Beasts from the East

[Kita_Ikari]

“Oh- well, I’m so sorry to hear that-And you’ll forgive me- if I didn’t wait- while you fawned over what to wear- in case your master showed up!”

Of course the Sith apprentice expected the neti to be in a bad mood. She was a bit salty about being left behind and as such left a sarcastic remark at the philosopher. "NOW WAIT JUST A SECOND!? THAT IS NOT TRUE!" She replied defensively. "You know I have trouble with ships!" Honestly she wanted to whack the neti for that comment, but took it either way. Even though she did care about her appearance when it came to Jacobi, she could have cared less with Tormentous.

“And for the record-I’m not the one that got knocked unconscious with their own weapon last time: do try and show our colleagues here some respect.”

Silvanius was wanting to argue back on that, but she set aside a couple snide remarks on the back burner for another day. She was not planning on making enemies with the group. "I'm sorry if I upset you all. I was just trying to help." She replied.

Kress's cheery disposition was one that was welcoming and concerning to Silvanius. Concerning only because it was a good outer cover to hide her real emotions and thoughts whether it was intentional or not. Her comments on the battle and scars were fine. It was the mentioning of her Master and Kress drinking together that caused a bit of jealousy to bubble up within her. However, she kept herself levelheaded and raised a brow at her instead at the information.

If the Sith apprentice hadn't known any better, she would have sworn the bitten lip and way Kress approached her with a certain look, she could have sworn she was trying to be alluring somehow. Then thought freaked her out. She wasn't into woman. However, she was found to be wrong.

"However, Ikari...next time you want to aim a ship's turret in my direction, helping or not...you better plan on killing me in the process."

Silvanius frowned irritably as the crow pulled away, her blue eyes narrowed in annoyance. Her expression quickly changed to that of a smirk. "Fine. Instead of saving you next time, I'll just shoot you instead and then feed you to my Nexu." Of course she was joking. ...Or was she? Silvanius chuckled to herself at the thought.

"Your new stepmom," Emic's response left Silvanius speechless and unamused. Still, she put up with it and shrugged it off. Course it did bring up the subject of her real mom to mind, one she hadn't dwelled on in awhile either. Silvanius, no...Kita still missed her mom. And her father...but she had to let go. "Haha. Very funny." She walked off and sighed. Something inside Silv told her it was gonna be a LONG day.

~~~~~~~~

The young blonde Sith apprentice sat on a boulder nearby watching Emic and Sa'ato quietly as they fixed up the speeder. There wasn't much Kita could do to help. Really she figured she had helped enough and managed to cause trouble just from her near fatal rescue to her companions. "Ungrateful...but what did i expect?" Silvanius also watched Kress from time to time as she collected supplies from the corpses.

The moment she thought of how bored she was, her head lifted quickly as she heard the sounds of lizards. Now things were bound to get interesting and dangerous. Whipping out her saber, she ignited the Silver blade and stood. A couple of the raptor lizards that accompanied the rest of the 2 dozen reptiles eyed her, hissing with sharp teeth bared as they began slowly approaching forward.

She over heard Kress comment about bringing down the betas, well full at knowing she had subdued the leader. "At least that thing is out of the way." she thought. In a split second Silvanius felt the warning of the force you at the edge of her mind as the 2 reptiles quickly jumped at her. Before even meeting the sharp claws dig into her flesh, she twirled her saber, taking clean off one of the raptors head. The body twitched as it fell to the ground. The second met the end of her lance in the head. This caused the beast to stagger, allowing Silvanius to run her saber through its neck, burning the tissue all the way through to the other side.

She may have enjoyed killing people...but the Sith apprentice did enjoy killing the beast on these different planets. "Maybe I'll make myself a pair of boots..."

[Professor Mors]

Sa’ato patiently eyed the unfolding combat. Though it seemed at first that his companions had experienced a similarly tough time with the local fauna, the Neti was inwardly pleased to observe their collective progress. He did not have time to linger on this for long, however. Emic’s call to action drew the professor back to the task at hand, and hefting his rifle, he worked to track the two lesser lizards attempting to free their leader. The academic would have to aim his shot carefully. A blistmok’s heart was situated much lower in their body than most bipeds, to avoid mortal wounds from larger predators and to keep their organs covered while sleeping.

