deercountry | Now go stand in the corner and think about what you've done (Semi-closed)

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Now go stand in the corner and think about what you've done (Semi-closed)

Who: Darth Maul

azurestar, and whoever else wants to watch and help but not get involved
What: Lance killed Reaper, Maul's boyfriend, and now Maul wants revenge!
When: Nov. 1st-3rd
Where:

Content Warnings: Property destruction, injuries (including biting)

Though the Gate may be a lantern location, when Lance spoke to Maul he wasn’t near enough to a lantern that could take him there faster than his feet. He’s been to Prufrock often enough by now to know the street that will take him directly to the gates of… well, The Gate. He’s on the main road leading to the massive colosseum, moving at a fast pace and in Trench appropriate garb. If Maul gets there first and doesn’t find him there, well…

Maul, full of fury and the desire for revenge, can feel the Dark Side closer to his grasp than it has been in a very long time. He marches off to where the Gate is at, and every so often along the streets, something will happen. A light shorts out, a trash can crunches down into a small ball, a window shatters. Just small signs that his rage is ready to overflow. Once he reaches Prufrock, he reaches out with the Dark Side and finds he can sense Lance’s mind close by. Once he has a lock on him, off he goes. If they don’t reach the Gate, well, Maul wasn’t joking when he said he’d be willing to raze the town to the ground in his grief and anger.

When he spots Lance up again, the street beneath the paladin’s feet will begin to tremble. "You!" Maul howls out, his double-bladed lightsaber being immediately ignited. He points one end at Lance. “Prepare to die!”

“...Shit.” Is Lance’s eloquent reply. Well, at least Maul announced himself instead of just jumping right in. This whole mess is too overwhelming for him to spare more than half a thought to Maul’s Hollywood worthy line. Under other circumstances he might laugh. But he’s got to focus here, the street seems sparse right now and Maul’s shout combined with the lightsaber seems to have some people scattering. Except some Hunters who seem interested to watch.

Blue-gold bright light curls off his arms like plasma arcs off the surface of the sun as he raises them to get ready to try to take Maul on. He turns his back to the direction of the gate so he can more easily try to maneuver in that direction and lead the man there. His empathic powers are overloaded by the pure hate and pain radiating off of Maul and that’s distracting, but he ignores it like he does so many other things every day.

“Give it your best shot,” he tries to gently goad to maintain Maul’s focus on him and him alone as he forms a plasma staff in one glowing hand.

The fight that starts at this point will rage on for three days straight as Maul does his utter best to gain revenge on Lance. The first few hours of it will take place in the Prufrock district and there will be a very large amount of property damage in the two main streets that lead up to the Gate from Maul using the Force to throw rooftops and other large objects he can grab with the Force at Lance, who will do his best to control their fall or if he can’t do that, incinerate them with his abilities. There's going to be at least one NPC shop owner who forever has Maul on his shit list after this because Maul causes his little store of magical knicknacks to completely collapse.

Lance will have given a couple characters heads up that he’s telling Maul to meet him at the Gate and those characters and others will work on keeping the path clear. During this time, there will be a lot of natives being displaced from their homes and businesses needing help to get away from the impromptu battlefield. Maul won’t care while Lance will do his utter best to contain his opponent from causing too much death or destruction.

Once Lance sees a clear path to the gate, he will full body grab Maul and use his powers to rocket them both over there after a little while of trying to lead him there slowly. The two of them will continue fighting in the arena where nobody can be hurt for the remaining 2.75 days until both are too exhausted to continue. As long as no one tries to interrupt the fight or take Lance’s side, Maul will ignore them, but anyone is welcome to simply watch and/or make pithy comments with others watching in the arena’s stands about how dramatic this whole business is. Lance will mostly be trying to stay alive and wear Maul down, trying to keep his wrath on him and nobody else.

Eventually, Maul will concede he can’t defeat Lance, and limp off to the disaster house where Reaper lives to go lick his wounds and recover his strength. He won’t be apologetic at all for the chaos he’s going to be causing. Lance will tend to his own wounds and get to fixing up Maul’s damages in Prufrock once he’s regained some strength, viewing them as his responsibility as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luz was in her room, slowly trying to calm herself since the last few days, when she heard the door open and close. By now she'd gotten to use to each of the boys' entrances by their footsteps that she knew who was who: Lance's heavy boots, Fern's small, practically silent step, Luca's soft thuds. This step was heavy, unapologetic and purposeful, and she could wager a guess at who's it was.

After all, she'd been waiting for this awhile.

Luz came downstairs to a worn out Darth Maul, freshly tired from his bout of destruction. There seemed to be np triumphant look on his face but nor was their scorn and wrath at a loss there. Darth Maul simply looked weary, and Luz could only imagine how much devastation was left in his wake. Quietly, she motioned to a sofa she'd already made up: soft enough to give refuge, but with enough give to withstand Maul's heavy body.

The girl softly exhaled, then finally spoke to her friend.

"Thirsty?"

Maul had gone three days without food or rest, driven by anger and mad grief at the loss of his mate. When all was said and done, both combatants had been still standing, something that irked him greatly. He'd always been terrible at getting revenge but he'd still had to try. With nothing left to give, he'd stumbled to the Disaster House, exhausted in both body and spirit.

He looked blearily down at Luz before nodding slowly, collapsing on the couch. The inner workings groaned under his weight but it still held him up well enough. He yawned, showing off a mouth full of sharp teeth, and it looked as if there was still a bit of fabric stuck between a couple of his fangs. Best not to ask how that had gotten there during the course of the fight.

