You Can't Stop the Beatdown (Sarge)

[Ashin Varanin]

A Mandalorian walked into a bar, and the bar said ouch.

It's an old joke. But squinting though his T-visor at the inhabitants of this particular bar, Rach found himself unimpressed by their general lack of guts. For one thing, they flinched every time his armor clinked against itself. For another thing, they all steadfastly turned away when he said-

"I'm gunning for the Prex of Omega Pyre. Who here knows where I can find her bodyguard?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

The man had been going bar to bar for sectors asking this same question, so it was only a matter of time before Sarge caught wind. It was a set up; it was too obvious not to be. But that was the point, wasn't it?

In front of Rach, between two tables, stood nothing. That is until Sarge raised his head enough that his hood exposed the lower half of his face. "You rang?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"So you're the ghost. Some say you're a Defel. Others say you're a Ghostling, but I once screwed a Ghostling Sith Master to death, and she didn't look much like you. Except for the dead part."

People scattered. Rach drew a couple of knives backhand, edge forward, just right for cutting someone with a 'poorly aimed' punch. His helmet sensors tried and failed to come up with Sarge's precise outline, and his Force instincts didn't do much either. In fact, they did nothing. Maybe the ghost was a vong in active camo. To cover his advance, a flamethrower hissed.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"How cute.", he says indifferently. At first, he doesn't move, until his cape flutters and a bottle of whiskey flies through the air and towards the shoulder whose arm ended in a flamethrower. Other than that one brief movement, all he did was take measured steps backwards as tables began to catch on fire... and alcohol began to burst under the flames.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The edge of the flamethrower blast brushed the projectile, and the bottle froze in midair, spitting fire all over everything. An instant before it blew, it accelerated off to the side. It smashed against a retreating Ithorian. Rach continued to advance, knives up. Smoke began to fill the bar; his helmet would filter it out, and even a ghost would make smoke move.

Hypothetically.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Hypotheticals were just that, hypotheticals. With the cape mimicing the smoke around him, his outline simply didn't exist. He circled slowly through the now almost entirely empty bar. But through the smoke, Sarge could smell the peculiar reek of this Mandalorian.

He smelled like the Dark Side, women and arrogance - with a hint of beskar. All Mandalorians smelled of beskar to some degree. His was weak though; new, perhaps.

Slowly, cautiously, he drew his blade from it's sheath and attached it to the front lugs of his ancient DC-15A. It was a long weapon, perfect as a ready-made quarterstaff, but it was also a plasma weapon. Perfect for dealing with armor.

It used to be a pain to hide, but he'd shortened the barrel slightly. Reduced range, but it was a good trade off for stealth.

Quiet as death, he stalked Rach. Not a single noise made, no smoke moving to give him away. This was going to be interesting.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

It became very, very clear that every sense of his body, mind and armor was insufficient to the task at hand.

A lazy, pansy 'artiste' might have tried to 'ping' Sarge's location with a rolling wave of the Force. Rach simply turned a quick circle and sprayed the whole room with a rotating stream of lightning from the fist that held one knife. The arc twisted and cracked, varying its level at random. He could still get some idea of the room's layout from his helmet sensors, despite the smoke.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Thankfully for Sarge, he was all but in a good firing position when Rach decided to go the route he expected. Lightning. This time, however, instead of alcohol, he threw one of the metal chairs at Rach. There was a split second of lift, followed by a throw.

The metal would attract the Lightning, since Force Lightning, for some reason, was just regular electricity that was conjured - not that he'd ever understood why that was. Taking a single step to the right, the DC comes up, and four plasma shots head towards Rach.

Mostly just to keep his head down. They were aimed, but he knew they weren't going to be kill shots.

Attack. Counter. Wait.

He needed a good opening. He'd bought himself time, little more.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The lightning hit something mobile -- which was, of course, exactly what Rach was looking for. A corona of sparks danced around the chair as Rach stretched out his other knife-wielding fist and the flying chair stopped. That gave him an approximate direction for Sarge, a probability cone even.

As his lightning ceased, the chair broke apart in midair. The intention, of course, was to fill that probability cone with flying metal and see what happened. But blasterfire snapped through the debris as the chair's components separated. One bolt melted a chair leg. One creased the cloth at the side of Rach's neck, a bit of distracting, frightening and irritating pain. One slapped harmlessly against his breastplate, heating it against his chest.

The fourth bolt shattered his T-visor. An inner layer kept molten transparisteel out of his eyes, but his vision was nothing but an orange blob.

But there was no point in vision, not at this exact moment. Rather than take the time to rip off his helmet, Rach sent the sharp-edged, superheated fragments of the chair back along the probability cone for Sarge's position, and leaped in that direction, knives whirling blind around him.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

The moment the chair broke apart, he knew what was coming. But for something like that, guesswork is your only defense. Pieces of shrapnel peppered the space where sarge had been, cutting through his cape as he dove out of the way.