Notching the concussion rifle’s power down to half-capacity, Sa’ato expelled oxygen-rich breath from his nostrils in one fierce exhale, before sending a cruel blue bolt leaping out at the beas with an electrified crack. From where she stood hunched over the struggling alpha, Kressara would likely hear the sickening crunch of bone as the wayward reptile’s lower torso imploded, its lifeless body skidding across the rocky ground as it fell and came to a halt. The other stalker attempted to stop fast and angle its body toward the Neti in turn, but its momentary pivot cost it dearly as the professor blasted its tail clean off its scaley rear.

As the creature yelped and began to flee in a panic, the academic reached out in the Force to read the present status of the encounter. The air was indeed thick with fear, but not owing to any sentient life. Forsaking his steady hand for a series of successive warning shots, Sa’ato succeeded in warding off the few remaining blistmoks. Pack or not, their defeat had been assured, and soon enough they would have to find a new alpha to follow. Nodding at the stimmed-up assassin to deal with the larger specimen as she sought fit, the Neti knelt down beside one of the myriad deceased and started to hew shimmering skin from bone and sinew, “There is value and application in their hide, but leave the rest. It would not be wise to tarry here…”

***The Tulrus Isle, Due North of the Equator***
Having stowed their initial bounty in the rear storage of the speeder, the party had enjoyed a relatively peaceful commute as they departed the eastern mountains. Clearing the ravine after half an hour, the whole of the planet opened up before the unlikely companions as only the brightest of roses, the tendrils of once-rich lava veins slithering out from the open shore into the wider sea. And all the while, like an indignant spike of pure natural wrath, the figure of the central volcano scraped at the clouds above and loomed high in the distance. Though impressive, that would prove to be an expedition for another day.

As the party traveled further and further south, a new alpine theater rose quickly to the west and hid the planet’s furnace from view. Eventually, as solar winds cut across the lower plain and blew the migratory plumes of smoke away, a crude bridge became visible bridging the shifting eastern continent to its central sibling. Though its foundations were likely wrought steel, centuries of eruption and magma displacement had caused a thick layer of rock to collect and expand over the crossing’s exterior. Bizarre to observe, but trustworthy in practice. As the speeder zoomed easily along higher ground, all that was required was one sharp turn, and the walls of another valley, albeit lower in height, gradually opened up before the tested hunters.

“Hold on everyone”, Sa’ato called out from behind the helm, “I’m going to take us to higher ground”. Gunning the speeder up along the isle’s western slope at an angle, the Neti sent the chassis arching up along the steep crags until the incline leveled out into a minor plateau. Parking in the shadow of the nearest peak, the professor leapt eagerly out of the pilot’s chair and took a knee at the edge of the cliff-face. Procuring a pair of macrobinoculars from his belt, the retired academic had only to survey some 300 feet before catching sight of their next target. A large adult tulrus sauntered about obviously down on the valley floor, its horned countenance raking through the dirt in an attempt to uncover unlucky lava flea larvae.

The charcoal gray quadruped was bull-like in nature, sporting impressive musculature that allowed for a fierce frontal charge capable of subduing most other beasts on the planet. Further still, the creature’s thick hide was surprisingly resilient, and had evolved to withstand intense heat to allow for safe fetal development during the egg stage. While one to three tulrus might wander from continent to continent in search of food, the isle was their ancestral breeding ground, and boasted the highest population in the system. But it was not their skin that the Neti sought. No, it was their cruel horns, formed of incredibly dense chitin that was told to be tougher than durasteel.

Sawing them off would be no small task, yet Sa’ato was confident that his companions could keep watch while the work was done. At worst, the professor would employ Kita to perform the deed with her new lightweapon. For now though, their target was far too living for his standards. “Someone must go down there and get its attention”, the academic explained as he armed his concussion rifle once more, “Once it charges the rest of us will descend and attack its blind spot”. Sa’ato paused and eyed his colleagues, “Whoever takes the role of the decoy, do not attempt to strike its face or limbs- go for the belly, where the flesh is thinnest”.

