Private Upward Momentum

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

"To survive?" Arris repeated the word with absolute skepticism in her tone.

She believed him when he said he didn't know anymore. That part struck as honest to the core, and the way she read it was an answer that went beyond his place in the Covenant.

"Found family?" Arris chuckled. "Somehow, I think people would find that answer more disgusting than any other..." She mused.

"I'm here because I followed Mercy..." But now?

Arris thought about Kirie and Nilira Vornix of all people. She'd actually throw Ace in there, too, if only he'd stop being so guarded. There were people in the Covenant who mattered now. To her anyway. While Mercy continued to slide into something darker than Arris ever imagined, Vestra was slowly taking the reins, while Arris just...

"I think you and I are stuck on the same ship, Ace." She said flatly.

A final puff before the cigarette turned to ash in her mouth. "I ain't a mover like Mercy is. I wait, and I respond. I'm a responder, I guess?" That... actually started to make some sense for her.

Sure, the irony didn't escape her; it was rich to say she was 'responding' with all that blood on her hand. Tapani didn't call her to come massacre its people.

"But why are you lying to me?" She asked. There was no accusation in her tone. "The only moment I felt you wanted to be here was when you held the gun to my head. And if you wanted to survive... You'd have taken my offer on Narsh and fucked off to some backwater."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Ace caught the skepticism immediately. He knew she didn't bother arguing because she had already decided. Her answer about Mercy landed harder than he expected. So, it wasn't ambition, just... loyalty. That explained more than she probably meant it to. Loyalty could drag people into places they never planned to be and keep them there long after the reasons rotted away.

When she said they were on the same ship, something tight pulled in his chest. He hated that she was right. Not because he wanted to be like her, but because he already was, whether he liked it or not.

"Maybe…" Ace said at last. Not defiant. Not conceding either. Just honest uncertainty.

Then she called him on the lie. His eyes drifted off, jaw setting, but he didn't backpedal. If anything, he leaned into it.

"I thought you'd get it." He said quietly. "Surviving doesn't mean I want to be here." He paused. "I want you all dead, honestly. I hate what we do. I hate what I've done..."

That part came out flat. Unadorned.

"But if I'd taken off on Nar Shaddaa?" Ace went on. "What's the chance you'd have burned a world I ran to anyway?" He glanced back at her briefly. "I had a better shot sticking with you."

The words weren't an excuse. They were arithmetic. He broke eye contact again, tilting his head back, craning his neck to look up at the sky.. at the storm still churning, at the galaxy stretched out beyond it.

Then he brought it back to her.

"Do you…" Ace asked, slower now. "Do you actually agree with what we're doing? Burning worlds. Killing people that didn't ask for it. Spreading fear and loss... Are you really fine with it?"

Arris Windrun ​

 

[Arris Windrun]

"I thought you'd get it." He said quietly. "Surviving doesn't mean I want to be here."

Something about what he said struck her. Arris had to think about it, but it didn't take long for her cybernetic mind to recall something... Off. She thought back to that day and what they talked about.

"I'm not here to run anyway." He said "I'm here because I believe in... this." A lie. "The way I've lived my life. I hadn't realized the Covenant carried the same values."

"You say we carry the same values... what values are those?"

"You preach that you value individual strength. Growth through strife. Freedom from someone else's doctrine. None of that's new to me."

Then she thought about what he said only some minutes ago.

"What is it with you fucking Covies," He snapped, "and being so fucking callous about taking innocent life."

The Force shifted inside her. She began to burn up like a rock hitting atmosphere. Arris remained on the ground where she was, unmoving, and on her face grew a slight frown.

She answered his question, though - was she really fine with this?

"No."

The cyborg kicked herself back on two feet. "But that didn't stop me."

A metal hand reached for the grip of her gun.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

He didn't need to see her reach for her revolver. Feeling the Force tighten around her Thread was enough. It was subtle, but unmistakable. Intent sliding into place. Either it was about to all end right here, or it wasn't. He didn't turn to look at her.

