1st GBA Tourney - Vrag vs Fabula Caromed

[Eralam]

The fighters find themselves in a circular arena, exactly 50 meters across.

Marble pillars jut out from the floor, forming concentric circles throughout the arena. The outer ring is five meters from the rough stone walls, the middle ten, and the inner fifteen meters from the walls. The pillars are one meter thick. A skilled fighter can use them for cover, but be warned: the pillars have seen their share of fights. They will crumble under sustained fire.

The ground between the pillars is covered with coarse, tightly packed sand. The footing seems solid enough at first, but could prove treacherous the unwary. Inside the inner ring of pillars the floor is the same rough sandstone as the walls.

The roar from the audience is deafening. They have come to witness death and destruction on a personal level, and their bloodlust is palpable.

On opposite ends of the arena, the fighters wait behind metal gates. Once the gates open, the match will begin.

Who shall prevail? The crowd eagerly awaits the answer.

[member="Solan Charr"]
[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Spoiler: Gear

Lightsaber
Chom-Huun
Vulcan Blaster Rifle + disruptor
Vonduun Skerr Ygdris
Vonduun Skerr Dhaladii

Blast, snap, razor, thud bugs
Blorash jelly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZhf98IydQ0​

No ceremony to it; Vrag did not make a living out of death just to pretend it was something more than it was. She made it her business to be as efficient in its delivery unto the next poor soul as possible, and with years upon years of avid practice, she could rightfully claim to have honed that aspect of herself into near-perfection.

Thus she stood behind the metal gates in utter silence, body calm and muscles relaxed as her arms cradled the blaster rifle she'd wrenched from the beaten and bloodied arms of some mandalorian in Keldabe. It had been a fun fight, and she'd been acutely reminded that even her flesh could be rent if she wasn't careful enough.

A mistake she would not repeat today.

The second the bars slid out of the way, the woman was on the move, careful footwork bringing her straight ahead and into the cover of the outermost pillar, keeping careful watch of her opponent's position through the use of thermal vision. Breathe in, breathe out.

Vrag sped out of her cover again, stance low as she shot short bursts of blaster fire at [member="Solan Charr"] while circling ever closer towards him along the outer circle of pillars, passing in and out of cover every few seconds or so. The blaster bolts would be enough to keep him pinned in the same spot as she worked her muscles and Vonduun in tandem to cross the expanse separating them faster than a normal human ever could, intent on crushing the man in close quarters.

Provided he didn't succumb to blaster fire first, of course.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

He wasn't Solan. Or a he.

As the gates came down and the air around Fabula was saturated with blaster fire almost immediately. Blasters weren't something she normally had to deal with. Most of her enemies were either monsters or melee fighters, so it wasn't as if her Juyo/Ataru nonsense would offer her much defense against a ranged assault. Fortunately, ever since she had her custom armor completed, she didn't have to. Also this gave her another chance to show it off~

When the world around her lit up with a dozen bolts of burning plasma, Fabula exploded into action. Only by immersing herself in the Force could any living creature hope to get out of something like that, but having extremely blaster-retardant armor helped a great deal. First, the Mandalorian followed her instincts and moved out of the way of just enough bolts that it wouldn't put undue strain on her to defend against the rest. Evasion was easier than deflection for her. Simply lowering her body helped her evade several shots. The remainder...her new, crimson blade hissed to life.

Fabula's deflection instincts were severely out of practice, and weren't really ever that sharp to begin with. She only managed to redirect a couple of shots out of immediate threat. The few remaining ones that were still close enough to her smacked with mildly explosive force against her. Fortunately, beskar took more than a couple of small arms shots to notably damage.

Surprise.

With both fighters closing the distance to each other with mobility assisted by the Force, Fabula was within melee range in seconds, and brought her plated left arm into a solid Wrruushi palm strike as close to her opponent's center of mass as was possible at that velocity. On her own, her enRaged muscles held enough power to shatter stone and dent steel. With beskar backing that, it would be a significantly greater threat.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

A wild [member="Fabula Caromed"] appeared! It was super effe— wait.

