Through Blood and Dirt and Bone

[Aver Brand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJkUjWJoAo​

Maena :: The New City

A figure.

Just one among many, pushing down the street. The slums stuck to her armor, a thin lacquer of poverty and despair. It stunk, too, like rotting flesh and human refuse, but nobody noticed. Not with the mouth-watering smells wafting from the street vendors lining the main artery of the district. Their shrill voices mixed with the aroma of sizzling meat as they attempted to out-shout each other. In a business where every customer made a difference in the struggle for survival, no method was too cutthroat.

Today, that customer was her.

Visor protracted, red strands matted with sweat, a dirty smile. She blended easily, the dust and grime hiding the quality of her equipment. Her blasters looked old, scraped; her suit was dented, littered with scorch marks and cuts; her belt sagged heavy with ammo, power packs, and the steady weight of a knife.

The cook only had eyes for the credit chit she handed over as he wrapped her steak, fresh off the grill and so rare it was practically mooing. (Not that they ever told you what kind of meat they used. Not that you’d ever want to know.)

Sauce dribbled down her chin as she stuffed her face, tearing off massive chunks with sharp, sharp teeth. Still nobody paid her a second glance. Not when she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, nor when she slunk out of the main flow and into a narrower side alley. Nearly four decades of existing in this exact kind of environment had made Aver Brand an urban chameleon.

Whoever turned the corner next would only find an empty street.

The mercenary was cleaning the meat fibers stuck under her nails in an abandoned building, three stories above the bustle of daily life. The hum of the city below and the chatter of passersby blended into pleasing background noise. It was the occasional staccato of gunshots that really reminded her of home, though.

And the tools laid out on the table before her, of course:

A pair of knuckledusters. They only looked rusty. Won one lazy Cage Fight Night on Nadir;
a wrought-durasteel crowbar. Slightly bent on one end. Picked it up on the way here;
a wooden chair leg. Still had a tooth stuck in it. Lifted from a dumpster behind a sleazy bar;
a broken beer bottle. It stank of swill so foul it was practically chemical warfare. Same dumpster;
and, finally, empty space. It glared from a wiped patch of nothing in the thick layer of dust on the plastic.

Aver grinned, checked the time, and settled more comfortably into the corner of the room.

(It was the only one without mold.)

[member="Onley Xiangu"] | [member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

M a e n a
The New City

Always, it seemed, when the Droid most commonly regarded by his numerical designation of 60--Six-O---found himself away and off from the stern leash of [member="HK-36"] and the largely honest Galactic Alliance. IGa-60 possessed a certain strut, a heavy mechanical bounce, a cool flow more chill than the winter winds of the most frozen Ice World. Left to his own devices, Six-O innately found himself magnetized towards evil doing, violence, crime, all manner of anarchy and darkness.

A jive kind of bionic, the brutality just jibed so well with it. He took these vacations more and more often it seemed. Frequent leaves of absence that seemed to expand longer and longer with each and every one he took.

Being good was an arduous task. So what were a few displays of grotesque murder and mayhem in the greater scheme of things? Did he, Six-O, not deserve release? The organics sprayed their substandard lubricating oils in and upon each other quite unabashedly. So if he, God of Time and Foul Play, wanted to smear himself in gore and parade up and down the street whilst blaring his Terror Protocol and cracking pot shots with all manner of high-caliber firepower in to the sky or towards a crowd, he would! Drop it, [member="HK-36"]!

"Help me!" A voice would try to entice response, it's pitch beyond terrified.

Belonged to a Pantoran, grubby pants leaned downward from his waist over his legs, ending just a small inch below his heels, the hem scruffy and tattered from constant treading upon. His feet and chest were bare, hair wild and face filthy. With ferocious footfalls rang over metal grate, his body flung at high pace across a connecting ramp between two buildings, roughly half way up the inner-curve of the comatose Volcano.

His pace was brisk, his body surprisingly nimble. He quickly thrust on forward, sweeping right with his arm, nearly uprooting an aged human woman over the edge of the railing as he progressed. "PLEASE!!!" He cried once more.

