High Councillor Mihoshi Keibatsu vs. Trainee Rohan Lap'lamiz

The darkest rooms of the Tempest Crown Cantina hide many secrets, shady dealings, and unsavory types. The Backroom Ring is one of those secrets. Known to many as top tier entertainment on Nancora, but restricted, open to only those who can pay to fight. And it is lucrative.

Fifty feet in length and width, the Backroom Ring is a square room used long ago as a water cistern, now repurposed into a bloody combat arena. The ceiling is low enough for the taller fighters to feel claustrophobic whilst the walls are layered in dented durasteel plating equipped with shock prods and deadly spikes. Humid air fills the room along with the stench of sweat and bile. Neon lights dot the ceiling in the middle of the room, splashing color and shadows in circles further out. No seating arrangements are available, only cam droids showing live feeds on the cantina screens. Speakers bolted into the walls spread the crowd's cheers in the ring, blasting fighters with their energy.

The ring is segmented into square panels, each capable of independent activation. Pressure plates hidden beneath the surface trigger traps when stepped on. Most panels do nothing, but some discharge electrical bursts strong enough to stagger even armored fighters. Others superheat, glowing dull orange before cooling, forcing constant movement. Some panels are purposefully unstable, collapsing underfoot without warning, to disrupt balance. Many and varied traps exist underneath the floor, constantly innovated on and changed from day to day. Gravity projectors under the arena can alter gravity, making combatants float or pinning them to the floor. The ceiling hides gas vents, misting combatants with stimulants or pacifying and disorientating them.

There is no place for elaborate maneuvers here, no space to breathe or rest. The Backroom Ring is made for pure close combat. No high ground, no distance, only brutality as panic and pain close in.

The arena was an odd one. Not entirely unknown to the small High Councillor, but odd enough that it gave her a bit of pause as she stood on the bright pulsing blue square near the entrance she had been shown. The tiles expanded across the room, all of them matched and mismatched in color. Green, red, blue, yellow, enough colors that spending too long with them was bound to give someone a splitting headache.

“Pips, you stay here. I think this one is safe enough but I don't like the look of the rest of this,” she said softly to the droid perched on her back.

He climbed down with a soft trill, tippy tapping on the square curiously.

“Yeah, I dunno either. This should be fun though.”

The entrance by a brilliantly red square opened and an armoured figure stepped through, looking around at the floor himself. The dark green pauldron bore a black cog that named him for what he was.

An Imperial. Likely from the same clan her friend Reiden was from. Miho leaned on Kurotsubaki's black haft and watched the trooper as he checked his own gear with swift, precise movements. Definitely a well-trained warrior.

The Odanite grinned as she tilted her wide-brimmed black hat back a little and shifted her gaze from the Imperial to the squares on the floor. Were they color coded? Was that just a trick to get people thinking that?

Curious and more than a little maddening, Miho stepped forward slightly and tapped Kurotsubaki in the middle of a nearby square. The green tint of the square turned red hot for a moment, then faded back down again.

“Hello, Imperial. Neat floor, don't you agree?” She spoke loud enough to be heard across the room with a grin as she tapped another square around her and nothing happened. “Very curious.”

Looking back over the room at the man in Trooper armor, a slight grin on her lips. “The name's Mihoshi Keibatsu. You?”

The silence between them was thunderous until the barely heard response. “Rohan.”

“Pleased to meet ya,” the High Councillor said happily. “Now, I have no real desire to kill you and I'm going to assume you don't want to kill me.”

The man nodded, once down and once up.

“Care to make a game of it then? First one to the middle gets a handful of credits.” She shook one side of her green coat with her free hand. “Then we can dance and figure out the rest, eh?”

Rohan watched her through the black lenses of his helmet. After what felt like an eternity, he nodded again.

“Alright then!” She tapped a third square near her feet and raised an eyebrow at the quick sparks along the plate. “And go!”

Rohan watched as the woman began to test the various floor plates and move towards the center of the room. Puzzles were a dialectic to him as he frowned under his helmet. There was a pattern to the floor. He knew it. He just couldn't see it. He tapped the square in front of him tentatively with his toe. The blue square turned yellow then reverted.

Nothing happened.

Rohan tapped the panel next to it and the green hue switched to red. A moment later it returned to green. Rohan stepped onto the blue square. As his full weight pressed upon it it flashed yellow and then stayed that color. The woman was making greater progress. She was unencumbered by armor and was lighting jumping from square to square.

You're going to be left behind. Rohan began walking towards the center in a straight line. The grid of colors pulsed and changed. Blue to yellow. Yellow to green. Green to red. Unseen by Rohan if two tiles were of the same color they changed at the same time. Rohan skidded to a halt as he watched the woman land on a green tile, it flashed Red. However, it was already next to a set of red tiles. As the green finished turning to red the whole section of red tiles disappeared.