"Parched," he said wearily. He blinked his eyes slowly, trying his best to stay awake for a little while longer.

Luz nodded, then walked into the kitchen and got a cup. Thanks to Fern she'd been able to make her own freshly squeezed orange juice, and she poured Darth Maul a cup now, also sliding a sandwich next to him.

She didn't say anything for a little while, only watched him eat and drink. When he was done, she finally looked him square in the eye.

"Did you accomplish what you mean to do?"

Despite his utter exhaustion, his body still reminded him that food was a priority considering the last time he'd eaten something had been almost four days ago. He devoured the sandwich with all the manners of a starving alligator, tearing into it and chomping large sections of it down, hardly chewing the bites. After he'd swallowed almost the whole thing, he felt revitalized enough to answer Luz's question.

"No," he said sourly, not even hiding the fact he was sulking like a child who had lost a championship soccer game. "That little maggot Lance is still drawing breath." So at least he hadn't murdered him even with all of the Sith Lord's rage and utter hatred powering him.

Luz sighed. She made herself some hot chocolate and was sipping it gently, swirling the chocolate with her spoon, looking into it a moment before turning to Darth Maul.

"How many places were demolished, with your attempt to kill him? How many people were hurt, do you think, while the fight was going on? Did you see any of them getting rescued? Or maybe in the moment, you didn't really care. And in the end, you didn't even succeed."

Luz put her cup down. "I need to know something. I know you care about Reaper, I'd be blind if I didn't. But you also know that if we die, we come back. It takes a little time, but it happens. So why was it so important to kill Lance?"

Maul shrugged, nonplussed at the thought of how much destruction and chaos that had surrounded the fight as he'd made his way towards the Gate. "My empathy is very limited as you well know. Others can care about people they don't know well and perfect strangers all they like. For me, it is limited to those I am close with." That was just how Maul worked. His friends were attempting to get him to a point where he could care about all life but he wasn't there and possibly never would be. He was just too stunted emotionally that way.

"We don't know what lasting effects come from killing someone here. There hasn't been a big enough sample size of dead Sleepers for that and it means we can't take anything for granted. And--" He paused, a muscle tightening in his jaw. "--I killed someone in Deerington and he never revived. I never got the chance to apologize or make up for what I had done to him." Ben's lasting death had hit Maul hard, but if there was one good thing that came about from it, it was the fact he'd felt true remorse for the first time when it had happened. "So there is no guarantee that just because someone has revived before that they will do so again. Losing Reaper would devastate me and I couldn't let that insignificant little speck, sitting there and gloating about what he'd done on the network, just get off scot-free. It was the only way I knew how to deal with it all."

Was it healthy or at all a good way of dealing with things? No. But it was very much the way Maul would choose to channel his grief and rage. All things considered, it had been a lot less worse than it could have been.

"So I guess that means you have to let the heroes worry about everyone else. The Usagi's and the Midoriya's of this world. That's a lot to lay on them, Darth Maul, especially because we don't know what else is coming for us. You never know when we're going to need all hands on deck."

And Luz sighed, because she couldn't understand it. She couldn't NOT care about people who were in the crossfire, that one moment were just walking around and the next were flattened by something falling on them because of someone else's vendetta.

Because one day, Darth Maul might piss off the wrong person and that would result in HIS death.

"I'm sorry that happened. There was a lot of unnecessary death that happened when your mind got all warped. But I understood that it wasn't you Maul, even when you were choking me. That place was taking advantage of what you were, and it used you as a tool. But you're free from that now.

And so is LANCE. That recording he did was because of the Arena influence. He may have not have had regrets about killing Reaper, because they already have a history, but the person in that recording? He was the same as you when you killed Varian, or set Fern on fire or killed Margot. The only difference was that you didn't regret half of it because deaths made you forget how important it was. Lance had to see himself succumb to this place's hold on him. I can tell that's something he's going to have to deal with on his own."

That was probably why his Omen recorded it without his knowledge. It was a creepy thought, but one that Luz knew must have been mortifying anyway. Luz couldn't even imagine seeing herself reflected by her worst feelings for all to see. That was a lot.

In any case, she sits back down next to him. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"That's their choice to make. They could always be a little selfish and stop being martyrs that run around trying to fix every problem that crops up in this place no matter how big or small instead of burning themselves out doing just that. But they won't." Maul's voice was blunt and harsh. He just couldn't be asked to care about his effect on people in this place when he was this tired. The lasting damage he'd caused to the city and its inhabitants was the furthest thing from his mind.

"So maybe he'll regret killing Reaper or at least have to deal with seeing that ugly side of himself? Good for him. Because I'm most certainly not going to feel the same way about my attempt to kill him again." 'Again' because Maul had already killed Lance once in Deerington, though there had been little malice in the action then. He simply couldn't be bothered to act when Lance was in trouble, not so soon after being branded as a monster in the post by Ironwood and Glitch, and instead just gave him a mercy kill rather than acting.

He leaned back into the couch, his yellow eyes closing for a moment. "Just a little banged up." Lance hadn't been aiming to really hurt Maul all that much, though he did have a few scrapes, bruises, and burns from going twenty rounds with the Voltron paladin.