So he answered it without ceremony. His lightsaber ignited with a low snap-hiss, the blade spilling out beside him in a clean line of light. Not raised. Not aimed. Just there. A fact. An acknowledgement that he felt her intent, and he was ready.

He kept his gaze above, still on the storm-choked sky, voice steady when he spoke.

"Then stop pretending you're fine with it." Ace said. The truth laid flat. "And stop doing it alone."

He finally turned his head enough to look at her, not challenging or pleading. Just measured.

"I'm not talking about overthrowing anything." He continued. "Not banners. Not speeches. Not 'fixing' the galaxy. I'm talking about you and me standing close enough to the decisions that matter to slow them down."

He lowered the lightsaber slightly, the blade still humming, still present.

"You said it yourself; you respond. You don't move first." His eyes held hers now. "I'm your partner, right? Then respond with me. Intercept instead of ignite. Push back on the worst calls before they turn into ash."

This wasn't a vision. It was a mechanism. He glanced upward again, toward the roiling Force storm, trillions of lives pressed beneath it like weight on glass.

They wouldn't save everyone, or pretend it's clean. They would just keep it from getting worse than it already was. People like them? They'd always kept things from snapping.

The lightsaber's light reflected faintly off his glove, off the duracrete, off the edge of her synthflesh.

"You're not okay with it." Ace said, grounding it back where it started. "I'm not either."

He stayed stood exactly where he was. Still ready.

"So don't turn that gun on me." He finished. "If you wanna stop that shitty feeling in your gut. If you really want to be a responder, then I'm in it with you."

The blade stayed lit between them. Not a threat. An offer.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

She heard the unmistakable hiss. Her fingers only wrapped tighter around the grip, but she didn't draw.

He began to talk. She listened.

Words of compromise. An affirmation of partnership. Her own sentiments pointed against her.

He appealed to her better nature.

"So don't turn that gun on me." He finished. "If you wanna stop that shitty feeling in your gut. If you really want to be a responder, then I'm in it with you."

Arris breathed.

Maybe he was right.

But Ace misunderstood one thing.

It wasn't only Arris Windrun he was talking to.

In the snap of a moment, the cyborg pulled a move she had used time and time again... only Ace had never done his homework.

Statuesque, without turning around, Arris twisted the holster towards him in a sliver of a second, with only the subtle motion of her hand as a tell. As soon as the barrel saw his midsection, her finger pulled the trigger.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Ace felt the pit form in his stomach, seconds before the trigger broke. It was just enough warning to move, not enough to plan. He twisted hard to the side as the slug tore through the space his torso had occupied a heartbeat earlier, the slug snapping past him with a concussive crack.

Pain flared anyway. A grazing hit, or debris, something bit into his side as he stumbled, boots skidding against the ground. He didn't go down, instead rolling with it, momentum carrying him away from her line, lightsaber snapping up on instinct.

What followed was a single, sharp cut across her line, fast and aggressive, meant to knock her aim wide and force her to react instead of fire again. The blade hissed through the air close enough that she'd feel the heat, close enough to tell her to stop without saying the word.

"Arris!" He said, voice rough, grounding. "What's the matter with you? You really want to end it like this?"

Ace's grip around his lightsaber remained tightened, his muscles were braced in preparation for any follow-up, side flaring from whatever hit he just took.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

So he saw it coming? Impressive.

But his intent to kill? It wasn't there - and she knew it. He also assumed she would have drawn her revolver after that, but she didn't.

Instead, the cyborg turned, right arm stretched outwards, and grabbed the plasmic blade of his lightsaber with her hand. Yeah, she had a habit of doing that. Her control of tutaminis was underpowered for the trick, really, but she could buy a few seconds as the energy tore away the outercasing of her arm, now dripping down in red-hot globules.

It didn't take her much time at all to see which hand he favored. How... unfortunate for him that it was cybernetic. The technopath reached out to it like a friend and asked that it open. Unless Ace had gone up against this before, unless he knew how to fight the art of mechu-deru, his fingers would splay open and jam at the joints.

If successful, Arris would not hesitate to snatch his own weapon with the Force into her own left hand, before his right could adjust.

