ToC:Triam Akovin VS Ashin Varanin

[Lira Dajenn]

It was time for the Tournament of the Cauldron to export itself.
Try as hard as they did, there was just no way of perfectly replicating the different environments they required for round two of their grand event. They had made their unrealistic requests, demanding that they somehow replicate the climate and habitat of some of the most extreme planets in the galaxy. Mere simulations would not be good enough, it had to be real, it had to feel real and when enough slaves and scientists had perished at their hands for such impractical ineptitude it was only then that the Queens of Rattatak had decided that they were going to have to use the real thing.

The remaining contestants were to be shipped out, given the luxuries of celebrated gladiators and plenty of opportunity to rest and prepare for the next fights ahead.

Back at the Cauldron a multitude of screens were set up, surrounding the arena so that no detail could be missed of the now televised spectacle, the pit below for once completely devoid of action. Nothing would take the limelight from their glorious occasion.

The screens flickered to life...

A base Underwater, creaking metal, dripping water, and cracked walls.

The final fight of round three of the Tournament of the Cauldron brought nothing but danger. Deep beneath the ocean floor was a base, long abandoned by military, scientists, and civilians. Old durasteel walls creaked and groaned, water dripped from the ceilings, and cracks within every panel of the walls showed that the station was ready to implode from the pressure of the thousands of tons of water atop of it. One had to be careful, lest they flood the station.

This is where the last two competitor fought, @[member="Ashin Varanin"], one of the most powerful duelists alive, and @[member="Triam Akovin"], the only non-force user to make it this far into the competition.

The crowd seemed aghast, scandalously cheering more for Triam than for Ashin. They were excited, they rooted for the under dog. A roar took them as the bout began.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

This was no place for a lightsabre.

Four feet long, just under four and a half pounds, and indestructible short of a black hole or a superlaser, the sword Winterlight was Ashin's favorite weapon. She'd made it with all the talent and finesse of a highly skilled alchemist who'd known that her return to the Light Side was imminent. As a result, she'd made it indestructible, but not especially evil in functions or factors. At this point, it served her much like her lightsabre, part of her and of her Force connection. It had tasted the blood of Masters, chopped the head off Zaiden James-Greyson, and rammed itself through the skull of Lotek'k, the skyscraper-sized Terror From Beyond.

She'd contemplated bringing a Ssi-Ruuvi paddle beamer. Its fire didn't affect structural integrity; it ignored shields and armor, too. But there was such a thing as too much. When in territory this dangerous, the wise warrior and explorer took minimal weapons. Weapons made for a feeling of security, and that feeling would get you killed faster than anything. So she left the beamer at home, along with her customary off-hand knife, and certainly her lightsabre. All she had was Winterlight, her brain, and a fairly specialized Force skillset. The important part of the Force right now was, well, sensing things, and that had been a weakness of Ashin's for some time. She'd even gone to the Dagoyan Masters, the galaxy's greatest experts on Force instincts, and even they hadn't really been able to crack the tradeoff she'd spent her whole adult life developing. Every Force Master faced a choice between power and insight. Luke Skywalker had summarized Ashin's condition as being unable to hear a whisper when you were shouting all the time.

Carefully, Ashin pricked the index finger of her left hand with the sword's point, and smeared her own blood on the very tip. That was one precaution. Then she closed her eyes and listened. Anyone moving in here would step on creaky plating at some point or other.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Well kark, as if facing an infamously powerful force user wasn't bad enough, they had to duke it out under karking water. This certainly was no place for overly heavy boots, and it would be certain that her armor would not help her in the slightest to swim should the situation go soith. She had to be smart about this. What little of her opponent she did know, she had been more or less prepared for. She was a warrior, a saber toting juggernaut... with lightning. That was at least, until she turned to the Jedi. Regardless however, Triam was confident in her armor's ability to deflect lightsaber, blasters, and most blunt objects. She also had her Phantom Fingers, her secret weapon. It could bypass a single saber blow via magnetism, and when hooked into flesh or armor, it had a tantalizing electric effect. Additionally, should ever bury its class into flesh, it was able to inject enough hallucinogenic toxins to theoretically render anyone incapable of recognising their own hand let alone the ability to concentrate one the force. If that wasn't cool enough, it had a cortosis safeguards to render lightsaber useless.

Little did she know that would do her no good in this fight.

A good investment on her part however, was a rebreather apparatus and repulsor pack. Those at least would save her in the water, where this fight would almost inevitably end. All she had to do now was to decide whether or not it was intelligent to bring her freakishly dangerous Neuranium boots. It did have the advantage of planting her solid in the face of telekinesis, and made for one hell of a bad day if it ever landed on someone's face, not to mention the added benefit of ensured radio silence.

She figured though her opponent wouldn't be phoning anyone any time soon, and it was more likely in the event of electronic failure in her boots repulsion system would undoubtedly break this stations creaking floor and anchor her to the ocean floor forever. That wasn't a risk she was willing to take, so as much as she didn't want to leave behind her "cute" kitty Kat kurb stomp boots, it was probably a necessity that she did so.

Now with nothing but her rebreather fitted ultrachrome armor, repulsion pack, Phantom Fingers, and her robotic hand, she hesitantly began her walk through the eerie abandoned base, that somewhere stowed her enemy to fame and three small fortunes. It was unnerving to say the least, as she clutched the metal of her blaster rifle. She was glad at least, that this place had corridors and passageways for her to run through, and form minor entrapments for her pursuer. In fact, learning that her opponent was a juggernaut focused on aggressive combat, Triam had the good sense of assessing that Ashin might be caught unawares by a trap... after all, her reign as an Empress ended by a trap she didn't see coming. If it works on large scale, why not small? To accomplish this, Triam outfitted herself with around twenty five kilos of explosives of varying types, all stored dangerously on her back. She would rely a bit on luck in her gamble, in addition to the hope her assumptions of her enemy would be correct, that she would be far to focused on defeating her as quickly as possible to notice such a potentially lethal weakness.

