I'd like to get back in this, but was the last of my group to go. Ralin, you want a shot? Or are you sticking to AoS?

**I wish I had the time to keep up here, but I'm having enough trouble in AoS with school/work/PC issues     feel free to kill off my guy if it works for somebody - I can just make a new character if I get the time to play here again**

Hey Mel, hope you don’t mind, but I still hope you’ll get the chance to post eventually. I heard you were having your baby, so we’ll be sure to keep your character around. Congratulations! I hope everything goes okay![/OOC]

As the heavy dust settled, Nell crossed her arms and eyed the one-handed human smiling next her. He looked like he hadn’t smiled in a very, very long time.

Nell angled her head to the side and pursed her lips, “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

“Perhaps.” Demarq’s sun-blinded smile quickly hid beneath the dark shadow his long unkempt hair cast. He turned over to where Nossk and Red regarded each other coldly.  The huge red-orange lizard leered down with his good eye, teeth bared and a menacing growl forming low in his throat.

The trandoshan stared back unflinchingly, rocket launcher still secure in his clawed hands. The force dragon inhaled deeply, snorted, then went over to what was left of the rancor and used the opportunity to piss on the carcass. Not really seeing any reason why he shouldn’t, Nossk went over and joined Red holding the missile launcher with one arm atop his shoulder.

“So where exactly do you get off on not trying to kill me?” Nell moved in closer, exposing her pale neck shyly. Demarq felt the charric press against his gut before it clicked as it was set to the highest setting. The female corellian made big, vanilla caramel caf eyes up at the pirate, “Is because I’m just a little helpless and petite female?”

A slow grin crossed the one-handed pirates face completely devoid of any intimidation, “Not in the slightest sweetheart.”

“Care to explain?” Nell jabbed the charric more forcefully, her tone leading quickly to anger.

“Well, you’re definitely not one of the prisoners, and since a good portion of your weapons aren’t even lethal you aren’t a mercenary.” Demarq tried to lean away from the weapon pushing against what must have been a broken rib but continued talking, “Which means you have your own ship, more than likely a grudge against Gerba, like ourselves, might I add, and you’re Corellian.”

“So?”

“Corellians always make the best pilots, and well, I need a pilot.”

“Since when do I care what you need?” Nell’s narrowed.

“I’ve done a good amount of dealing with Gerba,” Demarq waved his stumped hand about as if forgetting there was a hand there to flourish his smooth talking, “I know the way around the palace, the security, and the traps. Once we get in of course.”

Nell set her jaw when he made a valid point.

“Besides, you wouldn’t kill a cripple would you? That’s just heartless.”

Nell rolled her eyes and holstered the charric.

Many creatures such as reptiles in the universe possess the ability to silently communicate large amounts of information through pheromones and body language. But Nossk was still surprised when started “talking” to him.

Nice kill. Red shook off some pieces of debris, What are you anyway?

The Trandoshan had gone on a sort of ghoulish shopping spree with the dozens of corpses littering the cellar floor, and picked out his choice weapons after he’d assembled a considerable stockpile of death-dealing apparatus. The towering Trando now had a small arsenal festooned about his scaly body, from the pair of vibroblades hanging from his left hip to the repeating blaster he hefted onto his shoulder and everything in between. The lizard-man was back in his power-house element, and it was none to soon for his weary, wounded, and diminished human companion. Before leaving the house (which had once again sharpened their paranoia of basements), the pirate captain had insisted that Nossk destroy the remainder of his little weapons cache, an order he reluctantly obeyed by tossing a frag grenade into the beautiful mass of weaponry (his stock of the destructive little orbs had been replenished by the mercenaries’ ammo bandoleers).

And so the patched-up pair of prisoners took to the streets once again, this time with a more specific purpose than staying alive or looting some booty: They were going to start a crew.

The small bands of prisoners roaming around in laughable, temporary alliances had all been easily slaughtered so far, but that was quite simply because the two of them had been fighting as a line of work for years beforehand, and had a rather obvious advantage. But what if someone was to round up the few that were still venturing about on their own, alone but still elite in their own right? This new gang of escaped convicts would be, at the very least, the match for any mercenary squad, the only issue would be keeping together a group of men all killing for a prize only one of them could walk away with. That’s where Nossk’s big bad scaly self would come in, where all the diplomacy and smooth-talking in the world wouldn’t get the message across as well as a few snapped limbs.

“So where to, boss?” Nossk asked the wounded pirate, emphasizing the last word with thick sarcasm.

“Surprise me Sparky, pick a direction.” Demarq growled impatiently, limping heavily on his torn leg and trying not to think about the itching sensation that lingered where his hand should have been. “Ghost limb” they called it, and now he understood why.

“I pick that way.” Nossk said at once, pointing down a random street.

“Thanks for letting me know, now start walking.”

This process continued for several blocks, winding and weaving their way through the deceivingly large faux village with no other guide than Nossk’s brilliant sense of direction. A couple days of ceaseless combat seemed to have thinned out the Battledome’s ranks quite a bit; either that or there was some elaborate game of hide-and-go-seek that the wayward duo weren’t cool enough to get told about. Regardless, the only sentient they’d come across was an eccentric Gran who opened fire with his blaster the moment they came into view. With no opportunity or particular desire to make their offer of recruitment, Nossk snapped off a quick burst from his newly acquired Merr-Sonn repeater, and that was that. The task of assembling an effective crew, however, grew more daunting by the minute.

