Public Swift As A Coursing River: Bounty Hunter Boot Camp

[Karesh]

Karesh couldn't read the minds of droids, but he could see that she was thinking of something. He chose not to interrupt her train of thought. His hand stayed on the hilt of his gun while his eyes scanned the forest. The optical implant having a corresponding contact lens that allowed him to see things in both eyes.

There did seem to be a couple humanoid shapes in the distance, perhaps other hunters claiming their trophies. The maze wrapped onward though, so it was hard telling just how many there were.

Karesh listened to Lachadann as she spoke, then with that same devilish grin from before, Karesh spoke up. "You just reminded me," He yipped as he reached into his bottoms of his light leather armor, picking up in his hands a large flask. He took the cap off and tipped it back in one motion.

After his sip he handed it toward Lachadann, "Can bots get tanked?" He wasn't sure anymore, there seemed to be so much new technology in the galaxy these days. "Let's get to that joint then 'eh?" He nodded his head toward the fortress.

That's when Rostam Khavarzai showed up and started talking. Karesh quickly put the flask back away, in case the new guy was a nark. "Something tells me, mate, ya just fecked us..."

 

[Lachadann]

Lachadann laughed, slopping some booze into her mouth.

"Something says you are both right."

A gong rang overhead, a panel opened on the floating fortress's underside, and what seemed like the next phase descended in a tractor beam. It looked like a quartet of vaguely humanoid droids, two brandishing lightsabers, two carrying bulky flamethrower-like guns that frosted over even in the heat. Descending, one fired at a target in the maze, and a scream choked off, and a rush of frigid air carried through the maze as the CryoBan took effect. It was a major escalation.

Lachadann handed Karesh back his flask. "I think you will need this."
Rostam Khavarzai

 

[Rostam Khavarzai]

"When you face a real Sith, you'll thank me. Or you'll burn alive." Rostam commented to Karesh . The assassin heard the sound of a gong, which drew his attention up above. Four humanoid combat droids began descending from the ceiling. "We should divide and conquer. I can take the melee ones, but I might get roasted by the other two, which I think have flamethrowers."

Rostam looked at Karesh and Lachadann . "I think you two can figure it out." He rushed off towards the location of the lightsaber-wielding droids. Quickly, he drew from his belt his vibrosaber. He could hear the sound of claws again, cursing under his breath, he dashed down a hall of the maze to the last known position of the lightsaber droid.

 

[Karesh]

Karesh took stock of everything happening, the chaos, the droids, the sounds of the maze around them. He took a deep breath in, and exhaled slowly.

He looked forward, opening his eye, and focusing with his implant. There were going to be so much collateral damage here. "Oi, pissant!" Karesh said in the general direction of the droids. He shot off a couple blaster bolts that they dodged or blocked with sabers.

Karesh ran forward, shooting the blaster a couple more times at the droids before drawing his blade and charging at them. They shot their flames at him as he charged and he jumped into the air over them, landing behind the droids. He hoped Lachadann would be able to help flank.

He wasn't sure how Rostam Khavarzai was holding up against the others.

 

[Lachadann]

For her part, Lachadann eerk-eerked along through the maze after Karesh . She was really going to have to invest in one of those jetpack things you'd hear about on the holos. (She liked the holos.) When he jumped over the pair of Cryoban-and-flamethrower-wielding-but-also-saber-wielding droids, she squinted at him on the theory that maybe he had one of those jetpack things also, but no. Not for the first time she longed for the life and physicality she could have had. But then again, he was part cybernetic; you could do an awful lot with cybernetics in this modern day and age, apparently.

So anyways, she started blasting. Two charrics fired simultaneously at the same droid that Karesh focused on. The chassis resisted her fire, but a flamethrower canister burst and a CryoBan one in successive instants of strange fire and frost and surging air. A whole wall of the maze burst away and got sliced up by the flailing lightsaber of the dying droid. Big, big mess. She resolved to get nowhere near that lightsaber technology.