Well, it was a mild surprise, but Vrag wouldn't have survived for as long as she had in fighting wars had she been stricken by shock every time something odd or unexpected happened on the battlefield, because something odd and unexpected happened every few seconds or so. Really, war was the purest example of man trying to impose order on something that knew none; your best bet was to embrace the pandemonium and work with it rather than against it.

And for all her looming figure and strength, the firrerreo was nothing if not adaptable. She used to fight in a wifebeater and cargo pants, wiping blood and sweat off her brow as she fired a chitty rifle from an even chittier cover. Adapting to a sudden gender change shouldn't prove to be too hard.

Buy'ce. Bolts useless.

Wasn't too hard to put two and two together, and it didn't take much time, which was possibly the more important of the two facts about identifying the nature of her opponent given the small window she had to actually do something about it.

And so the Sith stepped out of the line of attack as they closed into the wide measure and squeezed that other, deadlier trigger. Well, deadliest, really.

As the extended hand of her opponent brutalized the air where Vrag's chest used to be, the under-barrel disruptor spat its beam of condensed distruction at her foe's midsection at what was essentially point blank.

If Vrag had been paying more attention to the identity of her adversary beyond their armor and chosen venue of attack, she might've become the victim of a dawning suspicion that she knew the woman.

Unfortunately — or fortunately? — the Hand did no such thing, and remained blissfully ignorant.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Nimble little devil. Fabula didn't really have any way to avoid a shot that close, but she wasn't one for grace anyway. Instead, she rotated her hip when she saw danger, exposing the slightly heavier armor on her off hip to the gun pointed at her. One layer of beskar might not have fallen against a disruptor shot, though it would certainly have been damaged. Two and a layer of high-blast-resistance armorweave soaked decently, though Fabula felt tearing on the skin of her left thigh from the sheer force of the blow. She wouldn't be able to pull off that trick again...and she'd need to get that plate replaced later.

That said. Point blank range was a very dangerous place to use delicate ranged weapons. Fabula used the extremely short distance that she had recklessly closed to "forced her enemy to operate at" to snatch her armored hand forward, once again, at superhuman speed to grab at that gun. Whether or not it worked? Her lightsaber followed. Enough of that bullshit.

Lightsaber in range. From the overhand slice she'd used to strike at her opponent's weapon, she followed through with a backhand swing, once again at spitting distance and aimed for, coincidentally, her enemy's midsection. She knew that armor, and was pretty sure it could resist her swing, but "resistant" did not mean "immune."

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Until that second, Vrag had lived under the impression that disruptors could disintegrate anything because they worked at a molecular level, but clearly that was not the case when it came to beskar. Because it was clear now; with the buy'ce, and the resistance to laser bolts, and now resistance to a disruptor beam… she was fighting a mandalorian. Or, well, someone who was wearing beskar.

Details. Sometimes, they didn't matter.

And then again, sometimes, they did. Like when the other combatant made a grab for her weapon. Even in the small space they occupied, every centimeter — or inch, a matter of preference, really — of difference was of importance. And that difference was currently leaning in Vrag's favor by sheer virtue of reach and size.

She shed no tears in sacrificing her long-range weapon to the opponent's grip, but not before squeezing that trigger again, for she doubted the beskar, for all its fabled resistance, could take two hits in the same spot, not by a disruptor. Her right hand, however, did not remain on the weapon even as the mandalorian clung to it.

The one major pitfall of fighting others who used the Force was… well, that they used the Force. The superhuman speed could dazzle and easily overpower those who could not tap into space-magic, but Vrag, unfortunately, was not one of those people. Her reactions, therefore, followed the same pattern of miliseconds than those of her foe, which put them on far more equal ground when it came to CQC.

So, back to the free hand? The right hand snapped back and then forward, aided by the motion of Vrag's hips even as the woman stepped forward and out of the line of attack again, this time to the right. The motion would lend itself to a great force behind the blow to the extended elbow of her opponent while also making her awkwardly difficult to hit. An icepick grip would not help at all in reaching across the body in an attempt to cut beneath that arm.