There behind him, the one and the only, Pan-Galactic Scumbag, Six-O, the barbaric slaughterer of a million billion lives! The sensors of his spire dome gleaming more brightly than lazy hue of Prymis itself, a shredded and thoroughly frayed cloak undulating with a life all it's own as metal feet, gravid with great weight, clunk and pound at each fall of sole to grate. Musical notes and mellow verses probing the sky from his Vocoder.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdiB3cISeBk[/youtube]

"Move, MOVE!" The Pantoran bawled, shouldering through another two bystanders in his path, he could feel the weighty sway and rumble of the Droid hot on his heels.

Now this wasn't just any random that Six-O had decided he needed to destroy, [member="Matsu Xiangu"] herself. The Sorceress, The Necromancer, The Ghoul-Queen of Maena had insisted this poor blue inferior required death. Something sour having befell their previous working relationship, he wasn't worth her time personally, but knew too much to just be allowed to wander off flapping his suck.

"Chit!" The alien barked, jabbing his heel with the entire weight of his body and momentum against a make-shift door that had obstructed his progress. He didn't even care when the cheap material shattered to dust and splinter, gashing the pad of his foot to the bone.

The music, it grew closer.

Sweat beading, grime and dust clinging to every ripple of his flesh the Pantoran strode on, rounding tight corners, and barreling through narrow hallways, leaking wound flapping with each step, blood hobbling his traction.

It was a proper chase, leaping from building to building, hoisting body over rails and over brittle panels. By the time he'd made it street level the man was spent, chest heaving deep gasps as he flooded forth in to the dim maze of Under level streets.

"K. . kark it. . . " He panted, looking around with a circular sway of his shoulders. He just had no more to offer, flight had failed. Time to fight, he didn't like the prospect.

He gulped in deeply, blue back and shoulders glimmering under the flicker of hanging glow-globes that stretched from the building he'd exited across the street in a vast web of wires that provided meager light to the street below.

The sound was dull, it's lyrics and musical notes made indolent from the belly of the structure it stalked through. The Pantoran clutched the handle of an aged Slugthrower from the front waistband of his pants. He tried to drown out the flames in his lungs with long inhales, and deep exhales. His arms raised, he leaned forward on his weapon, bracing for the inevitable kick. Then it happened.

Bang,

bang,

bang, bang, bang.

The very shots that one Mrs. Jane Doe, [member="Aver Brand"], herself had heard. Then, under the sudden din of blared music a scream resonated at terrifying pitch. Just another night. Just another death.

[member="Onley Xiangu"]​

 

[Onley Xiangu]

He spent most of his time in cities. Maybe he was simply averse to the wilderness after being tossed on so many abandoned planets to see if he was capable of surviving but he preferred to be completely surrounded by noise and sound. Much of Maena was complete wasteland but the New City provided every manner of entertainment possible. In fact, he’d come down to find someone in particular but instead had become momentarily distracted when an old woman - or what looked like an old woman - held a wrinkled hand out from her shawl to offer him a vial full of spidersilk.

Obviously, he’d taken it.

By the time he reached the dark red swath of city burning in neons, everything moved with a trail. His steps – slow-motion – took him through kaleidoscopic scattering, edges connecting, sloping embrasures, one thing curling in to the next so it was difficult to separate the boundaries. His vision was tunneled, focused on parts of the picture instead of the whole: the back of some man’s head as he skulked in front of Onley, a dress off to the left so short the curve of a thigh called like a mountain to be conquered, the teeth of a some pig-like alien as he tossed a humanoid out of his brothel. He was vaguely aware of a Twi’lek calling to him, pulling her tube-top down to reveal three of what should have been two, tweaking one of the trio as she winked at him. “Half price for you, sweetheart!”

As tempting as the offer was, Onley still remembered he had things to do.

At that point he was so high he was actually enjoying the music coming from somewhere off around a corner as he took another left, only realizing he’d nearly stepped in an artful pile of sprayed brains when his registered that a droid was holding a smoking blaster and somehow looking unconcerned despite his stationary features. Onley was probably projecting.

“Nice,” he said off-handedly, hands in his pockets as he took a step around the scene.

It was another minute of walking before he got where he was going, the smell of black mold assaulting his senses as he slipped in to the derelict building. There hadn’t been much instruction as to where to find her so he just let his senses lead him, rewarded by the discovery of a doorway that was mysteriously devoid of the same disgusting overgrowth as the rest of the place. Pushing the door open slowly, he materialized in the doorway to stand across from the woman perched in the corner.

“I’m not saying that you could have written a postcard or something, but it would have been nice to hear from you sooner.”

