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