"No. They won't. And I wouldn't either. Its easier to have a fight when you ignore everything else around you, but those people have a right to live too. Why do we get to take it away just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? By that logic any one of us could die in an instant. Me, you and all the things you've worked for. Does that mean you just let it happen?"

Luz was grateful to have magic, but that didn't mean she'd use it without any sense of appreciating the things around her. Of course it was harder to bother with people not involved in what she was doing, but what good could come out of devaluing everyone else around you?

"No, you won't. You won't regret trying to kill him at all. But the same could be said about any of his friends. Shiro could come after you, or any other person that wanted to make suer Lance was OK. So you die, or they do, and someone else gets angry and its just one big killing spree. We all put each others' eyes out and die and feel justified, if we're lucky."

She looked down at the tea she was serving him, and poured herself a cup.

"But you know I don't feel that way. If I did...I would have hated you. You almost killed Fern. You DID kill Varian, then Margot, and later you almost killed ME. By all right, I should hate you. I should want you dead for being a destructive monster that never seems to care about any of the lives that you snuff out in your path."

She stared into the cup. Margot had hated him, she remembered that. Luz couldn't have ever explained to her sister why she had not hated Darth Maul the same way, and in the end, she never got to anyway. She did see the mob of people who Darth Maul had angered, and understood that anger. For a moment, anyway.

"And I don't. Because I know it isn't all you are. That's what your Master wanted you to be: a tool. A harbinger of chaos. And I know you're more than that."

Maul listened to Luz and tried to think of counterarguments to her words. But it was difficult when he was so fried emotionally, physically, and mentally. "I am too damn tired right now to have talks about morality," Maul said in a surly tone, stifling another yawn that threatened to worm its way out of his mouth. "The power to kill someone is one of the greatest a person can possess and I have never had a reason to rein it in or put it in check yet. I just don't feel the need to."

If he ever did get that far, Maul would be well on his way to the redemption he was currently seeking, but he just wasn't ready to look that critically at his own actions yet. Maul had a very strong Id and just so often gave into what he wanted that he really had no concept of moderation. He was still relying on his friends for that.

It was one thing to tell people himself about what he'd felt like as his master had completely depersonalized him and turned him into more of a living weapon than a sentient creature with feelings and his own mind, but to hear his own words echoed back at him from one of his friends was more than Maul could really stand right now. He sighed deeply and rubbed at one of his temple horns as if he was getting a headache. "You know that. I know that. But it's still hard to remember it some days." Sometimes, it was so easy to fall into old patterns and Maul just couldn't remember how to be the better person.

"Well, you did try to kill someone, and you're not dead yourself, so it's probably taken a lot out of you."

Luz was pretty sure she was never going to understand why it was so prized to kill someone. Luz had done it herself and had only felt horror in its wake, mostly because she had the fear of it being a thing she'd just do instead of trying other ways. Luz had always cherished life, and the idea of snuffing it out of someone, even if said people were horrid to the core, it was a lot to put on the conscience. She was sure she'd never be able to explain that to Darth Maul, that doing it had made her wonder if she'd be putting her soul in jeopardy every time it happened.

"You were acting irrationally, from someone else's standpoint. It was an act of passion, to strike out a someone you care so much about. It blinded you."

Luz lowered her eyes. "I wouldn't have wanted to attack Lance. I know where he's coming from, a little, and I can't imagine how it must feel to have someone that tortured and killed him still moving around like it never happened. The people that tortured me back in Deerington, I made sure they...that they met their ends quickly. It was cold and dark, but I knew I wouldn't have had a chance if I let them continue on to do the same thing to others. The messed up thing is that they take up mind space in my head, they have since. So for Lance, it must have been different, and gnawed at him until the Arena compelled him to fight the monster in his nightmares."

She sighed. "And even knowing all of that stuff, I would have probably done what YOU did too. Not so much with the smashing of buildings and casual injuring of onlookers, but. Revenge for the one I loved. I understand that feeling."

Maul listened and he nodded at what he heard from Luz. She clearly didn’t approve of what he’d done but she also wasn’t about to completely condemn him for the course of action he’d chosen to take. “You’ve already got much more wisdom than I did when I was the same age as you.” A high compliment from Maul no matter what circumstances they were given under. “I’m sure that will only continue to grow.”

He yawned and laid down on the couch, shifting to put a pillow beneath his head. With his horns, he was bound to tear it into pieces by the time he woke back up, but with his level of exhaustion he needed a bit of fluffy comfort instead of just using his arm as he was warranted to do when sleeping alone. “I am glad you understand both sides. That is something I cannot yet do.”

Maul’s stubborn insistence on holding to the ideas he’d known for so long make him very inflexible and rigid, unable to fully take in anything new that entered his mind. It was just another on top of the pile of things he found himself needing to work on.

"It's the trauma that does it," Luz said, only a third joking. "You think you know how you feel about things, what your view was, and then you meet all these new people and all of a sudden you're thrown into your worst nightmares. You have no choice but to think about everything you've been and put it into perspective."

Family. Loss. Sadness. Joy. Pain. Any of those had one had a meaning Luz thought she understood, and then Deerington had come and intensified ALL of them.

"If there's something I learned in all of my months in that place, it's that EVERYONE has a side. People just think it's easier if 'right' and 'wrong' are the only options. There's so much more to everything, to everyone. That's the part of me that understands why you attacked Lance. I wouldn't have done it because Lance has his side, but I think if, say, someone had hurt Varian or Fern or Luca, what would I do? I wanna protect them, with everything I can. It wouldn't be me if I didn't."