[Kressara Thryn]

"Value to their hide's huh?"

Kressara stared down at the wriggling raptor, now panicked by the loss of it's pack and heaving for oxygen under the tight grip of the wire that failed to cut it too deeply due to that impressively thick skin. The rigidity of her shoulders lessened and a pitiful string tugged at her heart. Kress may be a spiced out sith who peddled drugs to the masses and killed men both for contract and pleasure...but animals were never on that feel good menu of mayhem and murder. Killing that poor creature, even though it attacked them first out of instinct, would just be snuffing out the life of a living thing that wasn't despicable enough to earn hatred from the young lady pressing against its haunches with her boot heel. With a click the wires loosened and then retracted back into the rings from whence they came, dropping the knife that had been connected to it for safety measures before shooting back into her finger apparatuses.

"Go on. Get lost!" Kressara kicked the great reptile to keep the fear of god in it, but made no moves to hinder the beast from standing up on it's two back legs and bolting away to rejoin its family.

Realizing she may have gotten a few looks for not harvesting a valuable skin, Kressara shirked it off with a wry grin and shrugged, "Had too many scars to be worth much and the darn thing was staring at me."


--------


God, did it EVER cool down on Mustafar? A pocket of cool air? A blot of rain? No. Of course not. Her neck hurt like the dickens too. That boulder really knew how to throw a punch…

"I'll cook dinner for the first person to crack my back when we decide to camp for the night. I think that crash reshaped it into a permanent 'S' shape." She tilted her neck and a boney pop sounded above the motor and the wind. "Ahh...or perhaps it's in the shape of one of those little 'and' symbols..."

Surprised her creaky spinal column didn't alert any future prey as to their arrival from a mile away, Sa'ato put his petal to the metal and weaved up a peak, eventually putting it in park so the hunting party could survey the dip in the landscape beyond. Kress climbed out and stood lazily, stretching out her muscles as the professor talked strategy...and then silence. This caught the young woman's attention. One and two clicked when she realized there was a behemoth lava dwelling bull to be distracted and she was probably the only one currently inebriated enough to volunteer. Air held and then poured from her lungs and her eyes craned sideways with a nervous nibble of her lip. Might as well.

"Yeah, yeah...give the big boy a tummy ache. Got it. If I don't make it, tell Slade I spit in his water purifier weeks ago." Brazen and regretting it, the crow dropped her bag onto the ground and sauntered to the edge of the incline. Eh, not too vertical. Almost diagonal really. "A kiss for good luck? Anyone? No?...rude."

True to her callsign, that little black bird took the plunge from the clifftop and skid down the incline with all her efforts focused on maintaining balance and keeping upright. Gravel ground against stone beneath her sliding soles and a dust cloud followed in her wake all the way down to the basin's floor. She unsheathed a vibroblade and ignited the weapon, then made her way cautiously over pockets of heated earth closer to the bull. She didn't have to do much to garner it's attention. Pebbles rattled when their prey stomped a mighty hoof in warning, vibrations traveling up the bottom of her feet to the tip of her nose.

"Holy cow…"

[Emic Lai]

The enemy had fled in its bestial cowardice. The twitch behind Emic’s eyes asked, politely enough, for her to pursue and cut them down to the last. Please, Emic. Could you please reduce them to nothing but a quivering pile of bleeding meat? For me? Emic declined her battle fever for the moment, assuaging its desire with the promise of bigger, more enticing prey, and the pleasure of flaying a defeated foe. Unfortunately not sentient, this time.

Her knife slid across the blistmok’s belly, splitting its skin but no deeper, then using the split to separate the pelt from the subcutaneous fat. Ecstatic. The subtle ripping as it was culled from its skin, the blood pumping through the hole the slug made from a heart that didn’t yet know it was dead.