Speaking of right hands... hers fell to the ground in pieces from slowing his strike.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Ace didn't recoil when she grabbed the blade. For half a second, his brain tried to rationalize it: cybernetics, heat-resistant plating, some insane Covenant mod that let her do the impossible. He'd never seen anyone put a hand on a live lightsaber and hold it. Whatever it was, it wasn't something he'd trained against.

Then his prosthetic went... wrong. The feedback vanished. The familiar neural hum dropped out like a severed wire, and before he could even swear, his fingers splayed open on their own. Joints locked. Motors jammed. The hilt tore free of his grip and snapped toward her hand.

Ace didn't panic, there wasn't any time. He adjusted. Reacted. He surged straight into her space as the weapon transferred, turning the loss into forward momentum.

He crashed left, driving into her left side before she could reset. His right hand clamped down on her left wrist, denying her room for a clean arc and buying himself time. In the same motion, Ace drove in hard, left side leading, organic elbow bending cleanly as he swung his beskar forearm across her upper chest, using it as a bar to crowd her space.

He'd take advantage of her missing right hand. But in that instant, pressed close, Ace felt it. Something was wrong. Her Thread was different now. It didn't just burn dark. It swallowed everything around it. There was bo trace of light riding under the anger or the intent. Just a suffocating, permeating void that drowned out anything else he might have sensed. It didn't feel like a person steeped in the Dark Side.

It felt like something unnatural. Artificial. Ace held the clinch anyway, whatever she was right now, he didn't have time to solve it.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

There was little time at all between her grabbing his blade and him pressing to deny her its use. It might not have been shocking, but Arris Windrun had only used a lightsaber once before.

Then she held her hand out like asking for a wrench; she pulled Kirie's lightsaber into her hand with the Force and ignited it 'flat end' against the steel until it melted.

The only other time she held one?

She stretched her arm out towards the lightsaber on the duracrete and pulled it to her with the Force. Then, Arris shoved it into the woman's outstretched hand and attempted to crush it and her lightsaber both with a preternatural grip.

He was making good moves. Only trouble was, for him, that every decision was a reaction to a reaction. Unlike Arris, Ace didn't rely on sacrifice as a way to regain control of the movement of play. He allowed her to dictate instead of him. It was... a very Jedi thing to do.

And again, he hesitated. This time to seek understanding, not that she knew it. The cyborg stood there, coldly, unmoving, with her remaining hand restricted, except to press her chest against his beskar arm and enforce tension at his elbow. All that rage, self-loathing, and despair breached the threshold of what she could hold back. And, oh, she was holding back...

What had been burning now erupted in an explosion of Dark Side power as she gave in completely to the Hatred. It was as if the storm above them changed directions, waves of raw emotion manifest, made palpable. Each bashed into Acier as he stood before her. Not just as a barrier, but an infection - her insidious disease let loose to run rampant and try to influence him.

Her co-processor saw Ace as an opportunity. It recognized him as her apprentice, but it needed more. There was far too much defiance. Too much conscience. Not enough surrender. And it hated him for it.

Arris dropped the lightsaber.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

What had been pressure became flood. Hatred no longer contained or directed, but unleashedL raw emotion given shape and momentum. The storm above them twisted, currents reversing as waves of the Dark Side slammed into Ace one after another. It wasn't trying to shove him back, it was trying to get inside.

It crawled at the edges of his thoughts, corrosive and invasive, carrying despair and fury like an illness passed through contact. Something about it felt wrong. Not just powerful. Not just angry. Wrong.

He'd seen Arris fight. Seen her calculated, vicious, precise. Even at her worst, there had always been intent behind it. Choice. This wasn't that. This was indiscriminate. Mechanical. Like a system running hot past its limits. Like something wearing her skin and burning through it.

Something was off, and he didn't know what, only that overpowering it would finish the job it was already trying to do. The Dark pressed harder, probing for cracks.

His mind flashed, unbidden, to Teth. To the ziggurat. To when the Dark side vergence attempted to do the same thing Arris was doing now. He remembered Zaiya's hand in his and the way the Force had answered when he'd let himself become a bridge.