She was also counting on that the Jedi wanted to survive this experience too, thus making her weary of exploiting such a weakness should she find it. After all, if it all goes kaboom, the base comes crashing down with thousands of tons of ocean on top of them, in addition to over fifty pounds of high powered explosives going off in tight enclosed quarters.

If she couldn't win, she would make her opponent hope for a draw instead of mutually assured destruction... however, whether or not she had the resolve to press such a devastating button, was not something she knew. Damn she was insane to even consider such an alternative for the sake of money! But it gave her a thrill, thus it came close to her heart and erased all reason...

The duel began! If Ashin was paying attention, she would hear a creek to a corridor to her left, ten meters upward into another corridor.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"] was, to Ashin, sort of an unknown. Oh, she had a rep for collecting rare minerals and substances -- Ashin's friends and allies had found her a useful source from time to time -- but as to how she used them? That was anybody's guess. Ashin had been busy acclimating to life with a new right trapezoid, and running things that needed running, and killing things that needed killing. So busy, in fact, that she hadn't been able to get her hands on the fight tapes from Akovin's last matches. She would pay for that, she knew.

Then again, it wasn't the first time she'd let hubris get away from her, and she was still standing. Granted, she was currently standing in about half an inch of seawater, a microleak was hissing somewhere, a whale or wave sent groaning tremors through the facility, and was that a footstep?

She squatted, put her hand flat and still against the deck. Water just covered her knuckles. She waited to feel vibration in the deck, anything that seemed like someone was winding up for a charge or some such malarkey. To keep Winterlight from ringing or scraping on the wall or floor, Ashin rested the bastard sword on her right knee, hand far back beside her. She closed her eyes and stretched out with her limited sensory and precognitive abilities, as she'd tried to learn from the Dagoyan Masters of Bardotta -- and as they'd refused to teach her. This was old Jedi skill, learned in a time before her best friend was her own pride and before she'd become the kind of person who lived to fight and win. Instinct, she hoped, would give her a better awareness of the ripples in the water, the movement of air, the tremors in the warped deck.

Action through inaction. She knew, as surely as she knew her own sins, that the Jedi were bantha poodoo in this day and age, that they squabbled over different Codes and interpretations of Codes, that other tenets fell by the wayside or were magnified into extremism and even stupidity. Not like most Forcers were much better, but as someone who'd spent many years as a faithful Jedi, the Order's faults offended her. And one of the ancient Jedi principles that might have fallen by the wayside, to be trampled and picked up again and examined with moderate interest, was action through inaction. Wait and see. Find the right time to move.

She didn't move, just half-knelt there, squatting with one hand down, eyes shut. Ten metres up, a cross-tunnel made an X intersection. The leftmost branch held the enemy; she could get a sense of a bright, intent mind, very focused. If Ashin were Spencer, she could have hit that mind right now, make it go away, fog it, cloud it, break it.

Action through inaction. She waited.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

While Ashin had heard Triam creak through the corridors whilst standing perfectly still, as well as muffled slightly by the unseen trickle that flooded her room, Triam heard nothing that would indicate a threat. She wasn't yet used to the native sounds of the creaky base, and the unnerving sounds of rippling water here and there. It felt almost as if the whole thing was essentially ready to come crashing down. That would make a most boring end to a fight indeed... if neither could even see each other before the environment kills them both, even if it only killed one of them it would be an exceptional let down. The winner would be decided solely on whether or not they still had a faint pulse by the time they reached the ocean surface... if they floated at all.

She walked down the several corridors carefully, trying to avoid the debris and ignore the broken lighting systems, and the various other ailments that afflicted the structure. Leaks were a common sight, though not everywhere. Opened walls or floors were a familiarity, and were a welcomed sight... not because it boosted any of her confidence, but because it proved that the walls were not these paper thin strips of sheet metal made into a pressurized water tent.

Her boots, unfamiliarly light today, still clunked a quite rhythmic beat against the cold hard steel.

Happening upon the intersection, Triam had to choose which path to take. She heard the soft current of water that filled the room Ashin was in knuckle deep. She didn't hear a whole lot other than that. Leaking water wasn't usually a path one would want to take while in an underwater base, but since she was going to be needing this place's air more or less, it would be the least she could do to see if she could patch job it. The ocean didn't need any more of her precious bubbles.

Slowly with each step having a purpose Triam came to the corner, and like all the others, she shimmied on the wall to the corner, before sliding her head around for a glance.

"Chit." She breathed wordlessly. Ashin Varanin, squatting at the water... with a sword? She supposed that wasn't unusual, it was rare for Jedi to carry water resistant sabers. She cocked her head a little bit at that. Maybe she utilize that some time, a lot easier than trying to block it with cortosis up close and personal. She liked distance. Even still though, she was a queen for close quarters, a tazer/toxin clawed fist, with one of them being mechanical and unforgiving on flesh, and boots that would crush your- oh yeah, she didn't have those right now. So she fist that made most people go night-night.

Returning to reality, she assessed the situation. Ashin Varanin in a room with knuckle deep water, squatted into a compacted position, with a sword on her knee. She wasn't sure if Jedi could still deflect blaster bolts with a seemingly normal sword, additionally, it was likely the sword was a rather heavy item. Lightsabers were weightless and omni-directional, swords cut in singular lines and were weighted. It did however, pose a potential weakness. For one, it could smack away her Phantom Fingers, and because of its pointed nature, there would be a higher chance that it might slip past a chink in her armor. That was scary.