Hope reared its bedazzled, glorious head as they rounded the next spontaneously-selected corner. He stood in the middle of the street, covered in scraggy brown fur and the bottom half of his prison coveralls. A recoilless rocket launcher was poised on his shoulder, seemingly daring any brave challenger to take his best shot. Nossk stood frozen at the mere sight of the heavily-armed, confident figure. He and the human watched and waited.

The Chadra-Fan glanced in the newcomers’ direction, and proceeded to quite violently flip the frack out. The tiny furball began chattering excitedly, and waved his oversized weapon in their direction, still squawking his high-pitched surprise and alarm.

“I want him.” Nossk exclaimed abruptly, instantly amused by the tiny alien with the missile launcher. Surely something with so much gusto and chutzpa (and a huge gun) would be a valuable addition to their soon-to-be fellowship. “Can we keep it?”

Demarq sized up the diminutive creature, nervously hoped that the excitable thing didn’t decide to paint the nearby houses a new shade of red, and finally sighed in resignation. “Do whatever you want, but you’re cleaning up after it.”

“This is gonna be the best.” Nossk growled victoriously. He took a few steps towards the jittery alien, at which the Chadra-Fan immediately began to freak out in a considerably more vigorous manner; the Trandoshan stopped. “Put that thing down.”

The Chadra-Fan squeaked a quick but distinct negative.

“No, you put yours down first.” Nossk said a little louder, still keeping the barrel of his underslung repeater trained on the tiny prisoner.

A long string of ear-splitting chitters responded, which, although indecipherable, sounded thoroughly insulting. Despite his Trandoshan friend’s insistence on continuing the endless conversation, Demarq was rather certain that the lizard-man had absolutely no clue what the little thing was saying.

“No, don’t you try to play me like that!” the reptile yelled, “I said you first!”

The pirate captain was about to intervene, about to explain to Nossk why it would be impossible to enlist the aid of a jittery creature that could neither understand them nor be understood, when a deep rumble shook the ground beneath their feet. At first Demarq was terrified that the twitchy little bastard had snapped and actually fired the little death cannon perched on his tiny shoulder, but the confused look on the Chadra-Fan’s face coupled with a conspicuous absence of death laid waste to that theory.

“What in the hell - ?” The pirate began, his puzzlement only deepening as the tremors grew increasingly violent. It was as if an earthquake was ripping through the Battledome itself, and for a brief moment the human considered that throwing one into the mix would be just like the sadistic little slug. A moment later, Theory #2 was cast aside just as quickly and completely as the first.

One of the pristine white houses farther down the street was instantly reduced to an explosion of splinters as a massive, leathery body crashed through it. As the shattered timbers and roofing tiles rained down on the shell-shocked occupants of the little suburb neighborhood, the rest of the creature started to take form as it emerged onto the street. First the huge, talon-tipped hands; then the arms, thick as tree trunks and strong enough to level the home with a single sweep; then the titanic torso – fat, gnarled, and unbelievably enormous. The rancor trudged through the remainder of the building’s foundation and stepped into the street, appraising its surroundings with the slow comprehension of a true semi-sentient juggernaut.

Even the bewildered ball of missile-toting fuzz was rendered speechless.

It was at this fortuitous moment that, at the far end of the now-too-crowded street, a massive (although still dwarfed by the rampaging monster that had just made its stunningly dramatic entrance) red hssiss lizard skidded into view. On its back, nestled between the double row of dorsal spines, sat a human woman, presumably its master (how one could manage to tame a dark side dragon, none of them had the time or knowledge to ponder).

The rancor’s attention shifted from the three miniscule humanoids previously engaged in a worthless argument to the infinitely more interesting, not to mention meal-sized, beast and its fair-skinned rider. The one-eyed lizard ground to a sudden stop as it appraised its new adversary, taking care not to throw Nell. The living weapon bent low on its front legs as it slowly began to circle the huge creature, its single eyeball jerking every which way as it searched for a weak spot among the thick layers of brown flesh. He had found none when the rancor opened its drooling, gaping maw and roared its murderous intent to whoever might be unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

One of its mammoth, ponderous legs shook the earth and pulverized the pavement as it took a slow, deliberate step forward

Red charged.

The last thing Nell had seen was the giant monster growing ever larger as Red closed the distance between them. She felt the familiar roller-coaster ride as his powerful bounds brought them scant meters away from the extraordinarily lethal monstrosity, dodging its sledgehammer fists as Red bolted between its legs and lodged his fangs into the meat of the rancor’s right thigh. Venomous daggers sliced as deep as they could through the larger beast’s natural armor, but even so drew hardly a drop of blood through the impossibly thick hide. Now, latched onto the rancor’s leg like a vice and largely immobile, the agile lizard was an easy target for the giant creature’s flailing arms. A fist the size of a small speeder crashed against Red’s ribs, throwing the dragon skyward and taking a sizeable chunk of the rancor’s leg with it.

All at once the eerie neighborhood became a spinning blur as Nell was sent hurling through the air, lizard and all. The huge hssiss was tossed only a few meters, but Ness sailed through the air for about half a block before coming to an abrupt stop in the most unlikely of places - a thoroughly confused Trandoshan's open arms.