"Mmmm-hhmmmm," Maul said, agreeing with her. "At least you've learned that at the beginning of your life, so the lesson will stick for the rest of it. I learn slowly and stubbornly and most people do not give me a large amount of leeway given I am already an adult." Granted, that was only in body and partially in mind, given Maul's emotional maturity level was about on the same one as that of a a seven year old.

He yawned once more, now ready to sleep. "I do try but there are times when I can only react as I know how to do. This was one of them." His eyes shut and he dozed off near immediately, curling up on the couch as he went into a deep, dreamless sleep. Best just to put a blanket on him and leave him there. He'd be asleep for a full twenty-four hours given how long he'd been up and how much energy he'd expended.

"People also judge by appearances sometimes, and you look pretty scary," Luz added. She didn't think much of people who judged others on appearances, but she couldn't act like that wasn't a factor. It had been for her too: if she so happened to look guilty and she was smelled within a length of something back on Earth, she was usually blamed for it. "But you know as well as I do that new people are coming here every month. You'll be able to show new aspects of yourself to others more willing to give you a chance. I'll bet they have their own complicated stories anyway."

Luz nodded here. "Things are complicated. And hopefully, if Lance and him ever meet again, they can talk and settle things in a less, uh, death arena kind of way. That'll just be better for everyone involved."

She let him sleep and saw that the pillow was going to be ripped to shreds and shrugged. Varian would just go and get a new one, or several new ones, later. Things in their house tended to get messed up pretty easily to begin with.

When the destruction gets too out of hand, Midoriya is called away from the neighboring district of Crenshaw for support. The fastest way there is leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Midoriya--in his hero costume as Deku--is surrounded by the sparking energy of One For All as he comes to a stop on a nearby building.

Glass litters the streets. Dust kicks up and turns the remaining lunar orbs a sickly yellow. There's a great rumble and crash of a structure being torn apart. Something large hurtles through the smoke. The roof splinters as it flies through the air, dropping tiles everywhere. Roofs aren't built to be thrown. One large piece breaks off and hurtles towards a row of townhouses. He jumps up, dodging debris, and aims a downward roundhouse kick to redirect it.

"ST. LOUIS SMASH!!!"

The kickback mechanism of his Iron Soles delivers a second helping of his super strength and helps shatter it. The pieces fall harmlessly onto the street.

He lands and quickly picks out where most of the destruction is coming from. One of the combatants (Lance?!) is attempting to lead the fight towards the Gate. The other is using telekinesis. Flying debris crashes all along the street. Midoriya dodges, narrowly avoiding getting flattened by another large chunk, a strained expression on his face. Even if he could get close, there were--

Screams. They draw him like a moth to a flame. They yank all his senses into a single-minded rush as he turns. Before he can think, he's running towards them instead.

Ruby wasn't about to miss out on Trench's first big old sleeper on sleeper brawl. Her heart was heavy for both Lance and Maul's situations respectfully but she didn't want the people around town to suffer needlessly if she could help it. Maul wasn't exactly known to do things with an ounce of subtlety and the bits of roof tops flying around was just proof of that. She was going to do damage control the best she could and hope that Maul and Lance could work this out in their own way.

She Deku smash through one of the pieces and her silver eye goes wide with wonder- She had seen his powers in use once before but it was definitely an amazing sight. Unfortunately there was more to be done and she quickly used her semblance to break up into slushy frost that resembled flower petals and rushed along toward anyone in the line of fire. When the frost touched them they two would break apart into the same mass of speed until they were out of harms way at which point anyone Ruby had been carrying along with herself would reform back into their normal selves.

She threw Deku a thumbs up and smiled.

"Care for a team up? Feel like we'll get more accomplished."

Midoriya has no context for the fight, only that one of them is trying to lead the other towards the indestructible Gate arena amidst flying rubble and blinding flashes of light. That seems to be the best they can do for now, and he and Ruby need to do the best they can right here.

Needless to say, he's excited to see her.

"Rose-san! Perfect!!"

Amazing, really. Her power is well-suited for rescue operations, mobility, evasion... But there's no time to fanboy about it. They have their work cut out for them. All Midoriya can do is put his training into practice. Establish a line, get people behind it, hold it. And they need a triage station, even if it's just a tarp on the ground, and transport for those who couldn't move... He has no doubt he'd find injured victims closer to the source of the destruction. This is a mess.

But, it is rather like his Provisional Hero License exam. It's familiar.

"That building over there should provide cover." He points to a complex much larger than anything he's seeing thrown. "Tell anyone who can move to go to Crenshaw District. It's too dangerous for any bystanders to be watching."

In Deerington, his powers had severe limits on how much energy his body could use to fuel these abilities. And when he fought in the arena with others and with monsters during bloodsport, he'd started to notice those limits are not the same and he has no idea where his limit lies now. In this battle, he's paced himself as best he can, but Maul is far more skilled and his only advantage is his powers.

So if those powers fail him at any point, he'll probably die. That's actually not an outcome that particularly bothers him except for the fact that he also has people who would be upset. His sense of self worth may be low but he's not ignorant of that fact at all. So where does it end? Reaper did what he did to him because the dark magic of the dome drove him to kill Moira, who was also Lance's friend. And now he's killed Reaper and Maul wants to kill him.

