1st GBA Tourney - Lisette Kuhn vs Triam Akovin

[Eralam]

The wind blows gently across the grassy plains of Naboo.

Under the seemingly endless skies, the fighters find themselves in the ruins of an old temple. Most of the building has been lost to time, leaving only the cracked stone foundation and the crumbling remains of the walls.

The stone foundation is uneven in places, making footing tricky. The stone detritus that was once the proud temple litters the floor. Some pieces are as big as an astromech droid, others little more than gravel. The fighters will have to contend with the obstacles if they wish to survive.

[member="Lisette Kuhn"]
[member="Triam Akovin"]

 

[Cassus Akovin]

Although an infamous treasure huntress, it wasn't often that Triam found herself in the position of an archeologist, or a tomb raider. In fact, most of her "treasures", were just rare ores. So maybe it was a good thing she was actually looking for something of value that wasn't in a mining tunnel on some obscure world.

Nine droid remotes scanned the general area, sweeping behind crumbled pillars, looking into open caverns. They produced nine additional visuals in her HUD display, obscuring a majority of her vision within the helmet of her improved armor. Currently her Spark was using her Second Wind Node, while her laminanium hand plugged into a Gatebreaker Node, which gripped tightly against her blaster rifle, outfitted with her specialized scope. Obviously, it would add on some extra weight she would have to compensate for, but she didn't expect to meet anyone here.

It was always good to have a weapon readily at hand though, if danger ever erupted. Yes, even on a silly planet like Naboo. Never know when you need to shoot a Gungan.

Within her belt, the usual ammunition added weight to her frame, but there was also something very new to her, and very dear. It was a 'simple' cylinder, that had an interior complexity that dwarfed her other technological innovations in terms of specialized design. Meanwhile her two pistols hung from her hips, clattering softly against her armor plates as she walked.

Her droid wasn't with her, and neither was Crol. She told them she was out adventuring, and while that was true, she was thinking about practicing the lessons she had learned from her Jedi tutor ([member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]). A shiver went down her spine.

"That is the oddest thought I've ever had. Who'd ever think I'd learn anything from a Jedi I didn't beat to a pulp? She smirked with her typical sort of vain pride in herself.

Given her distracted vision, her boot stepped down and splashed into a deep puddle. Her foot sank deeply in the liquid. It splattered all over her armor, and made a smudge on her H.E.R.D. Laser, which she promptly wiped off with one of her gloved hands.

Gross.

[member="Lisette Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Triam Akovin"]

Lisette wasn't exactly one for tons of gadgets, not much beyond the armor she wore on her back and the sabers at either side of her waist. She didn't see much use for trinkets and toys, though she often pondered on just how effective a blaster might be in her hands. But, here, on Naboo she came dressed for combat - like normal - with her armor and both of her lightsabers, one for Juyo and the other for Ataru. She had originally opted to wear a small energy shield standard of Mandalorian strike teams, but decided against it upon recalling her purchase of the Tempest armor had included a personal energy shield - which had been fitted to the armor - courtesy of the company itself, perhaps on behalf of her being a Mandalorian herself. In any case it had been her second day on Naboo, a planet so green and dull that she found herself wishing she were on Dxun again.

It wasn't that Lisette looked for challenges of the physical sort - her physique should tell an entirely different story than that - but rather the slowness in the pace of the people of Naboo that bothered her. She was impatient, the kind that acted a bit on impulse when things got boring and repetitive, rather than thinking things through like she did when motivated to do so. Today she found herself walking through the rather untouched ruin of some temple of old, boots crunching granules of sand and rock beneath her heels, with her hands hanging loosely at her sides as she normally would walk. Lis supposed she was moderately tall, disproportionately thin for her height, and kept her somewhat mid-length hair tied back behind her head in a loose bun-ponytail combination of sorts. While she strolled through the temple ruins, paying little attention to the majority of her surroundings due to a lack of interest, something appeared to catch a glint of light as she passed it, prompting her to walk towards it. "Well, what is this?" Lisette muttered, stooping low to examine the shiny little relic.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

A little red outline surround the right uppermost box/field of her vision indicating something was amiss. No longer paying much attention to cleaning the muck from the surface of her boots, her attention span set upon one of her nine droid remotes. The HUD display responded to her eye movements and superimposed the image she was looking for so that it appear larger than the other ones, which appeared smaller to accommodate for its size.