Emic’s fingers gingerly doused themselves in the leaking fluid and the conqueror in her bid her taste it. She put her hand to her face and basked in the savory scent of freshly spilled lifeblood. Her tongue moved on its own, before the Zabrak snapped out of the trance and caught her tongue between her teeth. It was definitely not smart to try and drink it. Knowing this stupid Mustafarian wildlife, this thing’s blood was probably lousy with heavy metals, toxins, and who knows how many bad things that would put even her strong Zabrak physiology to the ultimate test.

Instead, she painted a thin stripe of the stuff on Alexis’s forestock as a gift to the loyal friend and weapon, and yanked the skin free from the blistmok. Two holes, one in, one out. As perfectly preserved as you can get, hunting with a slugthrower.

She rejoined the group, packed the skin away in the storage compartment, and slid into the back seat with no other words yet to say.

---

After a relatively brief travel time, and some complaining from the Crow, they arrived at the edge of a ravine, a vantage point on which to hold the advantage on their unlucky prey. The Professor explained that someone would have to go down and distract the standoffish beast, while Emic stood some five feet away, already switching out Alexis’s sight for a longer-range magnification scope. She was nestled in a prone shooting position on the edge of the ravine, sighting in the beast and calibrating her sight for 300 feet before she replied. “Not me. Alexis needs to eat.”

Emic hoped that Alexis appreciated the effort. It wasn’t like Emic to stand back and shoot from afar; she took after her mother in that regard. Alexis was a weapon for a different type of person. Someone like Zeth.

Emic’s cousin was ice that never melted, cold even in the heat of war. His battle fever was a quiet thing, bubbling under the surface but never boiling over. As he explained it to that teenage cousin Emic used to be, the moment just before the pull of the trigger was his drug; when the target was just behind the reticle, you understood that person. In that slightest moment, when your finger was squeezing, you were your victim’s best friend, worst enemy, and the writing on their tombstone. Their spouse, even if they had no idea who you were, would hate you for eternity; their parents would curse everything about you. In that moment, you and your target were alone, and nothing except death would part you.

It’s said that some assassins, in order to really feel their target, would imagine, for days at a time, that they and their target were spending time together; doing something like building a speeder, playing dejarik, or counting marbles in a big jar. It wasn’t like Emic was unaccustomed to that idea. She felt that empathy too, just less so from a distance when the threat to oneself was minimal. Zeth, though, took to it incredibly. He could go through that whole process in a second, and every sentient kill he made with Alexis, he remembered the experience they had together in his head as though it really happened.

Zeth called it his focus. That all-accursed focus. It was that focus that--

Emic was shaken from her reverie when Kressara volunteered to be the sacrificial lamb of the day.“Yeah, yeah...give the big boy a tummy ache. Got it. If I don't make it, tell Slade I spit in his water purifier weeks ago.” It seemed she was reluctant, but her “frak-it-all, let’s do this” attitude was to be admired. “A kiss for good luck? Anyone? No? Rude,” the Sith said. Emic chuckled softly and lifted up from her scope to retort. “Ask me again if you come back alive, candy,” the Zabrak replied with a playful smirk before returning her eye to the scope and tracking her target. In a moment, all bravado and warface, Kress spilled over the edge of the ravine and went to look that tulrus in the face, but see her maker instead. That's it, blondie. Stare that beast down. Let it see it's own death in your eyes. Calm and cool, Emic. Just like you felt before. There would be bombast and bloodrain later; this was Alexis's show. If the Sith got her pretty face destroyed by the hooves of the charging beast… well, at least Emic would have a close-up through Alexis’s scope.

[Professor Mors]

Sa’ato blinked with some surprise as the carefree human volunteered herself for the task at hand. If he were a betting man, the Neti would have lost credits throwing his lot with the Zabrak. The professor was not great mastery of the chemistry involved in the making of narcotics, but now he could not help but wonder what the hyperactive woman had coursing through her veins. If she survived the encounter, the academic would be sure to make a point of asking. However, business first, research second. The retired teacher knew that as territorial as the tulrus were, it was not likely one would simply assault Kressara outright.

