the ember highlighting the frown she wore before it faded back into darkness and left only those yellow ringed orbs.

"Helping your opponent? How, noble. Dumb, but whatever gets your fuel burning." Niki spoke through a smoke filled sigh.

Her voice almost singsong as she stared at him, unblinking.

"You've done well to this point. Any strategy planned besides attempting to kill them with kindness? Or should I be worried?" There had been no issue with the favor he had asked for. Nor was there any issue with him doing as he pleased with it.

She simply wished to see him squirm a little.

 

[Velok Brokentusk]

"Go tell that whiphid he needs to bleed somewhere else, thank you."

The protocol droid toddled off to do as instructed.

The protocol droid conducted its mission admirably and without incident.

When it returned to convey a comm number to Mauve , discerning eyes might notice a faint mist.

If Mauve encountered this mist, it would sting for a moment and leave a dusting of permanent freckles. It was a subtle vapor of blood using the technique known as Blood Trail. Velok's hopeful intention was to permanently mark Mauve for ease of contact. As the droid had smelled a bit like Zeltron to his cavernous nostrils, Velok hoped that sending it right back with his comm number would give that vapor spell the chance to brush up against the target. He was fairly sure he could freckle only Mauve with this approach, that he'd injected enough intention and specificity into the spell, but nothing was certain.

He kept interjecting bits of blood into all available spaces. In fact he was using the blood to draw certain tensely shivering runes with a somewhat indiscriminate backup plan in mind.

 

[Mauve]

In the skybox, Mauve scrubbed furiously at the sudden crimson freckles that had appeared on her hands after accepting the commlink from the droid.

"What?" she muttered under her breath, shuddering at the thought of what the stains might be from and while she was no sleuth she knew that two and two made four.

Disgusting.

She pumped out a double handful of hand sanitizer from where it sat on the desk, a little off camera, and began scrubbing once again at her hands under the desk while plastering an a faux-smile onto her face as the next round's pairings came up.

SEMI-FINALS

​

Kyric | Antar | Mercy | Arris Windrun

 

[Sael]

​

Dreaming seemed so simple a concept, yet so foreign an action. She went places in her sleep, but did not remember them when she woke.

Would she remember this one?

He took her somewhere, to someone, and in voiceless reverence, she watched it connect, grow, build, and define itself. At first it looked like an undefinable network of conduits, wide, tendonlike connections bridging, thrumming and humming as thinly glowing red and orange threads. All along the contour lines, they became solid and structured, and solidity slipped further away until it was entirely gone and Sael was faced with a smaller version of herself in every sense of the word.

See. That's you. You paint with the wild bursts of star dust from their dying suns. They could never understand you. Could never understand this. Don't forget where you came from, but there's so. MUCH. MORE.

Her would-be guide seemed to consume her awareness in a way that felt like her own. Like there was no membrane to distinguish herself from him. Boundless.

The moment felt like a meniscus. Like any second it might spill over.

And then it did.

Shhh. Shh. Don't you see, Sael? They were so small. So meaningless. And you? You're a universe.

In a brilliant explosion of colour and she came apart right with it. Atom by atom, deconstructing in a way that she knew there was no way to rebuild herself exactly the same way she'd been. She'd come out of this as something else.

If she could be all that, all those tiny bits and pieces and still understand, still hear, still feel power, what couldn't she do?

The enormity of it made her laugh too, his madness, his vision, it caught on like a wildfire and she was happy to burn. The blaze started in her ears, and at first she couldn't hear anything but the swirl of his words, she eventually felt the music because he heard the song, and unified like this, their harmony was unparalleled.

Let them hear it too. Sael buzzed warmly, and felt this version of herself pirouette. Destruction is so instant, so finite, the end is something we can bring, something I've wanted for so long, but this fun, this living you thrive in — I want that. That is the music, isn't it?

____________________________________________________________
Isar
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris was let up to the skybox via a secure back elevator. She blinked at Velok Brokentusk 's image on the screen, then glanced around the room.

She was a bit surprised by how crowded it was, and failed to recognize any current and former Sith Emperors. Though she made note of Darth Adekos and Ashin Cardé Varanin , as among the more active personalities. Besides the one who summoned her in the first place, Mauve .

Had this been a few rounds earlier, she would undoubtedly have made a bad first impression. Maybe she would have assumed this was all about the cheating, and that they were going to disqualify her.

Instead, the bona fide dark horse of this tournament sauntered in and made her presence known. Her flesh twisted and burnt, at some points impossible to distinguish from the artificial bits and pieces. Though her cybernetics were prominent.

"Am I in the right skybox?" She broke the ice.

 

[Isar]

“Now you’re getting it.”

Death was an ending. A book slamming shut. Well. For most people. Not those Sith, those ritual freaks those unending yarns of life who spun on and on and on and on and on. Refusing to run their course. Refusing to be the shut book. Just words that looped over ad over again, the same stories, the same words, refracted a thousand ways. Never a new note, always the same chords.

Then again… Isar would want to live forever too, if he ever found out how.

Let the show run out until the ending of the universe.

The swirl of nebulae vanished, though Isar still saw stars, and he crashed back into his body, swaying wildly. He wrapped a hand around Sael’s waist, pulled her close. Their minds still intertwined, thoughts bleeding into thoughts, emotions a confusing miasma.

