Blood and Iron

[Garrus Garon]

...whispers and rumors were all that filled his ears. It started small in a bar without a name on a world that is best forgotten. While he sat in a booth, enjoying a stiff mouthful of the local beverage, he heard a voice blurred by alcohol tell another that Ordo had been slain. Nonsense was his first inclination. Nothing came of it. Another cantina in another little known world produced the same rumor though. After that another and so on. Eventually, once he'd sampled the local drink long enough, Garrus Garon had risen up and taken matters into his own hands to appease his simmering ire. Once he had beaten the man bloody he asked him where he'd heard this rumor and several times after that he did likewise to other men and always to the same conclusion...

...a man had shown a mask in a bar somewhere out in the Unknown Regions. Nothing specific but the mask and a vague description were always a part of the tale. Upon researching the subject Garrus had discovered that Ordo hadn't been seen in sometime and that his ultimate was unknown. Perhaps the rumors had more than a bit of merit. It was a troublesome revelation to say the least. Many Mandalorians considered Ordo a traitor after his turn to the dark side however Garrus, for all his regular inclinations, was more introspective than that; Ordo was still a Mandalorian after all. Eventually Garrus discovered a name, Seren, no last name to speak of....

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Location: Zaadja

...icy wind washed over the Warriors face as he stood tall on a barren field of snow on the barren world of Zaadja with its perilous mountain ranges looming tall in the background, snow covered and devoid of life. Once upon a time a fortress had been maintained here but all that was forgotten now. Standing there Garrus had left a small starship somewhere in the distance far beyond the what he could see. Dressed in his Beskar'gam he wore a Beskad sheathed back over himself, its hilt extending up over his left shoulder, with a Blaster Rifle in his right hand resting leisurely at his side...

...no fire would burn here so it defeated the purpose. This place was cold. Only the burn of the alcohol in his flask warmed him as it burned a path down his throat and it into his belly once his left hand had placed it to his mouth. Weeks ago Garrus had made a tour of several bars, the type that were seedy and ridden with scum, where he wrecked the bodies of men and left a message..."Let Seren know to find me on Zaadja."...coordinates were left behind to make it easy and then Garrus had left. Now he waited...​

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[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Garrus Garon"]

So he'd shown the mask around once or twice. It was old in a way that made him remember Taungs and Arca Jeth under a Manda'yaim sun, but a hunk of metal was fundamentally a hunk of metal. He'd made two hundred credits on a station over Esfandia by embedding the sucker in the wall at twenty paces. Put an edge to it with a whetstone, too, then traded it in kind for unspecified services in a place that his mother would have called sordid. She'd have been right, too, but she was seventy years in the rearview, twenty of them colored like an underground jail. The kind of place where education counted for little, and morality counted for less. All that mattered was how fast you stood up when someone came knocking.

Well, Garrus Garon had knocked his way across the Unknown Regions looking for Seren Teancum Ordavo, and Seren had gotten the message.

He'd signed on to fight for the Lords of the Fringe, but who could know how long that would last; he had no connections that would make the Fringe world of Zaadja a deathtrap for an interloper, and wouldn't have used them if he did. His world, in all respects, was confined to his immediate sphere of influence. No home, investments, corporations, private fleets, clans, backup. Just the Dark Side-tainted beskar that covered his joints, the old lanvarok on his left wrist, and the sabrestaff at his belt. One of the whores had called him lonely; it wasn't a word that meant much to him. Alone was just his natural state.

Warm coat and a knit hat over the armor, too, because Zaadja was pretty fething cold. He stomped over the ice field toward the Mandalorian, still about forty paces away.

When a man came knocking, you stood up, and you stood up hard.

 

[Garrus Garon]

...the silhouette in the distance told Garrus that his challenge had been answered however there was still a bit of ritual to be observed. There were no armies around the two of them nor droids which would broadcast this match to the glalaxy at large. All there was were two men who stood opposed to one another for no other reason than that one of them might have killed an acquaintance of the other. It was one of those things that was a bit more complicated than it appeared however simple it was at the same time. Now that was a true crux if ever there was one...

...icy wind obscured Garrus vision to an extent however once he'd seen the silhouette of the man he place his flask to his lips a final time before downing a heavy pull. It was good. Very good and the burn the liquor produced told the tale well. Once that was down Garrus discarded the flask, dropping it in the snow somewhere and then he took a risk as he called out..."I am Garrus Garon! Brother of Strider Garon! Field Marshal of Mandalore! Warrior of the Clans!"...accompanying those words he loosened his grip on the Blaster Rifle he held and let it fall onto the snow covered fields of ice before lifting his arm...

...slowly his fingers started the deft work of unclipping the different pieces of his Beskar'gam and letting them fall to the snow covered plains starting with the shield generator, then his shoulder plates and moving on to a different assortment..."If your name is Seren and you are a man I challenge you to face me like a man. Let your arm speak for you."...by the time Garrus had finished he only held his Beskad in his right hand, the short blade of mandalorian iron that he could wield with a single arm, while he looked ahead. On his left arm was a bracelet of sorts, technology of some sorts it'd be difficult to identify through the cold wind and distance still between them...

