Duel Galactic Kaggath Round 1: Arris Windrun vs Vagabond

[Mauve]

x

The arena floor rumbled and shook, the entire surface sliding open like a missile silo to reveal… an enormous Wroshyr tree rising up from the lower levels. It towered so high that its upper branches crested the arena and stood nearly eye level with the skybox. It sat upon a grassy, fern littered field. Amid the ferns, shapes prowled. Dangerous predators. Vornskrs. Force hunting beasts.

The boughs of the Wroshyr tree criss-crossed, forming limbs as wide as Coruscanti skywalks that the combatants could duel upon.

Droids hovered in the air around the tree, some with cameras, but many projecting interlinking rayshields so that the duelists could not interfere with the duels of the others. Of course… ray shields could always fail.

If any of the combatants fell to the ground far below, they risked being set upon by the vornskrs.

The announcers’ disembodied voice cut through as the combatants took their places on the boughs of the tree. “Honoring those who fell in the Battle of Kashyyyk between the One Sith and Republic, so many years ago, I give you the FIRST ROUND of the GALACTIC Kaggath!”

“Fighting for BESPIN GAS, it’s the daredevil blonde, the cruisin’ Talusian, it’s. ARRIS WINDRUN!”

“And her opponent, the Swagger from the Devil Moon, the Soldier of Fortune, the VAGAAAABOOOOND.”

“CHALLENGERS! BEGIN!”

Arris Windrun | Vagabond

 

[Arris Windrun]

"If you're not first, you're last!" Arris chanted the company slogan as she was introduced into the ring.

The cyborg took a ready stance. An experienced shockboxer and underground fighter, Arris had her fair share of dueling experience against unconventional opponents. She knew nothing about Vagabond aside from basic stats presented before the duels began.

She entered the ring with the following items: her standard cybernetics, one vibroknife, a whole lot of mystery in those packages strapped to various parts of her torso and jacket, and the cherry on top--a pair of new hands with built-in, overtuned shockmits.

Her legs were built for strength, and it was the first thing she took advantage of when she jumped several times her height and landed on a branch above, near-ish to a corner of the rayshield, but with a portion of the tree to her back. She stripped some bark with one hand, shattered it with the other, and sent the shrapnel at nearly 200kmh towards where she last saw her opponent.

Her medical droid reprogrammed the fighter's biomonitor before the fights began. It was set to react accordingly to a life-or-death fight, and keep her body going even if it meant risking permanent damage to her soft tissue in the long run.

Vagabond

 

[Vagabond]

Garrick Valtren, known to the arena by his mercenary name Vagabond, basked in the attention and adoration of the audience. Billions, if not trillions of eyes watched him in the arena and over the broadcast. He knew they expected a sepctacle, and he intended on giving them something memorable.

He surveyed the arena while he idly thumbed at the lightsaber by his side, an elegant weapon with a sleek aurodium finish. The ground level was a dangerous place to fight, made unpredictable by the many predators prowling for prey. Several of them stalking toward him even now. Those would be a problem. His opponent seemed to reach a similar conclusion about the beasts, and she leapt up into the tree, landing on its branches. Her display defied human capabilities. She didn't seem particularly strong in the Force, nor had he sensed the Force when she'd made that leap.

A cyborg, then. Garrick smirked.

A moment later the hairs on his neck stood on end. His gaze flicked to the nearest vornskr. It had prowled close, but wasn't preparing to pounce just yet. No the danger came from—

Garrick seized the Vornskr with the Force. It roared, but with no way of defending itself against the telekinetic attack it could only thrash about futilely as Garrick pulled it close, lifting its body to interpose it between him and his foe. The vornskr caught the brunt of her attack, but some of the projectiles slipped past on either side of it.

Garrick growled as the spikes grazed his shoulders, leaving bloody trails on his freshly-pressed white dress shirt. A few more of the projectiles, larger chunks of the bark, pierced through the vornskr intact. They didn't have the lethal speed anymore, slowed by the vornskr's body, but still embedded themselves in the part's of Garrick's body unprotected by the armourweave undershirt. Small pools of red formed along his shoulders and arms, staining a two-thousand credit dress shirt.

"You queen," he screamed.

With a thought, Garrick dropped the Vornskr. Its body dropped to the floor, wheezing in its death throes. That primitive fear, the palpable pain as it slowly succumbed to death fed Garrick's spirit like kindling did a flame.

He unholstered his Ambassador in his off-hand, and detached the lightsaber from his belt, clicking its activation switch. The blade thrummed to life with a discordant roar, crackling with red energy. The metal pulsed with power, containing the violent spirit of the kyber crystal within. Garrick leapt onto a branch about equal in height to his foe's. From his position, he attempted to seize the branch on which Arris Windrun stood and break it at its most vulnerable point, to literally rip the ground out from under her. Forcing her to jump made her movements that little bit more predictable. He intended to fire the Ambassador at her, a short volley of two shots, once she moved.

---
Equipment:

• one (1) cool lightsaber
• one (1) cool Tenloss Ambassador
• one (1) very stylish overpriced dress shirt (ruined)
• one (1) armourweave undershirt
• one (1) armourweave pair of trousers
• one (1) instance of the Khurevil crystal as a heart (tl;dr greater durability against injury, i.e. a toughness buff)

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris watched as the bark struck their mark--wait. What?