The woman let out a scream as she twisted in the air. She grasped for the illuminated panels grabbing hold of one. With nearly no effort she pulled herself up. "Did you see that?"

Rohan nodded as he paused to look at the board. He'd been moving without thought and he silently wished his brother Kai was here. Rohan's brain struggled as he tried to hold all the different patterns in his head. Did blue become green or yellow? Red was clearly bad but would yellow matching yellow squares also create an issue?

"Look, this is dangerous...maybe we shouldn't race anymore."

Rohan pondered that thought. He didn't need to win here. Just survive. As he was about to answer the outer ring of panels began to pulse red and then disappeared. Rohan spun at the sound and saw that the next set of tiles flashed red and disappeared. He looked at the woman. "Run!"

Miho tilted the brim of her hat up and looked at the rapidly disappearing tiles and swore quite beautifully for a few seconds before she began almost bouncing from tile to tile, not giving anything the chance to collapse or trigger.

Land, then jump. Land, then jump. She drifted along the threads of fate and time as the Force guided each landing, each jump. There it was, the last tile in the center. The outer rows were pulsing faster and phasing out of existence. “Well, that’s just not fair.” She muttered more to herself than to anyone in particular. Pips trilled from the safe space at her entrance and danced back and forth between his feet.

“Yes, yes. I’m working on it,” the Odanite said darkly. “One of these days, I’m going to sell you to a scrap dealer. Know any good ones?” She asked loudly in Rohan’s direction. “Scrap dealers.”

The sense of baffled male filled the air as the two of them stepped on the tile at the same time. “Oh. Huh.”

“Hm.” Rohan said through the microphone in his helmet. “Now what?”

The center most tile hadn’t changed color by so much as a single gradient while every tile around them had vanished. “Uh, I’m not entirely sure. Rock-paper-scissors to decide the tie break?”

Again, the Imperial seemed slightly unsure how to deal with the small Odanite. “Sounds as good as anything, I guess.”

“One.” Miho said with a grin.

“Two.” Rohan’s voice came from behind the mask.

“Three.” Miho said, picking her throw.

“Shoot!” Rohan finished, throwing a rock.

Miho also threw a rock.

“Well, shit.” Miho said softly. “Eh, I think I’ve had enough for one day anyway. Credits are yours, Rohan.”

She pulled a handful out of her pocket and deposited them in the waiting hand of the definitely confused trooper. Miho looked up and around at the arena. “I yield. Or something. Can we go home now?”

The lights turned back on, the sound of the tiles coming back online filled the room and Miho grinned at Rohan while Pips came bounding across the floor to climb up the back of her coat and take his usual position. She held a small card out towards the man with a freq scribbled on the back. “Give me a call sometime if you find yourself in the Nilgaard Sector. I’ll show you a fun time.”

With that, the small High Councillor turned and walked away, waving a hand over her shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Rohan. This was fun!”

Rohan's instincts had been right. The pulsing tiles began to disappear as they completed a set. The woman yelped after a near miss as she stumbled. Rohan reached out with the Force helped her balance. He didn't have time to talk. His mind was racing and then...silence. The woman hadn't moved while she caught herself. Rohan hadn't moved when he stretched out his hand to save her.

They were still standing...

Rohan spun around. Had someone stopped the game? Was there someone watching that wasn't going to let one of them actually die? Had he broken a rule by not letting her fall?

"Look!" the woman called out pointing excitedly at the ground. Rohan looked at his feet. It was a green tile. He looked up, his helmeted head perhaps not showing his confusion as he opened his arms and shook his head. "Look!" the woman gestured towards his feet and then hers. Rohan looked again. They were both on green tiles. Realization dawned for him.

"If we..."

"Yes!"

"Yellow?"

"Yellow!" The woman and Rohan both jumped to a yellow tile. Rohan closed his eyes. A moment later he realized he wasn't breathing and he was still standing on a tile. They began to work in tandem. Blue, red, yellow, green. They hopped in sync across the board as they approached the center. As they got closer Rohan felt that old nagging feeling return.

"Wait!" Rohan looked at their squares, both red. His heart sank. He looked at the center and turned to the woman. "You need to take the last jump."

The woman looked at the stormtrooper. "Why?"

"It should be you."

"Why not both of us?"

Rohan looked at her sadly. The woman turned and her face fell. The center square was only big enough for one of them and in their joy at having figured out the puzzle they hadn't noticed that as they moved forward a full ring it disappeared behind them. They were to far to leap back to safety and the moment one of them entered the center the other would fall. The woman's face said it all. Rohan knew what he had to do.

"Go now." Rohan stepped back off his square and fell into the darkness.