Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
[member="Vrag"]
The virtue of a shin-level snap kick was that it started retracting immediately. Quick to launch, quick to recover, it outpaced other maneuvers with ease. Like the time required to bring your back-side arm around, against your body's torsion, and drop and lean so you could have a prayer of reaching the knee of someone kicking your forward leg that low. Vrag managed it, without the Force, which told Ashin a good deal about the armor's capabilities, but even enhanced speed couldn't give that particular strike any sort of breaking power against a leg that lacked an anchor.
Certainly not against someone who was wearing double-strength particle shields set to shock.
The same, incidentally, went for the extrusion aiming straight up at Ashin's groin. Grashals weren't alive, just abandoned, purpose-grown shells with living biots tacked on. Most of those biots were fairly innocuous. At a guess, the protrusions were gricha grubs, thin-shelled biots used to plug gaps in the dead shell that was the grashal. For a gricha to erupt under her foot was one thing, but for one to reach her groin with any kind of power left, not to mention get through the shield -- not possible. Especially not once the shield spread out the impact across her entire body and shocked it to death on contact.
At that angle, Vrag's left hand would have had to twist oddly to get a grip on the slanted, rounded ridge that defined the knee of Ashin's greave. But getting that grip through the particle shield wasn't in the cards, not when the hooking gauntlet met the particle shield and slid off in a torrent of sparks. Vonduun crab, Ashin well knew, was vulnerable to a shock. Currently, her balance wasn't great thanks to the suicidal gricha grub, but she'd been jolted up, not sideways or back or forward. As the transferred force of Vrag's downward palm strike shoved down Ashin's already-descending front leg, Ashin rooted her side stance and called on the Force in a serious way.
A way that Vrag, neck-deep in Vongsense, just plain didn't have time to counter. That was the ultimate price of spending too much time with your head in the Vong plane: when the Force happened, at least in a competent short-range high-octane way, your options reduced sharply. Lightning exploded from Ashin's armored right elbow, a point-blank torrent that passed through the particle shield without resistance, amplifying the shock. Bent over and torqued forward as Vrag was, horned helmet right by that elbow-
If Ashin had been capable of sympathy just now, she'd have winced. The lightning jumped the very short gap between elbow and ram's head with enough power to make a reactor blush. The smooth, rainbow-sheen surface of the grashal danced with a flare of reflected light, and her helmet's active cancellation strained to hold back the thunderclap.
The virtue of a shin-level snap kick was that it started retracting immediately. Quick to launch, quick to recover, it outpaced other maneuvers with ease. Like the time required to bring your back-side arm around, against your body's torsion, and drop and lean so you could have a prayer of reaching the knee of someone kicking your forward leg that low. Vrag managed it, without the Force, which told Ashin a good deal about the armor's capabilities, but even enhanced speed couldn't give that particular strike any sort of breaking power against a leg that lacked an anchor.
Certainly not against someone who was wearing double-strength particle shields set to shock.
The same, incidentally, went for the extrusion aiming straight up at Ashin's groin. Grashals weren't alive, just abandoned, purpose-grown shells with living biots tacked on. Most of those biots were fairly innocuous. At a guess, the protrusions were gricha grubs, thin-shelled biots used to plug gaps in the dead shell that was the grashal. For a gricha to erupt under her foot was one thing, but for one to reach her groin with any kind of power left, not to mention get through the shield -- not possible. Especially not once the shield spread out the impact across her entire body and shocked it to death on contact.
At that angle, Vrag's left hand would have had to twist oddly to get a grip on the slanted, rounded ridge that defined the knee of Ashin's greave. But getting that grip through the particle shield wasn't in the cards, not when the hooking gauntlet met the particle shield and slid off in a torrent of sparks. Vonduun crab, Ashin well knew, was vulnerable to a shock. Currently, her balance wasn't great thanks to the suicidal gricha grub, but she'd been jolted up, not sideways or back or forward. As the transferred force of Vrag's downward palm strike shoved down Ashin's already-descending front leg, Ashin rooted her side stance and called on the Force in a serious way.
A way that Vrag, neck-deep in Vongsense, just plain didn't have time to counter. That was the ultimate price of spending too much time with your head in the Vong plane: when the Force happened, at least in a competent short-range high-octane way, your options reduced sharply. Lightning exploded from Ashin's armored right elbow, a point-blank torrent that passed through the particle shield without resistance, amplifying the shock. Bent over and torqued forward as Vrag was, horned helmet right by that elbow-
If Ashin had been capable of sympathy just now, she'd have winced. The lightning jumped the very short gap between elbow and ram's head with enough power to make a reactor blush. The smooth, rainbow-sheen surface of the grashal danced with a flare of reflected light, and her helmet's active cancellation strained to hold back the thunderclap.