"Well, what is this?" Triam grinned. It was some woman, strolling around in the ruins just like her. "Scan her, send it up to um... kark, what did I name that damn ship? The big fancy one. Ya know what, I like that one name better. Make it official, The Big Fancy One. I want her face checked for bounties and other related queries." The remote merely beeped, as its scanners worked on the woman.

A few minutes later, and a return ping indicated the remote was receiving the proper information from The Big Fancy One up in orbit. It found something interesting.

"A KUHN?" A rage set into the hot headed mercenary, and while she sat down next to her puddle with her arm resting on a fallen stone pillar, her arm came down and cracked the damn thing to pieces. That was probably a priceless relic to somebody.

"Nobody told me there was more of them! Well, send me to hell if I don't make sure this one stays dead. I don't even care if nobody pays me. This queen is dead." That was a lot more cold hearted than was typical of Akovin, but she had a deepening hatred for the One Sith and their taint on this galaxy, and Alric Kuhn was the public face of its industry... and she was going to kill him for his bounty, until he "died". Recently she discovered he was alive, and found herself involved in his blasted company. She planned to eventually usurp it from him, but if she could fork in a low blow to the man's family and pose it as a case of mistaken identity... all the power to her. She had a feeling her Jedi tutor wouldn't approve.

Yet, she was no Jedi.

She was the Relentless.

Bolting upwards, she hefted her blast rifle up as she mobilized her micro-swarm of droid remotes to surround the general area concerning one [member="Lisette Kuhn"], subtly... unsuspectingly. This was an ambush of a single woman. She ran through rubble to find a nice sturdy spot behind cover, that was above her target for a better view of the ruins. She sat atop some sort of weird giant stone head thing or another. Her rifle aimed, and steadied itself. The scope weighed down on her rifle, and she compensated... though she hoped it wasn't too much.

Ready to take a shot, a droid remote would pop out from one its hiding positions and fired a stun shot, followed by four others if it could manage, and a moment later her rifle expunged a bolt of plasma at her... then again, and again. Trigger pull, trigger pull, adjust, trigger pull, etc...

The objective in this maneuver was clear, disorientate with the surprise of ambush to make it easier to shoot at her.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Generally speaking, Lisette rarely used her new surname. She was a stepdaughter to the Kuhn empire, a bastard child to her mother during her mid-teens, and was really quite anti-establishment. She might have been given a somewhat appreciable figure to grow into, but she still wore metal armor rather than silk dresses and such that her half-sisters on Empress Teta enjoyed. Since she was the ripe young age of .. well as soon as she could comprehend how horrible of a mother Silara had been, Lis had been actively trying to escape her mother's clutches - which she one day succeeded in doing due to the clone of her dead sibling that would have probably been the last child Silara would have had if it wasn't for the timely invasion of Empress Teta and that damned Kuhn. She had traveled alone, much like now, being taught life lessons here, beaten there. Being brought to her knees by a Jedi Master as a lesson in her place among society as the whore-daughter of a Sith was only the first experience of many that had ground the need to survive into her brain. As such it was the very object she was bending down to look at that perhaps saved her from a short death.

The glint of metal blotted out the reflection of light from the small artifact and because of the lack of footsteps prior and a slight "hanging" sensation in the air, which she was told was one of the ways the force told people like her that danger was close, beckoned the young rogue Jedi to pull the saber she utilized for Juyo and immediately pushed back. What followed was perhaps the most obnoxious display of sparks, lights, and so on from stun blasters and the like cascading on the ground and against the column she'd been bending down beside inspecting just a few moments ago. She didn't simply play opossum, however, but rather acted aggressively as she would have with the Sith or Primeval she'd fought of late, not even hesitating to throw her saber right through one of the droid remotes while her free hand - which hadn't thrown the saber - made a sweeping gesture to push the remaining three back and away from her, scattering stun blaster shots through the air rather than at her.