For a long time, Lance wasn't just afraid of being near Reaper, he was afraid of becoming him. It didn't take long for him to figure out there's apparently similarities between himself and who Reaper used to be, the man Moira knew. And that fact has terrified him more than anything. Above all else, he didn't want to be like Reaper, so he kept everything that Reaper did to himself and never tried to get even, though there were times when he felt close to pushed to it.

Once it finally happened, it was too much for him to mentally handle. He still hasn't fully processed it, but years of being tempered by war and torment have allowed him the ability to zero in on crucial facts so he can take action in the face of adversity, and in this case one thing is clear: Maul is a threat to everyone so he has to fight him, but if he lets Maul kill him, the cycle just continues and if he kills Maul, the cycle continues. And that's the only thing mentally sustaining him by this point.

Physically, it appears his body is practically a nuclear reactor and he can draw more strength from the moon at night as a Paleblood. But even with that, he's still human. He may be able to keep putting out energy constructs and blasts, but his muscles are tired, he's lost blood and he's injured. His brain still requires sleep at some point to function and it already doesn't function that well as it is. His only comfort is that when he looks at Maul in his fighting stance across from him, the man looks at least just as ragged.

"Dude, this's gotta end at some point." His voice is hoarse and his breathing irregular but not enough to interrupt his words. His hands glow and he brings one up to his latest wound on his arm from a chunk of debris he didn't manage to block, to seal it off with heat. Though he was not aiming to kill Maul, he's certainly aimed to try and slow him down somehow with blasts and energy blades aimed at non-vital areas where he could find openings in between shielding. Even if they hit, clearly the guy is still standing.

Maul hadn't expected this to be an easy battle. He's fought Lance before and knows the paladin is no pushover, even if he doesn't possess the same level of skill that Maul himself has when wielding weapons. What he hadn't counted on was the man's powers being near limitless and able to keep him going for this long either.

Maul is exhausted. He's fought for days now without food or rest. The Dark Side of the Force combined with his anger, hate, and rage has helped sustain him for some time now but even that has its limits. The only reason he's standing upright is sheer power of will at this point. He simply refuses to quit at this point. Though he's still got his lightsaber out and has still been throwing chunks of whatever is nearby to wound Lance, his body is on the final dregs of his prodigious strength. His vision is starting to go a little fuzzy at the edges and his muscles are starting to shake. But he won't stop, not for any reason.

"Never," he growls out stubbornly, shaking his head. "It ends when you are dead or I am." With that, he picks up another large chunk of rock broken off from some ancient pillar that had fallen in the arena long ago, and sends it flying at Lance.

Though his body can generate energy, he needs to be able to focus to make that energy into anything useful, and especially to keep that energy under control and not cause harm to himself. No food or sleep for three days and constantly pushing his body to survive Maul's attacks is ultimately why he's got a number of injuries now. On the second day, he was starting to fumble and by today he's really straining and has even harmed himself internally with his own powers becoming unrefined and reckless.

If he's not careful, he could lose control in an unpredictable way he doesn't want to imagine. His breathing is strained and ragged and he coughs wetly as Maul stubbornly declares he won't stop. Then the rock is coming at him and he cusses under his breath. His hands and arms glow and he tries to just incinerate it, but he's not fast enough. The boulder gets blasted into a shower of smaller rocks, but still large enough to hurt him badly.

With no other choice, he ignites the energy in his cells through his body to light himself up and rocket himself out of the path of the shower. When he comes to a halt, he stumbles to his knees and coughs again, dark red almost black blood dripping from his lips in the late afternoon sun. He heaves a couple ragged breaths and pushes himself back up, staring hard at Maul.

"And then what? I kill you and Reaper comes after me and it happens all over again. You kill me and make more enemies, maybe someone kills you for it. And then Reaper goes after them and on and on and on. Where does it end?"

On that last hoarse question, he lets out blinding light from his hands in a quick flash to disorient Maul. That's the best he can do right now with how tired he is. Anything more might do more damage than he wants to both of them.

Edited 2021-11-14 02:40 (UTC)

Rather than having some great epiphany, because he's utterly stubborn to a fault and perhaps a little insane from blood corruption at this point, Maul already has a ready answer. His yellow eyes gleam and he bares his sharp teeth in an unhinged grin. "You are learning a hard lesson from the Dark Side. It never ends."

If Maul was more sharp, he'd be able to anticipate the blinding flash of light that Lance sends his way. But after so many days his mind is getting a little fuzzy and he can't react as fast. A bunch of bright white stars flash in front of his eyes and he ends up temporarily blind, dropping his lightsaber in surprise. He blinks madly, trying to clear his vision.

Still blind, he holds out one hand, summoning the Dark Side to him. It takes a little more time in channeling it given Maul's exhaustion. But when he does find it, he reaches out, trying to pull Lance into his grasp by yanking on the nearest lifeform he can sense in the arena and using telekinesis on it. He hopes there's not a stray bird or rat lying about or he's going to look very foolish in a minute.

Frankly, he's not sure what he's going to do with Lance once he's got him within his grasp. It's not like he's got enough strength or energy left to beat him to death with his bare hands, tempting as the idea might be. Maybe he'll just knock him about the head a few times and take out five of Lance's remaining braincells.

Somehow he's not surprised. Fighting with a guy for three days pretty much dulls you to the idea that he's gonna suddenly see logic. And he's familiar enough with the dynamics of dark and light side in Maul's world that his only reaction is a heavy sigh of "Oh, brother."