"Hi." The gun-bristled reptilian said amiably.

Nell reflexively rolled out of the Trando’s arms, landing gracefully on her feet before whirling to face him. She took in his considerable armaments at a glance, and instantly snapped a savage kick aimed at disarming the reptile of his massive repeater, or at least knocking it off target. Before her leather-shod foot could make contact with the cold metal, however, she met unexpected resistance. The human standing nearby had leapt between her and his Trandoshan companion, blocking her strike with his left forearm. For an instant his attractive face was contorted with pain as he winced from the blow, and Nell noticed with no small degree of astonishment that the forearm holding back her kick ended with a bandaged stump rather than a hand.

“Now hold on there sweetheart.” The pirate panted, trying to keep a straight face despite the unbearable pain lancing through his ravaged arm. “This is hardly the time.”

Nell returned her foot to the ground, still maintaining her fighting stance. Again she lunged for the reptilian, understandably assuming he was the largest threat and thusly deciding he should be dealt with first. Just as before the man stepped in her way, pale and bandaged yet somehow dangerous in his own right. His eyes shone with the pain and agony just moving must have caused him, but at the same time they were indescribably aflame with resolve: there was no way he was going to allow her any closer to the Trando - oh no, he had other plans.

“That’s really a bad idea,” the pirate remarked again, not reaching for the pistol on his thigh but still blocking her path. “If you’ll let me finish, Fido here might be the only thing capable of keeping your little pet alive.”

“What? Against a rancor? Thanks Stumpy, but I’ll take my chances with Re –”

Demarq had no intention of letting her finish her skeptical protest. In fact, once he’d established that she was no longer going to try to kill either of them, he lost most of his interest in here entirely – at least for the moment.

“Nossk, launcher.” He called over his shoulder.

“Got it.” The Trandoshan immediately let his repeater clatter to the ground and took off at a dead sprint down the road. He vaulted duracrete blocks and large, deadly-looking splinters from the wrecked house, keeping his glassy eyes locked on Chadra-Fan’s missile launcher. The first time Red had been tossed through the air, he’d landed squarely on the tiny alien, crushing him to death instantly. His oversized weapon, however, still lay perfectly operable and ownerless on the cracked asphalt. Nossk bolted back and forth, dodging even more debris that hurtled through the air as the two beasts battled. He dove to the side as a complete, and rather affordable bathroom set threatened to cut his interesting little obstacle course short. Nossk pulled himself to his feet, took a few moments to orient himself among the thickening dust and rubble, and took off yet again. Both Nell and Demarq looked on with considerable anxiety, each quietly concerned for their respective lizards.

“Mine eats people, you know.” Nell commented, wincing slightly as Red was once again thrown through the living room wall of a nearby house.

“So does mine.” The pirate captain responded casually, cheering inwardly as Nossk spun neatly out of the way of a falling cinderblock and continued on his way.

“Well I can ride mine.” The beast trainer persisted, observing as her hssiss shook off the wood and drywall like a wet dog and once again leapt at its significantly larger foe.

Demarq thought for a moment. He supposed technically he could ride Nossk, but it was probably not the wisest of ideas. “Well you got me there, mine talks though.”

The Trandoshan dove forward as a kitchen window smashed to pieces behind him, showering him with glass as he rolled back to his feet within arms-reach of his precious objective. Nossk grabbed it up and quickly checked to ensure that it was loaded before hefting it onto his shoulder. He peered down the rocket tube’s sights at the dueling monsters, but the lightning-fast hssiss was everywhere at once, practically crawling over the rancor’s body like a squirrel in a cartoon holovid; it was impossible to get a clear shot.

“Oh ya? Well mine’s bigger.” Nell snapped.

Demarq paused noticeably before turning to face the concerned trainer watching her friend and companion fight just as the pirate was. His expression was one of stung disbelief.

“Oh no you didn’t…”

Their argument was cut short as Red was thrown a third time, instantly grabbing both their attention. The crimson reptile sailed through the air, a sensation he was in general quite unfamiliar with, and came down in a scaly heap where Nossk had stood a moment before. The Trandoshan had leapt just clear of the crash zone, taken a knee, and finally drawn a clear bead on his enormous target. It was impossible to miss.

Nossk grinned a positively devious grin and let fly.

---------------------------------

When the smoke cleared, Demarq turned smugly to Nell, who was coughing into her sleeve as a wave of dust swept over them.

“Mine just blew up a rancor.”

The whole world was spinning as Nell felt herself ebb out of unconsciousness. A hot liquid was dripping down her ear, and her pale hand revealed it to her as blood dripping from her somewhere on her head. The corellian was pinned on her side under stone against and against Red’s tough scaled stomach.

Nell lifted her other hand to find her fingers caught in a death grip around her Charric. The delicate and rare weapon seemed undamaged. Her knuckles were white from the strain, but her stiff fingers were unable to open and she struggled to pry them apart. When her hand finally came loose it smashed into a piece of stone.

Nell sucked in air between clenched teeth and angled her body so she could put the precious Charric back into its appropriate holster. Damn thing was expensive.

