Adept Terran Koul vs. Adept Celevon Werd'a

You had arrived on Arx after hearing word of a fighting tournament. It had been set up by the Combat Master and had been advertised as a Revival of the long held tradition of naming a Champion of the Antei Combat Center. As you had arrived at the signup table after waiting in line, you were met by a Trandoshan who looked you up and down, said nothing, and slid a form attached to a clipboard to you. A cheap chain linked a pen to the clipboard.

You read it over and it was a standard legal waiver noting that you could not hold the Combat Master or the Brotherhood liable for any injuries or even potential death that occurred during the tournament. You were entering this tournament of your own free will. Any and all repercussions of doing so were at no one’s fault but your own.

You signed, and the Trandoshan hissed with delight as he pointed to a door behind the table. A cheap paper sign was taped to the door that read “ACC Championship Introductory Meeting” in what looked to be felt-tipped black marker. You stepped inside the dark room and that is the last thing you remember until you woke up just now.

The world around you was dark… and soft. The area that you lay on felt just a bit more firm than a standard pillow. A quick check of yourself revealed that you still wore and carried everything you had when you had signed the waiver. While vision was extremely limited, you could tell that someone else was in the room with you. Four ceiling lights clicked on, one at a time, giving the room a bright glow beneath the four lights, but an eerie darkness outside of their radiance. You were in a padded room with a barred and sealed door. Every surface of the room was covered in thick, firm padded square tiles. You lay on a bed made of the same material in one corner of the room, while someone laid in another bed in the opposite corner. It was too dark to make out their figure well.

A holoprojection dropped from the ceiling, giving the room a pale blue glow. It was Combat Master Vincent Brujah. The Sith smirked as he began speaking.

“So, you’ve signed up for the tournament? Where I come from, that makes you a little crazy. I’ve taken you to a more appropriate environment for someone with your condition.”

As he smiled, pink mist began spraying from the ceiling at the same location as the lights. Slowly, what little you could see of the full room began to tint pink. The Combat Master’s smile grew wider.

“And if you weren’t crazy before… well… we can fix that. The effects of this drug will be pleasant… at first. You must be careful, though. Take too big of a dose and things can get downright terrifying, or so I’ve heard. Prolonged exposure will result in death.”

He shrugged slightly.

“The only way out of this room and into safe air is when I tell my crew to open the door, and I’m only going to do that when there is one of you left capable of walking away. Until then, enjoy the ride.”

The holoprojection blinked away. There was no starting whistle. No horn. No audience. Just silence, dim light, and the realization that the longer you sit there, the closer you would come to death.

It was the itch, external and insistent, that woke him. It crawled up the back of his neck, raising the thin hairs on end. It drew him up from the dark and directed his groggy focus inward towards the phantom tightness in his chest. Slower than he liked, he followed it inward to his lungs, spread his awareness throughout the epithelial cells there, and subtly twisted. There was pain, a lurching feeling of profound wrongness, and then his breathing slowed. The insistent itch faded and he focused back outwards to the self-satisfied Sith's holographic smirk.

"...exposure will result in death."

The Kiffar tsked dismissively as he turned his attention away from the fading hologram to his fellow prisoner. The dim lights glinted off the fellow's beskar armor and the design triggered a dim memory. Though they'd never met, he knew the Mandalorian trapped with him from Arcona's records. He reached out tentatively and felt Celevon's alertness and suspicion. He waved easily in the Erinos' direction as he leveraged himself up from the padded bed.

"Well, this is a fine pickle. Shall we get out of here and see to the bloody Sith that tried to turn us into puppets?"

The taller man stood as well, his archaic helmet turning to scan the room, slow and methodical. A short grunt was the only reply.

Terran shook his head, then moved towards the nearest light, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever mechanism was releasing the toxin into the room. As he did, he called back over his shoulder to his new acquaintance.

"Or we could go at it? Make a show of it. First to draw blood?"

The half-Umbaran scoffed. "Why would I waste my time drawing your blood? It would be better spent showing this so-called Combat Master the error of his ways."

The Arconan swallowed a scoff of his own as he turned to face Celevon. "Okay then. At least we're aiming in the same direction. Poison's not exactly my forte, but I imagine we'll want to make our exit sooner rather than later. I've got a few explosives on me, but I rather suspect they'll have the chamber magnetically sealed."

Celevon nodded dismissively, as if he had already considered and rejected the idea himself. He gestured loosely towards the cell's door and took a few steps in that direction. "Magnetic shielding is irrelevant to my training."