And when he blinds Maul, he… fumbles. He isn't strategic right now, his mind is sluggish, his body running on fumes by now. Though he can generate energy, his powers still rely on caloric and nutritional intake to fuel the initial ignition and stabilize the chemical reactions. He's exhausted and hungry and keeps hurting himself just trying to defend. So he didn't have a follow up action in mind.

But it looks like there's no time to come up with one as Maul grabs him with the force. Shit, he doesn't know if he has enough strength to resist, everything hurts. He's yanked up and forward and he puts both hands out to try and create a counter inertia with energy from his hands. But it's not focused and refined and he ends up getting too close to Maul to safely do that without killing him, so he lets go of it.

Then a burst of panicked inspiration hits him and he removes the glove off of one hand and reaches out to try and touch one of Maul's horns or his neck, or anywhere exposed. He'll be taking physical pain, and he knows Maul is definitely physically hurting, but more importantly he may dull the emotional pain enough to get him to lose that fury that's surely the only thing that's keeping him standing.

Maul doesn't even notice the hand resting on his neck at first. Not until his hatred and anger start to feel just a little more fuzzy and indistinct. "What--?" He isn't sure what's happening but he's in tune enough with his own emotions right now to understand that the way they're draining away and becoming more distant. He narrows his eyes at Lance, sure this is his fault somehow but his mind can't connect the dots with how weary he's become.

He shakes his head back and forth, trying to hold onto what has sustained him for this entire battle. "I won't let this just end! I'm going to destroy you!" He shakes Lance back and forth like a rag doll, hard enough to make his teeth clack in his head and rattle his bones. But he doesn't raise his claws to slash his throat or search for his lightsaber to stab him through the chest with. Maul is getting tired. His fury really has been the only thing keeping him standing on his feet and now that it's not so easy to find motivation to end Lance's life the way he's been wanting to this whole time.

The drawback of being able to take physical pain and dull emotional pain (temporarily) is that he takes it on himself. He has to grit his teeth at all that rage, and after all he's been through recently it adds to his corruption levels. Blood leaks out of his eyes again and his canines become sharp, visible where he's grimacing. But he is an old hand at coping with this sort of thing and he manages to hold on.

He doesn't say anything in response to Maul's frustration, not at first. When he takes on people's emotions, it's easier for him to dissect them because it's not his experience. There's not just rage, there's pain under there, sorrow, fear, grief. All the feelings that anger protects us from. He lets go so that he doesn't take too much of that, "Just… let yourself feel… what's behind all your rage. Let go."

The way he says it, it's clear he's not talking about letting go of him. Though, that would be nice…

Edited 2021-12-05 04:58 (UTC)

Maul shakes his head, stubbornly refusing to heed Lance's words. But no matter what he tries, he can't hold onto emotions that are being taken out of him and slowly drained away. Behind all his anger and rage is sharp sadness and grief, knowing he's lost someone else that he loves and that he was helpless to stop the death of despite all his power. When he finally stops trying to run away from them, he's forced to face them head on. Finally forced to face them, Maul's anger breaks down enough that his sorrow comes to the forefront instead.

Exhaustion begins to overwhelm Maul and he knows that he can't continue this any further. He's reached his limits, the breaking point where he can't do anything else because he's mentally and physically gone to the brink. It's then that he remembers he's still holding onto Lance. His head whips to the side and he bites down on Lance's hand hard enough to break the skin and bring blood to the surface with his sharp teeth. It's not the first time Maul's done such a thing when he's reached his limits, so unable to continue that all he can do is bite someone like a wild animal.

Then with a frustrated snarl, Maul throws Lance to the ground hard enough to send him skidding through the dirt and dust that made up the Arena, just one last moment of petulance and anger getting itself out. His strength completely spent, Maul collapses to his knees, too tired to continue on for any longer.

"It's not fair," he says softly, more to himself than to Lance. "Why can I never gain revenge for those that I love?" Maul was really terrible at the business of revenge. Most times he's tried in his life, it's cost him far more than it ever should have, taking and taking without ever leaving him satisfied with what he'd done. Just ask Obi-Wan how unhappy Maul has been in his lifelong quest to gain revenge on the Jedi.

The bite is a surprise initially, but pretty in line with what he'd expect from someone like Maul. He's already in so much pain all over that he doesn't even cry out, but he does grit his teeth and grunt against it. He's been bitten by animals and he knows not to try and jerk his hand away, he stays still until Maul finishes his last angry act of defiance and throws him.

He bounces and skids a couple feet and coughs up more blood. He's done that enough times by now that he's pretty sure he's in some danger of suffocating on his internal bleeding. His breaths are wet sounding and shallow as he lies there a moment and then forces himself to get up onto his knees. The motion is slow and jerky, but he's not sure of Maul is really done or not, he wants to be ready.

"…I don't know."

It's all he can really say in that moment, though he probably shouldn't say anything. He doesn't like Maul, the man is crazy and in his opinion, really sucks at the whole self betterment thing, but you don't just empathically take away a man's anger and directly feel his pain and shrug it off. That anger is intense, he's still bleeding from his eyes and he can feel his canines newly elongated in his mouth as he moves his tongue around to collect blood and spit it out again. But it's not his anger, he knows that… still, it's a lot to carry, and he's shaking with it.