He'd told Madrona A’Mia that it only worked on people he cared about. Arris was the furthest thing from that. But he was out of options.

Ace didn't reach for the Light. He couldn't, not anymore. And he didn't reach into her either. He stayed where he was and did the only thing he could.
He grounded himself.

In who he was. In where he'd come from. In scraped knuckles and empty stomachs and systems that chewed people up and called it order. In survival learned the hard way. In being shaped, used, discarded... and still standing. In his ability to survive anything and everything. He let that define him.

Ace opened himself to the Force, not as a command, not as a push, but as a presence. He let his Thread exist fully, unapologetically, and held it steady against hers. Not trying to cleanse. Not trying to save. Just letting the Force see both signals at once.

Human. Broken. Defiant.

His right hand remained tight around her wrist, despite the Dark side assault pressing against him. Ace used the contact to allow his his presence to exist fully, exposed and unguarded, and held it steady against hers. To see if the Force would still recognize Arris Windrun as something human beneath it all. To see if contrast alone, shared damage, shared defiance, might cut through the absolute darkness long enough for her to surface.

The strain bit immediately. The risk was obvious. This wasn't control; it was a gamble. He could feel the pull threatening to drag him with it if he misjudged the balance. Still, Ace held the attempt.

Whatever this was, it didn't get to erase her without a fight... and it didn't get to decide what he became in the process.

Arris Windrun
​

​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

Arris stood there, a pillar of power unleashed, swallowing the person she was.

When Ace reached out, he connected not with a someone, but a when -- the roar of applause, a fighter's fear and exhilaration. He would see the moment she fell a hundred feet with the splinters and branches of a burning tree. He'd feel the killer instinct and the hatred of a Sith Knight wrapping his power around Arris to crush her. He'd feel her closeness to her death, and the moment she put a slug through the crystal where the Sith's heart should be.

A trillion beings watched her. On Ruusan. The HoloNet. Live, and after the fact. The Force didn't discriminate across distances, material, or otherwise. To many, countless souls, Arris Windrun was someone they rooted for... or against. Bets that would bankrupt a blue-chip casino were placed on whether she'd live or die. Her entire existence was a spectacle then.

And then there was a fight more ugly than the others. A fight where Arris Windrun died.

When it reached her skull, it melded the co-processor to her brain. Arris embraced the excruciating pain; she embraced the cacophony of primal emotions in this place. She embraced the paralyzing fear she felt on the cusp of death until all of it overwhelmed her and redirected into a shattering scream more powerful than anything she's ever felt, that even pieces of her own body began to tear open.

And she was reborn. A synthesis between cybernetic and organic. A Dark Side entity, a Sithspawn, whatever the fuck people wanted to call it. But she defied the Will of the Force and the Netherworld spat her back out - and she won.

But... it was that fear of death, that uncertainty of who she was. The despair and distrust. The belief that maybe all of this was a dream, that now shaped and defined her. And it was that thing in her head, the agent of her rebirth, that ate the ghost of Arris Windrun to stay alive. As she grew, it fed, and it fed it corrupted her in the Force. Arris Windrun wasn't alive anymore in the conventional sense. She was a wound, a perversion in the tapestry of Fate.

A reckoning would be had. That much was dictated by the Force. But until then? Arris Windrun was a monster.

Lifeless cybernetic eyes drifted down to meet him.

"Don't even try it."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Ace felt it all at once. Not memories... events. The roar of a crowd thundering through the Force like a living thing. Fear and exhilaration tangled so tightly they were indistinguishable. The sickening lurch of a body falling through fire and splintering branches. The suffocating weight of another will, cold, hateful, crushing down as a Sith Knight tried to end her. Then the gunshot. The moment the crystal shattered where a heart should've been.

And the watching. So many eyes. So many minds. Replays, commentary, wagers so vast they bent economies. Then the last fight. The one where Arris Windrun... died?

Ace felt the pain as the implant fused to her skull. The way she'd embraced it. Embraced fear, agony, the screaming chaos of a place soaked in Dark Side trauma until it broke her open and rewrote what remained. Flesh and machine collapsing into one another. A rebirth that wasn't a triumph. The Force rejecting her... and her clawing her way back anyway.

