ToC:MIkhail Shorn VS Isley Verd

[Lira Dajenn]

The sounds of buzzing words and sparking conversation could be heard in a low rumble in the gladiatorial arena known as The Cauldron. Thousands of people lined balconies, stadium seating, and individual boxes granted to VIP's. The audience lined a large ring in the center of the stadium sheer walls surrounding it and confining anyone who would be trapped inside. Six gates lined the inner walls of the Cauldron, each a heavy durasteel that dropped down from above, each carved with intricate pictures of Gladiators and Beasts alike. The arena itself was nothing but sand, rock, and and small clumps of recently coagulated blood. It was a harsh unforgiving arena, the perfect place for the first round of a tournament.

Two door's slid open from the opposite sides of the arena, two fighters and the second pair to participate in the tournament of the Cauldron. These two were recognized almost instantly by the crowd, their fame following them as certain as a sunrise. Isley Verd former Mandalorians, Dread Master, and a leader within the Confederacy of the Independent Systems. Cheers rose in his name, matching those of his competitor, Mikhail Shorn. The Thronebreaker, the destroyer of the Senate building and all around menace. The crowd roared for this bout, seemingly foaming at the mouth.

Again the roars of the crowd were silenced by a strong cutting voice. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Round two of the Cauldron will soon begin! These men stand as titans before you! Each born into blood and battle, each ready to fight!”

The Crowd roared once again and the Sister Queens of Rattatak held matching smiles. Her voice broke the boom once again “Begin!”
@[member="Mikhail Shorn"] @[member="Isley Verd"]

 

[Darth Metus]

Isley! Isley! Isley!​

Shorn! Shorn! Shorn!

The chants of the crowd were almost daunting to the Mandalorian as he stepped through the gates and into full view of the spectators. Almost immediately, the mere sight of the two combatants caused the thunderous applause and cheers to multiply, and Isley could not help but feel butterflies flutter within his gullet. He had been on countless fields of battle...but never once had he been apart of a spectator sport. Nonetheless, as his strides bore him into the Cauldron, he began to get into his "warrior's mindset". All was blocked out as best as he could: the thunderous applause, the stomping of feet, and the cheers...all ignored in exchange for a few brief observations. First and foremost, the Mandalorian took stock of his surroundings, memorizing each and every curve of the arena; for knowing the layout was important.

Second, the Mandalorian placed his attention on his opponent, Mikael Shorn. Apparently this was one of the two individuals responsible for the destruction of the Senate Building on Coruscant...and in order to achieve such a feat and walk away alive meant that ridiculous sums of power slept within this individual. Furthermore, there was a small vendetta in the back of Isley's mind, for it was by this man's hands that Emperor Tyrin Ardik had been removed from the throne of Sith Emperor. While this was not a source of great animosity, it was one of those things that came immediately to mind upon looking the man in the eye. Of course, being garbed from head to toe in his Taozin Beskar'gam, there was no telling what the Mandalorian thought by means of his expression, for his face was hidden behind his helmet as per the usual.

As a whole, Isley had seen fit to come prepared for war. Devorah's Song was in place between his armor and its jetpack, snugly fit into the groove that had been fitted into the metal specifically for it. A duo of CZ-835 Machine Pistols, complete with BANG slugs, rested in their holsters and three lightsabers hung from the Mandalorian's utility belt. He had grenades, of course, stowed within the confines of his utility belt and just itching for usage on the field of battle. Suffice it to say, Isley fully intended to fight as a Mandalorian...and a Sith. Whilst the two Queens began their introduction, there was a slight wince in response to the word "former" being included in his description...but then again, news of recent redemptions were not exactly front-page news across the Galaxy.

Then came the green light. A single word that heralded the show down between Titans.

At the instant of the word "Begin!" being uttered, the Mandalorian kicked on his jetpack and launched himself backwards and into the air, his hands flying to his utility belt. He produced from its compartments a duo of flashbang grenades, then lobbed both in the direction of the Throne Breaker. The flashbangs, whose timers was quite smaller than that of the a traditional grenade, exploded mid flight and caused an immensely blinding light to flash. Of course, Isley's own visor shielded him from the effects of this, and he then replaced the ordnance in his offhand with his slugthrower. Taking aim, he then fired off a trio of slugs at the Throne Breaker, for the Machine Pistol was set to a three-round burst, whilst centering his own mind for the commencement of his true assault.

@[member="Mikhail Shorn"].

 

[Lord Ghoul]

"Where is he?"

"I don't see him!"

"Look, there! The Thronebreaker!"

