RPG - Battledome II: The Cleansing (Page 6 of 9)

Guta-Nay hacked through the fake foliage in an attempt to reach the outer walls, killing anyone in his way. He was tired, hungry, and craving a glass of alcohol. It's not a good idea to **** off a Weequay with alcohol deprivation. Guta-Nay wanted to see if there was a blind spot between the turrets to he could possibly escape. When he reached the outer wall he saw a Jedi, armed with a lightsaber pike with a yellow blade ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber_pike but with a slightly shorter staff part)

Guta-Nay fired at the Jedi, who moved with superhuman speed and agility to deflect the shot and force push Guta-Nay before he could even blink. Guta-Nay was launched backwards, and he landed hard on the ground. He quickly drew his vibrosword and stood back up, parrying the Jedi's attacks.

The fight lasted for about 10 seconds, until Guta-Nay noticed the Jedi's left leg had been seared badly by a blaster bolt. Guta-Nay stabbed at the leg, causing the Jedi to move it back, shifting his weight to the bad leg as he did. The Jedi flinched at the pain, and Guta-Nay swung hard at the lightsaber pike, causing it to fly out of the Jedi's grip. He swiftly beheaded the Jedi, who was no older then 20, so he must have been inexperienced. That was probably why Guta-Nay had won, because he would have lost against a more powerful Jedi.

Picking up the pike, Guta-Nay ignited it, marveling at it's lightness and beauty. The blade had no weight to it, unlike his vibrosword. It was a great weapon, and Guta-Nay was sure he would put it to some good use. He walked closer to the wall, careful to not go past the line which marked 10 meters. Going past the line would mean instant death by the laser turrets.

Walking close to the line, Guta-Nay looked up at the wall. some of the turrets were locked onto him, daring him to step over the line. Suddenly, some of the turrets locked onto something moving behing him. Guta-Nay quickly turned around. A Gamorrean was running at him, vibro axe raised. Guta-Nay moved to the side, and the Gamorrean stumbled past him, almost over the line. Guta-Nay ignited the lightsaber pike, stabbing the Gamorrean in it's large gut. It fell backwards over the 10 meter line, and it got blasted rapidly by dozens of lasers. When they were done, the Gamorrean was nothing more then a smoldering pile of ashes and charred body parts.

Satisfied with his new weapon, Guta-Nay walked back into the forest to test it out on some unlucky prisoners.

I feel for ya ner vod.  You have my payers and good wishs.

Discovering the Braceman armor, the grenades, the shotgun, the pistol, hell even the ration bars in his overall pockets, had made Nossk feel good. Very good. He’d expressed general disdain for the fighters who’d run to the weapons and armor the moment they left their cells, but that didn’t mean he intended to fight barehanded and naked through hordes of heavily equipped enemies to get his revenge, his bounty, and his freedom. The Trandoshan’s gear had more or less fallen into his lap, ever since that first prison guard had so generously provided him with his vibroaxe mere seconds into this bloodbath.

Fighting the battledroid, however, opened Nossk’s lidless, reptilian eyes to something: There were some enemies that you couldn’t simply charge and rip apart piece by piece. Sooner or later one of his opponents would be too well-equipped for Nossk’s considerable strength and brutish courage to handle. His armor would be too thick for a slugthrower or a vibroaxe, his blasters too powerful, his range too far, his intelligence too great – and at that time the tale of Nossk would be all told, and an abrupt “The End” would be printed at its finish. Unless he had more.

Perhaps it was a sad reality to men such as him – needing more and more technology just to stay on part with your opponents – but it was a reality nonetheless. The primitive were doomed to failure and death, the modern fated to survival and victory. So far the only things that the Trandoshan possessed were acquired through a combination of two methods: searching buildings and killing people. He saw no reason to change his strategy now; after all, there were still plenty of un-scoured houses in the faux village.