He came out of it finally understanding. There had never been an Arris for him to know. What stood in front of him now wasn't a person... it was a scar that learned how to walk. A wound in the Force that never healed, only fed. Something unnatural. Cancerous. Wearing her body because there was nothing else left to wear.

Her lifeless eyes met his, warning him not to "try it."

That was when it clicked. There was no talking, no reaching, no saving. Whatever humanity had once been there was already dead by the time he'd met her.

All that mattered now was survival. Ace didn't let go of her wrist. He used it. He planted and snapped his weight forward, driving both feet into her in a brutal drop kick, then kicked off her chest hard enough to tear free and throw himself backward. The distance opened instantly. He twisted mid-air, momentum carrying him into a tight backflip as the Force surged to his call.

The lightsaber ripped back into his right hand. Ace landed in a low crouch as the blade ignited with a sharp hiss. He stayed there for a moment, eyes locked on her.

If he meant to walk away from this thing wearing Arris Windrun's skin, Ace would have to stop denying what he was bred to be. Restraint would get him killed. Only power would let him stand.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

Arris lurched back, and her feet slid across the ground following his kick.

The technopath reached out as soon as he returned the lightsaber to his right hand. She reached back into his left, washing her influence over the machinery within. Not only would she bathe it in Darkness so that he might feel the corruption of Ruusan on his hand, but she would show him just how dangerous it was to have even a single cybernetic on his body.

With the Force, she would overload the servos and invert the maglock, using them in conjunction to pull the internal pieces out of place.

Then, with her remaining hand, she drew the pistol at her hip.

Whatever move he was going to make - she'd be ready.

"You've never fought anyone like me."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

The moment she reached into his prosthetic again, Ace felt the interference, the malfunction, the violation. Darkness poured through the circuitry like oil forced into clean machinery. Servos shrieked under the strain. The neural link spasmed, feedback biting up his arm as something ancient and wrong washed through the metal. Corruption tried to crawl into him through the only artificial part of his body.

She was showing him how vulnerable he was. His jaw tightened. He didn't try to rip his arm back. Instead, he stopped holding back and the Dark side answered instantly. Pressure detonated outward from him. Raw, generational weight crashed into the space between them like a tectonic shift. The air compressed. Dust and loose debris lifted in a violent spiral. Duracrete beneath his boots cracked with a sharp report... and his eyes burned yellow.

He was tired. Tired of pretending. Tired of playing small inside a room full of monsters. Tired of extending mercy to something that had died long before he met it. He hated the Covenant. He hated what he'd done in its name. He hated that he'd reached for her and she'd answered with infection.

If she wanted to drown him in darkness, she'd have to survive the tide coming back. The debris didn't scatter and fall, they lie suspended mid-air in the wake of the surge: dust, metal splinters, fragments of shattered casing from her ruined arm caught in an invisible hold.

Then Ace narrowed it. The Force shifted from expansion to compression. The suspended debris snapped inward from multiple angles, converging toward her in sharp, violent vectors. Not aimed to impale, but to batter, to distract, to overload.

At the same time, the air above her distorted. A brutal vertical pressure wave condensed over her center line, a hammering telekinetic crush snapping downward from above, compressing the atmosphere around her skull and shoulders like a descending vice.

His prosthetic shrieked under her influence, but so did the space around her. Ace stepped forward into the distortion instead of away from it.

She was right. He'd never fought anyone like her. But he had fought bounty hunters. Mandalorians. Predators. Sith. Dark Side elites. Entities that thought they were inevitable. Whatever Arris Windrun had become? She was just another horror trying to test him.

The storm above twisted, not because he commanded it, but because something vast had stopped pretending to be small beneath it.

Golden eyes locked to lifeless ones.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

The cyborg watched, weapon in hand, but - for whatever reason - withheld firing. She was unmoving when Ace stopped pretending. When he let go, and embraced the power of the Dark Side, fueled by his repressed anger and hatred for the Sith Covenant. It wasn't her struggle to know, but she saw the signs of surrender, and felt the vast power surge out from him. The storm shifted above, influenced by their battle.

