Old Habits Die Hard [FZ]

[Mara]

Now that he was a bit more immersed in the firefight than he had been hiding behind the bar—though he was still relatively on the edge—it wasn’t quite as easy for Pak to be accurate with the borrowed blaster. There were more obstacles to shoot around, including the beings on both sides of the sortie. The would-be thieves stayed relatively stable and focused on their prey, but the few patrons who thought themselves heroes were a bit more erratic in their aims and movements. More than a few times Pak had had to hold his fire after aiming wanting to avoid hurting one of the Bothans on his ‘team’ who had moved in front of his real target. Plus, it had just been a while since he had worked a firearm, and it had taken a few moments for the familiar reflexes to return. It was a far cry from using a targeting computer and a proton torpedo or turbolaser. His first kill had only been easy because the baddie had been a fairly static target.

Slowly but surely, though, his accuracy was increasing. When it had at first taken him one out of a half dozen to eight shots to hit flesh, now he was at about odds of one in two or three. Which the Balosar thought was pretty damn good, considering all the variables. And considering that now he was aiming to wound, not kill. He found no reason to go around causing a bloodbath, no matter what the beings had been planning on doing. Pak had only went after the first guy because it had been personal. Anything else would just be overkill, no pun intended. For all he was concerned, they were just petty thieves, and deserved the justice system, not a blaster bolt in the head. He was shooting to defend the innocents, not execute the guilty.

And it was an awfully good thing he was returning to his firing sharpness from his long-ago military training days. A glance at his weapon showed the power pack about half-drained already. Though, there were also fewer targets to shoot at, thanks to himself, Shine, and any lucky shots by a patron. Pak reached around his table shield, lining up his next shot. In the next second, a bolt seared through a leg of one of the robbers. After all, despite his morality, Pak also believed there was no reason to use stun bolts on these thugs. In his logic, there was no telling how long this fight would take, and he couldn’t have these guys waking up again halfway through and start shooting at him again.

Through the din, he heard Shine’s voice come at him loudly off to his left. Without taking the time to look back, needing to keep himself focused on the task at hand, he assumed his companion was still back behind the bar or nearby. Pak had to hand it to the man. No matter the seriousness of the situation, he was managed to keep things lighthearted. The Balosar was almost proud. It was just something he would have done. And counting up their kills… that was something he and the guys had done back in the Starfighter Corps. Now there, there he had no problem killing. Those enemies deserved what they got, orders from Command notwithstanding. They had gone through their trials and sentencing already, unwittingly. There was generally no other way to defend the innocents without blowing the guilty to the far corners of the galaxy.

Without changing his position, still tracking his blaster for a new target, Pak fired back with a quip of his own. “One dead, two wounded. But I’m just getting warmed up. You sure know how to show a guy a good time, Alberts. We should do this every night. But next time, double the odds. This is too easy.” As if to emphasize it, he squeezed the trigger of his weapon, the bolt speeding into the shoulder of one of the thieves who had been aiming at a Bothan frozen in terror, hiding under a table. The wounded man spun around and dropped his blaster, and Pak ducked back behind his shield.

[Jazen]

What had started as an all out firefight had quickly descended into a game of blaster tag, where the stakes were the lives of its players. As players on both sides were taken down, either by the lovely being known as death or to wounds, the blaster fire went from full out barrages to an exchange of bolts at a more controlled pace. Ducked behind the bar, Shine had the added advantage of being able to see the room without have to stick his head out too far, what with the dirty and stained mirror at the back of the bar sitting right there for him to use.

The sound of Pak managed to make its way through the sounds of hissing blaster fire, his returning quip to Shine's earlier one a welcome reply in this mess. Laughing under the cover of blaster bolts whizzing above his head, Shine snapped his fingers to show his disappointment. "Well damn Pak, you'd be beating me if we counted cripples. Sadly, only kills count in this game, so looks like we're all tied up. Let's see what's left on the scoreboard."

Taking a breath, Shine peeked over the tip of bar counter. The window was good and all, but nothing beat seeing a scene with your own eyes. Shine didn't want to take the chance that one of the bad guys could be concealed by an ugly spot of grime on the window. By current count, two were dead, three wounded. That left four healthy targets, with three possible threats still capable of getting in the game. Correction, 3 healthy targets and only two possible threats; another man was doubled over a table and one of the wounded men was hissing through several blaster wounds to non-vital areas.

A barrage of bolts forced Shine to duck down behind his cover, sliding along a few feet to reposition from his last known location. Checking the charge in his blaster, Shine glanced to the mirror for a moment, checked the position of one of the men he'd seen, then repeated his action of poking up from behind the bar while moving and firing.