Thus it fell to Sa’ato for extra encouragement. Popping the stock of his rifle against his chest, the Neti narrowed his eyes and aimed for the mottled kneecap on one of the beast’s hind legs. Were he at a better angle, or a ways behind the behemoth, the professor might have struck a solid blow lending to a simpler fight. Mustafarian biology was not so forgiving however, and even at maximum power, the plasma discharge did little but to lightly bruise the brute’s flesh. Nonetheless, the message had been delivered. With an oddly-pitched cry, the tulrus kicked its front paws into the air with disdain, and began hurtling forward toward the wayward human.

With its head already arching down toward the mistress of mood-enhancers, several crude horns flashed vengefully at Kressara- and they were only getting closer. While the average tulrus lacked the endurance of a blistmok, the speed and power of its charge was comparable to the Reek of Saleucami. Not quite as fast as a speeder, but fast enough that the downed bird would only have seconds to react. Such being the case, Sa’ato needed to move into better range, and he needed to do it now. Waving an aloof arm at Emic and Kita, the Neti leapt back onto his feet, and groaned quietly as he stepped off the plateau and started his slippery descent down the chalky mound.

[Kressara Thryn]

Kressara had been punched, kicked, thrown out of the air, choked, pummeled, shot, nearly drowned, and even survived a few tumbles out of a couple windows. She'd stared down thieves, murderers, wild animals, sith lords, and Jedi alike...but none of that was about to compare to the way the ground beneath her feet rumbled at the charge of a speeding tulrus. Her entire body rattled like she was standing on top of a giant massage chair and the bovine shriek that came from the beast was enough to paralyze a lesser woman...so naturally it paralyzed Kressara.

Instead of letting the tulrus see it's own death in her eyes, the blonde saw hers in it's, rushing like a freight train to meet her. In that moment the stimmed up addict realized once again that there are some things in this universe capable of eliciting pain even on those pleasantly buzzed by substances, and this monster was one of them!

Move! Move! Move! Snap out of it!

Kress's brain screamed internal commands which her feet finally obeyed. She brandished the vibroblade with a stilled hand and faced the forward charging behemoth with a renewed determination. Her right foot kicked off of the ground, followed by her left, until the roguish sith was sprinting headlong at their powerful prey. A terrible shadow colored her pale features grey and the wind of the bull cast hot ash into her face, but Kressara didn't let the clouds make their way into her judgement. She leapt, lifting her legs outwards before her and skidding rear first into a slide beneath the tank of a tulrus. As she slid, her blade reached upwards to the belly of the beast and carved a burning trench in it's tender flesh before it caught on a rib. The blade sunk into its bone and yanked Kressara into motion with the monster, which was now bucking as it ran from the pain of a sudden wound along its underbelly. Rock and patches of raw obsidian battered the platinum drag along, bruising her hips and legs while her hand held on for dear life. Why wasn't she letting go? She had another blade!

Because. In moments like these, Kressara always got the dumbest ideas.

She used her thumb to unhook her razor wire and guided it with her still gloved hand to latch onto the hilt of her implanted blade. Just when she thought she couldn't hold on for even a second longer, the wire snagged and Kressara let go of the sword, narrowly missing the crushing blows of it's wildly galloping back feet. The wire spool around her ring unwound with a loud metallic whirring sound and in the brief moment between tumbling, landing, and being dragged once again, Kress had connected a small prong jutting from the exposed interior of the apparatus to the modified pommel of her second vibroblade. It clicked into place, connecting the piece like a plug to the blade's battery. The wire went taut and without a second to spare, Kressara rolled to her feet and hit the blade's ignition switch.

Electricity surged across the wire and shot into the gut of the tulrus with a devastating sizzle of meat and calcium, halting the mammoth bull's rampage and dropping it before the momentum of it's own slide yanked the blade from it's underside free. Kress lost her grip on the prey the moment that sword dislodged with a series of clangs and pangs against the stony earth, to which she graciously bowed out and awaited her nearing companion's follow up attacks. While she managed to stun the monster and even wound it, the fight was FAR from over, and they would need to do a lot more than that if they wanted to collect it's hide today.

"That's all I got! You guys better have some flashy tricks up your sleeves too, or we might be ending our hunting careers on this field! Give it all you've got!"