As the Odanite strode towards the cell's barred door, a scrap of flimsiplast caught Terran's eye. He knelt down directly below the light fixture that housed one of the toxin emitters and pried it out from the padded floor's seams. It was scuffed and the haphazard writing was nearly illegible. A label of some sort, hastily discarded, it was printed with a long string of Aurabesh - the name of some unpronounceable chemical compound. It looked to have been affixed to whatever canister was loaded into the toxin dispensers - probably with the same level of care and attention to detail as the "Introductory Meeting" sign or the liability waiver's cheap clipboard.

"Tetrahydrachl..." Terran started to sound it out, then shook his head dismissively. "Hey, Blackwolfe: any idea what this osik does?" He held it up, label facing the Erinos' visor.

Celevon turned and focused on it briefly from the distance. Terran could practically hear the visor clicking into focus as he zoomed in on the scrap of flimsiplast. The voice that answered was somehow both flat and dismissive as he waved towards the label.

"Tetrahydrachlorinitrium. Alchemically enhanced. For the weak-willed, it brings euphoria. Then terror. Finally, death." A note of impatience crept into his voice. "As the holorecording said."

"Well, that's not in my sabacc deck," Terran said, a wry smirk crossing his lips.

Celevon grunted again and turned back towards the door. He took a step towards it and the itch came back, crawling down Terran's spine and drawing his eyes towards the sealed door. He focused - outward this time, towards the door - and felt a deep well of malevolence emanating from it. He couldn't walk the flow of time the way some of his Clanmates could, but his sense of danger was as finely tuned as they came. Faster than thought he sharpened his focus to a knife's edge and turned it on the scrap of flimsiplast. He traced it back through the hours to the hand that had dropped it, then out through the facility, his consciousness spiraling through the corridors, finally fixing in an eastward direction. Celevon took a second step.

Terran stood, ignoring the slight popping in his knees, and gestured back towards the wall nearest the bed on which the Odanite had woken. "I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I think we ought to eschew the door. Our target is in that direction."

The faceless half-Umbaran turned back towards the Kiffar and paused for a moment. Despite the helmet, Terran could feel the Mandalorian's measuring gaze as he considered the suggestion. The moment stretched to seconds before Celevon finally nodded, slightly, then turned to the nearby wall. Well, at least we're working together, Terran thought as he moseyed carefully over the padded floor towards the taller man.

The Blade Master stopped before the padded wall and stretched out a single hand. Something in his posture shifted as he seemed to sink into himself. That was it. Then Terran felt an unnatural wrenching through the Force, as if reality's skein was twisted upon itself, and the wall dissolved into a powdery dust. Celevon gestured dismissively and the powder combusted, burning to ash - and, after a moment, to nothing at all. A man-sized hole was left in the wall, leading into a dimly-lit hallway.

The half-Umbaran stepped through the opening and Terran followed, ducking lower than necessary beneath a haphazardly erected piece of scaffolding. He glanced back up at it, noting the missing ceiling panels that likely gave access to the vents above their former cell, then scanned the rest of the hallway. Discarded paint cans, used paintbrushes, and various other bits of refuse littered the corridor. This time, Terran did scoff.

"Someone doesn't believe in dotting their Creshes and crossing their Forns."

"Apparently," Celevon replied, similarly noting the hallway's ramshackle state. "I take it you can track our would-be puppet master?"

There was an edge to Celevon's voice, one that put the Kiffar on edge in turn. He tried to shake it off, nodding further down the hall. "That way. The hallways twist and turn, but whoever armed the toxin dispensers is about a klick in that direction."

The Mandalorian nodded, then paused to study the Kiffar. His masked face was unreadable, but Terran felt a sense of wariness from him - and he felt the same wariness creep into the back of his own mind. The two men had common cause, but were otherwise strangers. Can I trust him, or is this all part of some elaborate ruse to make me drop my guard? Terran tried to shake off the thought, but it persisted. There was something sinister about the masked Mandalorian. Something in his unyielding demeanor that belied trust.

Terran forced an easy, practiced grin, then sent his own awareness inward towards his lungs. The adjustments he had made to his own respiration were still slowing his oxygen use and strengthening his body's ability to filter out toxins. He ought to be able to shrug off such a brief exposure.

Still, he thought, forcing himself to meet the former Arconan's gaze with a guileless grin, it never hurts to be careful.