Nell coughed from the thick clouds of sand and dust still filtering the air. She peered up from the awkward angle at the height she had fallen from, and felt even less motivated to move. There was no way she had survived that, not without a broken neck or something.

She had been “dead” for three months.

Eventually, Nell dared to move…slowly, her lips parting, teeth clenching, and eyes shutting tighter for every new hurt as she struggled against the heavy stone and red-orange scales, until she managed to snake her way out and free.  The non-lethal stokhli spray stick holstered to her back got her stuck more than once, and the half meter long weapon was more than likely the major source of the more painful of her bruises.

“Red? Come on Red, you better get up now too.” Nell climbed onto the unmoving beast, leaning against his side and the dorsal spines on his back. She pulled on a spine weakly trying to shake the large creature awake. The huge lizard had managed to take the brunt of the fall. She pulled harder when she couldn’t feel him moving, or breathing

“Come on, get up!” Nell’s face twisted as she tried to keep herself from crying, “…please…get up.”

The blonde corellian leaned her forehead against the unmoving creature and closed her eyes tightly.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Nell turned abruptly to the side to see right next to her, a human male, his ruffled hair and devilish, cocky grin identifying him as the typical corellian smuggler to most people.

“Kale?” Nell gaped with disbelief.

Brother?

She never blinked, but then as quick as her brother had come, he was suddenly gone. 

Before Nell could mentally digest what just happened she heard an angry roar on her other side. An angry, wounded, and dust-covered wookie threw off the stone on top of him. The thick furred mercenary stumbled to his bare feet, and raised his hand toward Nell as if it were supposed to be currently holding a blaster…that he noticed unhappily to be missing.

Nell angrily and clumsily grabbed at the blaster pistol at her thigh (now twisted around to almost behind her hip) and unloaded almost an entire blaster pack on the wookie merc before he finally went down. Nell stood up with one hand still holding to Red’s dorsal spine for support and shrieked, “Are you crazy?! I’m trying to GRIEVE over here!”

Red growled like an old wampa woken early out of hibernation as he stood up on all fours and shook off stone and dust.

“Force Red! Why don’t you take your sweet time next time.” Nell kicked the one-eyed lizard solidly in the side, not affecting the hardened creature but was still smiling with relief.  The field was still clearing from the chaos of the sudden death of Nelba the Shell Hutt and the showering death hail of stone from above that left a few crushed bodies in its destructive wake.

Red limped slightly, bearing the equivalent of reptile bruises, and one of the dorsal spines on the lower end of his back had been crushed and partly broken off. Some of those remaining alive got down and hid as the huge lizard moved past, unsure of how to deal with this new threat, others just started shooting. 

Nell held onto Red with one arm with her bantha hide boots pressed into his side as the one-eyed lizard suddenly charged at three sullustans while dodging fire.  He trampled/impaled two with his massive talons, running through them like an Aratech vibromower on a grassy field and leaving them in just as many pieces.

The third duro sighed and looked up toward the heavens with relief, and didn’t see the huge powerful scaled tail whip coming at him like a sonic charge…silent, then BOOM, no more thankful duro.

A mandalorian in black armor with a red mythosaur skull on his shoulder piece managed to dive out of the way at the last second. If Red hadn’t been sprinting like a runaway grav-train while dodging blaster fire he might have gone back and finished the job. He knew the smell of mandalorian all too well.

Nell was too busy holding on to try and take out more of the battledome competitors with aiding blaster fire. Her arms were growing more covered with cuts and gashes from the sharp scales. She cursed herself for leaving her handler jacket and gloves on the ship. An exotic animal dealer with as much experience as herself should have known better…

That was when Red ran right into and through a huge towering pillar on his blind side. The huge monolith shuddered from the force of the hit, but didn’t fall. The hssiss reeled dizzily for a moment in almost a full circle, and shook his head trying to regain focus.

A jet pack slammed to the ground with a musical surprisingly cheery clang as it was rendered completely useless.  Nell regained her footing back on the lizard’s side and climbed up onto Reds back between the spread out dorsal spines.

“You okay, Red?”  He didn’t answer out of hurt pride and embarrassment.

The lizard reeled again in the direction before he finally started running and picked up speed again. Nell leaned down as close to the lizard’s ear slit as she could get, “Let’s find Kale.”

Nell tried to keep low away from any blaster fire that may come their way, and pointed in Red’s line of sight, “See, over to those buildings? Lets start there.”

Kale was always more at home in civilization.

“Let me know when you smell Katray.” Nell held her hand against the charric by her thigh, ready for whatever was coming next as the mock village structures loomed closer.

It’s hard to get into a mood to banter when you’re still coming to terms with the loss of a limb and suffering from fatal injuries. Instead, Demarq coughed a little blood onto his companion’s feet.

“Aw, you little dungbag, I just washed those. Make yourself useful and bleed your way over to the med supplies. I mean, the ones that didn’t get completely blown up.”

“Sbeh…”Demarq panted, reality beginning to swim before his eyes as his adrenaline reserves trickled with most of his favorite blood onto the ground. “Caaaaake…”

“HEY!” the Trandoshan barked; if he had been an avian species, he might have ruffled his feathers. “No bleeding out while I’m talking to you. Get over here.”