He vaguely felt what he thought may be a piece or two in his leg, but one could never be sure in the middle of a fight.

But, then the man gave Sarge an opening, he pounced on an expected victory. Whirling, bayonet tipped blaster held like a quarter staff, he moved in from the thrust his blade down and across the back of the Mandalorians knee.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Precog.

Some idiots relied on 'feelings' and 'empathy' for their combat awareness, their danger sense. Rach, having fought some insane emotionless critters in his time, ascribed to the Skywalker school of danger sense: Precognition. The sense of a knee injury flashed across his mind, and he whirled blind, knees bending just slightly to bring his low block that much lower -- tough to pull off without leaning forward, but doable. The crook of his left knife and braced caught what was unquestionably a bayonet. After the initial impact, blade on blade, Sarge's weapon skidded along the edge of his wrist, half on the metal and half on the armorweave. A painful abrasion took hold.

Still, he'd snared the bayonet between knife and armored forearm, and his motion swept it to the side. The obvious countermove was a rifle butt to the face, so he brought up his right arm in an outside block, intending to take the butt on the bracer.

He didn't quite have the closeness for a headbutt -- but two birds, one stone. His helmet ripped itself off him, courtesy of the Force, and shot forward at about the level he'd guessed for Sarge's face.

And now, for all the good it did him, he could see.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge didn't have Force gifts. He couldn't sense the future in any capacity. But he did have experience, and the moment his blade was blocked, his first thought was to try and butt the man in the face.

Wouldn't work.

This guy knew what he was doing. So Sarge varied it up a little. Putting his body weight down into the weapon, he got it to slide forward a hair or two - enough to get inside his right arm block. Then, like pulling a stake from the ground, he shot the butt straight up towards where he imagined the mans chin was - at about the same time the edge of the mans helmet scrapped over the top of his head, stinging profusely and sending his hood back down.

Now Rach could see the man was clearly human.

And clearly young.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Rach got that visual for about a quarter of a second, because he was busy. Sarge's full body weight had skidded the rifle butt under his right arm's elbow pad, and the associated armor. All Rach could do was flinch, a little bit back and a little bit to the right. The strike cracked against the underside of his jaw and skidded up to his left cheekbone.

The initial butt-strike had taken the bayonet out of the bind; the second had given Rach a moment to bring his left arm back up and into play. And so he reached across his own body, touched his left fist to his right biceps, hooked the rifle butt from underneath with the left knife, and pulled it to his left to clear the air. His upraised right arm came down and in, stabbing at Sarge's left elbow.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

A knife would be coming next, somewhere on his back, probably. The most obvious target was his upraised arm, but he couldn't do much about that, except this: Leaving go of his weapon, unsure where the lengthy bayonet wound up exactly, he hit the powerpack release with his right and shifted left - taking what felt like a knife to his shoulder.

Good.

The powerpack dropped, and he took a step back and surreptitiously kicked the pack... just hard enough to slide it into a fire behind Rach that used to be a table and some wooden chairs.
Alcohol had risen the heat.

He gave it four seconds before it went off, maybe a bit more.

Despite the knife no doubt lodged in his shoulder, and in conjunction with the small kicking motion, he pulled a thermal detonator and primed it. Crouching and wrenching to his right to get the blade from his shoulder, he threw what looked like an uppercut for Rach's crotch.

In actuality, he was finding metal on his legs to stick the detonator too. Detonators had nifty little magnetic clamps that, when they were activated, held them to metal.

Now, he threw a sharp shoulder up and into Rach's gut to off balance him.

The whole process had been fluid, lasting no more than three seconds. Sarge didn't realize it, but the Vong had experimented on him. It's what gave him his affinity with language and his curious sense of smell.

It also made his reflexes heightened as well as his speed. He was nowhere near superhuman, but a saved two seconds here or there added up when fights occurred.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Rach saw the powerpack, mostly because he had to watch Sarge's hands very, very closely so as not to fail and die. He ignored it. A small grenade equivalent, right behind him, was an issue, but he had bigger issues.

Considering Sarge's left shoulder had gotten stabbed, all manner of interesting possibilities opened up from the younger man's shift to the right, immediately before he went for, of all things, an uppercut to the crotch. For one thing, it meant that Sarge was reaching for Rach's junk at an angle.

And that suggested something fishy, because Rach's junk wasn't much of a target at this angle. Rach wasn't quite fast enough to shift his legs and block the shot, but when something clicked rather than thudded or stabbed down there, well...

He flipped a mental coin just as Sarge rose up to plant a shoulder into the armorweave over Rach's gut. The Dark Master rose with the hit, gripping the arm that had so recently attempted the faux uppercut. A touch of Force-assisted gymnastics put his left knee up and over Sarge's head to lock against his neck or sternum; the back of his right leg settled against Sarge's chest.

