Golden Sun [Omega]

[Uriel]

Enter the space marine.

Instead of following immediately, Uriel was coordinating with security teams who were monitoring the ship's onboard cameras. You didn't bring a whole load of people to a ritzy party on aluxury liner without security; this was standard stuff when loads of money were involved. Sure, they weren't inside the room, but it confirmed the suspicions of the Inquisitor - these guys were all up to no good.

Therefore, down the hallway marched Uriel, bolt pistol loaded and raised, off-hand on the hilt of his force sword, ready to draw it and slice through durasteel bulkheads if need be.

"Hold it right there," he announced powerfully to [member="Saeronterus Ku'mar"], standing outside the room in which his co-conspirators were preparing for their operation - he could take this guy on, no questions asked. The power of a man clad in Crusader armour was all manner of intense. His voice was amplified slightly this time with the power of his helmet, enough that [member="Zandra Tal'verda"] and [member="Mad Klay Grubber"] could hear it inside the room. The fight was on.

"Enough of the charade. Submit yourself for questioning immediately or be destroyed."

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

"Well, looks like th' jig, as they say, is up."

The door slid open and Zandra Tal'verda, Pirate Queen and all around big damn anti-hero, stood at the waiting. She was smiling from head to toe. Leather pants, leather boots, leather jacket. The lady just all around seemed to have a thing for tacky clothes. Even her tank top was a tacky silver metalic material. Such a thin woman hardly seemed a threat. That was the thing about expectations. You really should never have them because you would always be disappointed.

"A'right, a'right, eh? Ya wanna tussle?" she cracked her neck, twirling a short knife between her fingers, "Fine by me. Let's dance, pretty boy."

With that, she flew at the target. That was another thing. She was small, but fast. Part of living with her people as long as she did. She was taught to work with her strengths. She might not be the strongest woman alive, but it took less than a pound of pressure to break flesh.

[member="Uriel"]

 

[Uriel]

Without a helmet, Uriel could stare into the eyes of his enemy. She was obviously deranged and had allies to back her up-- yet she was content to challenge him to single combat. That, as always, was going to be interesting. Without a force sword to fall back on, only a bolt pistol, Uriel was forced to rely on his fists. So away went the pistol as she charged, the lithe woman exceptionally light on her feet. Certainly, being clad in Crusader armour meant that he could move just as quickly - like a vehicle he could run up to speed and stay mobile that way. That said, Crusader armour wasn't meant for hand to hand combat like this.

She was in his face right before the pistol touched against the magnetic thigh plate. It meant that to evade her, he had to backpedal slightly, raising his fists in front of him; an Inquisitor wasn't precisely an unarmed combat expert and hitting her with a hand would be easier than hitting her with a bolt pistol. If he hit her, he had the power to break through any bone she put in front of him.

However, he had the distinct feeling that hitting her was going to be the problem.

[member="Zandra Tal'verda"]

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

He would be right. Zandra was a dancer on the battle feild. While he husband liked to shoot away at his enemies, she liked to get up, close, and personal. She liked to dance around them, study their movements. Get to know them like family. You could tell so much about a person when you saw death in their eyes. She and the reaper? They were old friends, and Zandra liked to introduce her new friends to her old friends.
She slipped under his arm when he went to hit her, sliding around his massive armored body like a leaf in a breeze. Her limbs were fluid, but quick. The knife was an extension of her arm. She was one being, one soul. And she desperately wanted to see his soul as well. The galaxy was a big place, and Zandra's life was bound to be short. That was the drawback of her career choice. But while she was here, she wanted to meet as many people as she could. She wanted to get inside their heads, no, their very hearts.
Before she ripped them out.

For now, she settled on studying him while she avoided his heavy attacks. She was close enough to him that if he attempted to shoot her, she'd be able to disarm him easily. No. Taking him down would be difficult with this heavy armor. He had no helmet, of course, so she could easily just stab in in the head. Drop him like a ton of bricks. Boring, of course. And in any case, killing was terribly wasteful. Good opponents were difficult to come by...

 

[Uriel]

Well, to [member="Zandra Tal'verda"]'s credit, she was a very, very good Echani. She might have been a pirate, but her mentality essentially echoed the very essence of the fighting principle of her people. She liked to know her enemy through what her people did. A warrior culture at heart, unique and individual.

Uriel didn't know a shred of this, but hey, if he did, it'd be totally cool.

As an Inquisitor, he wasn't a totally incompetent fighter. Not just a brawler - he knew to use his feet, too. Every now and then Zandra would have to deal with a quick thrust of his armoured boot in order to throw her out of his line of attack. Duck and weave around attacks aimed at her knees. But, beyond that, it was fairly simple: street-fighting in powered armour, even so chunky and muscle-empowering as it was, was not an easy proposition.

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

She danced around his kicks and jabs with the grace of a ballerina. Still, even she could get tired. She would start to slip up eventually. It was really only a matter of time. In her head she was studying him close, like a scientist examining a sample. His feet movements hinted at special training. Perhaps something even resembling her own? He was a soldier, obviously. Disciplined. Probably lacking a good sense of humor too.