It did not matter that they had just met five seconds ago. It did not matter that the universe did have an inevitable ending, a death of all things. It didn’t matter that their own lives would run out in due course. All that mattered was the moment, the now, the here. Live in it most fully and it might just drown out that tinny ringing of inevitability, that tinnitus of looming fate.

“Death’s such a bore. Fuck entropy,” he said, or rather thought, pure rebellion and defiance bleeding from him. He leaned toward her, the space between them less than a heartbeat, faces mere centimeters apart. “And wouldn’t you rather make music.”

Though he didn’t mean music at all.

Sael

 

[Kyric]

Distracted by the looming announcements, even the thrumming nexus couldn't prepare Kyric for the sudden arrival of his sponsor.

Bathed in shadow, aglow with the amber light of her augmented eyes, Niki Priddy oozed an otherworldly poise. Her gaze bore into his and Kyric felt an inkling of shame at his disheveled state. Maybe some part of him should have expected a visit, but the sponsorship offer was last-minute. No words spoken between them on official or unofficial channels.

Truthfully, Kyric thought the whole thing a trap at first. The second round was evidence enough someone out there wanted to see him dead. A lousy 10,000 credits was nothing for the potential payout offered by the likes of Solipsis.

If not for the whispered promise on word of his rogue brother, Damien, even the allure of such illustrious opponents may not have drawn the Jedi Knight out. But Kyric knew now nothing but defeat or death could stop him from entering the arena. Nothing topped the allure of a light or death struggle.

In a fortunate turn of events, Niki appeared invested enough to not only visit the arena, but Kyric, too—shattering the illusion of unexpected danger.

"Helping your opponent? How, noble. Dumb, but whatever gets your fuel burning." Niki spoke through a smoke filled sigh.

Her voice almost singsong as she stared at him, unblinking.

"You've done well to this point. Any strategy planned besides attempting to kill them with kindness? Or should I be worried?"

The screen on the wall to Kyric's right—or Niki's left—projected the brackets to reveal an 'unexpected' mix-up before he responded.

He shrugged in answer after a few seconds of thinking.

Kyric considered the nature of his opponent's matches and smiled. The means by which Antar clawed his way up the brackets struck the Jedi as a matter of cosmic-grace. Some strange combination of luck and the Will of the Force guided Antar to stand before Kyric in the semi-finals. Unfortunately, that all translated poorly into strategy.

"At this point, ma'am, I've got nothin'. This Antar feller seems mighty determined," Kyric answered. "I've dedicated my life to this craft." He patted the naked blade of Resolute at his left side. "If I keep ahead of him and set the pace of the fight, I've gotta good shot. Life or death is determined on a razor-thin edge in there, Miss Priddy. Best I can do is keep em off-balance while we walk it."

---

Tags: Niki Priddy

 

[Mauve]

"Am I in the right skybox?" She broke the ice.

Tucking the comm number away in a pocket, Mauve stood up.

“Yes, excuse me all, I’ll be back,” with that Mauve ushered Arris into a nearby side room just through the hallway. Unfortunately intensely aware of the bounty on her head and the sudden absence of the oddly reassuring presence of several powerful Sith Lords. Strange. She’d never thought that sitting with such people would be a safety blanket, but then she’d never had a price on her head before either.

First time for everything.

Once they were alone, Mauve clasped her hands together, peering into Arris’ cybernetic eyes.

“You… are exquisite. You’ve overcome every obstacle, every duel, every opponent with ingenuity and tenacity.”

Mauve crossed her arms.

“I admire that. You may have noticed the Syndicate’s champion has been… failing upward. How would you be interested in taking his place should he be defeated? I know Bespin Gas represents you now but, well, there’s no rule against multiple sponsors. Not that anyone bothered to ask.”

She smirked.

“So. Interested?”

Arris Windrun

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris followed as if she were on an invisible leash. There would be no distractions from luxury or mystery guests.

“You… are exquisite. You’ve overcome every obstacle, every duel, every opponent with ingenuity and tenacity.”

A compliment from the host? Was this merely a Zeltron charm, or did she mean--

“I admire that. You may have noticed the Syndicate’s champion has been… failing upward. How would you be interested in taking his place should he be defeated? I know Bespin Gas represents you now but, well, there’s no rule against multiple sponsors. Not that anyone bothered to ask.”

Ah.

Arris stood more like a droid than a woman. Her gait was strong, shoulders tight, and eyes deadly cold. Actually, all of her was quite cold now. Artificial coolant flowed alongside her blood, and the Dark Side wrapped around her like ice to keep the rage below the surface.

Her metal jaw audibly cracked as she grinned. "That's a soft offer, miss."

"Your very shy friend has had his hands in my pocket all day," she of course referred to Razmir Tezhyn , who had been far less active ever since chit hit the proverbial fan. "I understand not wanting to break this champion's heart," she said 'champion' loosely. It also reminded her of when Vagabond 's exploded at the end of his own gun. She pulled the trigger, of course.

"The title is nice, I'd ask for it now... But what I really want is to formalize this little arrangement. I know I'm good for the bookies, I can probably make it all the way on my own. I know I definitely can with someone like you behind me..."

Arris took a small step towards her, then a second. The cyborg was taller and looked down her nose at the Zeltron.

"As for the winnings," her words trailed off.

She slipped two fingers into Mauve's dress pocket. "I'm sure most of it can end up right here."

Mauve