For all that Nossk had learned in his short time in the Battledome (from nearly losing to the cocky human, to realizing how vital searching your surroundings can be, to scraping with death yet again at the hands…blaster/blade of the war droid), in many ways he remained the dumb bruiser that got himself landed into this cesspool in the first place. The Trandoshan sidled up to the door of a prefab house several blocks away from where he battled the droid (the concept of switching hunting grounds was one of the few that was familiar to him), and promptly kicked it off its hinges. He had no process for selecting the houses he raided; no consideration for how many potential escape routes there were, how large it was, what kinds of noises he’d heard coming from the area in the past few cycles, none of it mattered to Nossk. All he knew was that it was a house, that he hadn’t been there before, and that there might be prey or profit somewhere inside.

No ambush waited for him as he walked through the doorway; or when he clomped up the stairs with not the slightest attempt at stealth; or when he tore through each room one by one, tensed and ready for something, anything to leap out and attack him. But there was nothing.

In one of the rooms Nossk found a large rucksack and two canteens, already brimming with water. The Trandoshan gave no worry to the possibility that it might be poisoned (and indeed it wasn’t, to his good fortune), and tossed them into the pack before throwing it over his shoulders and cinching the straps tight. The reptilian trudged back down the stairs, unsatisfied with the tranquility of the place and unexcited about his meager findings.

He was halfway out the door when an inexplicable, yet unmistakable buzzing noise made him halt mid-step. Nossk looked back over his shoulder, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, something in the back of his scaly head urged him to go back. So he did.

Nossk turned around and reentered the house, raising his new shotgun in an unconscious gesture of apprehension. Something had to have made that noise, but the Trandoshan had just none-too-subtly searched the entire building, and found nothing but the pack and water he now wore. Nossk wandered his way into the kitchen, looking for a door that hadn’t been broken in yet. It didn’t take him long to come upon a small door tucked into a small alcove of the kitchen, one easily mistaken for a coatroom or a broom closet. Seeing no other alternative the Trandoshan wrenched the light door open, and was surprised to see neither coats nor brooms: instead, a narrow, wooden stairway descended into the musky darkness below. The basement was below ground level, and judging from the pitch blackness had no windows to illuminate the stone-walled interior. Two kinds of men would turn around and not pay the foreboding cellar another thought: a smart man, or a scared man (or perhaps both). Nossk was neither.

The Trandoshan immediately mounted the stairs and began his descent. The shotgun’s stock was pressed tight against Nossk’s uninjured shoulder, steadying the slugthrower as it remained locked onto the bottom of the staircase and the cavernous darkness beyond. The lizard-man’s keen reptilian eyes adjusted in seconds, and he could make out the basement much more clearly by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs. It was essentially one large room, with about a half dozen durasteel beams scattered throughout to support the roof. The dusty mounds of junk strewn about the cellar were startlingly realistic for a village that was supposed to be all prefabricated and fake, and even sported such archaic touches as old, sheet-covered furniture. Nossk found the extensiveness of the atmosphere highly confusing.

Confusion was wiped away in a single instant as the Trandoshan picked up movement from the corner of his eye. He swiveled towards the rustling to his left and fired. Stuffing exploded in great clouds as Nossk’s shell connected with a long-forgotten couch against the wall. More than stuffing, however, he heard a horrible, insectoid screech add to the sudden clamor.

Gotcha. Nossk thought to himself, believing the creature to be at the very least wounded.

“At the very least” wasn’t quite good enough, however; so he pumped his weapon, and fired again. The screech sounded a second time - still in the same place. His target was immobile.

Nossk pumped his shotgun again before approaching the decimated sofa, behind which his unknown enemy lay, probably bleeding heavily (at least he liked to think so) from multiple gunshot wounds. The Trandoshan grabbed one arm of the couch and dragged it aside, revealing the gore-covered form of a small, insect-like biped buzzing angrily on the stone floor. It glared up at the reptile with hate in its multi-faceted eyes, flopping pathetically as it tried to lash out at its assailant. Nossk raised his shotgun slightly until the wide muzzle wavered mere centimeters from the bug-creature’s hideous face...and fired.