"What in the nine hells is going on?" She swore, forgetting herself for a moment before the sudden buzzing noise of a blaster bolt impacting against the side of her energy shield brought her attention towards the direction of what quickly became several more shots. Not wanting to waste her shield on her own carelessness, knowing full well that the small shield could provide protection from a far more fatal blow than her previous absent-mindedness, Lisette shut off the shield and jumped towards a small pile of rubble as a blaster bolt collided with her chest plate - a testament to the skills of whomever this sniper was. The kinetic impact was enough to wind her, but the laminanium was quality enough to protect her from further harm - for now. The lightsaber, of course, came back at the best of times - too early to be used in close combat and too late to have deflected the bolt that would have been the end of her if not for the armor - like a boomerang in the air, right back to her quickly extended and retracted hand.

[member="Triam Akovin"]

 

[Eralam]

Alright, so here's the rub. Two weeks is up, but at two posts each, it's really kinda hard to judge a fight. If you guys want to finish this out, I'll give you another week. If not, I'll lock it up and we'll go from there.

[member="Triam Akovin"]
[member="Lisette Kuhn"]

 

[Cassus Akovin]

Spoiler

OOC: Extra Week pwease :3

As the droids distracted the woman with its apparently obnoxious display of sparks, Triam Akovin leveled her sights appropriately and her compensation for the heavier sight seemed to pay off. As the droids were chopped up and tossed around by what appeared to be a Jedi of sorts, Triam continued to fire even as the woman made her advance towards her. The first shot seemed to be absorbed by some shield, which was useful information. A few shots later she got a good body shot. She was aiming for the head, but nonetheless it probably made her look more skilled than she was at this range. Akovin's often had a knack for luck... bad as well, but usually good.

There were still a number of droids left to her disposal, but they would become more and more functionally useless the faster the woman approached her. They weren't much more than orbs of distraction anyway when used in a non-reconnaissance combat situation.

At any rate, with her opponent fast approaching with her lightsaber, and it being made clear this one was going to be stunned so easily... she opted to gun her down instead. Three more droid remotes from the outskirts of the perimeter they formed around her zoomed as quickly as their little repulsor lifts could just to catch up enough to get in a decent enough range to fire. Three lethal blaster bolts fired in three different directions at their target... accuracy sitting around a 30% chance of hitting for each at most given the hasty maneuver. On top of that she added in a single shot from her own blaster rifle, before deactivating her HUD connection with the remotes to regain her peripheries.

Depending on how her opponent dealt with that, Triam would stand up, flip the switch on her rifle to full-auto, and raise her weapon.

[member="Lisette Kuhn"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

Spoiler: Music

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmH3OugIZt8[/media]

There was always one big enemy to a close-range fighter, a brawler, or any Jedi of any sort. Multiple enemies at range, firing upon them with blasters, always - historically - presented an insurmountable odd that always resulted in favor of the enemy so long as the Jedi could not keep up with the shots made, and usually that Jedi only had a single lightsaber, double-bladed or otherwise. But as she lifted her right hand, a lit saber already flickering out like a glowing dart to swipe away one of the blaster shots two more were already quickly upon her. She wasn't a master of the force, she had no great gift for something she had incredible potential for - she'd forsaken that to spite her mother, the former voice of the One Sith's Dark Lord. But she had a second lightsaber, and she was no mere padawan in saber-play.

In an instant that saber was in her left hand and she rotated her body, bringing her knees to a slight bend so that she could feel the tops of her boots against her shins, and in that same moment utilized what little skill she had in the force to accelerate her bodily movements in order to bring the saber she'd intended for Juyo to her back and Ataru to her front - right and left. It was the way she'd been taught to deal with two approaching lightsaber-wielding foes, the only lesson she'd received when she had tried to join the Jedi Order before they learned of her heritage. They must have had problems with traitors and defectors, otherwise she wouldn't have been exiled like her mother hand been thirty years back.