That he could have done the same wasn’t acknowledged.

“Heard a lot about you.”

The curl of a tattoo on his neck, a woman holding up a metal arm as a prize, was reminiscent of the 'aunt' he'd never met - a story he'd heard of how she and his Mother had met. Strange to have ink in her honor but to never have known her.

[member="Aver Brand"] | [member="Six-O"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

“You’re high,” she deadpanned in lieu of greeting.

It wasn’t hard to tell. Not with the sway in his step, with the way he peered at the world around him. His pupils were blown like a supernova caught in the act, and [member="Onley Xiangu"] probably felt exactly like it.

She cataloged his features as she rose to her full height, unfolding with mechanical precision. It was funny, seeing two faces she knew so well merge into something new, both familiar and alien at the same time. Because he was the sum of her two lovers, but also something more, an unknown variable she had yet to quantify.

Obviously, his mother had imparted more than just her cruel eyes and her delicate fingers.

“You come wasted again, I’m throwing you out the window.”

Aver strode over to the young man, surprised to find them of the exact same height. Maybe some Ygdris had leaked through while Matsu and Rev were frakking him into existence? Had to be, when she was the tallest of the three.

Up close she could smell it on him, too. Despite the stench of the mold permeating every surface and molecule of air of the place, She was there and He was there, flowing through his veins.

“Nice cologne,” she said, grinning behind her black faceplate. “Kinda pointless, though.”

Then she threw a punch at his gut.

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

Oh it was far more than your typical abstract strokes of gore and crimson illustrated across the horrifically sketched pages of some nonconformist, ultra rad, offbeat, hippie poser. Parading with their weak knees and absurdly fatuous mimicry of violence. Nah, it weren't like that. Six-O got put on the scene when you needed groovy cruelty.

Zoned out, Spacely Sprockets, mind in a fog of cerebral, psychedellic, ultra-phrenic mayhem.

That's what he left there, that's what the Microscopically Minute [member="Matsu Xiangu"] had working for her. This is why she had selected he, Droid-God-King of the Far Flung Fringe. Everything else was merely frail boned imitation.

Now what Six-O had here was the perfect, most pristine amount of facial anamorphosis. It started up on the frontal bone--Six-O was always amazed such creatures continued to exist, with armor this weak---notched and craggy, whatever the Droid had unleashed upon him left stomach turning cleft. Ragged, snaggy, flaps of skin sagging down across the zygomatic bone, the eye, completely shorn. No telling where that yellow dotted orb had bounced off to. Then, both mandible and maxilla were serrated with ruggedly disturbing indentations that left the wet flapping tongue squirming in the relatively still whole, but not entirely opposite side of the Pantoran's face. Blood pulsing with wet gargles, something not entirely unlike words barking from toothless half-gape. But the damage yet still, stretched further across the laughable skull helmet of this creature. All the way back to the parietal bone did the carnage ensue, a chasm of weeping blood and deflated brain matter left obliterated and dribbling.

It was beautiful.

Even as [member="Onley Xiangu"] strode carefully by the Droid, whom clutch this blue weak thing around dead neck. He did not falter from his task. Thoroughly examining and broadcasting the bloodletting to the mans mother. Funny, she'd never told the Droid she had a child. Or perhaps not that humorous at all. Very few individuals told Six-O anything. Latent fear, he calculated. Though more likely, he was just a Droid, what did he need to know for?

[member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Onley Xiangu]

You’re high.

“And you’re astute,” he said, half-flippant but mostly just as a way to fill the space as Aver unfolded and the woman he’d heard so much - perhaps too much - about finally seemed to materialize in to existence. In that hazy state of altered consciousness she seemed more animal than woman, each origin of muscle perfectly sinuous to its insertion when she moved. The way she was looking at him like trying to figure out how many pieces of his puzzle belonged to which bit of DNA was a little unnerving but for the most part he couldn’t help but wonder about her too.

Where had she been?
What had she seen?
Did she know that Matsu missed her?

“What are you, my Mom?” he asked to her threat in regards to the drugs, a grin softening the bite.

But contemplation wasn’t to be had apparently as without warning the woman drew back for a sucker punch that probably would have exploded an organ were it not Onley’s immediate instinct to flex every muscle in his abdomen to try and absorb the blow and stop it from knocking the wind out of him. Perhaps the only thing that saved him was that instinct and the slight twist of his body to the side to become a smaller target. It left him with a blisteringly bruising shock of pain on his right side that nearly made him double over, but at least he could breathe.