Kress staggered back and recollected her gear by releasing the sword on it's far end and rewinding the heated spool before slipping her ring back into place on her finger.

"I didn't cut it too deep I'm afraid! You'll have to hit it while it's toppled and pray the bullets take!"

[Emic Lai]

"Oh, she's dead," Emic remarked to herself as the Crow froze in place. Well, it's been fun, Kress. Good luck in whatever afterlife you believe in, it probably won't be very nice for you. It was nearly disappointing when she managed to move instead of being flattened. Oh, well, plenty of blood to be had.

When Sa'ato called for the rest of the crew to charge, she did not follow. Instead tracking the beast in the scope and pulling two rounds from her belt bag. "Let's see... hollow-point or full-metal jacket?" she pondered, watching the toppled beast struggle to rise to its feet, as her hunting party scrambled to fight the monster. "Hollow-point could take a leg off, if it could get through its hide," she mused, the cartridges between her fingers being idly pushed around by a thumb. "Better go with the FMJ."

She dropped the hollow-point round serenely into the open chamber and shut the bolt. She reacquired her target quickly, the knee of the tulrus. She breathed like Zeth and as her finger traced the trigger, the disagreement between her and Alexis faded to nothing. She was the hunter in the Iridonian wilds, heart cold and meticulous. As the bull rose, Alexis chose her moment, and a slug blasted from her barrel. It sailed through the air, taking the tulrus' entire kneecap with it on its journey to rest in the crags behind.

A rechamber with a standard round was in order. Now that the beast was grounded, it would be easier to dispatch, but a flailing tulrus could still kill. Next step, a slug right to the vitals through its underside, if she could find a shot.

[Kita_Ikari]

Kita had been surprised Kress had let the animal go at all. It seemed both were opposite. Kita didn't mind killing animals. But when it came to killing people, she was more hesitant unless in battle. She watched as the creature ran off, only to be quickly shot down by the neti. "So sad..." she thought. Looking back at the carcasses before her, Kita began concentrating on skinning the expensive hide from her prey and packed it into the vehicle for now before setting off.

♡♡♡♡

Quietly reading to herself on a datapad, Kita remained silent the whole ride until they begun making there way to higher ground. The sith apprentice looked up at Sa'ato and nodded before putting her datapad away, taking a look at her surroundings. Seeing they were atop the plateau, the sith apprentice hopped out of the vehicle, and kicked a stone along the ground before walking over next to the professor. She wasn't so sure what he was looking for specifically, but whatever it was, he had his mind set on it. As he pulled out his macrobinoculars, she squinted her blue gaze and focused on what her partner was looking at. It was small, but big enough for her to make out from their distance. The Tulrus was huge, and no doubt it would be a real victory to slay in her book.

She listened intently at his plan. It was a good one but there was no way Kita was going to be a decoy. "Yea. Not for me. I put myself in danger to much these days head on first. I'm taking a break." She glanced at Kress as she had already volunteered. "A kiss for good luck? Anyone? No?...rude." Kita smirked at the crows sarcasm and Emics response. She really didn't have anything to say to either of them. Her mind was focused solely on the mission. Detaching her saber from her belt, she flipped open the joint and ignited her Silver blade, ready for the attack. "Just give the word Sa'ato and I'm off." She said seriously.

As the Tulrus approached Kress closer, Sa'ato had already given the signal and began sliding down the cliff to attack. With a slight smile Kita had already started her decent downwards, her grey boots scraping along the rocks and other rubble as she maintained her balance while holding her ignited blade. It really wasn't to hard for her to stay upright, and she wasn't at all worried about harming herself with her weapon.

As they neared closer to the bottom, Kita landed and watched in awe as Kress was pulled about by the large beast from its underside. She winced with every sound the rocks made with impact of Kress as she was dragged mercilessly through the dirt. The sith apprentice felt a bit of pity for her. But she had volunteered ultimately.