White splatters of fluid showered the walls, the couch, Nossk, and anything else within a two meter radius of the small corpse that had just been blown open like a melon. The Trandoshan cocked his slugthrower a third time, and turned to finish searching the basement. What he saw stopped him dead, and maybe, though he would never admit it and none would ever know for sure, even instilled a single mote of fear in the brutish warrior: Arrayed behind him, semi-silhouetted against a tiny beam of light that peeked in between a set of double-doors to the surface, was an unbroken sea of the little insects. Little wasn’t exactly the best word to use, as far as insect standards go that is. They stood perhaps a meter and a half when drawn up to their full height, and were covered in a deep blue coat of chitinous armor. The lot of them were completely unarmed, but numbers can make up for a great deal of things. A deep, irritated buzzing, the very same that the first had produced before his death, seemed to radiate from the small swarm (for that’s what they were, a swarm). Stranger still, the very spite they must have been feeling seemed to bear down on him, to impress their hate into his mind.

To Nossk this meant nothing but a few funny noises and weird feelings in his empty Trandoshan belly. After all, as with the Yevetha Nossk knew very little of the many species that call this galaxy home, especially not one as unique and rare as the Bartokk. The Bartokk possess what is called a “hive mind”, meaning they think as one, and in their case their intelligence increases exponentially with each additional Bartokk within a certain range. This occurs through a type of primitive telepathy which can be repurposed to cry for help or, for example, share emotions. The Bartokk were in sole possession of several other unusual and distinctive abilities, but Nossk would discover those in due course.

I think I’m actually going to die. Nossk thought mildly to himself, waiting in tense silence while neither he nor the wall of insects moved. His eyes darted between claws and teeth that would be multiplied by dozens, and would very soon all be trying to rip a piece of him apart. They would simply surge forward and engulf him, so great were their numbers and so enclosed their battlefield.

Eh, whatever.

Nossk had always known how he would die. He raised his shotgun, bellowed long and loud, and charged straight for the wall of Bartokk as his first gun-blast echoed in the nightmarish basement.

((That would be me, sorry but I'm a little too brain dead to post lately, I'll try to get something up soon))

((Hey guys, just thought I'd throw in an FYI. Gunslinger is moving in to kind of join forces with Nossk, and I hate to say it but your party is already a bit on the large side, so I suggest we keep ourselves separated for the time being.

If you're looking for a new objective though, throw some mercenaries into the fight, I think it's about time Gerba released them in full force anyway. And don't forget that other NPC groups might have formed as well elsewhere in the Battledome - the possibility of a gang war is always open. Hacking and slashing isn't our only option for writing, we need to formulate some kind of goal for each character or group of characters; even if that's just slaughtering everyone else, then some mass-genocide plan has to come to light or something of that nature. I hope you can forgive the OOC.))

((In the end there was Mel, Sathik, Dash, myself...oh man was that really it? When it gets that small we really didn't have too much of a choice, but throughout the Battledome we kind of teamed up and split off a couple times. For now I'd say your group is fine, but you can tell how people start to lose track of where their characters are or what their new allies are doing.))

“Most of the sentients have run to the city.  Let them kill each other.  We shall own the woods, killing those we find and letting the masses slaughter each other in the town. We must find our ground and master it.  Come, those in the city will learn soon enough that the buildings only hold death.  They will seek shelter…and we shall be waiting.”

"A good plan. By the way, what is your name?"

"Dra'kash" he replied.

"Kal. Now, let us find our battleground."

Kal raised his Shatter gun, and ejected his right gauntlet blade just in case. Dra'kash readied himself similarly. They moved throughout the woods, and initially encountered few enemies, who they quickly killed. They stopped at a rock formation that formed a cave, of sorts. "This looks defensible, but it doesn't give us much of a way of escape, if a large group attacked us. Your call."

Before Dra'kash could answer, a mighty voice echoed across the Battledome. "WHERE ARE YOU MANDALORIAN!"

"Uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."

*I’m game Ralin  *

Kel’Dar’Ish held as far back in the shadows as he could and watched the lizard man start down into his hiding place.  Holding tightly to his native Shistavanen blade, he watched as the alien found a hiding place in the roots of a tree to hide his pack. 

This could be great!  After they leave I can take his stuff and see if he had any food; I’m starving.