Garnering ideas, her initial one was a fairly terrible one: electrocute the water. Yeah great, the Jedi fry's her feet... whelp, so do you! Then she remember that she had a repulsor pack. She still didn't like the idea, that was a risky thing using something that she might be dependent on for survival later... not to mention using it on a plan that might not even work. She'd use it as a last resort.

She didn't get any more bright ideas, but she decided hanging around the corner thinking up solutions to her dilemma wasn't going to be one of them, not while an armed Jedi was sitting there probably monitoring her thoughts anticipating what she might do as she thought through the situation. There was one thing she had assessed, and that was Ashin's weapon. There was one property she wasn't sure about, thus the only reasonable thing to do was to figure out using the scientific method...

... shoot at it... a lot.

She jumped the corner and opened fired immediately, hoping her assumption of the blade was correct.

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]

This deep in the Force, it was tempting to think of herself as invincible. Even with the water groaning the joints and plating of the undersea facility, even facing an enemy armed with a blaster rifle, she could have fallen for the temptation to see this as easy. Brought up Winterlight, redirected blasterfire everywhere -- not all Sith swords could or would do that, but this one was of sufficient quality to reflect a blaster bolt, and that was a problem. A lesser quality of Sith blade would have simply intercepted the bolts, dissipated them. And no rational sabre artist in the galaxy could face full-auto fire and reflect all those bolts straight back at the person who'd fired them. If she, casually or pridefully, made the decision to block, some of those blaster shots would hit the walls, and who could know what that would do.

Also, she detected a certain sense of wariness directed to a burden and the region of Akovin's back. That might be explosives, a suicidal choice for this arena, and one that she had to take very, very seriously. Reflected blasterfire would be a problem regardless of accuracy.

Such were Ashin's cogitations in the instant between Akovin's decision and the torrent of blasterfire, around the moment Ashin realized that said blasterfire needed to go away. A more telekinetically skilled Master might have just popped the power cell out of the blaster rifle, or made the trigger freeze. Ashin could do that, but didn't really have the time, precog or not. Nor did she have time to find a useful piece of bulkhead plating that wouldn't let in the sea. She would have to do this the hard way.

She stood and closed her eyes. Her sword hung down at her side, unused. She couldn't risk reflecting fire in all directions. A tutaminis specialist would have absorbed the energy of these blasts, let their clothes burn away, recycled the energy to use it for something else. Ashin knew tutaminis to some degree, but, again, she didn't have the time. So she'd gone with her old reliable, her personal specialty, the power for which she'd sacrificed rather a lot -- and one of the few advanced techniques that she'd been able to maintain and keep developing after her return to the Light Side. A faint, matte shimmer surrounded her. Normally she pulsed this power, used it for moments and no more, but it had been designed for sustained combat, and she was the galaxy's greatest living master of the ability to take a fist or a tree branch or a bar stool and use it to stop a lightsabre dead in its tracks. To the point where she could apply Force Weapon to her entire body.

Triam Akovin's fully automatic onslaught slammed into her face, her chest, her shoulders, belly, groin, thighs -- more hits than she could count. The old reliable Republic blaster rifle had some unholy ammunition capacity, something in the high hundreds or low thousands, if she remembered right. Blaster efflux glowed right through her eyelids, and uncomfortable warmth surrounded her as she tanked full-auto fire at a range of ten metres. Using the Force for other applications was not, at this exact moment, an option. Nor was this a sustainable solution. Oh, she could probably outlast the magazine, but she was immobilized if she wanted to keep that full-auto fire from chewing up the facility behind her and dooming both of them. And this solution took her concentration and her Force power -- it would, in time, tire her more than Akovin's finger would get bored of pulling the trigger.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Astonishment flooded Triam as water would have had not there been the spectacle before her. She had never heard of such a feat. She fired at the woman at every point, yet somehow remained unharmed and unaffected, albeit immobilized. It didn't matter where she hit, the blaster bolts simply seemed to dissipate upon contact with the woman's skin. She didn't even draw her blade for her to find out whether or not using blasters was a viable option for it.

It didn't happen often, but Triam was thoroughly impressed with this tiny feat of resistance and endurance. The motive behind though was not precisely clear to her. If carrying this ability to sustain blaster fire with her whole body, and her blade was incapable of reflecting bolts... or perhaps incapable of sustaining the damage of bolts, why not conserve her energy to her blade? If her blade is capable of such deflection or dissipation of common bolts, what advantage could she gain from taking it herself? The only scenario that made sense to her, that very much worried her was the possibility that the woman might be absorbing her downrange fire to increase her own strength in the force. She knew enough about the Jedi that it was not without the range of their skills, especially since similar (though crude) methods have been employed upon machines. If she was building up her energies in the force, again the motive was murky. However equipped she may be, she was still only human. You didn't need a starship thrown at her to die. Then if this wasn't the scenario and she was mistaking this power for another more dangerous ability, what is her motive? What is her motive?

If she was merely enduring these blasts, what for? Perhaps she sought to exhaust her blaster bolts. A valid strategy, though if she knew anything about automatic guns these days, she would have to know how long that would take. Of course should that be the case, at the crucial moment that she relented and was required to reload, that blade was very dangerous if her enemy suddenly decided to explode into her face.