 

[Karesh]

Karesh was standing behind the droid when Lachadann destroyed it, sending the hunter flying backward. He landed against the wall of the maze, smacking his head pretty hard. His implant pounded in retaliation, sending a shockwave of pain through his whole body. He then blinked his organic eye a few times and shook his head. He felt a bit of blood dripping down his face onto his lip, Karesh then licked it away before spitting it on the ground.

"Fething had to say lightsaber droids." He cursed under his breath. He took a couple deep breaths before lunging back into the fray with his knife in his hand, headed for the second droid. With a slam he landed on it before it was able to regain its footing. Karesh shoved the knife into its circuitry, twisting as he did so. The droid was still alive, flailing about trying to get the hunter off of it.

"Bot, now's yer chance! Shoot it in the damn head!"

 

[Lachadann]

The droid was still alive, flailing about trying to get the hunter off of it.

"Bot, now's yer chance! Shoot it in the damn head!"

Uncertain about her aim at a moving target at this range, with Karesh so close to it too, Lachadann risked taking the time to stump closer and holster one of her charrics. She took the other in a two-hand grip and put a careful shot into its damn head as requested. It collapsed. She came up to poke at the two destroyed droids with her metal toe.

The remotes, honestly, had been harder. She'd brought good charrics and Karesh was good at his job, but she had the unsettling feeling they'd been lucky. That, or the organizers had been overconfident and overstuffed these droids with weapons systems that had been counterproductive in combination. That seemed more likely.

"The lightsaber weapons. Are they undamaged? I think they would be gas money, one for each of us. Or a thing to use for opening ships maybe."

 

[Rostam Khavarzai]

Rostam broke into a sprint as the first lightsaber droid came into view. The droid raised an energy blade to strike down the oncoming assassin. Rostam closed the distance, just within blade reach, then suddenly dropped into a sliding dive tackle. He timed his strike perfectly. The droid whiffed, its lightsaber swinging wide, and Rostam drove his blade up into the droid's chassis as he slid between its legs. The vibrating weapon tore through its inner mechanisms, causing the droid to convulse and collapse in a cascade of sparks. Rostam rolled clear just in time to avoid being crushed beneath its weight.

A second droid turned, its red photoreceptors flaring as it locked onto him. Its movements were faster, more precise, with newer servos and deadlier programming. It lunged, sweeping its lightsaber in a wide horizontal arc, aiming to cut him in half. Rostam sprang back, his cloak flaring behind him as the blade carved through space. He landed in a crouch, boots scraping against the scorched durasteel floor, then surged forward. In one motion, he drew a flash-shard from his belt and hurled it into the droid's face. The device erupted in a burst of white light and shrieking static, disorienting the machine. Rostam closed the distance, slipping past its next wild swing, and drove his vibroblade upward into the droid's shoulder joint where the plating was weakest. Sparks cascaded from the wound as the blade tore through its systems. The droid froze, twitching violently, then collapsed with a hollow metallic crash.

It was over.

"You guys take the flamethrower ones down yet?!" He shouted to Karesh and Lachadann .

 

[Karesh]

Karesh stood and gathered his breath as the scene played out in front of him. With the droid on droid violence and everything. He got off the now dead droid, kicking its weapon away from it to make sure if it came back somehow it wouldn't be able to grab it. His red eye scanning the different displays it offered. Everything seemed to calm down for a moment.

"Well we took that lot down rather quick." He then looked between Lachadann and Rostam Khavarzai . Then to the lightsabers that fell from their corpses. Seemed rather wrong to take the loot from a fellow hunter, but maybe that's how Chiss droids did things, wicked.

"Methinks this is more my speed, Bot." He chuckled as he hoisted one of the flamethrowers. He turned around and shot the flames into the maze, illuminating a hiding nighthunter down the way.

