His finger squeezed down on the trigger. Slowly. Gently. A low, whirring song rose in the humid corridor as Sasha’s barrels spun, air whistling softly through their gaps. He feathered the trigger, and the whirr lowered and rose in pitch, grim music to his ears. Nikola grinned at the sound.
“I like your gun!” a bright, cheery voice commented at his side. Heavy armor creaked as the hulking Zabrak looked down at his counterpart. Though she was about a head shorter than him, Sera made up for it with a grin as blinding as the Iridonian sun, bright and toothy and pure. She had her helm tucked under her armand one foot bobbing in the sand. They were to be called out any moment now, facing an uncertain setting and an unknown threat, and here she was, happy as could be, making googly eyes at-
Sera reached up on her tip-toes and poked Nikola directly in the forehead, at the base of one of his larger crown-horns. The soldier sputtered, giving the younger Zabrak a cross look, but she only grinned in return.
“Like your horns, too. You polish those yourself?”
He regarded her with a cold, stony stare. She stared right back...and he found a surprising amount of steel hidden behind her blue-eyed gaze. Nikola grunted softly, and gave his Aedile a slight nod.
“You know what they are wanting us to do?” he asked, his accent rough and harsh. “What are we killing?”
“Not killing. Just fighting. Give the Head-lady a good show, protect their scanner-thingies, and do our best to keep from getting our heads bitten off, we’ll be good. The creatures didn’t ask for this, and we’re not gonna hurt ‘em more than we need to. So, put your pretty gun-...”
“*Sasha,” he interjected, his voice emphatic.
“Put Sasha on stun. Easy enough, yeah? As for the beastie itself…”
Sera gave Nikola another shrug and a grin. As the gate before them rattled, slowly lifting out of the sand, the younger Zabrak stepped forward, pulling two long daggers from her belt. She was practically bouncing as she stepped out onto the packed sand of the arena floor.
“I am thinking that you do not know what ‘easy’ means!” the soldier called out after her. Still, he followed, dark armor clattering as he moved into the open. The arena was massive, hundreds of meters across, massive walls trapping them within. Tens of thousands of people could fit into the tiered seats that lined the pit, but today they were only sparsely occupied, a few dozen forms scattered throughout, most wearing long, white and grey robes that marked them as Academy researchers.
But, they were of no consequence today. Not in his job description. Pausing at Sera’s side, Nikola unslung the helmet strapped to his blaster pack and slid it on, blinking as the targeting reticle came online. It didn’t have the same flashy crest for his horns that Sera’s had, but it gave him a great view of the arena around them. The beast hadn’t been released quite yet, which gave them more time to study their surroundings.It seemed relatively plain, barren of extra decor or obvious obstacles...which only made him more suspicious.
“Lookie here,” Sera stated, tapping on his shoulder as they moved farther in. She swiped a gauntleted hand through the arena’s sand, over an odd, even hole in the floor. Perfectly circular, perhaps two inches wide. Looking up, Nikola could see more of them, scattered across the fighting pit, arrayed in neat, curving lines that spiraled out from the center.
“Dare you to stick your-...”
“No.”
“What if I made that an order? Aedile’s command?” she offered, cocking her head.
“No, again.”
“C’mon, Nikkie. You need to live it up a little more. Smile!”
The soldier just stared at her. Even with the helmet blocking his face, she could sense that his face hadn’t moved even an inch. Before she could test Nikola’s sanity farther, however, a low rumble cut through the arena’s relative silence. That rumble turned into a ferocious, blood curdling howl of rage and anger. Another massive gate across the arena from the duo slowly yawned open, a gaping stretching to release…
Nothing. The cage beyond the door seemed empty.
The sand boiled directly underneath Sera’s feet for just a second, before something burst out and all hell broke loose.
The Force’s scream echoed in the back of Sera’s mind, primal and sharp. It drove her to move, to act, sending her lunging to the side just as an enormous limb shot from the sand, clawing through the air where she had stood only a moment before. Her mind, running on impulse, immediately jumped to Sand Caulker, one of the Iridonian apex predators that she had grown up alongside. But, as she scrambled away, daggers in her hand, that theory was very quickly disproved.
The creature that rose from the arena’s floor was massive, and covered with a thick coat of sandy, shaggy hair. It might have been white, once, but it was difficult to discern that through the dirt and blood matted in. She got a flashing glimpse of five-inch claws and two, curved black horns before the grasping paw swept towards her. She rolled out of its path, somersaulting backwards onto her feet and came to rest on her toes.
The thing just kept rising. Two meters, then three, then five, tall enough to cast her in its shade as the wampa turned and loosed an ear-piercing roar, fang-filled jaws stretching wide. Sera growled her animalistic defiance right back, pointed teeth bared as she brandished her daggers.
And then, of course, Sasha joined in. And she most certainly wasn’t set to stun, as Sera had asked.
A stream of crimson blaster bolts exploded against the wampa’s back. A score of steaming holes punched through fur and hide, flesh bursting off in smoking gobbets. But, the creature’s blubber and muscle were thick, resisting the scouring heat of Nikola’s fire. That wasn’t all, though There was a gleam there that Sera hadn’t noticed before. The dull shine of durasteel.
Plates of spiked armor had been attached to the creature’s torso, banding around its waist and shoulders, enough to absorb a great portion of Nikola’s fire. There was a particularly nasty piece attached to its left wrist, a hook of metal that acted as an extended blade. The pieces weren’t strapped on. Rather...it looked like they’d been bolted directly into the beast’s flesh
Those bastards. Those sick, cruel bastards.
The wampa whirled on Nikola, turning towards the larger, far more painful threat. One massive paw swept through the sand before it, throwing a wave of dark grit into the soldier’s face as he backed up, step by step, his cascade of fire blowing through the obscuring cloud, never ceasing. In turning on him, the beast left its back exposed to Sera, and her blades. The thick flesh and armor that had defended it against Nikola gave her plenty of places to grip. Springing at the last moment, her right hand wound into the fur that hung along one of the plates, while the dagger in her left served as a decent climbing pick, sinking deep into the beast’s flesh, creating a pivot that allowed her to start climbing.
Up and up. A long way to go.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?” the soldier shouted, hefting Sasha up.
“CLIMBING! JUST KEEP DOING THE HEAVY-WEAPONS GUY THING!”
“WHAT ELSE WOULD I BE DOING!?!?”
Positive Takeaways
stares A five meter tall wampa covered in spiked armor...and Sera is climbing it, of course. There was a lot of fun banter to set this one up, you were quick to introduce the character, the setting, everything! There was no slowdown here, a very good, quick, to the point opening post.
Can Be Improved
You had a few places where you missed your spacebar, and missed your closing asterisk on the markdown for the second Sasha bit.