We Should Probably Talk

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"]

Location: ECLIPSTICA, capital of the Shadow Dynasty. Somewhere Ashin Varanin wasn't supposed to be, courtesy of a state-of-the-art stealth transport and the kind of inside knowledge you get by conquering this sector twice.

Objective: Reeducation.

"I understand my wife is attractive, Your Majesty," she said, emerging from wherever she wasn't supposed to be, with absolutely zero care for how many courtiers, guards, legions or Dark Jedi might be in the vicinity. "I rather like her myself. And it's entirely possible that the rumors I'm hearing are without foundation -- maybe you're not lusting after her in an unseemly manner. Maybe it's all my imagination. But me, I listen to my gut."

Snap-hiss.

"And my gut says it's time we had a little talk the old-fashioned way."

 

[The Red of Sinner]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Standing next to his adviser with a datapad, Romeo looked up as the great Ashin appeared from no where, and apparently challenged his authority. He gave his adviser the datapad, and dressed in his battle ware, as they were on high alter lately. He slid on the mask that was attached to his belt, and both hands shot to the side, and a similar snap hiss echoed out through the throne room. One black blade, and one cryan blade.
"I can certainly say this is not how one has a simple down, now if you wish to dance, I must say I am all for it beautiful." He looked at all the guards point their weapons. "At ease men. I will give this woman the fair fight she deserves."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"]

"As a certain Moff once said, charming to the last."

He had his twenty kilos of asymmetric phrik, a ring of guards, and two lightsabres. She had a very simple black robe, one she hadn't worn in years -- not since long before her tenure as Sith Empress -- and a sabre that cast burnt-orange light off the facets of his armor. She wasn't immune to the charms of heavy plate, but she always, without fail, left hers at home when she made formal challenges. A slow smile curled her lip as she raised the simple lightsabre into a basic guard...

And then moved in. Not fast, but deliberate, with every visual implication that she intended to get in very close if he would let her. She walked as if she meant to walk right over him.

 

[The Red of Sinner]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Romeo's eyes watched hers, she was sizing him up, and her saber was the most beautiful color of orange he had seen. He smirked at her. She was walking right at him. "But your notion that you are welcomed in my throne room is false, and a foolish one." He winked at her behind the mask, she would see it too. "But.." He took his own steps forward at her, his sabers extended away from his body. "You are welcomed in my bed." The armor was heavier then the first version, but as long as he kept his balance equaled out, he would be fine, right followed by the left, his boots clacked loudly. This woman made me less weary then [member="Darth Vitium"] did back on Manaan, and now after that, the Sith Lord barely effected him.
His cracked his neck, and with out sudden warning, or even the slight notion he was about to attack his slid his feet, taking a spinning motion, balancing more weight on his less defended leg, and fire rose up from his feet, then up to a funnel, surround him in a loud roar, and extreme heat, and then at the end of his spin, he be facing her again, and his hands would move towards her, causing the large funnel of fire to swoosh forward after her.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"]

At his invitation, the grin vanished, along with her ability to blink.

He could reduce his telegraphing all he wanted; spins and pyrokinetic infernos took time, on the order of a good second or two from inception to firestorm. She spent that time enacting her standard response to large disturbances in the Force. Frankly, it was her standard response to a lot of things. In her time, she'd learned a variety of skills, been accounted powerful for this ability or that. She'd spent the last couple of years or more putting all of that to bed, letting it grow rusty, in favor of her specialization in Force Protection, shields, full-body Force Weapon -- at this level, the distinctions stopped mattering. As flame sprang up around him, a faint nimbus of distortion surrounded her.

The fire roared over her and around her, split out to either side, and didn't so much as singe her. A few more of those and she'd start having problems, but more than one Master had bailed out after watching their favorite techniques splinter against her chest, without bothering to stick around and try to wear her down. She sort of liked to dishearten them, play stronger than she was. So far, it had worked every fething time.

She didn't so much as pause, just kept walking closer.