What ever the reason it may have been, one thing was certain: she was using the force. It was a good thing then, that she had a remedy for that. The only danger to it though was the blade. Had it been anything else the feat would be no problem. A saber? Passes through once and hits target. A blaster? Hah, nothing there to block it. Shield? It would have to be specialized for kinetic attacks, and ultimately, it would have to give out some time. But a sword? Physical objects don't tend to lose battery and thus disappear, and magnetic shielding usually doesn't allow objects to phase through them.

She could attempt to incapacitate her using the mixture of electricity, water, and a repulsor pack, but not only did that waste valuable time between when she relinquishes fire, activates her pack, and triggers her glove into the water which by the way could be severely damaged by her enemies blade in the process and render her attack negated. Not to mention the wasteful use of her survival gear in the event of total base collapse.

Well, she couldn't waste a clip of ammo, so between the split second of gun fire and new attack, Akovin lifted her arm and flexed for her meat hooks to shoot forth towards the previously immobilized Varanin, primed both for electrocution and profound hallucinogenic injection should it pierce the skin.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]



The hooks slammed into the faint sheen that still surrounded Ashin, stirring the cloud of blaster efflux and smoke. No hallucinogens today -- but before Ashin could analyze the weapon, or do much more than bring her sword up, the hooks and lines fell into the water at her feet. At which point, the former Dark Lord of the Sith experienced a familiar sensation.



Paralysis.



You ever been electrocuted? Tased, even? Your vision grays out, your skin feels warm, you can't put together a coherent thought other than 'this is bad and I should go that way and my body won't do that.' Makes for some unsettling conjecture on the nature of the soul and sentient intelligence, if all it takes to shut you down is a bit of rubber missing from the sleeve around a bit of copper. A bit of missing rubber hasn't ruined someone's day that comprehensively since your conception.



What Ashin encountered now was a fethton heavier than your screwdriver hitting a contact you'd thought was dead at the fuse. Force lightning had a certain precognitive sense, and she was good at countering it, very good in some ways. But this wasn't Force lightning. Oh, they were both electricity, even if Force lightning had a little something extra, but this wasn't arising out of some primal manifestation of precise hate. This was just...tech. She fell to her knees, trapping a couple of the hot lines under her shins. Her hand tightened on Winterlight. With an effort of will, she swung the bastard sword around and slid its point under the trapped lines. All she could do. The alchemical metal soaked up current like a sponge. Her head rose. "Nice," she managed.



And put all of her experience, focus, and connection to the Force into the singular task of putting Triam Akovin through the nearest wall.



The wall was one of the few that didn't lead to the outside, sure, but it might still be load-bearing; she was a bit too fried and a bit too...intent for second thoughts. Her right leg was always bad at the knee, and the electrical burns to her shins meant her mobility had just gone from bad to yeah right. That, and she was still on her knees.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

Oops, was all Triam could think as in slowmo she watched the charged wires fall to the ground, That was dumb.

She didn't even get the moments pleasure of watching the former Sith Lord get some paralyzing volted, because she was too busy dealing with it too. In generally, electricity and water really should never be brought to the same battlefield, something the brilliant Akovin forgot to account when gearing her self up. Hell, she even thought about it twice before even engaging in the use of her glove.

*flash back*

Rounding the corner. Possible attack, hover to avoid water, electrocute water.

*flash back again*

I could use my glove to K.O. and electrocute her while hovering to avoid water, but that could hit the water.

*end flash back*

So why the hell did she turn on the tazer? Must have been reflex and too little time to really react cognitively. Or maybe she was just a little air-headed sometimes. She would pay for that... walls tend to hurt. Noticing the preemptive movement most often associated with an angry force user getting ready to shove you to Val'hala... and she's been there, it was a pretty big planet, probably hard to miss comparatively. Eyes widened.

"Brace!" She called out to voice command her boots to... wait... Damn it!

"Son of-" Bwush! Like a ragdoll her shiny "I. Assault U. Armor" turned into "I'm. Being-Assaulted-By U. Armor". Hardy Ultrachrome smashed into the wall with traumatizing force, and she notice suddenly that her helmet craftsmanship could use a little work. If she were able to her eyes would have widened even bigger, at the realization of what could have potentially have just happened. She had a kark ton of explosives on her back!

She braced harder and attempted to turn into the wall to prevent the blunt force trauma from activating any potentially fragile explosive equipment that still allowed her -both of them- to be in one piece. It was hard of course, with probably concussion and/or whiplash against the power of unrelenting force through a solid object. She was really regretting at this point that she had left her boots behind.

She smashed through the wall in a shower of shrapnel and sparks as metal tore through metal into some obscure other room.

Quickly her mind raced to take inventory:

Head trauma, rib and other fractures, possible muscle tears in various places, Phantom cables left 10 meters behind her, leaking the hallucinogenic fluids in murky yellow pools. Rifle missing. She still had pistols, explosives thankfully intact and not detonated... otherwise she wouldn't be having this thought. But she decided not to entice anything like that from happening again.

Appeared that Ashin, some distance away, had been rendered immobile. So perhaps her scientific method didn't tell her what the sword did (other than absorb electricity), it did tell her a lot about her enemy. She hurt a lot, and didn't move a whole lot. The way her knee was down, she got a certain vibe that it was a past injury she just reignited, and it was likely not the only one considering her stationary strategy.

Ashin was a grounded fighter then, and thus far proved not to be a very mobile opponent. She wondered how she would react to a chase. At least initially, Ashin had been the one to wait for her attacks, and respond to her tactics. Triam had been the aggressor, but in that last attempt the Treasure Huntress snapped something in her. Using lots of energy to push her away. If it had been Triam's will, she'd have gotten the opponent as close as possible and throttle them with the amount of power she saw in her opponent. Ashin was close combat, Triam was naturally ranged combat. A melee opponent giving up the advantage of close distance in the sake of anger told something to Akovin.