With all the tenderness of a worker in a mill handling a bag of flour, Nossk hefted his handless companion over his shoulder, picked up the pirate’s fallen carbine, and picked his way across a floor covered with blood, bacta and bodies.

A timid voice came from the doorway above them, above the fallen staircase. “Oh hey uh is the bacta tank in here? They said there would be a bacta tank in here.”

“It blew up,” Nossk replied. “Go away.”

“Oh uh okay.” The faceless individual in the doorway to the rest of the house turned to the rest of his group. “Hey guys, it blew up.” With an audible groan of disappointment, the would-be attackers slumped their shoulders and left the battle-scarred house of death.

And that was that.

Nossk, meanwhile, was hard at work keeping Demarq from crossing over into the sweet release of death. “Ain’t getting off that easy, nubs. We might be even, life-saving wise, but you don’t get to leave until I get to call you some degrading nicknames to your conscious face.”

The bacta tank was a lost cause entirely; its entire chassis was bent and broken as a result Nossk’s fortunately-timed emergence from his trance. There were several cabinets against the wall, however, which were scorched on the outside but had protected their precious cargo from harm. Nossk grabbed a roll of bandages and some packets of bacta, and set about his business.

The stump where Demarq’s left hand had once been was bleeding the worst: though disintegrations do not leave any charred matter behind, they do leave lots of blood vessels only partially finished, saying hello to the wide world with cheery spurts of blood. Nossk looked at the injury for a minute, shrugged, and slathered the bloody stump with bacta before wrapping a bandage around it.

Next on the list of injuries were Demarq’s legs; he had apparently taken a good deal of shrapnel in one of the many grenade explosions (that must have been one hell of a bright fight, Nossk mused). He looked at the mess of metal and burns and skin, shrugged, and slathered them with bacta before wrapping them up in bandages.

Then he realized what a terrible idea it was to leave the metal in there, unwrapped them, and picked out the metal bits how covered in blue goop, before rewrapping them in the old gooey, bloody bandages. Why waste?

Though Demarq had done a good job bandaging his hand, Nossk decided to take a look anyway. You know, while he was already at it. In the process, however, he managed to rip off the scab that was healing quite nicely, causing the wound to ooze blood again. He fixed it, of course, with a liberal application of bacta and a scab-free bandage. Sometimes it is okay to waste.

The pirate’s only other injuries appeared to be internal, sustained during his short rocket-propelled flight across the basement. As little as Nossk knew about human biology (were they or were they not allergic to bacta? He could never quite remember), he was pretty sure that Demarq’s ribs were just bruised, not broken. They only moved if he pressed really, really hard.
------------------------------------------------

Demarq awoke an hour or so later. He coughed, tried to caress his throat (still injured from the choking incident with that one merc. See my previous post, Space Pirate fans!) with his left hand, only to feel smooth cloth bandages against his skin. He looked down, surprised to see white fabric where his hand should have been, and sighed. I really wish this was not reality.

He changed his view from the Stump of Depression to the rest of his body. All things considered, the lizard appeared to have done a decent job, though the leg-bandages looked a little sloppy. This raised his spirits by a few Joy Points, but not quite enough to overcome the Gloomy Points granted by his newfound Unidexterity trait. Oh well. I guess you’re still alive.

He then looked further away, at his surroundings. Nossk had switched on the basements lights, and while some of them had been destroyed in the fire/explosive-fight, there was enough light to see by. And MAN were there a lot of bodies around.

Demarq decided to share this sentiment aloud. “Man, there are a lot of bodies around.”

Nossk looked up from his task of inspecting a corpse. “You say something, stumpy?”

“I said man, there are a lot of bodies around.”

“A lot of buddies around?”

“Bodies. A lot of bodies around.”

“Oh, bodies. Yeah. There are a lot of bodies around.”

Hopefully this illustrates how many bodies were actually around. Man, there were a lot.

-There were the bodies of the 6 Black Mesa mercs that had been the last to go down
-There were the bodies of everyone who had fallen into Demarq’s spikey death trap
-There were the bodies of everyone Demarq had shot from his hiding point behind his wall of bodies
-There were the bodies Demarq had shot earlier and used as his wall of bodies

SO MANY BODIES. Probably 40 or so. MAN.

Anyway, Nossk was busy poring through the pockets of each of those 40 bodies (man, that’s a lot of bod-), taking whatever he could find for food, ammo, weapons, medical gear, and other assorted crap. Normally the prisoners had next to nothing, but a few had gotten lucky. Mixed in with the deep pockets of the several mercs who had fallen, Nossk was amassing quite a little stockpile, particularly the weapons.

“We’ve got four different models of rifles,” Nossk mused aloud as he sat before his impressive pile of death-instruments. “I figure if I hold one in each hand, and you do the same…oh wait, that’s just three. Whoops.”

“Not to worry, Sparky. I’m just proud you can count that high.”

Nossk snorted indignantly. “No need to get all defensive. It’ll grow back in a day or so anyway.”

A few seconds of uncomfortable silence passed.

“Touche, my scaly companion. As proud as I am of my ability to produce my own body heat and to create children who do not eat each other, I bow to your evolutionary superiority in this regard.”

Nossk shook his head. “Whatever, Nubs. I got bored of that sentence after about three words. Now that you’re awake, what’s the plan of action?”