Instead of putting his back-pack in the hiding place, the lizard stopped and looking inside. 

“Look” he said to his companion.  “It’s one of Gerba’s hidden supply places!  Take some food and ammo packs.”

Grah!  Why didn’t I think to look in there!  I’ve been starving all this time, and I’ve been sitting on some supplies the whole time!

As the Mandalorian started down into the grove, however, his head swung in Kal’s direction.  “Look out!” he yelled to the lizard as his rifle came up level with Kal’s head.

Blast!  His helmet sensors must have spotted me!

Jumping from his hidden place, Kal tackled the lizard guy before he could pull his blaster pistol.  Grabbing him from behind and holding his blade to the alien’s throat, Kal kept his prisoner between himself and the Mandalorian

“Lets make a deal!” Kal barked in harsh basic…

*hope that’s ok; tell me if I need to edit*

It's not as great as I'd like, but I'm exhausted and at least it's something.

-

Chaos washed over Nossk in an emerald wave of whining Bartokk. His slugthrower thundered again and again, a full four times in the tight, smothering confines of the basement that had just become a killing ground. The column of insectoid aliens unlucky enough to be in the Trandoshan’s forward fire arc fell in droves, and for a few precious, glorious seconds Nossk felt invincible as he laid waste to the enemies before him; fear and hopelessness gave way to a sudden surge of adrenaline and excitement, and the reptilian thought for those same delusional seconds that he could hold the sea of bloodthirsty Bartokk at bay with the simple application of guts and his boomstick. After those brief moments passed, however, Nossk realized he was wrong. He was very, very wrong.

One cannot fire a pistol into a swarm of bees and expect to kill all of them, and by the same token slaying an entire hive of Bartokk with nothing but a spread-shot slugthrower was an undertaking reserved for the desperate or the foolish. Those initial instants when Nossk’s fire decimated the first half dozen or so insectoids standing directly in front of him was all it took for the rest of the swarm to literally engulf the defiant Trandoshan from every other conceivable direction. They leapt on top of him, crawled between his legs, clung to his arms and torso, all the while tearing at any part of him they could touch.

Nossk’s arms were jerked downwards as a pair of the creatures latched onto his arms, forcing his shotgun down and away from the targets in front of him. He managed to pump it once more, and pulled the trigger anyway, blasting another of the Bartokk away. No matter where the barrel was pointed it was sure to hit something, so thick were the insects packed around the reptilian mercenary. One of the Bartokk on his arm bit into his hand, loosening his grip on the slugthrower as another tore it away from his grasp. Nossk growled in pain and fury, and pulled his arm up to his face. For a frozen moment in time he stared the Bartokk attached to it directly in its multiple eyes – then he fastened his jaws over them. He snapped them together, and like a child breaking the shell of a hard candy he chomped through the creature’s natural armor, crushing its skull and tasting its gore.

Nossk flailed his arms in wide arcs, swinging the insectoids like some sort of sadistic theme park ride in his attempts to throw them off. One finally lost its grip and was hurled into the half-destroyed sofa that Nossk had shot upon entering the cellar; the other was used as a makeshift club against its kin, clinging to the Trandoshan’s left arm as he swung it in great circles. It didn’t take long for the reptilian to realize that it wasn’t going to let go, so he used the considerable momentum he’d gained to smash the persistent Bartokk against the duracrete floor. Exoskeleton cracked and white fluid oozed, but the insectoid creature still lived – until, that is, Nossk’s clawed foot caved in its chest as he turned to engage another (another dozen or so, rather) Bartokk.

One mustn’t forget that Nossk was not, by any means, fighting the monstrosities on a one-on-one basis. Even while he bit, threw, and crushed the insects, dozens more buzzed around him, some pounding uselessly against his Braceman plating while others dug into his scaly hide through open gapes in his makeshift suit of armor. As Nossk ground his latest kill into the ground, one of its hive-mates burrowed a clawed appendage into his upper thigh, twisting it back and forth in its attempt to drive the limb deeper. The Trandoshan’s reaction was instantaneous.