If not for her mistake, she was winning. At the moment it was undecided, thanks to Ashins blow, and her lucky survival. So perhaps she wasn't winning, but rather surviving Ashin's lack of need to be lethal... until perhaps now. Grunting to her feet, Triam pulled a pistol to her non-gloved hand. Quickly scanning her environment she could tell that this room was dangerous, very dangerous.

It was an aquarium study, with fragile enough glass on one side, and lots of littler aquariums throughout the room in tanks. If Ashin wasn't done with her outburst, it was quite possible they were both done for. Akovin though had two clear advantages: mobility, and the choice to threaten explosive retribution. Her first instinct told her to find a door... but she also wanted to entice Ashin to fallow. There was mess of a force users worst day on the ground right now, that she thought of perhaps vaporizing with her blaster to poison the Master... but she was rather far away, and it was likely that for one, her blaster wouldn't vaporize nearly enough with no surety of results, and two that at this point the Master would probably push it away.

Thus explosives seemed her trump card. That room wasn't stable, it was likely Ashin's only route of avoiding an on current of water should it break was into the aquarium room, with lots of cover for Triam, that they both would have to be careful not to break. If she didn't move, she'd either absorb the explosion and then get crushed by tons of water, or she'd have to strain herself from mobility. Akovin decided she liked this.

She flexed for her hooks to return, and with that pulled out a grenade and chucked that karker in there while hip firing her pistol, and brought her glove up to zip her up to the ceiling.

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]

Force Weapon shielding down, the hallucinogenic hooks should have shredded her knees when the Phantom Fingers retracted. It was the grenade that saved Ashin from a very nasty loss. Not much spoke to a Forcer's instincts like a gleefully tossed grenade. Well, this wasn't glee per se, but she did feel a certain satisfaction, and an impression of...crashing water. The fether was going to blow the walls, presumably.

She rolled forward; the lines and hooks zipped out from under her legs. As the grenade arced through the hole in the wall, she came to her feet and looked at it. Just looked at it.

Grenades. Everyone loved grenades against Force-users. Some people and organizations put in tricky little switches and pressure sensors to foil telekinesis, though that was just asking for a premature detonation. Others crammed their grenades full of weaponized ixetal cilona, or cortosis dust -- expensive and moderately ineffective ways to counter Force-users. And after a very long career, Ashin wasn't surprised by grenades so much as exasperated. Annoyed, even. So that grenade just froze in midair. It exploded in the hole, wrapped entirely in the Force grip of one of the most powerful Masters alive. It became a small sphere of fire and controlled shrapnel that went nowhere.

Pistol fire ripped through the hole in the grenade's wake. Ashin let go of the grenade, let its superheated remains fall, and batted the blasterfire away with her sword. This wall could take a few hits safely; she redirected the shots into it without noticeable structural consequences, and took a moment to blink away the grenade's afterimage. She saw nothing through there except an aquarium or twelve.

She did not see Triam Akovin. Feth.

With a grunt, she took two steps to put her beside the hole and outside of Akovin's line of fire. Her shins had some electrical burns, but crucitorn dealt with that. The heavy limp in her right leg would be the issue. She closed her eyes. Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them -- that had been lesson number one as a Jedi apprentice, two decades back. The core powers she'd learned them had always formed the heart of her skillset, and she was already in a telekinetic frame of mind. The remains of the grenade -- shrapnel torched to a red heat -- rose in the gap.

And kept rising, up the aquarium-room's wall, up to the ceiling, where her gut and the blaster pistol's angle of fire told her Akovin was waiting. At which point, the red-hot bits of metal skidded leisurely across the ceiling, bouncing somewhat, varying in height. Not the most subtle or talented telekinetic display in history, certainly nothing like Mikhail Shorn's railgun ballistokinesis, but fast enough to give Akovin pause and hopefuly force her down to the floor. Her armor might be good enough to take being put through a wall, but the point of this wasn't to hurt Akovin. It was to home in on her by sensing her shift in attention when she decided whether or not to deal with the bits of metal. And at that point, line of sight or not, bad at sensing her enemies or not, Ashin might get a pretty decent bead on her.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

30 meters. At the end of the aquarium room, with its rows of column like aquariums with random fishes of unknown specification swimming freely through them, Triam held her breathe as she saw something hopefully door like. A door is good, but it was three times out of her current reach. Her eyes strained terribly to see if that's what it was, her fried, mashed up brain struggled to concentrate, and only now did the pain of her injuries begin to add up. She added another item to the list: burns.

She was really regretting that last encounter with Ashin, and her use of the tazer. That was really just no fun at all. Struggling through the sparse and often broken rafters, she didn't look back to see if her plan worked... she would have heard the oncoming torrent of water if it had worked. It was likely Ashin did something with it, but that along with blastefire undoubtedly served to distract the Master from her escape.

With a foggy head, it was really hard for her to come up with more than just the first plan to pop through her head. Where before she considered the use of technology later and thus adjusted to a superior tactic, no she really only had one thing on her mind: trap the Jedi, blow up the room, escape before being crushed.

That was exactly what she was going to do... but first.

Clanging sounded in the rafters as metal shards began to graze in and out of the ceiling space. Her focus momentarily stopped her as they scattered. Jedi work, ignore it. She told herself. Ignore it!

She attempted to refocus and continued climbing, not all that threatened by the shrapnel, forgetting that her armor was segmented and one of those could very possibly slip into her. If she had part of her mind, she'd be freaking out a little bit. But a basically drunken head worked just as good as crucitorn.