Celevon paused a moment longer, continuing to stare into the Kiffar's eyes, then turned and headed down the disused hallway.

Behind him, Terran checked the clearance on his blasters, easing them loosely in their holsters. The intrusive thought repeated like a mantra. It never hurts to be careful...

Unlike his fellow prisoner, there were several things very different about the two of them: firstly, the Shaevalian-Umbaran knew nothing about the Arcanist whatsoever. Secondly, and in this case more importantly, his beskar’gam came with a default option of a filtration and pressurization system, allowing him to survive underwater, in space and in toxic atmospheres.

The moment the gaseous hallucinogen’s container began to expel it, Celevon had toggled that switch into the active position. Even if it didn’t work to filter out the alchemically-enhanced drug — technically, a type of poison, especially if too much was ingested — the Seeker spent very little time in that room after it was released. As he was unaware if the vents were still connected to the rest of the facility they were trapped within, the Mandalorian kept that switch active to be on the safe side.

And, finally, he had utilized his limited control of his own body and the healing energy of the Force to purge the last remnants of the sedatives from himself. With his trained immunity to poisons and toxins, it took much more than a normal dosage to knock the former Arconan Assassin out and keep him unconscious.

The Shaevalian-Umbaran had felt a small surge of Force energy from the Jensaarai, but had been unable to determine what the other man had done. Instead, his focus had mostly been on discovering a way out of the padded and sealed room.

However, the use of one of his names — specifically, one he rarely, if ever used and only a few trusted people were aware of — had ratcheted up his personal paranoia meter several notches.

... Beyond what it had already been, having been startled awake in a dark room by the hologram of the potentially psychopathic Combat Master. Before this, all he had known about the man was his appearance, name and position.

Since that point, the Seeker had been studying the shorter male periodically, all the while resisting the urge to delve into the mind of the Jensaarai. Looking into the dark blue eyes to see how much the hallucinogen was affecting him. So, naturally, Celevon was wary and could sense the unease in the other.

Beneath his helm, the Shaevalian-Umbaran frowned as he turned and began to walk away, even as he drew his slugthrower revolver from the shoulder holster. There was a known enemy who had tried to poison both males ahead of them — it was unknown if the Combat Master himself had been the one to set up the canisters full of the gaseous hallucinogenic — and several of that person’s lackeys on the other side of the door, around the corner from them.

The worst unknown variable was the potential enemy directly behind him.

Thus, already paranoid and in a state of heightened awareness, the slight rustle of sound behind him, louder than the noise the Jensaarai had previously been making?

It was no surprise that Celevon Werd’a spun in place to face his former fellow prisoner. Nor the fact that he cocked back the hammer of the revolver as he pivoted.

"Sithspit!"

The curse echoed through the nearly empty control room. The whine of a servo-motor followed as the protocol droid sitting next to him turned to look at Ex Loedi.

"Language, Technician First Class Loedi." L47P's mechanical eyes flickered on and off in a complicated pattern, then it turned its attention back to the monitor.

The Gran's left eye turned to the droid, blinking nervously, then all three stalks focused back on the same monitor. Scanlines moved down across the ancient screen at random intervals and the picture jumped side-to-side nearly imperceptibly, but the two combatants were clear enough. So was the label hanging from that mudscuffer Koul's duster pocket. Surely that's from the pair of canisters Vincent installed, he thought, sweat beading on his forehead. He tried to swipe it away, but the suction cups on the ends of his fingers stuck to the dusty, yellowed plasteel of the console. They always did when he was nervous.

Like you were when you helped install the canisters.

The intrusive voice was an unwelcome acquaintance. It chided him relentlessly. It pointed out every failure. It sounded just like a certain Combat Master who was conveniently absent after finishing his holorecording.

With an effort, Ex Loedi wriggled his fingers free from the console and wiped away the sweat on his forehead, at least temporarily. And he tried not to imagine the label sticking to his nervous fingers, then falling to the floor unnoticed. Instead, he focused on the monitor where the two dupes now faced each other, tension evident in their body language.

The half-Umbaran's slugthrower was out and cocked, pointed vaguely in the Kiffar's direction. Terran, meanwhile, had a hand on one of his WESTAR-35 pistols and the other held out casually, almost placating. But there was a dissembling air to his posture and expression. The monitor fuzzed momentarily, and the Gran reached out and struck it lightly on the side to clear the static. Two of his eyes spun to either side, where more modern screens displayed dossiers of the two men - their backgrounds, known abilities, and psychological profiles as understood by the Dark Council. His center eye stalk stayed glued to the video feed, though, and he - silently - cursed the lack of audio. The two men were speaking, and their body language showed increased aggravation.