Nossk did not hiss, did not growl, did not gurgle, did not snarl, did not produce any sound that one would normally expect a Trandoshan to make. No, when Nossk felt the hot lance of pain drive through his leg, he roared, a terrifying report more akin to a Krayt Dragon call than a Trandoshan expression of pain. Nossk’s vision narrowed to a red tunnel, one which zeroed in on the little insect trying to mutilate his leg. The Trandoshan reached down and grabbed the Bartokk in an unforgiving vice-grip, lifting it high in the air as he bellowed his rage and pain through the prefabricated house. Before the lizard-man was angry, violent, viscous; now he flew into an all-out rage.

Nossk began smashing the creature into everything and anything that he could find. First the floor, or whatever section of it was within reach and uncovered by an insect corpse, then one of the beams supporting the basement (a sizeable crack erupted from the impact, both in the Bartokk’s chitin and the beam itself), and then…

What else is there!? Nossk asked himself in a half-conscious, adrenaline-spiked flicker of thought. There’s nothing left to break it on, NOTHING!

The unbroken ring of Bartokk encasing the berserking Trandoshan blocked his view of the rest of the basement, and within reach there did indeed seem to be no further solid objects to swing the troublesome creature into. Nossk might’ve been disappointed if he were capable of sentient thought at the moment, or if he didn’t suddenly see/hear/sense the human perched halfway down the rickety wooden staircase leading upstairs fire his improvised, salvaged blaster into the horde of insects.

Perfect! A clear thought breached the murky battle-haze of Nossk’s mind, brimming with excitement. A staircase! I can smash it into that!

Nossk, still clutching the Bartokk in his extended arm and voicing his own personal war-cry, plowed towards the staircase. His hand closed tighter and tighter around his victim’s throat until he felt chitinous plates crack and its omnipresent humming change sharply in pitch, but at this point the Trandoshan didn’t much care if he was holding a long-dead corpse; whatever it was, he was going to bash it open against that staircase, and that was that.

Two of the Bartokk hung on his shoulders, scratching uselessly at the hard pauldrons. Another clung to his Braceman back-plate, tearing into the flesh under his left armpit along his side (where the chest and back pieces of his armor didn’t quite connect) with relative impunity. Nossk hardly felt them.

The reptilian’s mind had a single objective, a self-assigned priority on which his simple and often unused brain was completely locked. In this instance, it was the staircase. Two insectoids were battered out of his way as the mercenary gained momentum; the swarm gathered en masse behind him, moving forward in unison to swarm the Trandoshan again from behind. He, of course, couldn’t care less what they were doing or how unwise it was to ignore the rest of the hive while he unleashed his vendetta upon a single Bartokk; he was too busy concentrating on the staircase.

As he cleared the last insect between him and his goal (seemingly ignorant as it tore one of his shin-guards to shreds) he witnessed another tableau that might, once again if he was capable of it, instill him with a crushing sense of hopelessness and inevitability. A second group of the nightmarish bugs, just as big as the one he’d just run through with his prey held high, was assaulting the very staircase he was heading for. He’d given more concern to what he was going to have for dinner.

Finally, still crawling with Bartokk and bleeding from countless tiny cuts, Nossk was barely two paces away from the narrow wooden stairway. He stretched his arm back like a pitcher preparing to throw a gravball, and drove it forward again. Perhaps it was God, perhaps it was the Force, perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was Demarq’s considerable supply of “soup” (from an Anzati’s dogma), perhaps it was a combination of all or none of them; whatever it was, something had just saved Demarq’s life.

The fragile staircase shuddered dangerously as the large insect Nossk was holding slammed into it with disturbing force. Twice. Thrice. Four times. Now Five. Six times the Bartokk collided with the stairwell, and finally the wooden supports gave way. The beaten corpse crashed right through the side of the railing and several steps, causing the entire stairway to start its inevitable plunge to the cold duracrete floor. The pirate captain that began to fall along with it never had a place in Nossk’s decision-making process, nor did the unintentional destruction of one of only two exits out of this hellhole.