There had to be something to distract the Jedi, and it couldn't be too complicated, otherwise her head would hurt.

Well blowing up one aquarium couldn't hurt, that was distracting, and hopefully didn't obliterate structural integrity... cause once again, that would kinda suck. She pulled out a low explosive, tossed it at an adjacent aquarium and shot at it a few times. She meant simply to detonate the explosive before the Jedi could apprehend it, but in her drunken condition it merely served to hit the glass, and hopefully break it enough to cause and exponential degradation in its integrity, until water begins to flood out of it from the outside. If this station was operation, it was likely safety measures would seal off that aquarium from the outside to keep from flooding... well, we'll see.

As the bomb detonated, she reached out with her glove and zipped away another 10 meters adjacent from where she was last, under the sound cover of either explosion or flood water, and avoiding for the most part the shrapnel rake. If some of it did penetrate her armor and she was bleeding, she couldn't rightly tell just now.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]

That fight for clarity of thought, the focus of finding a good zipline target, tossing and aiming at the explosive and subconsciously bracing herself for the boom -- that was exactly the kind of mental shift that Ashin was looking for. In her day, as a young Jedi Knight, she'd been a very good Force tracker, and some degree of that old talent stuck with her. She got the lock. The shrapnel fell into the aquariums and hissed away their heat. The small aquarium blew with a mindboggling noise, but she wasn't targeting Akovin based on sound any more than she was using sight. A rush of water poured through the hole, though its bottom edge wasn't flush with the deck; most of the water remained inside the aquarium room. Out of her line of sight, old safety protocols brought up an opaque sliding panel to contain the water, but slowly. Somewhere in there, Akovin was flying ten metres across the ceiling of the room.

Crucitorn drove her past the taser burns on her legs. A sidestep put her in front of the hole; she got her cramping right leg up, planted her booted foot on the ragged edge, and shoved off with Force-enhanced speed and strength. That was about the only way she could get her right knee to work like this. She shot across the room diagonally, straight at the broken aquarium, and met the rising edge of the safeguard panel with her left boot. That gave her about half the height of the room, maybe a bit less; enough to enable the rebound jump.

Then, and only then, did she open her eyes, as she rebounded up and away from the broken aquarium, flying headfirst the rest of the way across the room, up and over the aquariums. Akovin was just getting to her new perch; maybe she'd gotten there already, in the last heartbeat or so. The sword Winterlight, held before her eyes and tilted back, inscribed a circle with its tip and rotated around the center of its blade to form a double-napped cone. A pretty solid defense against someone ahead of and above her, someone who was currently trying to shore up a solid position, especially when it translated into a whirling peripheral strike that threatened to take off limbs.

It was a Juyo move, but akin to the sword form she'd studied in the Unknown Regions as a girl. Force Weapon flared around Ashin's body, a pulse, nothing long-term, but a basic precaution for her when charging a range player.

Action through inaction -- but not even the purest Jedi adherent of that principle would wait forever. Just for the right moment, at which one move might finish the fight. If Ashin's focus had been anything other than complete, it would have reminded her of the old tale of the teamaster's duel.

On Atrisia, in a time when formal tea ceremonies were even more important than they were today, a teamaster found himself honor-bound to fight a duel against an experienced swordsman. He went to a school of the sword, where students had trained since youth, and asked the swordmaster to teach him, as he had never picked up a sword in his life. The swordmaster took the teamaster aside from the class and taught him a single stance and two moves. The stance raised the blade high above the head; the moves were the two basic strikes from that position, a downward chop and a circling cut aimed low. The stance left him open.

"You have learned focus to the same level as I have," the swordmaster had said to the teamaster. "All that matters is the focus. Take this stance, train in it exclusively, and your opponent will see that, although he can certainly kill you, he will certainly die in the attempt."

Moral of the story? One move at the perfect time. Well, the original moral of the story had more to do with the universality of the ability to focus, to clear one's mind. All paths led to the mountaintop. But today's moral had more to do with the results of that focus: A tornado of alchemical steel backed by a battering ram of high-level Master who had gotten a very, very precise Force lock on her enemy's location.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Perched awesome. Scan: Holy feth a whirlwind Jedi.

That escalated rather quickly. Too quickly for Akovin's likes. The whirlwind strike though was more of a disorientating attack as much as a it was psychological. In her current injured state that looked like some scary poodoo. Obviously one aquarium was not enough to get in the way of this Jedi, and she had some intuition into her precise whereabouts. Only ten more meters to go, that's all she needed. She had a simple plan, and so far the Jedi was being too fast for her likes.

She had strong doubts the sword could do much damage to her with its non-directional specific attack. She'd be much more worried if the Jedi was attempting to impale her, she'd probably just about fall off her perch. But with segmented highly durable armor (as testament from her survival of wall crashing) there was no real rational reason for her to fear such a strike...

...luckily for Ashin she wasn't being very rational at the moment, and she was scared as all feth.

Reflexively she stretched out her hand and flexed for another full on attempt of her Phantom Fingers. No plans, no scanning the area for water again, no hover pack no nothing. Purely "Holy hell that crap is scary get it out of my face." reaction. The nanotube cables launched out probably to wrap around Ashin and her sword with the attacks wild nature. Ashin's blade obviously would absorb most if no all of her electrical attack, but drug fluids might soak her a bit.

That was also when she began to shoot at her enemy, because outstretching a hand just wasn't good enough to kill that thing in your face... you had to shoot it too until it either scampered away or stopped twitching.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]


So Akovin had chosen to rely on her armor against the sword, despite the whirling strike's potential to bruise or fracture bone with blunt impact to a limb -- this blade, unlike a lightsabre, had momentum. But as these events unfolded over the course of the heartbeat or two it took Ashin to go from the Phantom Fingers' extreme range to melee range, the coming clash between sword and armored limb was probably the least of the bounty hunter's worries.

