First Reply Causing Problems is my Specialty

[Karkosuchus]

CAUSING PROBLEMS IS MY SPECIALTY

The shadowport of Fwillsving appeared to rumble as the WL0-RX1 Assault Tank raced through the main settlement, having been pilfered from a vehicle depot on the town's edge by Karkosuchus, the notorious bounty hunter who seemed to have risen from the dead to wreak havoc on the largely unprotected community of criminals and drifters avoiding the attention of the galactic authorities.

He wasn't particularly impressed with his new toy since the open air cockpit was entirely to small for a monster of his size. Still as his clawed hands wrapped around the joysticks of the heavy blaster turret, he certainly found himself at peace in causing as much destruction as possible for very little reason.

Emerald plasma fire exploded from the tank's dual barrels, completely vaporizing the run down facade of a local gambling den. Debris and shattered plastoid rained down into the streets as syndics and spice-runners scrambled in every direction to avoid the sudden, unprovoked bombardment. Karkosuchus let out a low, guttural hiss that shook the cramped cockpit, his massive jaw adopting a smile.

He gunned the thrusters, steering the heavy war machine directly through a crowded marketplace. Open-air stalls selling illegal stims and stolen tech were crushed into kindling beneath the massive iron treads. A few slow-moving smugglers didn't dive out of the way fast enough, resulting in a series of wet thuds that barely even register against the tank's heavy armor.

Alarms began to blare across the sector as smoke filled the sky. Fwillsving was plunged into utter chaos, leaving the streets wide open for anyone brave or foolish enough to try and stop the rampaging reptile, or simply try to survive the night.

 

[Isur]

Ports were harder and harder to find. But Isur made so his ship landed outside the settlement. A bit of goods to sell, and a chance for his folks to stretch their proverbial legs and fins and get some fresh air, and fresh water. Meant that Isur could go hunting as well.

What they hadn’t expected was an assault tank coming through the settlement. Now Isur wasn’t one who really cared about too many beings, but his crew was here, and there was now a tank taking shots at establishments they paid some credits to. Alarms were going off and Isur got up from the hostel he was sleeping in.

Grabbing his comm, the Karkarodon growled to his Quartermaster, this time a Herglic. “Prep the Snapjaw. Boarding teams lets see if we can make some credits off this tank.” Again, not a freedom fighter, but if someone was going to hold this settlement for ransom, it was going to be the crew of the Snapjaw.

Getting from the bed, and leaving the crab-like woman alone, he grabbed his repeater and wan-shen, and stepped outside. Screams and fire assaulted him. His trained ears could hear his crew powering up weapons.

And his trained olfactory glands could smell the blood.

Karkosuchus

 

[Karkosuchus]

CAUSING PROBLEMS IS MY SPECIALTY

The smell of fresh blood and burning ozone filled the air around him, causing him to subconsciously lick his blood stained teeth in pure satisfaction. The screaming of the flesh-bags only added to his enjoyment of the situation, but the tank's cramped controls were beginning to annoy him, limiting how much carnage he could dish out at once.

Reaching over with a heavy grunt, Karkosuchus unsecure the Heavy ACP Repeater from its mounting holder inside the console. To keep the war machine barreling forward through the panicked crowds, he shifted his massive weight and used his spiked thagomizer to press firmly down on the accelerator pedal. The engine roared as the spiked tail maintained their lethal speed.

With his right hand still firmly clenched around the joystick of the heavy turret to keep it aiming forward, his left arm raised the newly freed ACP Repeater. He opened fire directly into the thick of the fleeing crowd. The heavy plasma rounds tore through the air, ripping into the screaming drifters and tearing up the dirt roads of the settlement.

As the WL0-RX1 Assault Tank smashed through another line of junk-stalls, a familiar scent hit his reptilian snout, cutting through the stench of burning plastoid. It was Isur . Karkosuchus remembered the Karkarodon well from his old days back in the Hutt Space Consortium. The shark-man was a big target, and no doubt he was somewhere nearby in the settlement right now.

"So an old playmate wantssss to play...fine by me." Karkosuchus chuckled a low, rumbling hiss. If the shark got in his way, he might just have to make soup out of his carcass, but for now the bounty hunter kept his focus on the immediate slaughter, letting the tank roll onward over the bodies.