Good. Go at it. The sooner we can update your skill profiles, the sooner I can go home. Plus, if they were fighting each other, they weren't tracking him. Or Brujah. It was definitely Brujah who had dropped the label.

Sithspit!

The Arconan dove to his right, barreling through an empty cardboard box and drawing a blaster as he rolled back to his feet. He fired wildly, then twitched the fingers of his right hand and sent a barrage of refuse at Celevon. Paint cans, flimsiplast signs, splintered scaffolding, and more flew toward the Odanite in a hail of rubbish.

The half-Umbaran scoffed, flicking a hand casually, dismissively, towards the fusillade. The flimsiplast, cardboard, and scaffolding ignited immediately, then turned to ash just as quickly. The paint cans were another story. They burst into fireballs that Terran immediately accelerated, twisting gravity around them so they screeched towards Werd'a like tiny missiles. The terse Krath grunted, then flung himself out of their path. He kicked off the hallway wall and landed smoothly on his feet, then fired another salvo at Terran. Green flames coruscated around the slugs as they incinerated the air along their path, literally screaming towards the Kiffar. He reacted on instinct, firing a volley of blaster bolts at the bullets. The mix of superheated plasma and their own preternatural flames were enough to melt the slugs, transforming them to molten liquid. A sweep of his free hand sent the liquid to the side, splashing into a sizzling puddle to his left.

Celevon was on him before he could react, slugthrower holstered and dagger drawn. The wrist blade on his gauntlet was extended as well, and both glinting blades swiped in at him from opposite sides. There was an implacability to the Blade Master's movements that Terran just had time to note before he drew his second blaster, raising both to block and hook the dual-bladed attack. Sparks struck where the blades and blasters met, and Terran drew on the force to strengthen his own muscles as he pushed out, knocking Celevon's arms wide and then lunging forward into his chest to shoulder-check the armored Mandalorian. Terran grunted at the impact, the reverberation from the armor sending a numb tingling down his arm even as the taller man staggered backwards.

Terran tried to follow up, stepping toward the Odanite and aiming the barrel of a blaster at the man's solar plexus, but the Sliding Hands master countered instinctively. He recovered his footing immediately and stepped into the attack. The hand wearing his Mandalorian vambrace curled around the blow, striking the Kiffar's wrist, then slid up it as Celevon circled to the outside, turning the graceful pirouette into an elbow strike. Terran's hand opened instinctively, his blaster clattering to the floor. He backpedaled, creating space between the pair, and grimaced. The expression tightened the scar on his cheek painfully, and he grimaced further.

Celevon gestured offhandedly and the dropped blaster clattered down the hallway, away from the duo. Terran tracked it out of the corner of his eye - which is when he saw a dozen metal spheres rolling down the hallway towards them. For the briefest of moments, he considered accelerating the spheres at his opponent. Then he shook his head as if to clear it and gestured instead.

"Okay, look. I know I lost my head there. But seriously. Behind you."

The half-Umbaran's expressionless mask stayed glued to him for a moment, but, as if sensing the sincerity, he finally turned - right as the buzz droids opened up and launched themselves at the pair.

Loedi growled as the ancient Pistoeka sabotage droids engaged the two men and turned a disbelieving expression towards Elfour. The protocol droid gazed back impassively.

"Ability Test B2: engaged."

The mechanical voice from the vocoder seemed almost smug as he announced the buzz droid's activation - an act that would surely cause the pair of combatants to continue hunting for the toxin's source just as soon as they dealt with the swarm. And deal with it they would. Even now the two Elders were cutting a swath through the droids. The half-Umbaran had holstered his dagger and redrawn his revolver. Slugs flew from the barrel, pitting the buzz droid armor and blinding their optics left and right. Next to him, the Kiffar twisted his wrist in a practiced motion and a kriffing lightsaber flew out of his sleeve. He caught it in midair and ignited the amber blade, twirling into the swarm and lashing out with both the lightsaber and the blaster at once. Amber blade and amber bolt pierced droid after droid, slicing through metal plating and slagging circular saws. In seconds the swarm was so much debris, and the two men turned to look at each other. Their glance was silent - would have been even if the audio were working - and they shared a brief nod. Then they took off in a trot down the corridor and out of the holocam's field of view.