So! What did she have to go off of? His greatest obvious weakness was his face. She could knock his weapon out of his hand, go for the face, then what? It would be a terribly ungraceful way to end it, really. What else did she have to work with? She was so busy searching, she didn't see his next attack until it was too late. With a rather ungraceful 'Oomph' the breath was ripped some her stomach as his foot collided. Okay. That was her fault. She'd allowed herself to get distracted, but at the very least she thought she finally saw a kink in his armor. That was worth a temporary discomfort.

She took a deep breath, trying to recover quickly. Yeah. It hurt. She'd probably have a bruise, still, she'd had worse. Try childbirth. Twice.

"A'right," she mumbled sliding away for the moment, "Heh. Ya got me once. Don' get use to it, friend."

She readjusted her grip on the knife, eyes focused ahead. She wasn't stupid enough to look at her target, of course. That might put him up to the fact that she'd found a weakness. This was too much fun to spoil just yet, and she needed to waste as much time as possible for the rest of the crew to grab the goods and go. In a flash, she was back at it once more, blade flashing.

[member="Uriel"]

 

[Uriel]

[member="Zandra Tal'verda"]

There was not a word in retort to the utterance from the Echani pirate - only the roar of an enraged animal.

She was not backing down and nor was he. Stopping this pirate was the only thing on his mind-- and she was too close for him to draw his bolt pistol and just shoot her. Unfortunately, this meant that he was in unfamiliar territory. Curse this fancy starship and their request for minimal weapons - he would have drawn his force sword and cut her in half in a single stroke. That was not an option here. It was unfortunately not an option. Without it he was forced to use his hands and feet. As Uriel had just learned moments before, he was at least capable of hitting her.

For the moment, he was reduced to taking her hits; the benefit of having powered armour was the fact that it was tough enough to take a knife blow. Uriel's arms weathered the storm of the knife blade, for the moment. It protected him in the meantime. Ending the fight was another thing, stopping her from getting at him. To that end, he had one goal: use his power-armoured strength, reach out and crush her arm in a vicegrip to shatter every bone in her wrist once he grabbed it, and then disarm and subdue her in the moments following. If he could take away her knife, she'd be particularly helpless.

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

Practically helpless. That would be true, if Zandra didn't have a near obsession with steel. She never carried just one blade on her. She had one strapped under her stockings, peaking out the top of her shorts, small knives, but sharp. She loved them.

Her fingers twisted on the handle of the blade as she moved in, twisting away from him to the left at the last second. Make him think she was going for him, then move and catch him off guard. She would strike when least expected. The moment was all she needed. Just behind his head. That was what she had hoped to find. A real weakness.

[member="Uriel"]

 

[Uriel]

[member="Zandra Tal'verda"]

Like a steerly flash, a blade was driven towards his cranium. Uriel, without thinking, moved his head sideways in order to escape the blade, knowing that being stabbed through the face was not on his list of things to do. However, the knife stabbed past him, something he was not expecting whatsoever-- the little dagger buried itself in the power cables behind his head, into the crevice that was the power supply for the rather bulky Crusader armour that ensconsed his body in nigh invincible powered armour. It was an unlikely blow, having glanced off an armoured power cable and sliding into a recess that just so happened to be where it was. Zandra, however, had done it. She'd managed to find a tiny chink in the armour.

Immediately, the power in his suit began to fade. His body felt excessively sluggish and his body was starting to collapse - with over a hundred kilograms of weight bearing down on his body, indeed more than he weighed by a considerable amoung - Uriel knew that this was an incredibly lucky blow on her part and an exceptionally bad moment for him. The armour's power was slowing down and its weight was no longer movable by his body. In essence, he was now trapped inside what was a perfectly-shaped human coffin.

His arms drooped to the sides, unmovable. His legs refused to answer, his kneecaps brushing against titanium-durasteel and refusing to budge an inch. There was no power running through his mechanical veins, nothing to permit him motion or resistance.

He was trapped.

Uriel's face went from stoic resistance to panic as he realised the error of his ways and exactly what had just transpired. It was supposed to be that he was an invincible warrior, an Inquisitor of the Omega Protectorate, a part of the greatest fighting force the Galaxy had ever seen. And here he was, a little upstart pirate with a vibroknife ruining his day! It was unthinkable! Impossible!

Rage flowed through his veins, but the impotence of his ability to fight back now was unveiled.

All he could do was stand there and watch while she had her way with him.

Doom had come. His death was inevitable now. Unable even to reach for his own bolt pistol and shoot back, he knew what true hopelessness now was.

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

The Echani let go of the knife as it buried itself in the power cables. She wasn't stupid. As the armor around him trapped the man under it's weight, she snatched up one of her other blades, the one hidden away in the waist band of her shorts. He couldn't move. Perfect. Zandra tossed her bright star-white hair away from her face, smiled, the aimed a swift kick to the hard metal chest. Not to hurt him, or anything. Like she could with all that armor. No. Just to knock him back under all that weight.