 

[Isur]

Born to hunt, to find prey and stalk them down, across the water and the land, Isur was listening to the sounds of screams and the destruction. It was easy to hunt it down. What he wasn’t sure was why he recognized the scent. The croc was still alive? How long had it been…

Isur knew that he had been away from the crime world, living large off the plunder he and his crew had. But it didn’t mean he nor his crew had relaxed. If anything the Karkarodon worked on his skills, both with his weapons and those skills he learned from the Matukai. To call them the Force was an insult to Jedi and Sith, he knew that, and it also made him a target to bring down.

So he never referred to them.

Just used them to move and destroy. And he was first going to move. The tank was sighted, and a few of the crew radioed in.

Looting was occurring now, people were afraid, grabbing what they could and running. Was it their own? Isur didn’t care. Slaughter was occurring, chaos was reigning, and he heard the engines of his ship lift.

Moving around one more structure, he saw the tank. “Hold fire. Keep eyes.” He spoke through the comms as he approached, spinning the wan-shen until it moved under his arm.

Karkosuchus

 

[Karkosuchus]

CAUSING PROBLEMS IS MY SPECIALTY

Karkosuchus's eyes scanned the cramped display screen, noticing the familiar shadow of Isur through the smoke and fleeing drifters. The Karkarodon stood firm amid the panicked stampede, twirling a polearm and attempting to play the role of a hero.

He allowed a loud growl to escape his mouth, as under different circumstances, they could have cracked open a few casks of spice-wine and swapped blood-soaked stories about the good old days in the Consortium before the assassination of Gorba the Hutt.

Refusing to alter his destructive course, Karkosuchus shifted his weight, driving his spiked tail down even harder against the accelerator pedal. The heavy assault tank lurched forward, its repulsor lift floating over the settlement's debris as he rapidly picked up speed, fully intending to run the shark-man over and leave him as a bloody stain on the road.

"Try thisssss one on for ssssssize...fishface." He brought the Heavy ACP Repeater down, With his left arm steadying the repeater and his right hand clamped firmly around the turret controls, he pulled the triggers. His clawed hands squeezed, sending a blinding hail of automatic rounds downrange while the heavy turret unleashed an earth-shattering volley directly at his former partner.

 

[Isur]

A fight. That was what he craved, needed. Isur was more than happy to break bread with Karkosuchus but there was the thing about showing who was who in a line up of criminals and predators. Isur learned a lot from his mentor Delphos, including the use of a crew and a starship. He was no longer the predatory hunter.

Until he needed to be.

The Matukai had taught him well, and sometimes you had to adjust.

Seeing the repeater fire coming his way with prejudice, Isur moved, not so much dove, but moved, out of hte way, letting a concrete structure take the brunt of the hit. HIs own armor, piecemeal as it was for someone of his size, took some damage, and he sighed.

“Karking Trandoshan…” Switching from his melee weapon to grabbing his modified scatter gun, he turned and took a second to steady himself. From under the flechette launcher, came a burst of energy, a plasma blast, potential energy of a thermal detonator, but not the range of the latter being thrown.

 

[Karkosuchus]

The heavy plasma blast from Isur modified scattergun slammed directly into the front hull of the WL0-RX1. The impact rocked the entire cockpit, turning the display screens into a jumble of static and warning klaxons. Karkosuchus felt the heat bleeding right through the thin armored plating.

The tank wasn't going to take another hit like that, and he wasn't about to get fried inside a metal coffin. With a frustrated grunt, he kicked the hatch open, ditching the cramped controls. He leaped from the cockpit just as a second wave of explosive force tore into the vehicle's frame.

Even for a brute of his size, the sheer volume of firepower filling the air was impossible to dodge completely. A stray cluster of burning shrapnel and plasma fire clipped his side, tearing chunks out of his thick scales and searing into the flesh beneath.

Karkosuchus roared in anger, the blinding pain only fueling his aggression as he slammed hard onto the flat roof of a nearby junk-stall. The structural plastoid groaned under his massive weight, but it held. He didn't stay still for a second. Blood dripped down his flank, but he ignored the sting, his instincts locking onto the direction of the blast. Isur was using the local structures for cover, trying to play it smart.

Karkosuchus lunged forward, launching his heavy frame from roof to roof. His thick feet impacted each surface with a succession of loud, heavy thuds, cracking the cheap building materials beneath him as he moved. He stayed low, keeping his center of gravity dialed in as he scanned the alleyways and debris below, tracking the scent of shark skin to sniff out Isur exact hiding spot.