The Gran turned back to L47P accusingly. "You know they're headed right here now, don't you?"

The chromium-plated protocol droid returned his three-eyed gaze impassively. "This is why you shouldn't litter," he replied without inflection. "It's against protocol."

Ex Loedi seethed ineffectually and began to punch at the console's keys, trying to find another holocam with a view of the combatants. One by one, they all returned static. Disabled. Crik!

"Almost there." The pair stood at a Vev-shaped intersection and Terran gestured to the right. The Mandalorian nodded and gestured for Terran to lead the way this time. The Kiffar did so silently, chagrined at his earlier susceptibility to the toxin. One more turn and the pair nearly ran into a refurbished TRD-2 sparring droid. The ridiculous looking droid spun on its treads and ignited a dual-bladed red lightsaber while its shoulder-mounted blaster tracked towards the duo. Unseen within his helmet, Celevon smirked at the ridiculous defense. He gestured derisively and the lightsaber flew from the droid's hand, twirling around to decapitate the automaton.

Terran chortled beside him, nodding in respect, then reignited his own blade and shoved it into the armored door's control panel. The door's failsafe activated, whooshing open, and the pair stepped into the dusty, dimly-lit control room. The room was almost empty, manned only by a protocol droid and a sweaty, heavyset Gran. They spun towards the door as it opened. The protocol droid gazed at them mutely, then deactivated, its head coming to rest at an unnatural angle. The Gran opened its snout, grunting gutturally. Then he too deactivated, fainting out of his chair and onto the durasteel floor.

"Well," Terran murmured, eyes dancing between the monitors before turning to face Celevon. "That answers that, at least."

"What now?" the armored man asked. "Going to punish him?"

Terran shook his head, then slagged the console with a few well-placed blaster bolts. "Nah. I suspect Brujah will do that for me." He holstered his blaster and saber, then gestured back out the door. "Can you take off the mask to drink? I'm buying."

As the Seeker finished the turn, slugthrower revolver slightly raised, he could see the Kiffar’s dark blue eyes had widened...

However, it was the shadow of movement behind his fellow prisoner that had drawn Celevon’s attention. In a deft action, muscle memory having taken over, the Shaevalian-Umbaran lifted the revolver the rest of the way, sighted and fired.

The retort of the slugthrower echoed in the somewhat enclosed space of the corridor behind the pair, and would no doubt draw the attention of anyone else within the location. The former Jensaarai jigged to the left, giving himself room to maneuver in the adjacent widening of the small room.

The former Arconan Special Forces Operative spotted a telltale shimmer of a personal cloaking device being deactivated

“Get to cover!” Celevon barked at the former Jensaarai as the shorter man had turned to see who or what had been shot. He too was looking for signs of life, but had the protection of beskar plating.

Better to be safe than sorry. With that thought — entirely unaware that it echoed the Kiffar’s own on their current, mutual SHTF situation — the Blade Master reached out with his off-hand, a tendril of Force energy extended to the fallen enemy. Celevon twisted his hand and there was a harsh crunch as the body’s head turned, neck broken.

Thankfully, it seemed the Arconan had not argued the point and taken cover behind some haphazardly stacked crates. His WESTAR-M5 Blaster Rifle was held at his shoulder, even as the other male glanced through the sights. “Five more coming from that direction,” Terran reported for his temporary ally’s benefit. “Think you can pull off a similar trick to what you did earlier?”

Beneath his helmet, the former Arconan Assassin’s lips curled into a wide smirk. “Aye, I most certainly can. And better.”

“I do love a good trick,” the Arcanist quipped back in a moment of camaraderie.

The moment the others rounded the corner, the former captives were ready. The Seeker’s idea of a ‘better performance’ came in the form of a wave of emerald fire, leaving their enemies both blinded and scalded.

Then, they acted. Terran Koul lit them up with streaks of blaster-fire whilst Celevon Werd’a’s slugthrower revolver roared with every shot. Before long — only about twenty seconds had passed since their enemies had rounded the corner — they were the only two in the area still breathing.

The Shaevalian-Umbaran released the cylinder, then emptied it out with a tingle of multiple metal cartridges that hit the ground. As he began to reload it with the thick slugs, Celevon turned to see the former Jensaarai out of the corner of his remaining organic eye.

“Shall we continue on and hunt down the bastard that locked us up with canisters of poison? Or do we get the hell out of this osik-show?”