Maul can hear Lance's wet, rasping breathing and he can only hope the paladin drops dead before he's able to receive adequate care. He's done a lot of damage even if he wasn't able kill him like the Sith Lord had so desperately wanted to. A small amount of blood from biting Lance gets swallowed down, healing the tiniest amount of Maul's injuries. He forces his prosthetics to make him stand up, his lower half managing to remain still even while his upper half is shaking with the effort of Maul forcing himself to move even after all that battling.

"Get out of here before I regain enough of myself to want to snap your neck again," Maul warns. His anger and pain will return eventually, no matter how much Lance has managed take into himself. They always do. Maul's been living with those black emotions since he was a young teen. They won't disappear for good. Yet muted as they are right now, all he can do is feel disappointment in himself that he wasn't able to finish what he'd started.

Well, at least a neck snap is quick and easy, Lance thinks to himself exhaustedly, angrily. But not his anger, nope. But also it's a lot and it's like it takes shape outside of his main stream of consciousness and becomes a voice of its own only he can hear. He grits his teeth and his head tilts against it like he's resisting a gust of wind. He sounds tense and barely controlled but also like he's on the verge of passing out.

"…That's fair."

Probably best to just get out now, and fast. He's a ball of internal chaos but he finds the strength to summon his omen. It bursts from him in a cloud of smoke in the form of a mystical looking coyote. Then the coyote grows in size just enough to let Lance ride it, crouching low so Lance can get on. He can barely see or think, but his last thought is of Hunk and Shiro, so the Omen runs off to find whichever he can first to get him help because he's definitely not doing great.

Vira-Lorr, for her part, was almost at the point where she had given up trying to stop these incidents where Maul was concerned. Was she happy to hear about Reaper? Absolutely not, and she'd had to make note to find him when he was in his squid state to make sure he was safe. She did understand why Lance had issues with the man, but once events bubbled up the way that they did, it never ended well and Maul was one of the least forgiving when it came to a death caused by the events of the nightmare. Intervening was both futile... and worse, no longer possible. She'd looked into the future, and every time she'd gotten close, it had not ended well. She just wasn't able to bring the kind of arms to bear to intervene.

So, for the time being, she was along the sides of the street as the two of them were trying very hard to destroy each other, keeping as much a distance as she could while shouting "Get into the Gate! Away from others!" If they were going to try and kill each other, the least they could do was not involve the locals. She moved to pick up an overturned cart with an apologetic and worried look in her eyes, whispering to them to get their things and people inside. Out of sight.

Lance is doing his best not to destroy Maul or anything/anyone else. As a large piece of building is flung at him, he curses because there's a bystander frozen on a stoop in the path of it should he dodge. So he hastily creates an energy dome over himself and the frozen person, and keeps it raised even after the building piece has been neutralized into nothing so that he can turn to address them.

"You need to go!" Then he hears Vira's voice yelling at them and he makes a frustrated sound, glaring at Maul and addressing Vira but also his opponent because this is ridiculous, "That was the plan but I guess Darth Douchebag couldn't wait five minutes to get there."

Maul has a very unhinged look on his face and is about fifteen minutes past the point of losing it completely, so he's long past caring about anyone who might be caught in the crossfire if he ever did to begin with. He breaks off part of a chimney off the nearest roof and throws it at Lance with the Force.

Maul is completely and utterly without care for any of the potential victims that might be in his way. "There's more objects out here I can use to take my revenge upon you," he says. Then he focuses on the street and with a tremendous Crack! the ground trembles and begins to cave in as he uses the Force to collapse the street in on itself heading towards where Lance is at right now. That's definitely going to cause more than a few people to end up getting hurt if he and Vira-Lorr don't move fast.

Vira-Lorr swore in a tongue none of them had heard before. It took something of an effort to cause her to expressly use her native tongue, but the situation sort of warranted it. "Keep angling towards the Gate, Lance! You two can fight this out there!" She wasn't about to stop the fight. For one, she couldn't. She couldn't summon boulders or stone walls to slow their rage, or hurl lightning. Those days were behind her. For another, she had a very good idea why Maul was in this state, and he wasn't going to calm down. "There'll be plenty for you to take out on each other!"

For her part, though, while she couldn't stop them, she could grab a pair of frozen younglings, rooted in place by fear. Hauling them up under her arms she started hustling, calling out to the locals. "Come on! Get clear for now! Once they're in the Gate, this will resolve itself!" Of course, getting everyone out of the way was a process.

Lance yelps when the ground starts to cave in and he leaps backwards into the air and grabs the frozen person behind him. Then he uses his power to rocket them both over to Vira-Lorr, stumbling to a halt and placing them in her care before rocketing away from them and towards Maul.

His hands light up and whips of energy form in both hands, both of which he arcs up from down low the moment he is in Maul's space. They're designed to startle him and get him to stumble backwards, if they hit, they'll cause bad burns, but nothing fatal.

But the street crumbling in the middle disrupts the foundation of a nearby building that may have people still inside, it starts to shudder, and his attention is pulled to it. Quickly, he creates a solid construct of energy shielding to try and stabilize it.

"Just get the area clear and I can get us there in like two seconds, Vira!" Easier said than done, but that's what has to happen.

Maul’s fury is unending and unyielding, fueled by his raw grief and rage. He is bound to continue this heedless of who gets in the way. He glances at Vira-Lorr for only a brief moment before his focus was returns to Lance. The two of them can do whatever they wanted to try and herd him to the Gate. Innocent people that got in the way until then he’ll merely consider as being collateral damage, something he won’t care about or consider until long after the fight is over, if ever.