The staircase crashed down in a heap of splintering wood and thick clouds of dust; Demarq made his own landing just a few meters away. The pirate had leapt clear of the stairs just before they struck the ground, absorbed the considerable fall with a neatly executed roll, and skidded to a halt several meters clear of the collapsed debris. Incidentally, his new position placed him very close to the umbilical doors cracking light from the surface, and granted him a temporary haven from the Bartokk’s attention. The swarm seemed to have forgotten about the suddenly vanished human, and had refocused their efforts solely on the Trandoshan, whose survival was becoming more and more troublesome to the hive. Nossk had drawn his pistol to fire into the body of the insectoid that had just been used as a battering ram to destroy the stairwell, when the remainder of the original group that had attacked the Trandoshan caught up to him. Four of the Bartokk slammed into his back at once, tackling their stubborn aggravator to the ground; his head cracked painfully against the duracrete, and the surprisingly heavy creatures knocked the wind from his lungs with the impact (It was the first time his bellow had been stopped since the battle began). Nossk’s pistol flew from his grasp, sailing through the air for a few seconds before clattering to the floor and skidding to its final resting place – at the feet of Captain Demarq.

Nossk struggled to roll onto his back, but every attempt was blocked by the oversized bugs crawling over and ripping at his body. At long last the Trandoshan had managed to free his machete, and immediately began blindly chopping at the appendages that roved his prone form, seeking for a hole in his armor that might be cut open and ravaged. Nossk felt a claw slice open his cheek, and his lungs finally filled with air enough to snarl in pain. From the outside Nossk’s predicament would look much like a “dog pile” in some violent sports game. At least a dozen of the little beasts were on top of him, pinning him down and trying their damndest to butcher him while still avoiding the vicious strikes of his machete. One had failed in regards to the second objective already, and now flopped feebly on the ground, spurting white blood from the stumps that used to be arms. The odds, however, were still miles away from being in Nossk’s favor.

And this is supposed to be impressing me?

An echoing, female voice rang clearly in the hectic mess of his brain. Time slowed to a stop, and reality blurred into a runny mixture of colors. Nossk found that he still couldn’t stand.

If this is all a deity receives in the way of worship, then perhaps this reality should be erased, and another started from scratch. Never before have I felt so unsatisfied with one of my followers, Nossk (a garbled noise met his ears where his clan name should have been). What happened, pray tell me? You used to have so much ferocity, so much vigor, so much desire for the hunt, but look at you now. First a mere human nearly brings you down; your victory was only gained through my intervention and your good fortune, don’t forget. Then a droid. An opponent with no soul to offer, no worth to me at all, and still you nearly fall a second time. And how well do you fair against my test this time, against insects no less? The ground where you lay is beginning to seem like a fitting place for you, considering how much time you spend on it.

“S-Scorekeeper?” Nossk gasped, still breathless and now terribly confused. It’s a well-known fact that this specific Trandoshan’s mind works differently from just about every other sentient being in the galaxy, but one could wonder if this seemingly miraculous audience with his God could be anything from just that to a simple figment created by his amped-up mind facing near-certain death. Regardless of rhyme or reason, his verbal lashing continued.

Be warned, Nossk of the Trandoshans, you have fallen out of favor.

“No!” Nossk growled, ashamed, angry, and disappointed all at once. No hunter could receive such news lightly, and certainly not when it was delivered by the image of the Scorekeeper herself. “I can still fight, I’ll –”

No more, fallen hunter. If you’re truly sorry for your failure and your insult to me, then you may prove it through your actions, not words. The road to redemption, however, is never a simple one. Until then, you can expect no aid from me. Farewell, lizard.

Streams of color winded their way back into the gruesome prefab basement scene. Nossk became a part of reality again, if he had truly ever left it, and time snapped back to normal as he felt the Bartokk’s claws resume their constant search for exposed flesh. His rage and despair, though, had gone nowhere.