Though he made sure he didn’t show it, Demarq was glad to see that the trandoshan still deferred to his command. Though their positions of physical dependence had switched, Nossk recognized that Demarq’s leadership abilities had kept them alive thus far, and didn’t think his career-ending injury had made him less of a man. Though it may seem silly for him to be putting so much stock in the lizard’s opinion, Demarq had to assume the role of captain. Without proper order, mutiny is the only logical result.

“Well, you’re back in fighting shape. That gives us a big advantage. I can still shoot, though it’ll be easier once I get this bandage off. We’re pretty well off…except that without my other hand, it’ll be a lot harder to fly a ship off this rock. I don’t suppose you know how to pilot a ship?”

Nossk paused for a moment in thought.

Demarq spoke again before the trandoshan could say a word. “The fact that you had to pause tells me everything. We need to find ourselves a pilot, and a good one, if we’re going to have a chance of escaping. We need to get back out there and see if we can’t find someone like that to join our merry band.”

Nossk glanced around the room all those damn bodies. “You interviewed all these guys before you took them down, right?”

“They’re different. The mercs can probably fly, but they have no reason to ally with us. The attacking prisoners did so in groups, so they had no reason to join us either.”

Nossk snorted. “So why should anyone join us, then? How are we supposed to motivate anyone to join up when they’ve already got this far by themselves?”

Demarq’s eyes regained a bit of their luster as he answered the question he had been hoping Nossk would ask. “That’s the reason I went after you first, you glorious bastard. Pain is scary, and you’re really, really good at it.”

Demarq struggled to his feet; the wounds on his legs cried out in pain, but he could feel that all but the biggest of them had already sealed up entirely. Bacta is wonderful stuff.

“Stuff all the gear you can into your bag, then boost me up out of this basement. It’s time we got moving.”

I was apprehensive about adding a new player, but I can't wait to see where Crunch ends up going))

((post coming! honest!))

The reptilian Crunch stands nearly 2.3 meters tall. He’s dressed in battle armor scavenged from corpses across the Battledome. The various pieces are hastily cut and bent to fit the Chistori’s massive frame. The armor is almost unnecessary thanks to the warrior’s thick, scaly hide characteristic of his species. Perhaps most frightening is Crunch’s jaw that allows him to dispose of enemies without even firing a blaster.
Weapons: Crunch intends it to be the heaviest piece of firepower he can find. Until then, his claws and maw should suffice.

…

It smelled like carnage. It smelled like war.

Crunch threw his head back and roared as the age-old instincts overtook over his mind. His glorious, violet scales glistened in the battle-stricken daylight. The Chistori’s vision became a sharp, hazy, red color as Crunch transitioned to predator. He deftly dipped to the side allowing blaster fire to fleck over his shoulder. In one fluid motion, Crunch scooped up a rock and hurled it at the top of a nearby hill. The perched assassin went down as the makeshift projectile collided with his skull.

Crunch gave a toothy grin and rolled aside. That was his thing: improvisation. Mama Grax had always known her little Rancher would go far. He had one thing his forty-something siblings did not, and that was cunning.

“Hey Chistori!”

Crunch, still crouched to avoid blaster fire, turned his head and narrowed his beady little eyes at the newcomer. It was an ugly little human prisoner packing a repeater rifle that was much too big for him. To be fair Crunch thought all humans were ugly. But this one was especially ugly.

“Go away,” growled Crunch starting for the village. It seemed like the perfect place to find equipment.

“Wait,” cried the prisoner jogging forward to catch up with Crunch. “Alliance! Alliance! We can help each other out, eh? Like a partnership. How ‘bout it?”

“I work alone,” replied Crunch simply. It was a cliché, but rightly so. His people had always fared better on their own. It was nothing personal. Although in this case it was. Crunch just didn’t like the smell of this human.

“The name’s Gardo,” said the prisoner panting under the weight of his weapon. “What’s your name?”

“Crunch,” said the Chistori really just wanting to be left alone.

“You a prisoner Crunch?” inquired Gardo not getting the message.

“Technically.”

Crunch had in fact been a prisoner. The wanted mercenary had been in the holding cell of two Rodian bounty hunters when the pair’s greed led them to set their coordinates for Teth. So Crunch modified his escape plan. He knew better than to underestimate the hunters who’d bested him, so he waited until the ship landed. When one Rodian made the mistake of getting too close to the holding cell’s bars, Crunch grabbed him and used him to coerce the second bounty hunter into unlocking the door. After a light lunch, Crunch emerged from the ship to find Teth in chaos. He was a little late to the party, but the Chistori decided that the best way to celebrate his freedom was to wreck a little havoc.

“I’m with you brother,” said the annoying prisoner. “Some Mando already took care of the Shell Hutt. With your brawn and my brains, I’ll bet the Galaxy we could take down Gerba. Word is the slug’s already hurt real bad. What do you say?”

Crunch thought about it. Not the partnership; that just wasn’t happening. Crunch was pondering the likelihood of taking Gerba down. He hadn’t gone near the Shell Hutt for a reason. Not only was durasteel hell on his molars, but bloaty Hutt skin was perhaps the least appetizing thing he could think of. Concerning Gerba though, it made a lot of sense to skip a little bloodshed and go straight for the reward. Might as well give it go. But he’d need a weapon…

Click.

