Research Director Titius Osseus vs. Bryar Bowl Champion Benevolent Taldrya Whiner

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.

"Well, looks like someone missed the memo. I'm already insane." Titius sprang to his feet, the red visor of his suit hiding the pink gas. A low whine ramped up as his mask began filtering.

Across the cramped room, Benevolent took a more leisurely time rising. "I would never have guessed if this is your usual haunt. Nice place you have here." Making it to his feet, he dusted himself off. "I was out for a stroll and came across these vagabonds. They invited me in with promise of a good old fashioned punch up. It seems I have been betrayed." Taking in the four walls, his gaze fell on Titius then to the rifle in their hands. "Pink armour. That was a choice..."

Titius cut off the commentary with an opening volley of blaster fire. The padding on the wall melted and peeled out as Benevolent sidestepped the barrage. Burnt plastics joined the pink mist in its assault on the duo. "OH, you do mean to kill me. Alrighty boyo you got it. But lets make this a fair fight? None of this blaster hooey." Barely a gesture and the rifle ripped itself from Titius' grip to slap the wall. Benevolent set himself into a boxer stance and began feining comical jabs towards his opponent.

Titius just tilted his helmet and drew his dagger. His other hand bent back to give way to a second blade from his vambrace. Setting a foot back, the mercenary charged at the shadowboxing fool before him.

"I said, A FAIR FIGHT." Benevolent dropped a fist into the floor. The padding rippled like a waterbed towards Titius and launched him backward into the wall with a dull thud. "If you insist in pointed riposte, Ill be taking one of those." The dagger flew across the room and began orbiting Benevolent.

Titius wasted no time, pushing off the wall and trying to close the distance between him and his opponent. The moment he took a step forward, his stolen dagger flew towards him in a sideways arc, as Ben made an exaggerated chopping motion to guide it. Titius took a wide swing and batted it away with his gauntlet blade. The dagger spun, out of control, up towards the ceiling. It struck and broke a light panel, shorting the circuit and plunging the room back into darkness punctuated only by intermittent strobe-like flickers and the red glow of Titius's helmet.

flicker

Titius punched forward with his gauntlet blade. Ben, starting to feel a little dizzy, tripped backwards onto the soft padded floor and narrowly avoided a slit throat. A glass bottle bounced free from his ragged clothing; all but one was shattered beneath him.

“Augh, that smarts. Listen, you're no barber and I'm not looking for a close shav–”

Titius had no interest in letting this buffoon continue, following up with a downwards stab that Ben had to roll sideways to avoid, flinging shards of broken and bloodied glass in the opposite direction.

The mechanisms in Titius' blade unfortunately got caught up in the fibers of the soft padded floor, leaving Ben a small opening as he stood and picked up the only remaining intact bottle.

flicker

“Say, why don't the three of youse guys open up a tab” Ben quipped as he clumsily swung the bottle like a short club at what was seemingly the nearest Titius.

Off-balance with his left arm tied up in the floor, Titius had no choice but to hit the quick release on his gauntlet, leaving it behind but just catching Ben’s wrist in the nick of time. Using the older man’s momentum against him, Titius stepped forward and spun, hauling Ben up and over his shoulder in a brutal reversal. Before Ben could recover, Titius grappled him from behind and locked his arms behind his back, now soaking with blood from a hundred tiny cuts. Titius leaned in closely as Ben tried in vain to pull away.

“Oh, don't give up just yet. I find myself looking forward to observing the efficacy of this airborne intoxicant. You never know, it might be worth further study later”.

Despite his dire predicament, Ben grinned and closed his left fist tightly. “Why wait?”

flicker

The shattered remains of the other broken bottles suddenly flew towards both men, as if fired from a FC-1 flechette launcher. Titius caught the brunt of it, mostly on his arms and back, with one particularly jagged piece slicing a small gash in the helmet’s environmental seal; a one in a million unlucky cut. The shock from the sudden pain made Titius lose his grip for just a brief moment, long enough for Ben to break free. He rolled forward and turned to face his opponent.

Titius, right hand pressed tightly against the cut to maintain some semblance of an air-tight seal, silently chastised himself. His mood turned, however, as he spotted something that might let him keep the upper hand.

flicker

Titius listened to the hiss of the blown seal for a second and lowered his hand. A low cackle escaped his lips as pain melted away. The low whine in his helm ramped up louder.

flicker

"This is my experiment, you are merely a subject. So stop trying to lead it." Shooting a hand out, he took a deep inhale and dramatically blew it at Benevolent. Horrific Deluge smacked into the outstretched palm. "You have compromised the results."

flicker

Ben saw the rifle come around and dove out of the way. His vision wobbled as he hit the ground, landing on more glass. The floor felt very wet as blood smeared across the cushion. A whispering hiss preceded the light exploding in another shower of sparks, plunging the room into true darkness.