The crowd erupted into a frenzy as a raven haired man strode onto the sands of the arena. He wore a battered suit of grey armor that bore long, black furrows and charred pockmarks. In one hand he held his helm, while his other hand waved to the crowd. Icy blue eyes stared up at them and his mouth bore a devilish smirk.

"I thought you hated people," whispered a voice in Mikhail Shorn's head. The voice sounded uncomfortably like his brother Seth. Shorn snorted as he continued to wave, smirk broadening. "Oh I still do. I just looove that they looove me."

He donned his helmet and at once the roars of the crowd became blissfully muffled. Shorn concentrated on controlling his breathing, which felt hot inside the helmet's confines. He hated helmets. Hot. Uncomfortable. Heavy. Hated 'em. But that hatred paled as his eyes fell upon his opponent. @[member="Isley Verd"]. Mikhail's gut twisted as an inferno leapt up within him. Whatever light Diana had poured into him on Ossus did not shine here. His gauntleted hands clenched into fists. His eyes ran over the beskar'gam. But he noticed immediately he could not feel the man in the Force. He frowned. That was... unsettling. Yet, he knew of Isley. A Mando-Sith. Fething spectacular. The arrogant metalheads annoyed him to no end. And the Sith? Well it was no secret that Mikhail felt a deep, dark joy at the Empire's demise. The Sith had ripped away his humanity with calloused hands and created a monster in place of a man. And having the opportunity to kill another one? It was like getting a present with a big, fat bow on top that he just couldn't wait to open.

The sand of the arena crunched beneath his heavy boots as he strode forward. While Isley took the time to scan the terrain, Mikhail sized up his opponent. Guns, jetpack, what looked like an honest-to-goodness sword, and... were those three lightsabers on his belt? What the feth did he need three lightsabers for? Shorn snorted softly. He remembered someone else who had used three or ten lightsabers. Darren Shaw. He'd shattered the idiot's tibia and made him lick his boots. Isley though? A mando-sith? Shorn would rip him to pieces and let the arena slaves mop up the mess. But Isley... Isley was not Darren Shaw.

Few people would think Mikhail Shorn researched his opponents. They forgot that before he had become a sociopathic, throne-breaking, temple-building, senate-smashing menace he had been an officer in the Republic Army. Intel reading and briefings were all part of the package. So yeah, Shorn had looked into this Verd guy. He didn't like what he'd found. Mentalist Templar dark-side Sith who wore Mando armor. Mainly the mentalist part. But judging by the amount of ludicrous stuff this guy was packing, Shorn wouldn't put him on the same level as Spencer Jacobs. Not even close. Still, the Mando-Templar-Whatever would probably try to get in his head at some point.

Mikhail didn't plan on giving him the opportunity.

The Sith Lord was not here to win a title. He didn't give a damn who was "Champion of the Cauldron." He'd signed up because when he'd looked at the list of names on the sheet he'd seen a long list of people who - indirectly or directly - had attempted to control him at one point or another. Most were government leaders. And oh, how sweetly Shorn would savor beating the living hell out of them. This was why Diana Moridena's Force Light had not proven entirely effective upon Mikhail Shorn. He longed to be free. Free of nations. Free of stupid societal constructs. Free of restrictions. As much as he hated useless mantras, he unknowingly lived and breathed the Sith code. His true purpose here was to turn the figureheads of nations into pulp and crush them beneath his heel. Through power he would gain victory. Through victory his chains would be broken. The Force would set him free.

Clad in the old Hydra armor, Mikhail stood nonchalantly on his side of the arena. He dragged out a knife from the sheath at his back; a long, downward-curving, nasty-looking piece of beskar. "Ouch" was infused with devaronian blood-poison. One cut could incapacitate a wookiee, courtesy of the excruciating agony it caused. Small pouches hung from his belt filled with phrik ball bearings. Armor, knife, tiny beads. That was all he needed. Lightning crackled around the fingers of his left hand.

"Time to start the party," he muttered.

Sure enough, Isley started off with a Mando classic. Jetpacks. Oh how Shorn loved them. He had fought in the Sith-Mandalorian wars toward the end of Moridin's reign. He ate Mandalorians for breakfast. Armor and all.

The Mando-Sith opened things up with a bang. Literally. Two grenades sailed toward Shorn. He raised his left hand and gestured to the side contemptuously. The grenades went flying away from him. Their blinding flashes told him they'd actually been flashbangs rather than frag or concussion, but it hardly mattered. His helmet's visor darkened automatically to the flash, much like Isley's.