 

[Lachadann]

Looking through the wreckage, Lachadann wound up selecting an impressively complex weapon, that CryoBan projector, which had the power to supercool its targets and even encase them in ice. It was cumbersome enough to need both hands, so she put away her trusty charrics and swore off the other loot for now.

"Too fast," she said. "They were always going to send us worse but maybe now they send us-"

A titanic roar came from somewhere beyond the walls of the maze.

"-much worse. See what it takes to make us run so they can teach us lessons of running. Or just make them laugh."

She attempted to stand on her metal tiptoes and see what was coming; it didn't work. Startled flocks of birds fluttered over the shaking trees...

Rostam Khavarzai Karesh

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The scent of scorched chlorophyll curled off the vibro-scorer in Malrok's hand, its haft still warm from slicing through vine-choked bramble. The maze clawed at him like a dying prey—razor wire above, slinking roots below, and somewhere in the shrieking dark, the nighthunters.

He moved low, deliberate. Silent as he could manage. Above, one of the battered repulsor spheres bobbed lazily past a rusted corner, its dimpled hull blinking a rhythmic blue. Another target in this sick game of bait-and-blood.

Not yet.

A snapped twig three walls over. Heavy. Quadruped. The cry that followed wasn’t human.

Malrok froze, flattened. The humidity dragged sweat through the back of his tunic, soaking the padded collar beneath his harness. He hated this jungle. Hated its noise. Its heat. Its creatures.

But mostly, he hated the ones watching.

He knew they were. Sponsors. Syndicate scouts. Black Sun whispers. The kind who traded lives for credits with the same ease others rolled dice.

He tapped the shaft of his spear once against his thigh. A silent rhythm. His own countdown. Then he moved again, keeping the sphere in peripheral view, but trailing the heavier sound –the predator, not the prey.

He has much to learn of the wider galaxy, and his first foray had been a humbling experience. He needed to be stronger, faster, more cunng. Above all, he needed credits. Condorian metals and gems meant very little this far from the Tower.

"Krixas guide my spear."

He rushed to the next obstacle with a renewed burst of speed.

Open​

 

[Lachadann]

"Krixas guide my spear."

He rushed to the next obstacle with a renewed burst of speed.

As the sound grew louder, something vast approaching the maze through the forest, Lachadann spied a human(?) with a spear running to or through the maze. Some of the violence had blurred the lines between maze and not-maze. Portions of the walls were blown out or burned away, and scorched vines and razor wire hung crazily on the gaps. She made a mental note to get some kind of quality vibroblade that didn't take too much dexterity, perhaps a machete. This body got hung up so easily on obstacles.

And on that note, she decided she should really be moving in the direction opposite the large noise. Fortunately, her one well and truly marketable skill was navigation of a gently precognitive variety; the Chiss sky-walkers were or had been the finest instinctive astrogators. She used that instinct to pick a direction in the maze, ducked awkwardly through a stretch of razor wire without harm, and got moving. Eerk-eerk.

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The guttural scream of twisted metal reached him before the beast did.

Somewhere off to the left, a wall collapsed under pressure. Something big. That made two predators in this place now: one natural, one made.
Malrok flinched, then adjusted.

Up ahead, a figure ducked through broken wire. Awkward gait. Mechanical rhythm. Shell-body? Cybernetic? He didn’t recognize her, but he noted the cadence—eerking—and the fact that she moved away from the sound. Smart. Smarter than what he was doing.

He stayed low in the undergrowth, using the collapsed section as partial cover. Just enough to keep his silhouette broken and motion clean. He didn’t stalk her, but he marked her path.

A glance to the bobbing sphere still bouncing along its lazy arc. He let it drift.
Then slipped parallel to her route, following two maze corridors over. Not close enough to threaten. Not far enough to ignore.

Lachadann ​

 

[Lachadann]

He stayed low in the undergrowth, using the collapsed section as partial cover. Just enough to keep his silhouette broken and motion clean. He didn’t stalk her, but he marked her path.