The greatest of them might, at a guess, be how she was hanging on. One hand shooting, one hand tossing Phantom Finger cables -- that didn't leave much room for balance on what was presumably the top of an aquarium, or a support beam.

Another strong contender presented itself for the title of factors which might make Triam Akovin unhappy. Specifically, the consequences of shooting cables into a rapidly spinning sword of average sharpness and immense angular momentum. The Phantom Fingers' meat hooks, hallucinogens and all, glanced off the pulse of Force Weapon shielding that Ashin had thrown over her head and shoulders, and then the cables wrapped and wrapped again around the centerpoint of the sword. Blasterfire glanced off her whirling sword and the shield around her head and shoulders. A blaster bolt slashed down Ashin's right leg, but she'd been focusing on crucitorn for her legs less than five seconds ago, and that state of mind remained. There would just be consequences for leg function when all this came crashing down.

At a guess, Akovin had just compounded Ashin's already permanent limp. She'd gotten that thing from Darron Wraith at Roche, then Josiah Denko at Barab, then made it worse by falling through the roof of a certain cave on Dagobah, then taken a strain from Alen Na'Varro on Rattatak. Contributing to the limp was something not just anyone could claim.

Since Akovin hadn't moved from her perch, around now was the point where Ashin slammed into the precarious gunslinger, presumably sword-first. Beneath them was a sheet of glass, the top of the big aquarium. Ashin's wire-wrapped sword carried enough momentum to, with luck, slam Akovin off her perch and bring her crashing down to the aquarium's roof, with Ashin. The water level was about a foot beneath the top. The glass probably wouldn't take their weight.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

"No no no no no no no no!" Her mouth chattered in a single part of a moment before impact. Blasters weren't any good and her cables were as should be expected all wrapped up on Ashin's sword, and she was about to be battered down whilst high on her perch... and not holding on to anything. Damn it! Why did she stop? She should have maintained momentum and now it has cost her precious distance from the Jedi. Not only was she too fast for comfort, she was too close now as well. It was inevitable that she'd be toppled over with the threat of that blade impaling her. She was entangled quite dangerously, and it wasn't likely she could get out of this situation without losing her glove... unless...

She toppled over the support beam towards the aquarium glass. With her charged cables that was the least favorable place for her to be of anywhere else. The door was ten meters away, and it felt like a hundred. It was a dashed hope right now until she could find someway out of this situation.

There wasn't any idea per say, but there was definitely an instinct here, and it was one of the most basic ones. Do. Not. Fall. At this point it was essentially considered an emergency, and as she went over Jedi and all, she desperately activated her repulsor pack in the efforts of avoiding the aquarium. She turned away from the Jedi as best she could to aim herself over it. It was going to be really close... and really awkward considering what the Jedi tied to her fingers might do in the mean time.

Since it was so desperately activated her flying wasn't exactly straight and was rather rough. In all likelihood one of them would crash into it, and the obvious hope would be that it was Ashin Varanin, with her blade absorbing the brunt of her electrifying attack.

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"] screaming in her ear didn't help matters, and the repulsorpack was a real joy. The sudden introduction of an antigrav element did exactly what Akovin had hoped: Ashin hit the glass first, though she managed to stay on her feet. It cracked under her, a spiderweb, and she froze. One wrong move, even an attempt at a Force-jump, would put her through the glass. The taser wires were still wrapped around her sword, and she'd get electrocuted hard. And while she could handle that, doing it underwater was something else entirely. There was such a thing as involuntary breathing, and drowning in water laced with broken glass was not among Ashin's preferred ways to pass from mortality. Akovin floated there, still tethered to the sword that had absorbed, and was absorbing, the current. Live wires.

The sword would release that current on contact. And she knew this sword very, very well.

Staring up at Akovin, Ashin slammed Winterlight into the glass, and a series of things happened, or would hopefully happen, within about a heartbeat of each other. All the current which the sword had stored was now released into the wires, a lightning strike spurred by the alchemical nature of the blade. Ideally, that would fry the Phantom Fingers, and maybe their user and her repulsorpack too, if Ashin was very lucky. The glass shattered under Ashin's feet, and she held the sword above her head for that extra half-second to discharge the lightning strike, render the wires inert, and keep her from getting fully and powerfully electrocuted as she was submerged.

One scenario played out in Ashin's mind. In that scenario, Akovin's explosives didn't detonate, and she fell into the water with Ashin, or she got rid of them and submerged before they went off. In hope, she thrust Winterlight up at an angle toward the place where Akovin might enter the water a heartbeat after.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Apprehensive eyes glanced at the aquarium as she saw in slow motion Ashin land on the now cracking glass, and a heart beat latter she felt the tug of her blade on her live wires smash into the glass below her, ensuring that the fight would take to the water... probably. She was pulled back at the force of her enemies strength, and her flight pattern was further disturbed. But she had to deal with on thing at a time, and at the moment her hand was quite unpleasantly being given a taste of its own medicine.

The electrical charge ran down the wires intertwining the fates of Varanin and Akovin, and into her Cortosis Guarded hand. Ouch. From her hand which was undoubtedly going to be scorched pretty bad, it ran up and around her entire body, as quite unfortunately for Triam, her armor was superconductive, and when it began to heat up... it heated up in every quadrant at the same time no matter where the heat or energy was applied. That was very much not fun at all, especially being dealt with it a second time.