Crunch slowly turned around to see Gardo aiming his beautiful-looking Mandalorian Heavy Repeater at the Chistori.

“You must be as stupid as you look,” the human was saying. “Did you really think I’d team up with the likes of you. You made this too easy! I can’t believe—”

Crunch wasn’t listening. His eyes were focused on the wonderful thing glistening in Gardo’s clammy palms. Three words went through Crunch’s mind. Words Mama Grax long had to put up with until the day Crunch left home:

I want that.

“Well I gotta say it was nice knowing you Crunch,” continued Gardo. “I guess I’ll see ya—”

Faster than anyone, least of all Gardo, could imagine, Crunch snapped his head forward and bit the unfortunate prisoner’s face clean off. Crunch lept forward careful to cradle the repeater in his arms as the body fell to ground.

The Chistori wiped his mouth off and continued towards the mock village, repeater rifle in hand.

Gerba the Hutt wasn’t dead…yet.

He garbled and choked on the glowing blue adhesive slime that held his mouth open and shut at the same time. The Hutt was already growing darker and mottled from the ruptured blood vessels inside his thick, blaster resistant hide. His huge eyes bulged and blinked. He could still breathe through his nasal cavity, or what was left open of it.

Nell’s hopeful eyes overlooked the huge expanse of the battledome but couldn’t make out the one she was looking for.

KATRAY!!!

Her lips pursed angrily and Nell asked without turning, “Still there?”

Gerba gave a muffled angry and very, very frightened choke.

“Wonderful.”

Nell Terigo adjusted the setting on her charric, the very rare and hard to get a hold of charric, to the pain setting and smiled pleasantly at the source of damn near all her problems.

Red’s large, eerily white teeth crunched happily through a gran’s armored breastplate…and chest…while he was still screaming. With a final sickening chomp, the lizard reached the gooey insides and the three-eyed mercenary went quiet.

Hssiss are a very highly adaptable species. These versatile lethal creatures even change to best survive the environment they grow to adulthood in. To such extremes that the heavily armored black hssiss of Korriban hardly resemble their gigantic green brethren on Mimbar.

Nell had found Red on Onderon, and the harsh, untamed world of beasts, and war showed in every scale and sinewy muscle of the dark force dragon. He moved and looked like a soldier lizard. Armor would have fit like a second skin, and the damage would have been legendary.

His head and dorsal spikes that stretched down all along his tail were larger and more pronounced than most hssiss. The tail itself was a massive deadly whip that nearly tripled the length of the lizard. Red bore huge striping of scars (almost healed completely by time and hardly visible on a first look), from battling drexl, the untamed beasts of Onderon, and Mandalorian soldiers.

The dais full of the wealthy and wicked guests of the Hutt and their bodyguards had definitely been emptied considerably. The huge red lizard wreaked a bloody kind of mess that only animals could create.

Nell Terigo adjusted the setting on her charric, the very rare and hard to get a hold of charric, to the pain setting and smiled pleasantly at Gerba’s slow suffocation.

Nell wasn’t very good at planning, pretty much everything that had led her to this point had been a healthy helping of luck and very difficult. She was finally going to save the ones she loved and end the hell that had plagued her for so long.

She should have seen it.

Anyone who dealt with Hutt’s knew better than to forget about their wily majordomo. The pathetic creature trembled uncontrollably from where he hid behind Gerba’s bulbous mass. He sweat fear from the screams of those being torn to pieces by the hssiss lizard, and his wide eyes were pinned on a ornate wall decoration that would save him…if he could only get to it.

There it was, the pretty ornate stone and secret switch. The twilek majordomo would have to leave his hiding place to reach it. His leku twitched and dripped sweat. He was breathing too quickly, too loudly, they were going to find him. He knew it.

The human female was speaking, in low, cold tones, he couldn’t hear over Gerba’s choking and the screams…wait…When did the screams stop?

The frightened twilek turned to the right. Huge teeth dripping some blue body fluid were only inches from his face. The majordomo shrieked and lunged for his only hope. Large blood-wetted talons cut through flesh and bone and pinned the twilek’s calf on the stone tile. The majordomo screamed but the ground started to shake. Somewhere nearby huge gears turned and rumbled. He had still been able to reach the hidden switch and pull it down.

The huge lizard’s yellow eye went wide and searched for the source of the sound. The majordomo coughed a laugh as the entire dias around Gerba’s raised throne began to slowly fall to pieces, showering down on the battledome below.

Red glared rage at the majordomo, and opened his jaws to end the twilek’s life.

Then Nell screamed. Without hesitation the hssiss immediately leapt over the massive Hutt to where the yellow haired human fell. There was no ground for the well-thinking lizard to land on, just huge chunks of stone being wrenched apart by lowering durasteel support beams.

Nell’s eyes were wide with that “Oh-@#$%-my-ass-really-didn’t-see-that-coming” look as she tried to grab onto anything tangible as free falling stone escaped her fingertips.  The hssiss leapt from sun-faded stone to stone as they fell farther and faster towards the battledome floor.

High above them the majordomo angrily sulked and nursed his leg as the Hutt’s raised platform pulled into a special escape chamber with Gerba still choking and sputtering.