He’ll let the “good people” of this town worry about others and continue to serve his own purposes in the meantime.

When Lance throws the whips of light his way, Maul avoids one but instinctively brings up an arm to avoid the other from lashing him across the face. The swipe across his left forearm leaves a deep burn and it hurts something fierce. But Maul has fought through worse injuries than that in his time and it'll take far more to get him to stop than only that.

In retaliation, Maul looks at the nearby ground floor window of that unstable building. Spiderweb cracks began to appear in it, the splintering sounds starting off quietly and growing louder until the entire window bursts with a shriek. The bits of glass never even hit the ground, instead hovering there in the air with the power of the Force, before he glances at Lance and sends the shard speeding in his direction, trying to lacerate the man. He wants to see him bleed.

"Right!" She yanked her gunblade out, flipping it to the gun side and popping a flare into it. Pointing it at an angle, she fired. It caused the flare to go off, but not next to them. Instead, it was back, away from the Gate. Her voice carried above the din of the commotion. "Quickly! All of you, get to the flare light, and get the town hunters that way. Clear the way!"

She could only grab the frozen people immediately next to her, to race out of the way. She wasn't going to engage Maul, not when he was like this. She'd learned that when he entered this state, his mind was essentially a lost cause. Pure emotion had its uses, but there was no real reasoning with him.

"We'll clear the square, just get moving, Lance, Maul!" She'd worry about the aftershocks for this fight later.

The glass that is flung at him startles him and causes him to lose his focus on keeping the building from collapsing. It takes all of his concentration to keep just the right balance of energy, plasma and movement of particles to repel the building instead of incinerate it. He was only going to be able to do that for a split moment, but apparently it was enough, as two people run out of it right before it falls.

Then he barely has time to get out of the way of the worst of the glass. One shard slices across his neck. It seems like it misses his jugular by a hair and there is certainly blood.

The people who escaped the building run towards Vira and follow her instructions. Lance looks behind himself to see the path to the gate's status. Then he figures the least he can do is get them closer. So he uses the dust that was kicked up from the fallen building as cover to get in close to Maul and try to grab hold of him from behind.

Every time Lance gets hurt, there's a brief pause from Maul as he feels the pain he's causing, before he works through it and goes on trying to cause the young man more. It's during one of these moments that he loses sight of Lance as the dust grows too thick for him to see. He's just about to pull one of his lightsabers out so that he can scan the area when he feels hands upon him.

Maul yowls in rage as Lance grabs him, trying to loosen his hold so that he can turn around, and rip his throat out. Before he can make another attempt, he suddenly feels himself moving, and much faster than he ever could on his own. There's a distinct feeling of vertigo as he speeds along.

Vira-Lorr took advantage of the moment. She could see the shadows of two, or one figure within the dust cloud but she couldn't entirely pin it down. That wasn't important. She wasn't interfering in this fight. All that she needed to do was make sure the focus was on getting out of the populated area, and keep the people away.

Seeing a smaller blur of black running through the dust, she raced up and grabbed it. there was a child-like squack and she was running away, calling out "The road is clear! Make your move!"

Oh it looks like the road is indeed clear all the way to the gate. Imagine that. He'll have to thank Vira later, for now he keeps going all the way there and digs his heels in on the dirt of the colosseum to come to a halt.

He may have… blasted a hole through the doors to get here, but he's going to just call it necessary and fix it later, along with everything else.

As he stops, he spins to toss Maul as far from him as he can, so he can get his bearings. His eyes flick to the spot he'd killed Reaper and is relieved to see Varian removed the… remains.

Maul struggles in Lance's grasp but there's no escaping him, not until they reach the Gate and Lance throws him off to the side. There's one dizzying moment more of vertigo before Maul regains his sense of stability.

Maul gets tossed pretty far but his skills are good enough so that he uses the momentum to flip over and use his right hand and legs to skid to a halt while his left one still holds onto his lightsaber. He's barely noticed the change of venue except to note that there are less objects here with which he can inflict pain upon Lance. Also, there are no people here save for a few idiots who are watching from the highest parts of the stands where they (likely) won't get hurt.

Maul straightens up, his teeth bared in a snarl at Lance. "This is it. No more distractions, no more holding back. Now you die or I die trying to destroy you completely." Then with a battle roar sure to make the hair on the back of anyone's neck who heard it stand on end, Maul charges Lance.

Vira-Lorr finally had the two of htem out of the way, finally was glad to see them parted from the rest of the town so they didn't cause anymore trouble. As she heard the shouts and war cries going on within the Gate, she made sure everyone around her was ok before going to investigate.

She'd be a while in coming in, likely after the fireworks were long over, but she was glad at least that this part was done.

(OOC: You guys can continue to duke it out if you want, but Vira-Lorr probably will take time to get in, until near the end of the fighting I'd think, and if you already have a fight thread I don't want you to feel like you have to duplicate it.)

Lance heaves a few breaths, trying to catch his breath quick and reorient himself. He's got some injuries from the tussle in the streets but nothing he can't keep fighting through. Trying to defend himself and other people was no easy task, and the cause for most of his hurts, so… at least on that front he has to agree with Maul. No more distractions is good.

"Think I'll go for door number three." Is all he says as he takes a defensive stance, but the situation is so grave that he doesn't spare a moment to mentally high five himself for that sweet line.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now go stand in the corner and think about what you've done (Semi-closed)

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Towards the end of Day 3 in The Arena

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seems like a good place to wrap!