Duel Unhinged | Vestra Tane v.s. Arris Windrun

[Arris Windrun]

Vestra Tane
​

Arris barely moved in time for Vestra's first strike to be a near miss, or so she thought.

When the blade came up again, it slashed across the cyborg's chest, melting through synthflesh and scratching subdermal plating beneath--a thin barrier of metal that, if breached, would expose soft tissue (and vulnerable organs) housed within.

The smart thing to do would've been to step to the side, or jump away, or any other manner of avoidance and distance. So naturally, Arris did anything but.

No, the Dark Horse used the Force to create a sudden burst of speed in her legs and stepped into the narrow space between them, attempting to shoulder-slam Vestra.

 

[Vestra Tane]

Arris Windrun​

The sight and scent of melting synthflesh was immensely satisfying. Not so much as burning flesh, of course, but still - it was good to take the little joys, where you could. That satisfaction did little to defend her against the oncoming hunk of metal, though, because at full extension like this she was off balance, slow.

Arris had made the right call. Moving in was a good play, most of the time, if you could survive it. Vestra had to admit that, even while it took most of her focus not to get immediately bowled over by two-hundred kilograms of metal. The cyborg had the edge in a grapple. Except...

In the split second after Arris crashed into Vestra, the arc of bloody red that was her blade disappeared. So did, she was fairly certain, a few bits of her skeleton - Arris hit like a speeder, and moved about as fast as one when she wanted to. Injuries upon injuries - a broken arm, now cracked ribs. A pain to heal, if she had a future to dread.

Still, she laughed. Because she just might, if she got lucky.

Lightsabers, it turned out, were pretty damn effective at any range.

The black hand moved, Vestra aimed to jam the saber's emitter into the side of Arris's neck.

Then click, and slice.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Vestra Tane
​

The crimson blade vanished, and in a moment nearly too late to process, it reappeared in a fury, impaling her neck in an instant. But before Vestra could pull her weapon in any direction, Windrun's hand came up and wrapped around Vestra's and that hilt within, holding the lightsaber in place with a desperate, force-fueled grip.

At the same time, metal tore off the cyborg's body and began to repair the damage, just like it did at the Red Ronin. That was when Arris pushed the weapon forward, slicing through her own neck and slowly towards Vestra. Her head tilted forward, nearly collapsing from the loss of structural integrity. Then it tilted back up as metal filled that gap, too, and she grinned. Her eyes went as wild as they could in the glow of red light. Emanations made it clear that Arris was held together by hatred alone now.

Pushing the hilt, rather than the blade, towards Vestra's head, Arris said in a crackling, satisfied voice.

"Hey, Vestra."

Energy built in her hand.

"Bang."

 

[Vestra Tane]

Arris Windrun​

Should've gone for the head.

Would that have helped? Probably not. It probably wouldn't have saved her, but maybe if she gouged out whatever that dark, oily thing in Arris's skull was, they both would've died. She felt the heat of plasma next to her skin, bleeding through the magnetic field that kept it all pretty and stable and deadly.

And then, with those senses of hers immersed in the Force, she noticed an influx. A mass, in the Force, of something dark and beautiful and powerful. It felt familiar. It felt -

She cackled, in the second she had left.

No, no, it wouldn't have mattered.

Ah, well. At least she had fun, in the end.

Her last words weren't uttered with any malice. Hell, her smile wasn't even particularly mean spirited.

"You bi-"

The bow shock split her skull in two, and crushed enough teeth that she would've been rendered unintelligible even if the following impact didn't char most of her face. Did one of her eyeballs pop? She couldn't tell - There was a sound, in her skull, and then she was blind on her left side, and -

And what the hell did it matter, anyway?

With a final great, heaving push that called upon the Force, Vestra wrenched herself free from Arris's grasp. Her right arm simply broke under the strain, and snapped where the cyborg had held it. Gouts of green mist began to pour from the metal wound, and Vestra noted with dull amusement that the only person this damnable cybernetic was likely to finish off was her.

Her left arm - well, it had already been mangled. It did not survive the escape. Yet another injury, piled upon a mountain so high that pain had ceased to be a meaningful sensation.

The dead Sith Lord took a step back, while green flame licked at what was left of her face.

She smiled, probably, with a grin that was all burnt muscle and shattered bone and blood.

Another step back.

Killer. Murderer. Scholar. Archeologist. Art dealer. Stupid, sentimental sap.

It wasn't a bad obituary, by Sith standards.

She thought about a grave, on Chandrila.

Are they gonna bury me next to dad?

Weakly, she raised her right arm, and offered a salute with the mass of jagged metal that used to be her wrist.

Nah, probably not.

And then she died.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Vestra Tane
​

The destructive blast had completely torn through her hand and obliterated metal up to her elbow, leaving a smoldering wreck for an arm to join the other. No hands left to reclaim Vestra, who had torn free a split second before.

She watched as the Triumvir spent her final moments, as far as Arris could understand, stumbling into a grisly salute before collapsing.

Exhausted, angry, ecstatic, satisfied - spent. Quenched hatred fled down her back in a shiver. And now, she felt cold.

"Idiot," she muttered resentfully for the both of them.

Then the cyborg turned away from the mess that remained and staggered across the sand. Onlookers (of those few workers who remained) watched with horror and uncertainty as one of the Triumvirate lay lifeless below. Now there were two; word and rumor would spread quickly.

Arris paused suddenly. She felt a sharp and brutal shooting pain in her gut.

'Not now!'

She fell forward onto one melted metal stump, then another, and heaved up blackened blood and coolant. Usually, it stopped there, but this time it just kept coming. Eying the disgusting mess, she noticed tiny glistening specks. She didn't recognize it, but they were pieces of her own subdermal armor, once shattered and shoved deep into her soft tissue during her fight with Drystan Creed . Those little pieces had crawled deeper over time, and what she saw was only a glimpse at the real damage inside.

The scoundrel felt the powerful kneekick crush against her torso, and cracked a series of subdermal plates beneath, and even tore muscular tissue below that.

"I need the plates!" Arris panicked. "Fix them. Can you fix them?!" She cried out to the droids.

"Not enough time to detoxify and fix. Must prioritize. Prevent organic death."

"No," Arris interjected. It was unclear whether she was of sound mind to understand. "Fix it!"

The things she did for victory.

Was it worth it?