...now that he was only in a tunic, breeches and heavy boots it was easy to feel the intense cold causing his muscles to slowly go frigid as they responded to the different temperature but his chest rose and fell with each passing breath nonetheless. In the back of his mind Garrus knew he had put himself at a disadvantage but above anything else he was a warrior through and through; he believed that the old ways should still be observed by the men who remembered them...​

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[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Garrus Garon"]

Seren drew to a halt maybe ten paces from the Mandalorian, listening as armor plates thudded into the snow. His nostrils flared, and cold wind filled his lungs. He smelled alcohol and well-worn armor being unbuckled, and whatever product Garon used to shave his skull. He smelled Mandalorian iron, and the snow of a new world.

"I'm High Inquisitor Seren Ordavo." He put enough emphasis into the basso profundo to let his voice carry through the wind. It was a title without relevance these days, but if they were identifying themselves, why not. "I killed the man with the mask in a space hulk over Mugg Fallow. I don't know who he was, and I don't care; if he was your brother, that's life. And if he wasn't looking to die, he shouldn't have come to the nastiest world in the galaxy, and he shouldn't have kicked me in the head." He chuckled a little as he removed his coat, folded it so snow wouldn't get inside, and put it down. He left the knit cap with it, too; he'd want that dry after. Snow rustled along his bare skull. "What's the opposite of suicide by cop?"

One of his lightstaff's blades -- he almost always used only one at a time -- flared to life, a washed-out blue as cold as the circumstances. He held the weapon casually down to his right, hand near the active blade emitter.

"Come on, Field Marshal."

 

[Garrus Garon]

..."Suicide by crook."....he replied with a bit of a chuckle bringing to light that Garrus knew the sentiment. Now that they were ten paces away from one another it was easier to see the man, Garrus noticed some of the details that accompanied his silhouette, he watched as Seren folded up his coat and placed it aside before taking his lightsaber and allowing it to hang loose to his right after activating it. Nodding his head once Garrus mumbled to himself..."High Inquisitor."...that would make him the cop even though he looked like the crook from where the Mandalorian was standing. The icy cold almost felt good as he came forward...

...the trek across the short distance between them began in earnest shortly thereafter. Ten paces. Eight paces. Six paces. Then he activated the device on his left arm. No tricks. He hadn't lured Seren into a trap. As he activated the device blue energy crackled to life until it covered the outside of his left forearm from the wrist to the elbow in a circular hue that measured about a foot and a half in total diameter. An Energy Shield, the type of archaic instrument one might expect on a veteran warrior...

...the Beskad in his right hand dipped low and arced back behind him so that the tip of its blade could drag across the snow. As he came within four paces of Seren he'd have let his right foot plant ahead of the left, he torqued his hips and turned them to his left; then the Beskad came around. It swept forward, across the snow it'd been dragging over, then arced up while Garrus rolled his wrist outwards to compliment the motion as the Mandalorian attempted to rip it up over the outside of Seren's left thigh and carve a path over his chest on the way to his right shoulder in the follow through...​

​

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Garrus Garon"]

His penultimate step planted his left, toes out; his final step put his right foot forward, got his left into line with the rest of him, and -- most importantly -- angled his thigh outward. The beskar plates above his knee grated and rang as the beskad shivered off them. The Mandalorian's blade skittered up Seren's belly, carving a furrow in the duraplast and serious damaging the armor. Hot blood dampened his belly.

But in the aftermath of that successful strike, Garrus' blade arm was up and across his body, not just limiting his field of view but limiting his return options, torsion attempting to force Garrus' balance to remain static. Seren's blue blade spiralled up between them, clockwise, to grip the back of the beskad and urge it on, keep it from coming back.

Seren brought up his left forearm and fired everything at Garrus' floating ribs -- the entire five-disc magazine, in a randomized spray. Lanvaroks were designed to fire the entire magazine at once; he'd jury-rigged this one to be able to operate a disc at a time, semi-automatic, but sometimes the classic mode just seemed like the right idea.

 

[Garrus Garon]

...following his initial stroke the aftermath got ugly quickly. The Warrior knew enough to understand that he was in a potentially bad situation however there was still opportunity to mitigate and minimize the damage done. Almost immediately after the stroke had completed Garrus had begun to reset his hips, in that time Seren's blue blade would ensure that a backhanded stroke was impossible leaving his right side open, he would also shift his weight onto his back left foot allowing him to dictate a backwards pull of his body...

...rather than attempt a backhanded blow against Seren's blue blade Garrus would press his Beskad higher and then arc it back in a counter clockwise motion, from his point of view, complimented by outwards roll of his wrist to reverse the former he'd used in his initial attack. In a nutshell Garrus would raise his blade a little higher so that he could arc it further to his left and bring it around so that he could rip it back to his right beneath the cover of Seren's blade in a fluent motion of both arm and body...

...as the blade arced Garrus weight had shifted onto his left foot so that he could draw his right side back and transition himself into a left side lead. The Beskad came ripping across horizontally as he did this seeking to tear a path from Seren's right hip and over to his left where it could crush itself against his left arm and the Lanvarok that he was wielding to send them wide but..."WAAAARGH!"...the pained cry of Garrus was obvious as one of the metal discs had sunk into his ribs, cutting into the bone and meaty flesh of his body, while another had cut a path onto his stomach a bit lower than the first. At least two of the discs had struck the Mandalorian cleanly, the price of admission some would argue while Garrus might have just been getting a bit slower...

...the blood of his wounds wasted no time in staining his tunic nor a few droplets from falling to touch the snow at his feet. Bet he was wishing he'd kept his armor on now...​

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[member="Seren Ordavo"]