Then, all those little pieces floating in the air flew towards her, projectiles from every direction. They tore through her jacket and clothes, ripping fabric that was never designed for battle. They cut open her synthflesh, tearing it off her frame in shredded pieces. They battered her subdermal armor, scratching, denting, and cracking black metal which protected her soft tissue, bones, and organs within. What was left appeared more machine than human, more droid than woman, largely from the neck down as she used the Force to protect her head as much as she could.

The Arris Windrun that stood before him was stripped of nearly everything which rendered her a person to the average organic perspective. She was practically naked, though (thankfully!) revealed nothing except the shape of her chassis. Which was strong, somewhat feminine in design, but devoid of any detail.

And still, she hadn't moved from where she stood. She did, however, look up moments before a telekinetic anvil crashed down from above, as if she sensed its inevitably through the Force. She bent at the knees, a piston in her right leg audibly snapped, and the outer casings of both crunched loudly when metal cracked. Splinters flew outward, and Arris Windrun was forced to kneel; her back was arched, shoulders sunken, and her head hung low.

As Ace moved forward, her arm snapped into place, and without looking, she fired another round; a slug accelerating so quickly it was announced by a sonic boom. There was a visible bow shock from the energy sheath wrapped around it, a product of her revolvers' hybrid design. Whatever it might hit - him or something beyond - the energy wrapped slug would punch a fist sized hole with a level of power that could penetrate a durasteel hull. There was reverb in the songsteel of her weapon, a peaceful melody that sounded entirely out of place.

Her forearm bent upward, her entire shoulder pulled back from the severe recoil. But Arris Windrun still hadn't moved... There she remained on one knee. At a distance she looked like a figure in a painting; a silhouette in deference to a dying world.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant

Equipment:
Acolyte Robes | Lightsaber | Cybernetic Arm

Fabric shredded. Synthflesh tore away in strips. Subdermal plating dented and split. The illusion of a woman peeled back in ugly layers until what stood in front of him looked more chassis than person.

There was no flinch, no instinct to shield her body beyond cold efficiency. He'd been right. Whatever Arris Windrun had been… it wasn't standing there anymore.

His pressure landed. He saw it in the way the air bent around her. He heard the metallic snap when something internal failed. Saw her forced to one knee under the vertical crush. And still she didn't break.

Then his senses screamed. Precognition didn't arrive as vision. It arrived as wrongness. A spike. A fracture in the next heartbeat.

The sonic boom followed. Ace moved before thought caught up. His organic shoulder snapped upward, dragging the beskar forearm across his center line just as the slug hit.

The energy sheath erupted against the beskar plating in a violent flare, shredding through his glove and exposing the prosthetic bare. Kinetic force transferred straight through the casing and into the frame beneath. Metal rang. Servos shrieked. The neural interface howled as overload signals tore up his arm and into his spine like lightning in a wire.

The pain wasn't sharp. It was blinding. The force of it launched him backward, his feet tore loose from the ground as he was hurled several meters, hitting hard and skidding across fractured ground. His control over the telekinetic pressure shattered with the impact, the compression collapsing as his concentration snapped.

For half a second, he didn't move. Then he was up and again in an instant. The prosthetic smoked faintly, plating scorched but intact. His arm trembled from the shock, but it held. Ace didn't know it was possible to be any more enraged than he already was.

His golden gaze flicked once, calculating. The ledge. Arris was on compromised footing near the canyon's edge, fractured duracrete spiderwebbed beneath her weight.

Ace didn't reach for her this time. He reached for the ground, right arm extending and two fingers lifting from the hilt of his lightsaber. The Force answered with savage immediacy. Duracrete beneath Arris convulsed. Cracks widened into ruptures as raw telekinetic pressure drove downward and outward. The surface didn't simply break, it collapsed, shearing in jagged slabs as if something immense had stomped down from above.

Stone, metal, and support struts tore free in a violent cascade, with the goal of forcing the section she stood on to give way.

Arris Windrun​