Another quite unfortunate event, was the fact that she kinda depended on her Repulsor Pack in order to survive. Going into the open ocean without one was one thing to Akovin: a death sentence. A rebreather would only last her so long, especially under that pressure. Thus the only way to survive, was to some how ensure that either her Repulsor Pack remained operation and she went under, or was some how otherwise separated from her own cables.

Damn that door who under normal circumstances was merely a hand stretch away, was now what seemed to be an impossible mile.

Her fingers were for certain finished, if not the electronics, than her ability to flex them further. Oh, and yeah, her robotic hand was finished too. She was effectively disarmed. She began to fall as her repulsor pack gave into the electrical onslaught, and that's when she knew where there real other trouble was: explosive discharge.

Hyper widened eyes and a very sudden bought of desperation, her nerve dead mechanical hand was very suddenly driven as hard as possible into the now inert nanocables of her glove, as she forced the painless limb to force the mechanism to break at any cost. If she succeeded, the cables would break under the desperate force of her metal hand and Ashin would be left to dunk in the waters on her own as Akovin free fell to the floor with around fourty pounds of possibly active explosives on her pack. As soon as the cables did or did not release she would outstretch both arms to her sides in over exaggeration in order to detach her Repulsor Pack, and Explosive Pack off of her in a quick release mechanism.

The moment she was free, if she was free, she would run as fast as she was able to, to that door that represented all of her hopes of life.

If not, she would be tugged under water with no repulsor pack, no explosives, and a karked up mechanical hand being rammed into inert wires held under the command of a Jedi Master's Alchemical Sword... while she sunk to the bottom of the ocean with no crutch to lean on beyond her rebreather, and her thoughts.

This field test indeed granted her a plethora of notes on her gear: bolster electrical defense, cut off reliance on electrical attacks, create a system to keep her strategically sound when brought low by any combination of human error, injury, or desperation.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]'s cables detached as the gunslinger hoped, and Ashin found herself alone in the aquarium. It was at this point that Ashin discovered the aquarium had no bottom. Which meant pressure. Lots of it. She surrounded herself with a barrier, which helped some but not a lot. Force Weapon was meant to repel lightsabres, shrapnel, not...PSI. Through water and thick glass, she watched Akovin run. Might be a victory; might just be Akovin making a strategic advance in the opposite direction. Not a bad plan, considering overpressure might be on its way. Ashin braced herself-

But the explosives didn't go off. No detonation. Feeling somehow unsatisfied despite herself, Ashin kicked her aching legs -- the crucitorn had worn off somewhat -- and ascended to the top of the aquarium. Shards of glass drifted down past her, and a few little crimson blooms marked where they brushed against her cheeks or hands. She caught the dull edge and pulled herself up and over the thick glass. She fell and rolled to lie beside the explosives. Priorities presented themselves. She could clean the wires off her sword, stand up, or-

With a gesture, the explosives levitated, dropped into the aquarium, and began to sink below the station. That would have to do as far as containment went. Snorting out saltwater, she climbed to her feet and limped after Akovin. The collected wires slipped off her sword blade. The taser burns on her legs slowed her, as did that glancing blaster shot, and she quickly found her mobility was approaching zero. Even crucitorn couldn't restore function that was being reduced by swelling. She had the answers, but those would leave her focus open to interruption of the nastiest variety.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

@[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"Even with that leg of yours," Akovin puffed astonished by the Jedi's resilience, as she approached the door. "You just don't know when to stop... do you?" She shook her head in disbelief. She climbed out of the water and dropped the explosives in the water.

Quickly she took inventory: Rebreather, Armor, Pistol. Well that helped a whole lot when one hand was completely useless and the other was stuck in a broken glove. She did her best to push it off with the finger stumps of her metal hand. It hurt like hell, some flesh having fused to her gloves interior. Half a hand, she added to the list.

Well, she lost her trump card and her secret weapon... and virtually the rest of her gear. She still picked up her pistol in a death grip. How long was this fight anyway? Three minutes? An hour? She honestly couldn't tell. She looked at the wake of destruction the two caused, and listened to the creaking it would suffer and threaten.

A wall with an Akovin Shaped whole, two obliterated aquariums, water, drugs, dead fish, and discarded equipment strewn out everywhere. The bodies of water protruding out of the floor weren't nearly as useful as she had hoped.

"Will you keep following me if I go out this door? Scuttling across the floor with a leg as torn as that?" She pointed at it with her pistol, "What if I go through this door and turn a corner, and wait for you... how many turns will it take to finally make your knee give out? If there is anything I learned today, I want to be like you, and I'll start by failing to let you win." She took a few steps back into the door.

"In my mind then you have two options: break yourself, or let yourself heal."

Well that totally came out of left field... but it felt right... no pun intended.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

@[member="Triam Akovin"]

Ashin was more than happy to stop walking. Limping, rather. And Akovin's little speech gave her some time to snake her mind's eye around the trigger of that pistol. She didn't do anything with it yet, just felt it, held it in the palm of her nonexistent hand.

"Akovin, that'd make an awful lot of sense if this fight had a point. But you walk out that door and keep walking, and I win. Simple as that. I don't have to follow you. Oh, it's not tactically sound for me to stand right here and let you do your thing, make your setup, find your spot, maximize your advantages -- but I think you're pretty much exactly as good at that as I am at standing still. Which is pretty good.

"So your call, Akovin. Walk away, or take the shot. But if you try to pull that trigger, I guarantee you won't have a fraction of the strength." She shrugged. "Of course, it might be worth taking the shot anyway, taking the risk. I'm tired, and I never was much good at fine-point telekinesis.

"So you gotta ask yourself...do you feel lucky?"