 

[The Red of Sinner]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Romeo stopped to look at her, he cocked his head as he watched his fire do nothing, but split in half, and pass right by her like it was nothing. He smirked to himself. "Impressive." He kept walking at her as well, and put away the cryan blade, stopped half way to her, and started to focus on the darkness around him. Feeding off the fear of the people in the room as they watched in terror as this woman barged in uninvited. The hate his men felt for her also drew into him. With this his eyes began to grow a bright blood red, almost glowing.
With each person he fed on, his own powers increased as his connection to the force increased. He took a deep breath, she edged closer to him. This woman didnt know him very well he assumed, more, and more he drew in, beckoning the force to do his bidding as the woman came closer. This woman threatened his family in his eyes, coming here, throwing her saber around like she was a force to be reckoned with. Of course, Romeo didnt know her either so it went both ways. It was time he did something he wanted to do for a long time.
His black saber in his right hand, the one without armor. His left leg stood in the front of the right one, and his left hand snapped, and shot forward, making a white flame shoot forward, the hottest it got.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"]

Could she tank the fire she guessed and sensed that he was about to throw? Maybe, but she felt no pressing need to find out. His move to draw strength from the bystanders was a good one, but it, too, took time. A gesture slammed one of his nearby armored guards into the space between them, intercepting the flame. Incineration cut short his scream. With nothing to hold, her telekinetic grip evaporated, and her focus centered itself on the aura of distortion around her. She hunched her left shoulder low and took the brunt of the leftover flame. Ash settled into her hair, fluttered across her field of vision, and she smelled the sweet char of burnt long pork.

A large room, this. She'd been walking, hadn't stopped. She was getting close to lightsabre range, though her blade had settled into a loose and less aggressive guard, her hilt down by her waist to the right.

 

[The Red of Sinner]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"Fair enough." He was indeed impressed, and was gaining respect for the woman, and her abilities. She was now saber length at him, he moved his right arm behind him, hold the saber away from his body, and his left hand was across in front him for a shield. His left leg stretched out more from behind him to give him leverage while his right leg bent to give him the more pivot maneuverability. Keeping balance and fighting with armor this heavy was a bit difficult, he wasnt used to heavy armor, but it wasnt hard to where he couldnt do it either.
His metal arm began to heat up as he began using a force ability called Convection, he wondered, would she know about this ability? Would she sense it? He did care, as his arm began to rise in heat nearing temperatures that could catch clothes on fire instantly. Romeo was more of a martial artist, but his swordsman skills were very honed in.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"]

If Ashin had given any thought to researching her opponent's combat record, she'd have challenged him to unarmed and unarmored combat in a ysalamir field -- no Force, no tech, no blades. There was something immensely satisfying about that kind of victory.

Air rippled around his arm -- like the distortion aura she boasted, but rising. Heat. He was heating up his own left arm's vambrace, trusting in whatever environmental underlay or specialized insulation kept the Convection from cooking his arm off. The sight of the heat drew her to a halt, just inside extreme lightsabre range. Left foot forward, stance loose and noncommittal, she kept her lightsabre hilt in both hands, not far from her belt, with her left shoulder angled toward him. Very basic stance, nothing firm or special.

She decided to operate on the assumption that very hot metal could eventually overcome his underlay if she made sure to occupy his attention fully. His ability to shunt the heat away from his flesh depended on moment-to-moment focus, but hot metal a quarter centimetre from your skin...hot metal took a long time or serious Force-related concentration to cool down, and she had no intention of letting him concentrate that hard.

She shuffle-stepped a touch closer and set her stance abruptly, sabre lashing out at his forward leg. Drawing motion from her connection with the floor, she aimed to crash her blade into the phrik-plated left side of his forward knee. Her aim wasn't to power through his armor or find a weak point. Instead, she meant to stress the knee joint, give it that little ping of distracting pain every time he moved. If she had brought a sword, or any weapon with proper momentum, and if this hit connected, he could have ripped an ACL right through his plate -- she'd opted to put that much drive-right-through strength into it, as much as she could summon at a moment's notice. That she was using a massless sabre blade instead of the sword Ravening had some effect on the attack, more than she'd like, but the sabre was still an instrument of her connection to the Force, and closely attuned to her ability to look at reality and say I want it that way. She could plausibly drive his knee sideways, regardless of the sabre's mass, if the hit connected.