Hearing shots fire, she looked up to see Emic had stayed behind. Really Kita knew that was the best option. They did need a person keeping eye from high ground. And attacking from a distance had alot of perks. Like not getting injured for one. The sith apprentice felt the ground rumble from the beast as it fell over onto its side from the impact of its injuries. I was well incapacitated, but not yet dead. This creature was really putting up a fight to stay alive. That and it really was a beast to take pride in hunting for the challenge of it. Taking a breath, Kita ran forward, brows knitted as she ran towards the Tulrus. She would have to be careful not to get crushed by the writhing creature. Looking around her surroundings, she had a idea about how to get onto the enormous creature and ultimately slay it.

Pivoting along to the side of a cliff, Kita quickly began jumping onto steady enough flat wedges in the canyons wall, gaining herself some height. Lithly she made her way up until she figured she had a good chance to jump. With blade in hand, she took a leap of faith after judging the distance and leaped from the cliffside, rolling and landing onto the creatures side clumsily. The large creature twitched and jerked about, beginning to slide and send her over off its back. However, before she allowed the creature to do so, she unsheathed her dagger and stabbed into the creatures hide with all her might, holding onto the hilt tightly until she could gain her footing, bringing out the blade and sheathing it. The beast roared in agony from the other attack of her short dagger.

Getting up on her feet, she attempted to remain balanced, shifting her weight with the creatures body movement to stay upright as she hurried forward to its head. "WOAH!" Kita felt herself teetering as the Tulrus thrashed its head about. She knew she had to be quick.

She leapt forward and seered her silver blade right through the center of its head, hanging onto the end of her lightspear before pulling it out and giving it a few more stabs through with her weapon for good measure to ensure it would die. After the 5th time, she withdrew her blade and deactivated it before falling off the beast with a thud to the hard rocky ground. Despite the sabers use, it had taken a moment for the large creatures life-force to fade from the sith apprentices blade as it fought to survive.

Ultimately unharmed for the most part, Kita ended up with a few bruises from her fall as well as a good bump to the head as she had made contact with a large stone in her landing. "Oww..." she opened her eyes slowly and rubbed her head, the large bump causing a throbbing headache as she used her spear to help pull herself up to her feet. Wincing, she looked over in a kress's general direction. "YOU OK!?" She yelled.

[Professor Mors]

Sa’ato watched Kita dance about with muted interest. In another scenario, he might have commented on the excessive force of her strikes in retrospect. However, a looming revelation was clouding his mind as this bout drew to a close. Having taken a better look at the bucking beast, the Neti made two startling observations. The first was the length of this particular tulrus’s horns. Not only did they appear blunted, but they were noticeably shorter than their purpose would ask of them. The second in particular revealed itself when Emic’s crack shot separated limb from flesh. The skin at the back of the joint was swollen, and wrinkled to an advanced degree.

Just as the professor fit the pieces together, Kita’s call for reassurance caused him to seize in alarm where he stood. Gazing at the young woman in disdain, the acoustics of the valley carried the sound of her voice out and away from the hunting party. “Quiet!”, the academic hissed, “This one’s a female- and an older one at that! Her brood is probably-”. Sa’ato did not bother to finish his sentence, his faux-lips quivering with nervous energy as the steady thump of hooves broke through the din, growing louder, and louder still. Somewhat resigned to the impending disaster, the retired teacher turned to face an oncoming ash cloud, and balled a fist as several meter-long horns sliced into view.

Two male tulrus, nearing maturity. Though their size was not quite as comparable to their matriarch, their youthful vigor could not be ignored, nor could the cruel sharpness and robustness of their chief weapon. The closer of the pair made a straight beeline for Kita, its head lowered and primed to gore the blonde intruder without a shred of mercy. In a best case scenario, the young acolyte would evade the horns and suffer blunt trauma from the impact: at worst, she would begin a frighteningly short career as a human pincushion. Still, the professor for his part was not likely to fare much better.

Growling at his ill fortune, Sa’ato stood his ground, quickly tossing aside his rifle and removing the pressured glove on his left hand. Holding out tendril-like fingers, the Neti looked as if he planned to stop the other sibling careening toward him with brute strength alone. The reality was far more painful, though equally demanding. Rather than attempt to leap out of the way, the professor allowed himself to fall straight backward, and released a guttural cry as one of the beast’s smaller horns punctured cleanly through his hand. But that was just the beginning. Partially impaled as he was, Sa’ato was thrashed and dragged forcefully through the iron sands as the creature rampaged about.