Flying arm bar. Textbook perfect. Except for the lump jammed between Rach's crotch and Sarge's right shoulderblade.

Yup. That would be a thermal detonator.

Before Rach could do anything, the powerpack blew. At this angle, in this moment, both men were looking in that particular direction. Rach hauled back on the arm as best he could before the detonation threw him -- and the thermal det -- across the room. In midair, he grabbed the thing out of his crotch, pure telekinesis, no physical motion, and chucked it back at Sarge with about a millisecond to spare.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Flying arm bar. Perfectly performed. Perfect.

Sarge couldn't help but grin. Below him, on the ground, lay his rifle... but more importantly, his bayonet. As he reached back to grab the knife, he locked his legs around Rach's head and pulled. All of Sarge's weight was going back and down, and he felt the end of the blade slip into his palm.

Grinning, he tugs it from the lugs in the same moment as he feels the man wrench on his arm; for a moment, he feared the shoulder would disconnect, which would be no fun, but thankfully he held firm and was released as the man went flying from the blast...

dropping Sarge to the ground.

Thankfully, although he got a nice tan to the face from the blast Rach took most of the blast. He groaned as he landed and looked towards where Rach went in time to find the detonator flyi- and then it exploded.

Sarge routinely wound up in close quarters fights, and the best thing about detonators was their variable timers, but more importantly, variable blast radius. Their damage was directly confined to what was in the blast, and outside of it...? Anything outside just felt exceptionally overheated. He'd purposefully kept his blast radius' small for just this reason.

Rolling as fast as he could towards where the powerpack had just exploded, he narrowly evades the blast but feels the heat from it blistering his cape and back. It's stealth was all but worthless, and it was now he realized they were both breathing horrendous amounts of putrid smoke.

But more importantly, the inferno had only grown.

Alcohol had only further fueled the fire, and it was just a matter of time before the authorities arrived to put it out.

He was bleeding from his legs, his left shoulder, and no doubt had gunk stuck in his lungs. Sliding his bayonet away hurriedly, he pulls out a final detonator - he usually carried only two. Rolling it leisurely towards where Rach should be, Sarge makes his way to the exit as fast as possible.

The situation was untenable for the both of them. He'd be followed, of that he was sure, but he needed time to recuperate.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The second detonator rolled out of the smoke as Rach got to his feet, coughing. His hand flicked, and the detonator struck the nearest wall. A portion of said wall vanished -- a relatively small hole. Tiny blast radii. Nice. He clambered through said hole and took a good solid breath, scanning the area for Sarge.

Sheathing his left knife, Rach gestured at the hole in the wall, and his helmet returned to him. Never ceasing his vigilance -- with that stealth cloak burnt, he could see Sarge, more or less, most of the time -- he ripped out the remaining transparisteel from the visor, then put the helmet on again.

"No powerpack. Nothing but a knife. T'tell the truth, my flamethrower's all out." He drew his knife, unhurried, and advanced.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge paused mid-stride, and sighed. Why couldn't this just be easy. Bloody gorram Force Users and their bloody gorram Force Powers, and their sheer bloody gorram stubbornness.

Turning slowly, cloak still mostly intact despite everything, Sarge simply glares at the man with annoyed disinterest. Beneath the cloak, although Rach wouldn't be able to see it, was Sarge's last remaining weapon besides the bayonet.

His slugthrower pistol; chambered for AP rounds as always. Too many people wearing armor to not use it, really. But he kept that in reserve for the moment.

"Gee, can't imagine why it's spent...", he says sarcastically.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Rach's left hand flicked, and one combat knife whirred across the space between them. it wasn't a good throwing knife; that sort of thing rarely was. But some telekinesis to keep it on track, and speed it along, and keep it point-forward-

Durasteel blaster bolt, straight for the gut.

He began to chant loudly, in a language that was most definitely not Basic. A poor Sith Sorcerer he might be, with only one spell to his name, but he knew that one like the back of his hand. As yet, of course, nothing happened.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

With a reflex that he probably shouldn't have, he turned the blade aside with his bayonet, the right edge chipping from the impact but altering the trajectory enough to guide the blade away from him. As the man began to chant, Sarge simply nodded once or twice and then interrupted him with a word from his own spell, out of order.

It vaguely sounded like zttchiw and made his ears ache.

The good thing about incantations is that generally it didn't matter who was speaking, just that the correct words were in the correct order. Whatever language the man was speaking was old, but he understood it. He made a mental note to get that checked later; a part of his mind hoped screwing up the word order would require a restart.

Or make it backfire. Slim chances there, admittedly.

The whole 'knowing languages' thing was starting to nag at him, though.

Shoulder's slumping slightly, Sarge took two steps forward. "Props for originality. First time someone tried an incantation against me."