Brutal Workshop (Dan)

[DarthHERA]

"CRACK!"

The slap - unexpected and unavoidable - burned Dan's cheek, and rocked his teeth against the soft inside of his mouth.

Hera had struck without warning and without provocation.

An imperious arching of her eyebrow dared him to a response.

"You're reputation means nothing here, Daniel. Your legend...what legend?"

She was deliberately goading him.

The words, like the strike, intended to belittle and humiliate.

"You are a roach beneath my boot"

A cruel smile.

"Shall I crush you?"

She lifted her hand to strike him again.

[Dan the Man]

"I've always been taught..."

Dan commented, as he dabbed the blood from his lower lip with two fingertips.

"...that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Wiping the blood across his jacket's lapel, he continued.

"But I wouldn't say I'm much of a good student. Especially when it comes to the one about turning the other cheek."

His sharp eyes met Hera's, and followed to her hand. As it bore down on him, Dan leaned inside so that the brunt of Hera's strike would miss it's mark, and drew a knee upwards towards the midsection of his advancing attacker.

[DarthHERA]

Hera dropped her arm down in a timely fashion to deflect and push off-side the offending knee, negating much of its impact.

While her own strike had been neatly avoided, she followed through with her hand to twine her fingers into the surprisingly soft hair that hung just over Dan's collar. Clutching her hand into a fist, she pushed more than pulled his head close to her own in order to speak into his ear.

"I have things to teach you that you have never encountered before"

She side-stepped to squeeze round behind him, leaning now her body against his back, her chin on his shoulder and her lips still pressed to his ear.

"Forget your iron self control, Daniel" she yanked back on his hair, stretching his neck in a awkward arch, "we need to unlock your passion"

[Dan the Man]

Grunting against the pain, Dan reached his hand down to his belt, pulling free one of his blasters. As the two struggled, he intended to show her a killer's true passion indeed, maneuvering the gun's barrel under the crook of his arm.

[DarthHERA]

Dan felt her body shake against him with low laughter.

"Now, now. Lets put the gun away"

Hera lifted a finger and blotted a small blotch of blood that still teetered on Dan's lip. She smeared it along the length of his mouth with a delicate touch.

"Let's keep it more personal. Up close and....nasty"

Touching the crimson tip of her finger now to her own mouth, she licked it.

"No one bleeds with a blaster"

[Dan the Man]

Dan tossed the blaster in his hand, catching it by its long barrel before whipping it around to crack across the side of Hera's head, drawing blood from the strike. Using the distraction, Dan brought his other arm down in an elbow strike, which connected in Hera's abdomen and provided enough force to part the two warriors.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that."

The shootist returned his gun to its holster in a spinning flourish.

[DarthHERA]

Bent double holding her midsection and with one hand to her head to confirm the fact that she was bleeding, Hera managed a rueful sneer between drawing painful breaths.

"Well, you're not without a sense of humor, I see"

She slowly straightened, one hand now dropping to her side.

With a slow, deliberate "schwwring" sound, she unsheathed a dagger from her hip scabbard.

"I think we've established we both bleed easily enough, so lets get on with it"

Holding the blade menacingly before her, Hera began to circle Dan. Each step moving a little bit closer. She regarded him with an almost stoney expression, giving no hint to when she would strike at him.

[Dan the Man]

Dan arched an eyebrow at Hera's dagger blade, the room's light glinting off its silvery edge. The irony in Hera's insistence was foremost on the shootist's mind. Only an idiot brought a knife to a gunfight, but there were plenty more dead men who brought nothing but themselves to a knife fight. If she was trying to get him to shed his genteel demeanor, she just might be on to something.

He slowly pivoted on his feet, keeping parity in distance between himself and the Sith Mistress. With the exception of his slow and precise footwork, he barely moved a muscle. His hands rested just below his hips, their apparent calmness incredibly deceptive.