Stupid man. This was why Zandra did not wear armor. Slowed you down. Made you weak when the enemy found the chink in it. The heel of her boot collided with the metal, and Zandra shoved. Hard. When he inevitably fell over, the smiling pirate bent over him, boot still on his chest. Standard victory pose, naturally. But she was not done. He had ruined her perfectly planned robbery. She could not leave him without... something to remember her by.

"What is your name?" she asked, playing with the knife in her hands, checking her reflection.

[member="Uriel"]

 

[Uriel]

The Inquisition was, in many ways, the greatest military fighting arm that belonged to the Omega Protectorate. Certainly, they were not the largest by any means. However, unlike their more mundane brethren, they had access to weaponry and technologies that outclassed the rest by leaps and bounds. Their training was so brutal it bordered on psychotic and deliberate torture - and they came out stronger for it. They were the best for a reason, their signature blue carapaces were a sight to behold. One Inquisitor was worth an entire squad of normal men.

Here now was one reduced to nothing.

On his back, unable to balance properly - about five hundred pounds of weight trapped against the ground sometimes did that, after all - Uriel was vanquished by his foe completely. There was little on his face other than spite and rage now, conscious of course but trapped in the shell rendering all resistance pointless. No man was strong enough to move the armour he wore unpowered.

Instead of words, Zandra was met with a wall of silence, the Inquisitor's pride not permitting him a witty retort. Only a stony visage of resistance.

[member="Zandra Tal'verda"]

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

Silence. Stone cold silence. Okay. Fair enough. If she were in his situation she would do anything she could to be a real pain in the arse too. Fine. Fine. The Echani sighed, playing with the knife still as she looked down at him.

"A'right, a'right. I get it. You don't gatta tell me jack," she snorted in amusement as she leaned over as if about to tell him a secret, "Bucha know somethin'? Nameless or not, I still got a bone to pick with you. Yeah. You spoiled my heist. Got in my way. I was really lookin' forward to robbin' this place, nyeh? Oh, I ain' gunn kill ya. Nah nah. I got more class n' that. I know when it's good to spare someone. You got potential."

She sat down on top of his heavily armored chest, looking him over. If only she could get a finger out of this. Oh well. He had two ears? Maybe she could steal an ear? That was too easily ignored though. No. She needed something he used every day. Something to remind him of her. Something to make him remember. She scanned his face, eyes locked on his.
That would do.

"However, I gatta punish you."

She winked, and like a flash of lightning, struck his left eye with her blade.

[member="Uriel"]

 

[Uriel]

He'd known she was trouble all along, a space pirate here to steal the riches aboard this ship carried by uncountable numbers of aristocra and entrepeneurs. He'd known it since she and her crew had boarded the Golden Sun. It was no mark of tricky deduction that she'd brought a lot of trouble aboard the ship. Whatever heist she'd orchestrated, he'd stepped in and stopped it, like a good protector needed to. However, it was now costing him his health, as she pinned his defunct armour to the ground and triumphantly raised her shiv to deliver the final blow.

There was nothing more than a scream from his lips. Pain eclipsed his senses as the knife drove into his head, tearing away at the white and grey of his eye and carving it away.

Toughened by horrors, by fighting Yuuzhan Vong and One Sith in equal measure - he still did not pass out.

He struggled, the blood and retinal matter trickling down the side of his face, his other eye still open as he fought desperately to maintain consciousness. In the face of the enemy, it was the only form of retaliation he could manage. She could not break him. She could not stem the tide; the little pirate was going to have to do more to stop Uriel. Trapped and blinded as he was.

Now if he could reach for his bolt pistol and aim it even slightly at her, force her away... maybe he could stage some kind of escape. Somehow. If his damn hand would react.

[member="Zandra Tal'verda"]

 

[Zandra Tal'verda]

The Echani tore the blade from her enemies skull. She regarded him with a strange mix of emotions, but only one word could accurately describe the Echani's feelings; Respect. Through it all, he glared right back at her. He never gave in. Zandra liked that in an enemy. It was why she didn't kill him. Death was something always dangling over her head. For a woman of her line of work, she danced with the reaper constantly. But she refused to lay down and die for an unworthy opponent. So she kept few alive. Let them linger on revenge. Maybe some day, she could die honorably.

On the leg of her trousers she scraped the blade across, wiping the blood and matter from the smooth steel. She never looked away even as she slid the blade back into it's holster. With one hand on her hips, she bent down, snatching up one of his bolt pistols. Ack, she was no good with these, but no way she could miss at this range. She steadied the weapon, aiming at his head, then his chest, then finally, she moved to take aim at his heavily armored elbow. Armored or not, she had sensed a weakness there as well.

"Next time you fight me, Princess, Try it without armor. Ya might stand a chance."
She fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Then she was done. Ugh. She remembered why she hated these weapons. Made a bloody mess and the kickback absolutely killed her arms.
With that, she set his bolt pistol against the wall, snatched a cigara from her leather jacket and lit it up.

"Don't forget me, Baby. I'll be waitin'."

She inhaled deeply as she looked him over for a moment, then turned on her heel and started to walk away.

[member="Uriel"]