 

[The Red of Sinner]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Sure enough, her attack connected , and his tendons ripped, and muscles tore. Romeo buckled to the grown roaring in pain. Now his leg was pretty much useless as his knee was in a tremendous amount of pain. His fare redden as he sucked in breath, but his eyes grew even brighter. Now he was mad, she made him kill one of his own men, and that was something he wouldnt take lightly. Some of his men here were fathers, and husbands. That was a single father, named Vajian Bunker. "What!? Do you want me to apologize?!" He looked up at her, "Is that what you want? Me, here on my knees, begging for forgiveness?! Cause I flirted with your wife? Cause I made a pass at you?" His hand turned into a fist. "Damn it woman! You didnt have to bring that man into this!" A tear dropped out of his eye. He fed on the pain in knee, throwing himself onto her, hoping to bring her down with him, and wrap his hand around her neck. He would also use telekinesis to hold her arms away from him, and he would squeeze her neck. "YOU KILLED AN INNOCENCE MAN! YOU KILLED A MAN THAT DID YOU NOTHING! I DID IT! NOT HIM! APOLOGIZE!" He roared in her face as he would attempt squeeze tighter.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="The Shadow King"] had about an inch on her, but the man was a twig. Even with his armor, he still didn't have the weight advantage by more than fifteen pounds or so. It seemed he was going for cinematic here, counting on a mass advantage he didn't have to bear her over, counting on telekinesis to move her arms out to the sides, counting on shock or overwhelming force or both to keep her from doing things while he cried and yelled and lost it.

Her hands tightened around her sabre, which was now pointed down, her arms trapped between them -- because she and her shield-aura were intent on resisting his telekinesis, and the force of his impact. Her right foot shifted back and out just before impact, an instinctive adjustment of her stance, though not by much. What mattered here wasn't just strength of stance, it was the other component of her specialty: Grounding. Binding herself inexorably to the core of the world, making herself immovable. When coupled with her full-body protective aura, the end effect was thus.

He got the grab, got his shout out, but might or might not have noticed that she didn't budge a centimetre. And that choking her wasn't actually working.

At which point she detached her left hand from the sabre, reached up, and grabbed his wrist where he was grabbing her. She didn't like to keep her Force protection up for more than a few seconds at a time when in combat, so as not to waste energy or put too much trust in it, but only a handful of seconds had passed. For the moment, she was good. It seemed he was taking the same route everyone had before him: No patience. Just raaage. Just trying to break her in the first moments. Oh, it was taxing, holding this shielding against two fire attacks and a physical assault, but that was a price she was willing to pay.

The personal nature of his diatribe washed over her like the fire. Between her wife's honor and her own rage, she didn't allow herself to care. Not right now. The first rule of her success in combat had always been to rely on others' monologues while resisting the temptation. She saved monologues for other times when she could.

Her left hand would latch onto his (presuming he was using his off hand, his left hand), curl over it, and twist it back, clockwise from her perspective, with her thumb against the back of his hand. She didn't just aim to wrench his grip off his neck. She aimed to crack that wrist like green wood splitting, while bringing her sabre up into his unarmored left armpit. In the process, her sabre switched phase, becoming half its length and blue, suitable for stabbing.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The knee was already a wreck; now she stepped back and deactivated her lightsabre as the scent of char filled her nostrils. Char, and humiliation.

"Absolutely pathetic." She deactivated her lightsabre. "That's the sort of performance I expect from someone who would rather rage than learn. Someone who thinks indignation makes him competent. Someone who thinks himself so far above, say, women, maybe even black women, that he doesn't need to watch his mouth -- that he can make whatever demeaning, degrading slurs he likes without repercussion. I trust that man is dead. I'd hate to see what might happen to a man like that in the big bad galaxy out there." She gestured at the ceiling, and the space beyond. Then she levelled her hand at Sin and made a fist. The air went still.

The throne behind him broke with a sound like a hammer on rock. A succession of sharp cracks left the throne in pieces no larger than the fist that had made them.

"This palace of yours isn't the real world, Your Majesty," she said. "Neither is this little pocket empire you've crafted. But that doesn't stop the real world from reaching in. I'm in the business of giving people what they deserve. Today I showed mercy. Don't make me come back."

She turned and left.