As the two Sith paced each other, Dan met Hera's eyes in a gaze. The shootist's eyes surrendered none of the youth that the rest of his body had lost years ago. They were sharp and fierce, like an eagle's own intense stare, across miles and mountaintops. And they were inexorably on Hera's own blue orbs.

The old man's dry lips slowly began to turn upward, spreading a furtive smile across his parched and wrinkled face.

[DarthHERA]

Wary, Hera drew her blade fluidly through the air from left to right and back again.

"You know Daniel, I have to wonder"

the blade swept languidly back and forth

"when was the last time you lost your self-control"

She jabbed forward quickly, but short of her mark, feinting in order to see his reaction.

"Your the man with the plan - things happen when you want them to. I like that"

Another jab, another feint, this time a little closer.

"But too much control can stifle the power of the Darkside. It is like storing chaos in a bottle. What's the point?"

Now she returned his predator smile, the dagger blade still in continuous motion, its dull gleam hard to ignore.

"Every now and then, you have to let the darkness loose"

Hera leapt bodily at him, enhanced by force power, driving the blade before her, its razor edge eager to find its mark under the assassin's ribs.

[Dan the Man]

At that instant, Dan's hand moved quick as a lightning strike, drawing a gambler's dagger from his belt, and slapping its blade across Hera's own approaching weapon with just enough force to cause her jab to miss to the right.

Adjusting his grip on the dagger, Dan's face took on a serious expression.

"You aim to see me blow my top, I suppose. So let me clue you in on something."

Pacing around again, Dan lunged in for a strike, which Hera easily avoided.

"At twelve, I was caught gun-running by the Imperial garrison on Tattooine. Me and six others were taken out in the Dune Sea to be summarily shot. Thats how it was then."

Adjusting his grip on the blade, Dan pivoted and began to circle in the other direction.

"They marched us up to the highest birm in three miles, and the local magistrate drew a pistol, placed it to the first man's head, and blew his brains all over the sand."

The shootist laughed a little.

"His body fell like a ton of bricks, rollin down that sand dune, burying up his blood & brains as the sand slid down.

After him, went the next guy, then the guy after him, and so on. Till it was me & the end of the line. He pulled the trigger..."

Laughing more, Dan ran his thumb along the hilt guard of his dagger.

"...the damn thing blew his own hand off. Sand down the barrel, plugged up the emitter & turned it to glass in a split second. I watched the magistrate bleed out over me and that sand. An instant before, I was ready to die. He bled to death. I walked the long way home."

The laughing stopped, and Dan's face turned cold & serious.

"Understand this. After that day, there's nothing that scares me anymore. Nothing."

[DarthHERA]

"Scare you? Is that what you think Im trying to do?"

She spoke as if mildly amused.

Hera had not made the mistake to misjudge Dan's character. He was 'seasoned' as they say, and had been around this deadly racket for a much longer time than she, as his story amply verified. She focused on the lined and cragged face. Much longer.

She was not fool enough to think that she would outwit, outmaneuver or outexperience him in the art of taking lives. Or facing deadly foes, for that matter. He had been killing people before she had even been born.

Scare him? No. See some passion for the kill, yes. Feel the thrill of the darkside course its black fire through his sinewy veins, definitely.

She spun on her heel, arm extended in a slash at chest level, followed quickly with a high scissor-kick that clipped Dan neatly under his chin.

[Dan the Man]

The connecting kick dropped Dan's gaunt frame to his knees. Through tussled locks of grey, he glared brimstone back at his teacher, wiping the blood from his lip. As his left hand dropped to his side again, his right snapped outward like a cobra strike, flinging his dagger at Hera's head.

[DarthHERA]

Hera had to throw herself sideways to escape the blade, its mark spot on.

The glare Dan fired at her was what she had wanted to see. It was a beginning.

Rolling onto her back, propping her body up in a semi-reclined position, she took a split second to look over at Dan.

Pulling his fallen blade to her using the force, she held it up as a lure.

"Come get your knife from me, old man"