Ben could feel a deep hatred across the room as he found the wall and slid up.

"You have serious anger issues! Maybe therapy would help." His breath caught and heaving coughs assailed him. The ball of hatred turned towards the noise and illuminated the room with blaster bolts. Ben sidestepped and saw Titius tracking him in the brief glow. "You have a hard time listening though." Another brief gesture sent the rifle spinning away once again. Gasping for another breath, Ben pulled the rifle into his hands and leveled it.

Several shots pounded into Titius, eating through his armor. A muffled howl filled the room as he was forced to his knees. Ben kept firing until the clip ran dry. He could feel a second trigger and squeezed hard. Deluge bucked as it dumped its payload into the room, the noise of a dozen orbs slapped the padding before settling to another hiss.

The Force howled as Ben inhaled. His lungs froze and eyes bulged as he gagged silently. Titius heaved himself up from the wall and crawled over. His visor nearly touched Ben's face as he whispered.

"Experiment failed. Subject deceased."

Ben resisted the urge to take a big steadying breath. Normally that was his go-to solution to slow things down and think his way out of a situation, but in this case it would just make his problems worse. His slow deep breath budget at this point was looking like a ketchup-sandwich dinner 3 weeks from payday. While his overly-aggressive roommate was, very briefly, preoccupied with a glass-induced extra ventilation hole, some corner of Ben’s mind concluded maybe it was time to do something about that too. He popped open his miraculously still intact remaining bottle, poured the contents over his trusty pocket-towel, and wrapped it tightly over his nose and mouth. Was it too little, too late? Probably. Maybe he'd go down looking like a drunken bank robber.

flicker

Suddenly, Titius reached down to his belt and held up a small handheld object tightly in his hand.

“I wasn't kidding before, when I said I'm crazy”, said Titius as he slowly circled back to his original corner, never taking his eyes off Ben. “I’ve seen firsthand the kind of excruciating organ damage an explosion in an enclosed space can cause. You're not walking out of here alive either way, so why not let the gas do its work. It could be a far less painful way to go out than this grenade.”

“I’ve gotta say kid, in my experience, it's usually surviving that's the more painful choice–”

Without waiting for the rest of the quip, Titius threw the gravity grenade in his hand at Ben, hoping that between the poor lighting and poison gas the Elder force user’s reactions were starting to suffer. Then, with a practiced motion, engaged the magnetic tether on his Relby V-10 that he has been working his way to and opened fire with another salvo of blaster fire.

Ben instinctively reached out to telekineticly shove away the grenade, but hadn't sensed the impending blaster fire until the very last minute. The grenade was a ruse, it wasn't even armed. And he was too off-balance to properly avoid the…

fli-flicker-cker

It was hard to tell in the ruined lighting, but Titius was certain he made contact with that last hit. He saw the bright bolt disappear into the pile of loose rags that his opponent had been wearing, which now lay motionless on the ground. He fired another pair of shots into the limp body, just to be sure, before crossing the room.

A single, opened bottle of something cheap lay on the ground next to an empty pile of blaster-scorched rags. No body. Titius remembered some Jedi just disappeared without leaving behind a corpse when they died, but that didn't seem quite right here. Still cautious, he picked up the rags and held them high in the air.

As if he had been personally watching this particular fight the whole time, the Combat Master’s holoprojector blinked back on in response, revealing a slightly perplexed but amused Vincent Brujah

“I didn't see a disruptor on the list of equipment we found when we searched you, but that's moot at this point. Disintegration certainly counts as ‘not capable of walking away’. Enjoy your fresh air, for now”.

Still wary of some kind of trick, Titius cautiously gathered his equipment and left the padded room through the now open door. That definitely wasn't what he expected when he decided to sign up for the Championship Tournament, and he could only hope he was up for the next challenge.

Sometime later, in an overlooked supply cupboard elsewhere in the facility, a mostly-naked human suddenly shimmered into view, wearing only an alcohol-soaked towel as a loin cloth. He held up the holocam his client had given him two days prior to check for any damage. Luckily, it seemed to still be working even after the chaos from earlier.

“Well, it seems my days of getting beat up for work are certainly coming to a middle. Now, just gotta find a staff uniform so I can get some of that exclusive tournament footage she was willing to pay my premium rates for…”