At that moment, his only thought, and sole labor was to fight to gain a handhold of patch hide to take him up and over his adversary’s back. All the while, a cruel irony resounded in the Neti’s mind. This, of all things, was supposed to be one of the easier items on the list...

[Kressara Thryn]

"Yeah, yeah! I'm aaaal...rrrriiiiight…" Kressara's nonchalant response slowed to a halt and changed tune when a pair of younger tulrus bulls came charging from the ashy distance after the slayer of their matron. "Blessed stars…Yo! Hey! BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!" She shouted over the thundering hoof falls and readied her weapons for a second time, standing her ground. One bull rushed Kita and the other pummeled their bark skinned companion, dragging him along the jagged lava fields. Luckily enough for Kressara, they split, giving her the opportunity to choose her next target, even if the thought process afforded was only a few more seconds before action was demanded of her.

"Hang in there, Sa-ato!" The platinum sithling broke into a mad sprint after the raging beast who's horn skewered through the hand of their comrade, covering a fair distance by nimbly leaping over obstacles, her thin soled boots and light weight giving her better traction against the sandy, crumbly terrain while her addiction allowed for some measure of pain reduction. "I got you!" Kressara's encouragement struggled to be heard over the rumbling and jet turbine-like breaths that ferocious creature let gust from it's nostrils in plumes of steam. It turned upon reaching an impasse of lava rock boulders, giving the crow a chance to catch up.

Clink! The sith assassin unlatched her wire rings and hooked the ends to one of the dozens of knives covering her belt before twirling one of the vibroshivs in a red hot arc to her left. Seeing her chance she skidded to a stop and let the knife go, slicing air with a metallic ring before it sank hilt deep into the ear canal of the monstrous charger. Lucky shot! Even Kressara couldn't believe she just landed that one, though truthfully she was aiming for the tusk as something of a control point, not that she could manage to pull THAT weight. Not all the drugs in the world could amp up her strength enough for such a feat. However, a fire hot metal shiv in the eardrum would give even a field mouse control over that monolithic bull!

Kress snagged the line and the bull flung itself sideways to avoid the pain of tearing her blade from its eardrum and toppled as it fell to one of it's front knees. Her shiv broke off in the ear, sending her wire whirring back towards her as the addict sith ran to meet the creature. One hand dug into her pocket, scrambling for something cylindrical while the other brandished her sword.

"Get yourself off of it's horn, Splinters!" She yelled as her toes pushed off the ground, launching her onto the horn of the bull opposite Sa'ato. There she dangled for a few moments as the monster righted itself and charged again, until her fingers found the object they'd been searching for. Kress pulled out a syringe filled with Glitterstim and in a desperate attempt to impair the tulrus, making it easier to subdue or slay, she jammed the needle into the exposed gums of the heaving beast's mouth before injecting the entirety of its contents.

"FIRST ONE'S FREE!!! HAHAHA!!!"

Plink! She dropped the vile and readied her ring one handed for the dismount before the drugs began to affect the bull, only to realize that her wire had been jammed by a failure to fully detach from the broken shiv pommel.

"Not good! Not good!" She yelped and the dizzied behemoth ran full speed against the gravely incline below their gunman, digging both horn and Kressara into the cliffside. A sickening crack rang through the air over the roar of parting rock face and sand and something felt like a balloon popping against her ribcage as earth waked over her tumbling body. It all went black, though she felt awake, felt her eyes desperately blinking debris away and her limbs ragdolling in a downward spiral of hot gravel and obsidian dust, until a rocky thud against flat ground left the masterless apprentice gasping for air. Her heart hammered in her chest and when the black soot cleared she realized her eyes were at least still working...because when she looked down at her side she could see a gnarly spear of lava glass extending from the empty space between her bottom right ribs.

"...Sh...Sh-hi…" A shocked curse hung in her throat.