With a roaring howl, Red snatched the female by the tough holster strap over her shoulder, shredding through a good portion of her blue coveralls in the process. Strong, powerful talons and scaled muscles leapt from stone to stone trying to put off the eminent crash to the ground. Red twisted and turned like a grackelcat…

The world was a big blue of bright red-orange scales, stone, and the sandy battlefield below for Nell as she tried to maintain control of her bearings.

“Well this is gonna hurt.”

She shut her eyes tight.

THEN…Three months earlier…

Nell Terigo came back from the dead.

She gasped and coughed for breath as she flung her head from the gray murky swamp water. The yellow-haired human clawed at reeds, and rotting bog lilies. Nell was covered in black silt and blood...her blood. Nell cried out in pain as she pulled herself onto a shallow bed of sand overshadowed by towering faded brown reeds.

She had been dead for five hours.

Nell choked on air and coughed up mud, swamp water, more blood and what might have been vomit.

Thick black smoke and hot orange flames burned from a huge wreckage of metal that might have once been some kind of transport starship. Something trapped inside howled.

She rolled over and collapsed onto her back, clutching her stomach, mouth agape in agony. The hair hanging in her face was burnt and the right side of her long brown leather jacket was covered in black burns and red blood seeping from underneath.

Nell inhaled, and tried not to scream as her body convulsed.

Then a darkness came through the reeds, very like the essence of a shadow coming into solid form. Nell cried out and tried to crawl away despite the burning pain that screamed through her. Her right eye had burst a blood vessel and was wide with terror.

“Absolutely, not love,” The dark figure’s rotting hand grabbed her long, and loose yellow hair and pulled her out of the water. Nell screamed and kicked, blood on her lips and voice hoarse.

“I’m the reason you’re still alive, lovely, lovely creature.”

Tears left streaks through the dirt on her face. Nell knew she wasn’t bleeding anymore. Her blood no longer left her body, as if something unseen held it in place.

“Lovely, lovely creature.” He continued to drag her, unbothered by her screams and attempts to pull free from his darkened rotting flesh, “I can’t heal, of course. I merely kept you from leaving your lovely flesh.”

“LET ME GO!!” Nell screamed through her tears and suffering.

“We’ll let your pretty flesh heal itself, love,” The darkness shrouded humanoid pushed aside the reeds and pulled his struggling prize along, radiating with glee.

“And then, love, we’ll have some fun.”

….

“Hey little Nellie, its me.

I’ve found out everything that happened, and…well I have honestly no clue how to react to this…

You deserved…you had so much life ahead of you.

I should have told mom to put you in a convent…forever. Then I…you…none of this should…have happened.

I’m going to take care of this, Nell.

I still can’t help but think this is partly my fault…I mean if it hadn’t been for the bounty on my head…the whole accidentally getting captured thing…and my little sister having to get me out of every jam I’ve ever been in…I…can’t believe…

…I’ll fix this…I promise.

Save me a bottle of the good stuff, pretty girl.”

The holovid message flicked off and the image of Nell Terigo’s brother vanished. She had been ‘dead’ for thirteen days.

….

A low growl came from the reeds.

The dark force sensitive being paused, then slowly turned unable to sense the creature through the Force, “Well now, what are you, then?”

Nell smiled with dirt and blood covered teeth, “I call him ‘Red.’”

NOW…

Huge pieces of sun-bleached stone rained down on the side of the battlefield where mercenaries and prisoners alike still fought the hulking dome of Nelba the Shell Hutt. Limp pieces of bodies, expensive food dishes with their half eaten delicacies, and the weapons of few mercs hit the ground like hail.

When the huge brightly colored lizard crashed to the ground amidst the chaos of stone he was able to maneuver his flexible scaled body to reduce the impact of the hit. But it was a long, long way to fall.

The lizard and human rolled and clumsily smashed into a wall of stone that had pierced into the ground, and more stone showered violently on top of them.

Shrapnel ricocheted off of Kal's armor as the missiles detonated. A distant explosion from the direction of Gerba's booth, drawing the attention of everyone in the area, including Nelba. Kal knew he had little time before everyone recovered, and the fighting continued. He rose to his feet, sprinting towards the Shell Hut. He scooped up a thermal detonator on his way, then leaped onto the metal shell, thumbing the button on the det. Nelba looked at him, panicked. He desperately tried to cycle the iris closed. 'Oh, no you don't." Kal shoved the det through the closing gap, then sprang back as it detonated, amplified by the hardened shell of the Hutts armor.

Kal looked at the mess he had made. "Well. That went well enough."

Sorry for short, but if my allies or anyone else wants to continue from there, they're welcome too. I'll try to get back into this.

The Hutt lay in his own liquids but it didn't necessarily mean he was dead. Hutt's were renowned for their super thick hides. Besides a Hutt could play dead like nobody's business.

The medical crew came to retrieve Gerba's huge body, immediately he was dunked into an over-sized bacta tank. The small medical chamber went into lock down. Other medical rooms would be open, but this one, with Gerba inside was impenetrable.

-

Tressah put on the jetpack and quickly launched to the other polls. She knocked two other jetpacks down and watched as the contestants below squabbled over them. The last two she grabbed for herself. She had a feeling they would be good bartering tools.

(Sorry for the short post, shall do more later).