A glance to the bobbing sphere still bouncing along its lazy arc. He let it drift.
Then slipped parallel to her route, following two maze corridors over. Not close enough to threaten. Not far enough to ignore.

That roaring was getting louder now, but she made good time out through the back of the maze. A little charric fire at key attachment points did pretty well at taking down certain structural elements when necessary. She wished she'd grabbed one of those lightsaber weapons. It would have been intensely useful just now. The big CryoBan weapon was too slow, too diffuse - a good trophy but a poor tool for the moment.

She ducked around the final corner and emerged from the side of the maze, in an area that wasn't supposed to have an entrance or exit. It verged on raw jungle. She moved into the edge there for some visual cover to take a look around. She adjusted the CryoBan rifle on her back and took a charric pistol in a two-handed grip. She was of two minds whether to continue with the exercise - those trees were moving aggressively, being moved rather - or whether there was even a way to not continue.

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

The blue metal person broke through a final tangle of wire and vanished into green.

Malrok followed, slower and quieter. The clearing beyond wasn’t a true exit, just a breach where the maze had failed to contain its prey.

He stopped just inside the treeline, one boot on rusted metal, the other sinking slightly into damp jungle soil. The shift in scent was immediate. Richer. Older. Something moving out there was strong enough to bend trees without breaking them.

His eyes found the other figure again.

They were armed with a kind of stubby pistol he didn't recognize. And the larger thing on her back... He didn't recognize that at all. Seemed heavy. Maybe it was a symbolic or religious thing.

He tilted his head, watching her adjust the cannon like someone choosing a less-than-ideal burden. Either she was stubborn, or she liked trophies.

He wordlessly pointed past her with the haft of his short spear tipped with a crystal, faintly buzzing.

Pointed at where the rumbling grew closer.
Another maze wall collapsed as some thing pushed through. Something Malrok had never seen before.

Lachadann ​

 

[Lachadann]

He wordlessly pointed past her with the haft of his short spear tipped with a crystal, faintly buzzing.

Pointed at where the rumbling grew closer.
Another maze wall collapsed as some thing pushed through.

Lachadann hissed between her teeth, through the mouth slit of her protocol droid shell. She'd taken this course to put the maze between her and the creature. Clearly the creature had shifted vectors. (Or maybe she'd screwed up the navigation and come out ninety degrees from where she needed to go.)

The creature was quadrupedal, with huge shoulders and tail, a crested blunt crushing maw, and miss hanging from its heavily scuted hide. She estimated it as eight meters tall and twice that in length. It was chewing on a bounty hunter. The bounty hunter looked very small.

 

[Malrok Duskwell]

MALROK DUSKWELL
⟁Tip the Scales⟁

He said nothing.

Because words would mean acknowledging he didn’t know what it was.

Didn’t know what species. What class. What world it came from.
Didn’t even know if it was natural. Sithspawn? Genetic weapon?
It didn’t matter.

It killed.

It chewed through armor and bone like swampfruit rind. Blood spattered wet over the hanging vines. A shredded leg tumbled free from the beast’s maw and twitched once, still wearing half a boot.

Malrok exhaled through his nose, slowly.

He crouched lower, shuffling to a root cluster, letting his cloak darken around him hoping to match the soil. He kept the spear low, the brighter tip close to the ground to reduce visibility.

His eyes scanned the creature’s gait. Thick scutes flexed with every lunge. The tail swung like a battering ram, heavy with trailing moss and blood. One eye cluster tracked movement lazily to the right—but not toward them. Not yet at least.

Good.

He shifted one foot back in the dirt. Just a few centimeters. Resetting his weight. Making ready. To move, to disappear...
He found his gaze lingered on the underbelly. The throat. The breath-tendon beneath the jaw that inflated when it roared. Maybe it could be hunted.