Don’t double over. Don’t double over or she’s going to uppercut you in the face.
He knew because it was a move he was fond of.
Maybe she had contributed to his DNA.

Using the position change from turning slightly, he put his weight on his back foot and kicked out with the one facing her in as fluid a motion as the punch left him capable of. It was low, aimed at her knees or shins so she couldn’t easily catch the kick in her hands and up-end him. It was clear she was willing to play extremely unfair to drill something in to his head though, so he tried to keep himself in line with whatever she might have up her sleeve.

[member="Aver Brand"] | [member="Six-O"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Her fist found taut, willing flesh that bent and curled with the force of her strike. Such inborn agility, and so well-refined, too. His mother’s son, truly.

And his father’s in equal measure, [member="Onley Xiangu"] proved within a breath. Instead of simply rolling with the punch, he took the momentum and made it his own. There was a feline grace to his movements, which was a feat in and of itself with a man of his bulk.

The speed and instinct were there. The sharp tongue and the innate talent too, clearly.

His head wasn’t all in the game, though.

Aver moved forward on the heels of her attack, closing their distance to a level of intimacy only appropriate of aunt and nephew; his foot found her shin alright, but found it just above the ankle, encased in phrik.

Regret was going to set in soon, likely along with a throbbing toe. Or five.

They were tête-à-tête now, breathing the same air. The mercenary was grinning, sharp teeth wet for the taste of copper already blooming in the back of her mouth.

“You are what you eat,” was what Aver whispered into his ear before stooping even lower with a jab at his left kidney.

“Speaking of your mother… she tell you why you’re here? With me?”

[member="Six-O"]​

 

[Onley Xiangu]

Nausea and pain. It was a weird combination, the sort of thing one tried to avoid associating with the acts his adoptive auntie referenced so flippantly lest they all become intertwined and disgustingly inseparable. Either way he struggled with the sudden agony in his foot while he tried not to throw up all over her at the sarcasm.

“No, but I can only assume she must be annoyed with me or something,” he shot back again.

Her fist came quickly, reaching for his left kidney. He was partially turned in order to execute the kick but that would still be a reach as she had to aim for his back for maximum pain.

His immediate instinct would suck but it was his best bet.

Even though it hadn’t been said he assumed the Force was off-limits for whatever this engagement was, or at least that was a rule he was setting for himself. But that didn’t stop him from more practical applications. He used it to throw his weight even harder as he came down on his throbbing foot and shoved towards her. He was a freight train, using his muscular bulk against her and push, push, pushing towards the window behind both of them. He felt her punch land but his sudden move forward saved him from a direct hit to the kidney, the bloom of a future impressive contusion crawling under the flesh of his back.

Of course, she was the tallest and strongest woman he’d fought yet. Whatever advantage of surprise he might have had would be momentary - indicated pretty strongly by the way he couldn’t disengage as the window loomed close, her grip too tight as she took him with her. Glass shattered, weak wood and metal creaking open with a hideous groan as the two grappled right off the edge in to the street below.

[member="Aver Brand"] | [member="Six-O"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

The temptation to spit back a grinning riposte died right along with the breath in her lungs. Onley slammed into her, and off they went.

Right out the frakking window.

That’s my boy.

Her arms were a metal vise around him as she pulled the younger man close – not to crush his ribs against the phrik, though she could – but to twist them midair. Because obviously, slamming someone back-first into solid duracrete was so much safer than cracking their ribcage.

Guess who just made the shortlist for Best Aunt of the Year.

Still, on the upside, this was the kind of situation where your nephew could really show you what he was made of. Either he’d impress and get up after a landing like that… or he wouldn’t. With parents like his, the school of hard knocks had basically started with his conception.

On second thought, going out the window probably didn’t even make his top ten worst lessons.

Or best. Perspective is everything.

[member="Six-O"] | [member="Onley Xiangu"]

 

[Onley Xiangu]

Man, he really wished the Force didn’t seem like it was off-limits right now. How easy would it be to just alter their trajectory with a quick telekinetic push, rotate them over again so it was his Uncle that was going to slam in to the ground and not him. They weighed about the same and Phrik wasn’t all that heavy so it didn’t seem he had the ability to force her towards the ground with gravity. Oh god this was going to karking hu---

He held his breath for the second time that fight, trying to stop the wind from being knocked out of him when he met with duracrete.