Viva Makashi footwork? Calling Vrag a Makashi duelist would likely be an insult to the usually graceful style, but the firrerreo didn't really care for names. What she cared about was her open palm, and how it was about to introduce an elbow to being bent in the wrong direction. With a strength behind the blow that could crumble duracrete, the olecranon was sure to snap with a nasty crunch.


[member="Fabula Caromed"]

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Disruptors were powerful (though less powerful than lightsabers, honestly). Fabula's armor likely couldn't have taken two shots, especially not in the same area. Fortunately it didn't have to. When her opponent surrendered control of her weapon, Fabula's instinct to brush it aside saved her from a second shot. The crunching noise of her fingers collapsing a durasteel barrel would have been music to her ears if she wasn't still in a fight.

Attack incoming. Minimize damage. Fabula's arm jerked back faster than it should have been able to, her hand giving her lightsaber a twist on the way back. She didn't have enough force behind that halfassed swing to actually create opportunities, but maybe the repulsion force of her blade could knock her enemy's aim off a bit. Shunt it off an inch or two.

...Or maybe she should just write off her arm and take advantage of her enemy moving in.

Fabula stepped forward, into the Vong-armored woman in front of her to close the gap even farther. Then, with every ounce of enRaged strength, she gripped for her throat. It was a gambit, but frankly she needed to hit something, ever, if she was going to have a chance in this fight. Grabbing a throat seemed like a good start, if she could even manage that.

Unfortunately, sacrificing her arm for a shot at a vital point turned out to hurt like a queen. She wasn't sure if she'd felt contact directly on her elbow or just somewhere along her arm, but the armorweave's slighter protection against blunt trauma had done very little to stop the wet cracking sound of her own bones.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

The moment her hit connected — that deeply satisfying crunch echoing in her ears — Vrag felt more than saw a hand going for her throat, but there was no space to move, not with the speed they both employed. Still, perk #8746 of full plate: neck guards. She'd have a number of seconds before that thing could start to do damage, and a number of seconds was a long, long while for space-magic junkies.

Well, long enough, at least.

Vrag flexed her muscles as she pushed off the ground, Vonduun coiling in time with its mistress to amplify the power behind the blows that would come. She would roll her hips, cant them back as the force of her push guided her movement, and for a fraction of a second the firrerreo would tuck her knees in — as far as she could, anyway — before twisting sharply to the side as she extended first the right leg, aiming somewhere at her opponent's midsection, or perhaps bosom, and then with a negligible difference, the left would follow, chitin boot careening towards the mandalorian's head at breakneck speeds.

If she was right, and that was beskar, then the kick would hurt like a motherkarker on glitterstim, but Vrag would take a cracked calcaneus over a cracked vertebra any day.


[member="Fabula Caromed"]

 

[Eralam]

I've got enough here to make a judgment, but since everyone else here is getting an extra two weeks and you ladies look to be enjoying yourself, you can keep going if you'd like.

[member="Vrag"]
[member="Fabula Caromed"]

 

[Eralam]

Locked, pending judgment.

 

[Eralam]

Hell of a fight you two had going, and it's a shame there wasn't more to it. If this had gone on another five or six posts, it might have been one for the ages. Short though it was, it was a brutal, well written duel. Before we go into the critiquing part, I'll go ahead and spoil the attention by proclaiming the winner to be:

VRAG

[member="Fabula Caromed"], you fought one hell of a fight. There are a couple of things that let you down, however. A point blank disruptor shot should have probably done more damage. I understand that beskar and armorweave make a formidable armor combination, but we're talking enough energy here to reduce a human being to molecular ash. I don't recall any canon instances of beskar meeting a disruptor beam, so I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet there would have been enough thermal energy as a result to cause some pretty gnarly burns, even with the armorweave.

[member="Vrag"], well done. You scored the only damaging hits of the fight, which were the deciding factor. If it had gone on longer, Fabula might have been able to turn the tables, but as it stands, you were in the dominant position and looked to stay there. If I had one criticism, it's that the tendency to be flippant can backfire. There's nothing wrong with adding color commentary to the duels, but there were a few places where it was hard to tell if you were just being a smartass or talking down to your opponent at first glance.

If either of you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me through PM, carrier pigeon, or any other methods you might have at your disposal.