What flowed through Lisette wasn't some stupid sense of justice, some regard for greater peace - she had only been with the Jedi long enough to learn to hold a lightsaber and to make her own, then she'd been spared capital punishment for her birth to live out her days with the marauding Mandalorians, her ancestral people from her mother's side. There she'd been beaten, she'd been thrown to the mud, and was taught to hold a metal rod before she'd been allowed to touch a lightsaber again. Needless to say, she was skilled in Jar'Kai, enough to defend herself from blasters with confidence in two forms that were at an absolute disadvantage to the ranged style of combat. What flowed through her was the fury that fueled the seventh form - rage.

Anger with her mother, her assuming step-father, her accursed father that abandoned her with her whore of a mother when she was born so many years before her mother was even an acolyte of the Sith. She felt a rage that burned in her not for one man, not for one group, one ideal, she wasn't as petty - as low - as to stoop down to her hands and knees and to wail for the death of a single foe or a group, she'd seize their heads herself if need be. No, she hated everyone. Man, woman, child, nobody but the orphans and the castaways knew what it was like to have nothing, to be treated as less than nothing, to be locked in a basement by their mother for the better part of twelve years for being a bastard. And she hated this [member="Triam Akovin"] for ruining her day of solitude, which was why the moment she rose up with her rifle raised the daughter of a Sith and a Jedi turned to look into the eyes of the blue-eyed marksman as she tossed her sabers to the side and willed them to skewer the two remaining droids - the third having been caught by one of the deflected blasters - and broke into a sprint towards her with her expression set like stone.

Die or not, she was going out with dignity.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

Datdatdatdatdatdat....

This woman was impressively skilled, that much was certain. She would have to give her that at least.

But there were few people that she knew of, that could charge head first into full auto-blaster fire and not feel sorry for it. Bolt after bolt poured out of her blaster barrel, trading precision and accuracy for pure fire rate. Classic spray and pray.

Her paragon shield activated too, in the event stray blaster bolts were deflected back at her... which she was hoping for if she didn't gun her down outright. Triam had developed a funny habit of using her own attacks as fuel for subsequent more sophisticated measures. Originally, the weapons this shield might power were designed to take enemy fire to transform it into usable energy. Luckily though, technology doesn't discriminate between friendly blaster fire and enemy blaster fire. So, ever since battlefields like Geonosis, she's managed to take every advantage she could garner from her own technological prowess.

There wasn't much else to think in this moment, as she crudely opened fired without a modicum of strategy attached to it. It was just aggression, and until things got sticky, thoughts and other emotions were largely unnecessary. So while her opponent culminated into a flurry of fury, Akovin stood as a stalwart wall of unfeeling efficiency. In many, many, many ways, Triam was more machine than human.

Yet at the same time, when she needed to be most, she always found that deep inner compassion to try, to be more than herself...

... but today was not one of those days.

[member="Lisette Kuhn"]

 

[Eralam]

Locked, pending judgment.

 

[Eralam]

Outfreakingstanding.

Things were a little slow to kick off, but this turned into one hell of a fight. I love the way y'all were able to work in your personal backstories. Most duels are thinly veiled excuses for strangers to beat the hell out of each other, but y'all went and made it personal, and I like that. Furthermore, it was cleanly fought, with no real mistakes on either side.

Having said that though, there is a clear winner:

Triam Akovin

[member="Lisette Kuhn"] , you fought well. Your biggest mistake was bringing swords to a gunfight, but sometimes that can't be helped, and Triam's droids were a tough act to beat. I hope we'll have you back for future fights.

[member="Triam Akovin"] , your use of the droids to determine the pace of the fight was brilliant. You had Lisette in a tight corner almost from the word go, and that really worked to your advantage. My only criticism is that those droids might be a bit much for an arena like this, but you handled them well enough that it didn't bother me overmuch.

Thanks for playing, and I hope to see you both back again. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me by PM.