Just barely.

He didn’t land flat on his back, the two of them rocking slightly in the struggle to avoid hitting the ground. Instead, he landed slightly sideways in a way that afforded him a perfect view of the droid his Mother worked with still collecting proof of a job well done. Pinned beneath his Uncle, Onley was in an extremely precarious position. Ground fighting was never good, especially not when trapped beneath two hundred pounds of smirking crab-uncle. He was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything despite the searing pain in his side. Or at least not any ribs yet since he could still get air in his lungs to talk to the droid.

“Hey again,” he said quickly before reaching out and grabbing a fistful of the victim’s brains. He whipped them around as fast as he could, attempting to smear them across Brand’s faceplate and blind her long enough for him to squirrel himself out from underneath her and get to his feet.

Weapon, weapon, weapon - he needed a weapon.

[member="Aver Brand"] | [member="Six-O"]​

 

[Six-O]

He'd become detached and lost, an apparatus of many forgotten ages and fallen Empires. Some sort of Beast pressed far from the pretty center of society, regarded as a lower animal and kept restrained to the very edges. Something wreathed in the shadows, forbidden, outside the restraint of time and fate of extinction.

Ridicule it, fear him, regard Six-O as a simple tool. But when your flesh became feast for maggots and worms, when you were blighted to rot, and your bones become as dust and stone. Onward would the Droid still venture.

His horrors were not the simple flickering of a wax candle waiting to burn out or blacken from the gust of a single breath.

Actually, on the topic of time, how long had he been standing there?!

Really, there were some evenings even Six-O could surprise himself. No. Scratch that. Six-O was incapable of being surprised. He calculated everything, at every second, during the smallest interval. But if you asked nicely to that regard, he'd probably still ignore you.

But then the glass broke. . .

From above, high above, somewhere up in this dizzying city within the Volcano--his new home---[member="Onley Xiangu"], [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s bastard man child thing, that he didn't realize was in fact her squalid progeny, and [member="Aver Brand"]. . . the former [member="Vrag"] male-female creature insect came descending, how unfortunate he didn't know either. The thump of armor and bones and meat was satisfying, the crunch of glass and scuff of Phrik as they grappled on the ground so. . . so delectable.

The machine was intrigued enough that even as Onley placed his hand where it most certainly did not belong, Six-O did not even process a single scenario where he felt he needed to tear that limb from the shoulder and forcefully insert it through the mouth and down the throat. What did it want? What were these things searching for?! IGa-60 began to calculate, pivoting away as they struggled on. Surely they had their own weapons? But what if they didn't? Hmmmm. . . which one was stronger?

CLAK!!

A solid, razor sharp, Phrik Machete he had picked up during his brief tenure in Commonwealth Space bounced and skidded an arms length away from the pair. Now. . . what else did they need? Oh yes. Music. Something to fight to! Oh how he loved playing the synth sounds and scratchy tunes of his Terror Protocol. . . Any. Excuse. Was. Good. Enough!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-5NXA5tTNc[/youtube]

 

[Aver Brand]

The world screamed and shook as they hit the ground. The moldy duracrete cracked from under the impact of armor, muscle, and ego. Traveled straight up her spine despite the nephew that served as her cushion.

Damn. Was she getting up in the years already?

Just to prove her right, the bastard smeared the gray matter of some unfortunate fether across her helmet. Little poodoo. Unfortunately, Aver wasn’t a weekend warrior. She was a day-in-day-out destroyer. Foreign objects obscuring her vision? Not the first time. The Exodus came with plenty of countermeasures – it was ridiculous, really.

The ticked off auncle squeezed her thighs like a vice – Matsu would know, Loray would like it – in order to keep Onley pinned.

She raised a fist, was about to pummel him into the pool of blood beneath them—

music?!

Feth, she was a veteran of more wars than Onley had years to his name, but that still managed to throw her off. Aver glanced over at the culprit. A droid. Something… familiar?

And a fething phrik machete. Of course.

The merc lunged for it. She was on top, so… good chances. But apparently she was also old.

Maybe Onley would beat her to it?


Tune in next month to find out!


[member="Six-O"] | [member="Onley Xiangu"]