He didn’t know what it was. But he was starting to understand how it moved.

That would have to be enough.

Lachadann ​

 

[Karesh]

The last few moments that Karesh was awake were a blur, they had defeated the droids and then everything went fuzzy. Karesh knew he tried to follow after picking up the flamethrower, and he stopped when he noticed no one picked up the lightsabers. He knelt down and grabbed it then everything went dark. He was having another one of his visions.

Karesh's pupils swallowed his eyes as memories rushed through his head. He lived an entire life in the span of a few seconds, moments of tenderness and even scorn. Whoever owned this lightsaber before the droid was likely a Jedi, meaning they either stole it or killed the Jedi. He saw the birth of his child, the death of his wife, and the building of the very lightsaber he was holding. Then everything went black. What he didn't know was he was experiencing a side effect of his Kiffar heritage. Even being half, he was able to connect to the memories of items sometimes. Though, to him, it was just some really weird thing that happened.

The hunter was out for however long it had been, and when he awoke he was able to orient himself. He hated doing it, but he knew he had to tap into the Force to figure out where Lachadann had scurried off to. With his condition, the mercenary found himself allergic to the Force and using it or having it used on him gave him a huge headache right behind his implant. So now he had a double headache, from the vision and from using the Force. He still found the blue droid quickly as she wasn't really that fast.

He stalked behind the group as they made their way through, and when they emerged and encountered the looming beast, Karesh realized he needed to jump in to help. "Bot, I nicked this for ya!" He said, announcing his presence. If the droid looked back he was going to toss the lightsaber in her direction, he remembered she said she wanted one. He then realized that his voice grabbed the attention of the beast.

"Well, kark..." He said as the beast started turning its body toward the group. Karesh looked to Malrok Duskwell who seemed to be studying the creature.

 

[Rostam Khavarzai]

The droids were swiftly defeated, but Rostam could feel the vibrations in the floor. Something larger was approaching, a new threat. Karesh and Lachadann were joined by a spear-wielding man, Malrok Duskwell , and for a brief moment, Rostam seemed to slip from their memory. He quickly climbed a nearby wall using the thick vines, his eyes scanning the area as the heavy, rhythmic sound of something massive grew louder. Then he saw it. A large reptilian creature was plowing straight through the maze, tearing foliage and stone aside with brutal force.

The beast's attention was fixed on the trio. Rostam, ever the opportunist, decided they would make excellent bait. He watched carefully from around the corner of a hedge wall, keeping the three fighters between himself and the monster. He would strike when the time was right. His gaze swept the shadows, searching for any sign of the Maalraas, but there were none. The smaller predators had fled, frightened away by the greater hunter. Now he needed only to wait for the perfect moment.

 

[Lachadann]

But he was starting to understand how it moved.

"Bot, I nicked this for ya!" He said, announcing his presence. If the droid looked back he was going to toss the lightsaber in her direction, he remembered she said she wanted one. He then realized that his voice grabbed the attention of the beast.

"Well, kark..." He said as the beast started turning its body toward the group.

A large reptilian creature was plowing straight through the maze, tearing foliage and stone aside with brutal force.

She fumbled the catch, being what she was, and crouched to scrabble for the lightsaber.

The rancodin lunged, and just as rapidly as Lachadann had exited the maze, she went right back in, seeking visual cover. She'd snatched up the lightsaber and now she found that its emitter was pointed at her stomach.

She slung the CryoBan gun over her shoulder and clumsily switched the lightsaber up to activate it properly. The green plasma blade looked extremely hot and she was reminded how lucky she'd been in the earlier fight.

As the rancodin's tail swept a mass of wall material along, it bowled her over with a crunch of durasteel plating. She managed a clumsy swipe that scorched the tail's plating but didn't penetrate it. Probably for the best, really. Pain would have made her a point of focus. As it engaged Malrok and Karesh, she deactivated the lightsaber so she could get up without cutting herself.