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

[survivalthroughhate]

Who: Darth Maul survivalthroughhhate, Lance 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.

Comments

[azurestar]

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.

[survivalthroughhate]

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.

[azurestar]

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…

[survivalthroughhate]

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.

[azurestar]

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.

[survivalthroughhate]

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.

[azurestar]

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.