 

[Isur]

Being on the surface wasn’t as easy and linear as being in the starships that he typically raided. It was open and free, but more restrictive than if he was hunting in, say the seas of Glee Anselm. Still, he was fine here. Fine to put a stop to a croc.

And it wasn’t even that Isur wanted him dead, but he did need him to stop causing a problem on his and his crew’s shore leave.

The crew were doing their thing, honestly probably raiding already. This trip wasn’t going to last long. Looking down at his gun, he saw the heat dissipating from the last shot, took most of the powerpack. Fine.

He could deal with the scatter and the blade. Isur could smell the blood, almost taste it, it was that close. Closing his eyes, he centered his breathing, not in the Force but to use part of his species gift, of finding electrical impulses.

Didn’t work so well in a non conductive medium like air.

“Kark.” He cussed as he came around the corner, scattergun raised.

Karkosuchus

 

[Karkosuchus]

While moving across the sagging roof of a storage shed, a glint of metallic silver caught the edge of his bright yellow eyes. Below, in the tight space between two houses, the large muzzle of Isur 's scattergun came into view likely angled to fire around the corner without stepping out of cover. Karkosuchus was not foolish enough to try and move across the roof as that would expose him to the crossfire from Isur's crew down below.

He was unsure how many were in the burning settlement, so he pushed through the pain in his scorched side, lowering his center of gravity slightly to dig his heavy claws into the duracrete roof beneath him. His hands struggled to gain leverage on the tough surface until he grasped the metal piping, using it as an anchor to rip a section of the roof away from its structural support beams.

He concentrated on his target and made a slight adjustment to his aim before throwing the debris at his opponent. The heavy junk flew straight through the air, but before it hit the ground, Karkosuchus was already advancing. He didn't want to stick around to find out if the projectile had hit the shark, so he used the rock as cover to sneak up from above, knowing his clawed feet could easily crush Isur if they didn't move quickly enough.

 

[Isur]

The challenge with amphibians and to some degree, aquatic reptiles is that they weren’t loyal. They were able to live just fine in both environments, the water and on land. They needed both, as far as Isur could see. It wasn’t an original thought, no, his woman of ill-repute sometimes-on-sometimes-off crab girlfriend Crustacea had brought it up to him. And after that he did hunt down a clan of frog people.

Gator types were a bit better, at least they were another predator. Isur could respect that. He didn’t, but that was more a personal choice.

His fire of the scattergun didn’t find purchase and the Karkarodon cursed at himself. Foolish. Rumbling off in the distance, he could hear his ship taking off. Good, it being in the sky and with shields meant Karkosuchus couldn’t do too much damage to it. Unlike what he was experiencing. The junk flying towards his cover caused a minor shockwave that pushed the shark down.

“If I was in the sea…” He said, something he found himself saying anything a land trip didn’t serve him. It was equal part threat and equal part truth. Rolling, he reached for his polearm-like wan shen as he sensed the Trandoshan approach.

“Come on out.”

Karkosuchus

 

[Karkosuchus]

Karkosuchus fell like a rock, his strong legs absorbing the hard impact as his clawed feet hit the ground. A thick cloud of dust and debris burst out around him, completely hiding the narrow gap between the houses. Through the gray haze, he heard the metallic clatter of Isur rushing to grab his fancy polearm.

The Anointed knew that a polearm was most effective when keeping an opponent at a distance, so all he needed to do was close that gap. In a cramped alley like this, a long weapon could be more of a hindrance than a help if the area became too tight. He didn't give Isur any space to breathe or swing the long weapon.

With a purposeful stomp that compressed the loose soil beneath his foot, Karkosuchus charged through the lingering smoke. His enormous right arm shot out, claws ready to grab Isur's throat or the polearm's shaft to secure it, while his left hand held the Heavy ACP Repeater aimed at close range, prepared to splatter whatever remained of his former partner against the duracrete walls.

 

[Isur]

Keeping people at range wasn’t only for his safety, it was for theirs as well. If someone got in range of Isur, there were rows and rows of teeth in that mouth, and unlike Wookiees, he had no qualms about using everything that made him an actual predator to get to his ends. Looking up, he saw the Trandoshan, and his own rows of teeth.

Predator to predator.

This meeting was more that everyone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Isur did not like being disturbed on his shore leave.

But did Karkosuchus care? No. Coming in to swing the wan shen, there was a growl for Isur as the polearm was grabbed, and Isur quickly moved to spin it, intent to use the Trandoshan’s grip to help knock his repeater bolts wide.