“NO!” Nossk bellowed, in one surge of immense strength rolling onto his back, trapping three of the insectoids beneath him. With his arms free the Trandoshan pulled his vibroaxe in his right hand, still grimly clutching the blood-soaked machete in his left. His wild kata of dual-wielded strikes felled enemies on every side, clearing a few scant feet of room for the reptilian to work with. The Trandoshan burst to his feet, whirling around in time to drive his blades into two of the insect trio he had been holding to the ground with his own mass. The axe and machete were back up in a flash, lashing out in every direction with no indication of control or actual targets. “I have not fallen that far! I’ve shamed no one, do you hear me Scorekeeper, NO ONE!”

Now epic struggles and heroic battles are always fun to watch, but rarely result in any real degree of success. It was indeed nothing short of miraculous that Nossk was not only alive, but still standing and holding the swarm relatively at bay with his hectic, helicopter-like technique. Make no mistake, though, that fatigue would set in before long, heroic resolve or not. His sweeping blows would slow, his enemies would find an opening, and when they did, they would finish the job they began. Nossk was already streaming with blood, not all his, but not all Bartokk either. He bled openly from at least a dozen wounds ranging from small cuts to large gashes from which flowed dangerous amounts of blood. In the long run nothing had changed but a few more dead Bartokk and a drawn-out battle. If salvation lay in store for Nossk, not just from his shame but from the predicament that would inevitably end in his death, then it had yet to show itself.

((Come on, we're only at six pages and the plot is hardly developed, don't abandon this so soon. I should have this **** criminal justice research paper that's been devouring my time done by tonight, and then I'll try to jump back into this. I don't expect much time over the weekend though, it'll be the first time I've been home in a few months.))

**I'm back and here's a fresh post... ((hope Rev's is doing okay!)) **

Gerba sat with a look of glee. The carnage was brilliant but already things were slowing down. There was also the fact that some of the mercenaries were still yet to delve into the Battledome. Now was the time to tempt them.

Gerba smiled at his Majordomo with his lipless mouth. “Now we need to add my cousin to the mix.”

Fortuna had to stop himself from looking surprised but he immediately complied. He turned to a bank of controls and his fingers rang across the dials and keys with expertise. “Nelba is coming up. Where do you want me to drop him?”

“Place him in the centre, near the pillars. I have an announcement to make.” Gerba instructed.

The Majordomo gave a nod and from the end of a huge metal crane there was a metal shell. It was distinctly that of a Shell Hutt. However on the outside of the shell was a various assortment of food, weapons and armour that had been attached that was out of reach of the Hutt within. It was meant as bait but that wasn’t the only reason the contestants would be drawn to it.

Gerba moved to his podium, his huge form bulging from either side. “Attention, attention! Many of you have heard of my rebellious cousin Nelba the Hutt. I’m sure you’re also fully aware that he has a bounty on his head of three million credits from Black Sun.”

The crowd grew silent, their interest drawn. Even some of the contestants stopped to listen.

“He has been my guest for some time, but now he will join the Battledome and since all is recorded, the one who takes him down will be able to claim their reward with Black Sun, after all his bounty is for death.” Gerba told, he neglected to mention that the person who killed Nelba might not survive to the end of the Battledome but he did not care.

A roar came from the crowd as the Shell Hutt was lowered to the floor. A multitude of straggler contestants now went in, but not all. Gerba turned to Katray. “It’s time for a cleanse. Remove the contestants that hold back, they are not worthy of my contest.”

Katray gave a simple nod and headed off to search the palace for stragglers.

-

Tressah was growing edgy, there were too many of them together in this building. They’d make a good target. With her new armour donned Tressah decided to take her chances outside, spy or not.

She didn’t exit via the door, instead she moved to the trapdoor she’d noticed early. Cobwebs lined the entry but didn’t seem all that real. She scanned the area and then realised that Otto was following.

“Bored already?” he said quietly.

“Just want out, we’re sitting targets.” She said as she took the narrow steps downward. As they entered the tunnel they heard the Hutt’s voice announcing something.

“Phase three,” Otto commented.

Tressah said nothing as she moved along, she found the end of the tunnel and a faint outline of light at the corresponding trap door. Above there was much shouting and violence. It was quickly over and Tressah slowly emerged to find four bodies, two human, one Twi’lek and another that was too messed up to identify.