Mikhail craned his helmeted head up, the targeting system in his HUD keeping track of Isley where the Force could not. The sharp crack of gunfire reverberated through the arena, barely audible even over the roars of the crowd. Shorn didn't need the sound of them, however. The muzzle-flashes from the guns Isley was pointing at him were more than enough. Shorn grunted. Not blasters then. Hand still extended, he flattened his palm. Two bullets stopped mid-flight. The third flew on and slammed into Mikhail's breastplate, exploding violently. Shorn stumbled back a step, nearly thrown off balance by the force of the impact. The heated metal singed his chest despite the bodyglove he wore. Feth. How'd he missed that? A few more rounds like that and Shorn would start to have trouble. Then again, he'd once stopped the fusillade fire of an entire Tusken raider army as a knight. This mistake wouldn't happen twice.

The Thronebreaker made a pushing motion, aphotic energy flowing out of him. Faster than you could say "Feth, I'm vaped," the three hollowjackets went shrieking back toward Isley Verd propelled with near-railgun speeds that would shred any other armor like butter and put one hell of a dent in beskar'gam. Mikhail didn't stop there. He reached out in the Force and wrapped his telekinetic will around Verd's jetpack. Specifically the fuelcells. His fingers curled into a fist. The lovely thing about fuelcells is that when you squeezed with a telekinetic Force Crush equivalent to the strength of a durasteel docking clamp they tended to explode. He didn't care if Isley was wearing Mando armor or not. Flames were hot and they tended to burn through where the armor didn't cover, like the exposed portions of bodyglove at the back of Verd's knees and under his arms.

Regardless, without a jetpack, that was a long fething fall. Shorn decided to help Isley out a bit. He could not feel him in the Force, but for telekinesis only line of sight was required. Atramentous strength wrapped around Isley as Mikhail drank in that mad, intoxicating power of the Dark Side. Then he slammed Isley toward the ground with enough strength to make a small crater. Beskar'gam couldn't stop blunt force trauma.

 

[Darth Metus]

The Mandalorian was not the sort to simply float about stationary whilst engaging an opponent. That was a quick and easy way to result in one's being decimated with relative ease; and one of the most elementary tenets beaten into Isley's skull as a youth was the necessity of constant movement. Standing still meant death, yet movement meant life. This held true even now, as the Mandalorian guided himself through the air in a rough semi-circle, keeping himself facing the opponent. Whilst doing so, his eyes were locked upon the Throne Breaker like a predator readying himself to pounce...and then he saw a slight opening. Apparently Shorn was caught ever so slightly offguard by the BANG slugs, for one had impacted his armor and caused him to stumble back.

It was then that the Mandalorian decided to strike and relied heavily upon the skill that he specialized in. Mentalism was an area of the Force that Gregor Gideon had personally guided Isley into. He, being one of the most trusted individuals of Tyrin Ardik, was a Battle Meditator and stressed the importance of a strong mind; and how combating a weaker mind would result in disruptions to concentration in the Force. One of the techniques born of this training and mindset was one called "Mind Shard" and revolved around splintering the very mind of an opponent. The result was multitudes of mental anguish and, more importantly, an inability to focus one's mind on the task of manipulating the Force. As such, the moment the Throne Breaker stumbled, the Mandalorian lashed out with his mind.

Like a well-aimed spear, his consiousness collided with that of the Throne Breaker and began to unleash a full-powered Mind Shard against him. The tactic was of the same impressive strength that would be expected of a Master of mentalism. Though it was not enough to cause physical dehabilitiation, the splintering of Mikhail Shorn's mind should be enough to cause a sizeable interference in his utilization of his bread and butter: Telekinesis. Whilst maintaining this tactic, Isley continued to move about the aerial, semi-circle trajectory he had going with his jetpack...but found himself the victim of something known as ballistokinesis. Thankfully enough, the movement allowed him to narrowly evade the first slug entirely and the second grazed the shoulderplate of his beskar'gam.

The resulting explosion caused him to spin within the air and descend rapidly in response to the concussive forces; but working with jetpacks for several years allowed him to recover quickly. Of course, the third, depleted slug smacked into the Mandalorian's thigh with enough force to dent the beskar plating, causing a grunt of pain to escape his mouth. However, Isley had taken full fledge blows from walls of telekinetic Force and kept his mentalism plugging along, there was no way a slug would deter him now. As such, while still moving, albeit lower than before, he toggled the firing mode of his machine pistol to full-auto with but a touch from his finger and then squeezed the trigger; letting fly a hail of BANG slugs whilest still moving in the semi-circle.