"Whoa, a Jedi!" She exclaimed. It took her a moment to realize he had grabbed the poor creature with magic and held it aloft to bear the brunt of her attack. The cyborg wondered when she would face a Force user, and was not surprised to see that answer so soon.

She paused a little to see how much damage she had done. It only took a split second for her Athakam eyes to loop the visual data back into her coprocessors. A smirk quickly turned to frustration at the flesh wounds.

"You queen," he screamed.

A complete context reset. "Queen!?" She snorted.

Then, he dropped the beast, and in quick succession held blaster and blade. "Holy chi--"

The branch began to crack underneath her. Her biomonitor and nerve-assist package reacted faster than she could, and already the cyborg had leapt again to avoid falling. He was ready. Two shots. Distinct sound. Her eyes widened as the projectiles flew faster than her stimulants could reach her artificial heart. Even though her eyes knew what was coming, she wasn't fast enough to react entirely.

The first round grazed her cheek, the energy packed around it singed a few hairs. The second slammed into her shoulder, tearing through soft tissue and crunching against the subdermal armor beneath. Superficial, but a display of fearsome lethality.

She jumped again, grabbed onto a branch, and climbed up just out of sight. She imagined a gun that heavy was not easy to use, but she still had to be very careful if it hit her somewhere vital.

Her implanted comlink clicked on. "I'm watching your fight on the feed." A familiar voice, belonging to her Herglic friend, Seeva. Thief, slicer, retired bookmaker. All around a great guy. He was the one who installed the device. Encrypted communication used by intelligence operatives. They used it to fix fights.

"You came," she replied with a thought.

Her attention remained largely on the fight at hand and how her opponent would attack next. She kept moving, climbing higher.

Seeva replied. "Couldn't pass up a moment like this. Besides, I've got credits riding on this one. Thought we could tag-team like the old days. Let me see what I can do with those rayshield droids." Arris heard the excitement in his voice.

"Glad you're with me," she grinned.

Vagabond

 

[Mauve]

The camera and ray shield droids started to buzz around erratically.

“OH MY,” the announcer sounded gleeful.

A hacked camera droid began feeding its link directly to Arris Windrun .

Two rayshield droids dropped low and headed straight for Vagabond , projecting an interlinking rayshield between them.

“Those ray droids are headed right for Vagabond! SHOCKING!”

The rayshield was indeed very shocking. Perhaps even lethally so, if it made direct prolonged contact.

 

[Vagabond]

A rush of anticipation shot through Garrick as he saw the second bullet strike his enemy. Only for that anticipation to quickly melt into frustration. He'd hit, but the shot hadn't been lethal. She hadn't seemed particularly well-armoured from the brief sights he'd managed to catch, but these blasted cyborgs always had some trick up their sleeves.

Garrick let his frustration out with a snarl. His enemy moved so quickly through the branches that he couldn't line up proper shot. Body hits likely wouldn't have worked anyways, but a precision strike to a weak spot might have a chance. He had to slow her down somehow, or get in close to leverage his lightsaber advantage.

Garrick leapt towards a branch in the direction he'd seen Arris Windrun disappear in. He leapt again, setting down with the practice grace of a seasoned combatant, when he caught his name spoken by the announcer. And she wasn't lying, he managed to spot the pair of droids hurtling directly towards his position. A field of crackling energy spanned between them, likely loaded with enough energy to boil his brain straight out of his eye-sockets.

He grimaced, that hadn't been a pleasant sight to imagine.

Garrick reacted on instinct, lining up the Ambassador with one of the droids. He fired a shot—half his ammo now spent—aimed for the lower droid. His aim struck true, the droid was abruptly and violently ripped in the opposite direction, then exploded in a puff of smoke. The second one continued his approach, the half-broken ray shield arcing with electric energy now that it had no tether to bind it. A quick Force Push hurtled it in a direction away from Garrick, and into the tree. The droid crumpled against the bark, sputtering out, and dropped unceremoniously.

"Oh please, you think some droids could pose a threat to me?" Garrick laughed.

He leapt further up the tree, in pursuit of Arris.

"Show me what you can really do!"

 

[Arris Windrun]

The scoundrel had hoped her friend could have wrestled with more than the two droids, but the camera linked into her coprocessor made for a gambit and a half. It was a little annoying that the announcer gave her opponent a heads-up, and she heard the crackshot take out one of the two rogue droids with that swift, killer precision she needed to avoid.

Still, Arris grinned as Seeva optimized the camera droid's telemetry, fed it right into her feed, and let her mini-brain take over. She kept in her opponent's blind spot, feigned an upward leap, only to swing back around when her opponent took a moment to gloat at his victory over the distraction.

He was mid-jump when she suddenly appeared in his blind spot. An outstretched fist, wrapped in lethal levels of electrical output, flew at superhuman speed towards the mercenary's head. In her other hand, the vibroknife aimed in a sly jab at the wrist of his sword arm.

Were it not for the pain dampers and subdermal armor, that shoulder shot might've been disastrous. On top of that, the cyborg's artificial heart had pumped her body full of a stimulant cocktail, and her Neuro-Saav suite kicked into overdrive.

She felt great. This guy was fun.

She didn't slow down. She was faster.

Her eyes weren't afraid. They were insane.

Vagabond