His bolt managed to tag another one of the guys poking around for an exchange of fire, but before he could tag any others, the bolts started flying his way en masse. Cursing, Shine dove over the counter as bolts tore through the weakened bar, landing with a roll behind one of the many tables that had been knocked over in the chaos. Rolling to his feet, Shine let off another couple of bolts before ducking down again, laughing.

"Another point for me Pak! But this game is beginning to take too much of a toll; let's finish this up. I'll give you some cover on three. Ready....THREE!"

Poking up from behind his cover, Shine fired as fast as he could pull the trigger in the general locations of the remaining thugs, trying to keep them pinned down while Pak, hopefully, was making the best of his covering fire. And if any of those patrons wielding blasters had a brain in those heads, they'd taken advantage of the moment too.

[Mara]

(((Again, apologies for how late this is… I’m going to try to do better in the future.
Also, sorry if this is a bit rough; I’ve gotten a little rusty. But hopefully it makes sense.)))


Pak was checking behind his position to make sure there wasn’t anybody sneaking around back there when he heard Shine’s response. Satisfied that no one was coming up on his six and trusting his antennapalps to warn him of a change, his head turned back to the front and the action, eyes briefly flicking towards where he thought the other man was holed up. Though they had been joking back and forth, keeping things light, the Balosar now had the feeling that his new friend had laced his new joke with a serious comment. Apparently Shine wasn’t as interested in letting these thieves live for a trial as Pak was. This ‘game’ had gotten real, hyperspeed-fast.

So not really having anything to respond with, nor having the time or the energy to explain that he was wounding on purpose and why or to joke about his aim being a bit rusty, he merely crouched closer to his table shield and slowly leaned around it to look for another target. Better to just keep at his own personal battle plan and let the Corellian deal with his own consequences. Better to let his actions speak for himself than any attempt at brief conversation. He tracked his blaster around the room, checking for moving beings. Pak counted two or three possibles; he couldn’t be sure, because the thieves had taken cover as well behind knocked-over chairs and tables. One of them was not quite so protected as the others were, and so the Balosar started lining up another non-lethal shot.

But before he could squeeze the trigger, a hail of blasterfire rang out from the other side of the room, forcing him back behind his cover. However, he quickly realized it wasn’t aimed at him; the sounds of the bolts were a bit different. They were obviously after Shine and not himself, for now at least. He poked his head back out, seeing shots slamming into the shelves of liquor behind the bar and into the bar itself, the shattering glass making him wince in pain. Pak said a brief prayer for the lost lives of the precious bottles before tossing out some cover fire to keep the other side busy as the man abandoned his cover and moved farther into the chaos of the room.

Surprisingly, what Pak heard coming from Shine then was laughter, as he was looking around to see where his current target had hidden himself. He was grateful that the man was still in high spirits about this whole mess—it made the situation a lot more bearable—but he wasn’t sure if his philosophy about the matter was quite the same. The Balosar agreed that they needed to finish things up here and get on back to their lives. But his ideas of how to do so were a bit different from that of his friend. It wasn’t as if he himself hadn’t ever gotten excited in the heat of battle, but this cantina was a far cry from a real war zone. Petty thieves, albeit with weapons, were hardly on the same level as the enemies he took down while still in the military.

At his new friend’s shouted signal, the Balosar moved out from behind his cover, kneeling to keep his balance as he fired. He’d go with Shine’s plan but in his own way. As the Corellian sprayed bolts all around the other side of the room where the leftover ‘enemies’ were, Pak found his targets and took them down one by one in a matter of seconds. The first got a bolt in each kneecap and collapsed in a heap. The second took a hit in the meatiest part of his thigh and then his opposite shoulder. The final one was a bit difficult; the last survivor in any situation was generally the most dangerous. This thief was hidden behind fallen furniture. But Pak was short on time and had military training behind him. His blaster looked for and found any bit of the being that was not covered, and bolts sheared through a booted heel, the top of a weapon-laden hand, an ear. When a shot grazed past the guy’s head, burning off some of his hair, he finally gave up, falling over before he could raise his arms.

With a groan, Pak stood up all the way, stretching his legs. He kept his blaster trained on the wounded, making sure none of them got the idea to make a comeback. “No funny business now.” His power pack was just about empty, but hopefully the thieves didn’t know that. Luckily, none of them seemed too eager to do anything but check on their wounds and their dead friends. A glance towards the front of the establishment told him that their encounter within hadn’t gotten notice of anyone else. Hearing no sirens, no signs of any authorities on their way, he rolled his eyes and sighed. Typical… The Balosar finally looked over at Shine. “Well, Alberts… shall we just leave these guys to the justice of these fine Bothans and be on our way or see if we can get some fracking cops to pay attention to us?”