By now, the telekinetic forces working on his jetpack reached the Mandalorian's attention, but the Mind Shard in play by the Mandalorian should have rendered it less effective than initially launched; enough so that the fuel cells would not utterly detonate just yet. However, despite this, his lowness to the earth coupled by the subsequent telekinetic shove by the Throne Breaker resulted in a sudden grounding. Isley landed hard upon the Cauldron floor, damn near smacking his chin upon the ground, but managed to keep his machine pistol firing at his opponent. In the next breath, Isley leapt to his feet and took to the air again, concluding the hail of seventeen slugs whilst reaching for his second slugthrower. If the "success" of the first volley was any indication, then the spray of seventeen slugs over the course of Isley's flight should result in some sort of effect against that armor...or so he hoped.

 

[Lord Ghoul]

@[member="Isley Verd"]

Mind shard was great when you were meditating somewhere far away from your opponent. In the heat of battle, dodging bullets, with only a precious second of time to prepare, Mind shard didn't work so well. The elapsed time between when Isley Verd started "centering his mind" and when he used the ability on Shorn was exactly .8 milliseconds. Consequently, the pain that leapt into the Thronebreaker's mind, attempting to fracture his focus, was not nearly enough to cause the sort of debilitation it was intended to. Instead of making his telekinetic powers bone-shattering it merely made them bone-bruising. One could chalk up the notable lack of an Isley Verd shaped crater in the ground to this reduction in power, equivalent to reducing a Master back to a Knight status.

Even so, the pain seared through Shorn's mind like a hot needle, partially fracturing his concentration and causing him to utter a growl of frustration. It hurt. Fething mentalists. His grip on the Mando faltered slightly. Then those slugs he'd hurled started hitting the Mandalorian and the jetpack began to malfunction. Isley Verd's mentalism, while up there, was not so strong as to be unimpeded by a barrage of attacks. Dodging bullets, carefully maneuvering a jetpack to keep it from spiraling out of control... these things took concentration. And lack of concentration on a mental attack meant that that attack was generally unsuccessful. After all, attempting to deprive a Master of his comprehensive use of the Force was a fairly complicated task.

The pain lessened. An annoyance now, rather than a hot brand ripping into his brain. The targeting system in Shorn's HUD continued to track Isley's movements as he moved lower. The hailstorm of bullets the Mando-Sith unleashed rained down on Mikhail Shorn. The Thronebreaker just gritted his teeth and stretched out a hand. As stated before, when only a knight he had stopped the full-scale fusillade fire of an entire Tusken Raider army upon the fields of Mandalore. Aphotic power roared through Mikhail's body. He wanted to rend this man apart. He wanted to hear the sweet sucking pop of breaking bones tearing through flesh. He wanted to show the Confederacy what happened when they meddled with Mikhail Shorn. The heady, intoxicating miasma of cimmerean energy rolled out through his upraised palm in a pure wave of the Force. Bullets sprayed away from him, tossed aside like pebbles in a relentless storm.

The Templar sought to break his concentration? To end his complex weaves of telekinesis? Fine. He wouldn't stop each individual bullet coming toward him. He wouldn't attempt to attune himself to the trajectory of every projectile hurtling his way. He would simply shove. Shove the bullets. Shove Verd. Shove the whole damn arena. Around him, the muffled sounds of the crowd reached a new pitch as they witnessed a visible rippling in the air. Mikhail threw push after push in the Force. A bullet managed to find its way through, nicking his armored torso and exploding. Mikhail barely budged beyond another grunt of pain from the new bruise. Feet planted firmly in the sand and clad in phrik armor made to turn aside lightsabers, Shorn felt no fear. But anger? Anger he felt in staves. Anger at the government Isley stood for. Anger at the Sith for what they had made him. And anger at the Mandalorians because they just really. Pissed. Him. Off.

Force pushes rippled from Shorn's palm, ruthlessly and relentlessly battering aside slugs and ripping past, toward Isley, in a ceaseless barrage that sent rocks flying and sand spraying in a maelstrom of debris.

Then he suddenly changed the dance tune. With Isley's mental spike driving into his mind he couldn't perform such feats as he would typically. So he didn't. He gave Isley raw, unadulterated energy... in the form of chain lightning. Crackling, blue tendrils seared through the air toward Isley and everything in a goodly radius. The lightning could render the electronic functions of the beskar'gam useless as well as either kill him or obliterate his mental attack.

And to add to it all the slow burn of the jetpack's partially crushed fuelcells finally counted down to zero.