Iisska looked between the light saber and Zen with much apprehension before fastening it into his belt. He looked ahead into the arena. A fighter or two was already filing past them.

"You do a lot of stupid shit, Zen, but picking me to back you up over one of the others is pushing it," he said, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that in a real fight, I would rather fight beside my student, somebody I trust, over somebody like Quin or Cheshik, whom would be crushed in an instant at the start of battle."

"Mm," Iisska nodded, "You're right. I'm sure I can last at least two, maybe three instants."

"Better than half a one." 

---

The pair stepped out into the sun and the cavernous amphitheater-like arena. Rows of seating rose up at least a hundred feet on one side and several stories of box seats, storage, animal cages and prison cells on the other. The bottom of the pit was oblong and rounded and must have been at least 300 feet across at the widest point. Strange horns bellowed and reverberated through the stone. A swarm of insectoid natives and other aliens a thousand strong cheered, shouted and raised a cacophony that could have been heard from a mile away.

"These people must love their idiot parades," Iisska mumbled under his breath.

They were gathering toward the center of the arena as an announcer bellowed in an incomprehensible language over a primitive loudspeaker. It sounded intense. The crowd cheered. He had no damn clue what was going on or what they were supposed to be doing or fighting. Behind them the gate to the underworks [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99yFe68YtMQ]slammed shut.[/url] On the opposite side three more opened. Iisska shook his hands out, clenched his fists, made sure he was breathing correctly and relaxed as best as he could. His eyes locked on the dark lairs. 

A filthy looking heavily armored mercenary several feet away already had his guns out. He snorted, "So green grass is sproutin' up 'round yer feet, boy. When you get dismembered I'll be takin' them fancy blasters."

The man went almost completely ignored, much like a bothersome gnat, as the second he finished a squad of Geonosian cavalry charged from the open gates and spread out on the sand. They wore featureless helmets that obscured their faces entirely and blackened armor that wrapped their bodies in strange contours. Their steeds were huge bipedal beasts that were nothing more than jagged drooling maws and powerful legs. At their sides each rider wielded a heavy spear eight or more feet in length in one hand and some a sword in one of the other hands. The spears were held parallel to the ground as they came at the group, ready to eviscerate them. A bolt from a heavy rifle belonging to one of the mercs caught a rider square in the face and dismounted him, but it was only a split second before the first of them was caught on the end of one of those viscous lances. The crowd erupted in a riotous cheer for first blood. Projectiles and flashes of light sprayed over the sands. A few went astray and found themselves in the crowd of onlookers. The start of the battle happened so quickly they were not given time to plan strategy or decide how to best face their new enemies. Iisska however found himself with a few precious moments of alacrity as he tore through the air, over the head of a rider who had been trying to impale him, in a well-timed, wide-arching flip.

His thoughts: "Not a fist fight."

He planted both feet on the ground with a hard, [i]WHUMPH[/i]. The new DT-57 was already in his right hand and hardly a moment after Zen's lightsaber was in his left. He let loose three shots. All of them struck the mount and spine of the rider who was still trying to turn his beast around. Where they impacted carved out gaping, charred wounds and tore wide swaths of armor and flesh away. The animal went down screeching and crushed it's master who made no sound. The show had drawn the attention of two other nearby riders. They changed course, but Iisska was already on the move across the blood soaked arena.

The Geonosian soldiers were decimating the mercenaries faster than they could retaliate. If it were not for Zen, who had carved a wide swath out of the action with a few expert cuts, they may have been wiped out already. The crowd was loving it and a new surge of excited clamor followed each spray of blood and wave of sand kicked up underfoot. 

Iiisska strung out the two soldiers after him. The fastest could almost keep up, but he wasn't trying to get away. Without a moment's notice he stopped dead, crouched low with sword arm and gun pulled close around him, like a spring ready to go off. The creature staggered clumsily trying to come to a stop and take a bite, but Iisska snapped out and severed it's hind leg while it stumbled over him and crashed to the ground. He twisted as soon as it landed and slammed the saber through its neck to end its suffering then put a bolt through the chest of the rider. Not forgetting about the second foe, he bolted off again with a set of man-size jaws snapping at his heels. For once the look in his eyes as the thing chased him down wasn't fear, or anger, or panic. It was focus. He wasn't thinking about who's fault this was or where he'd rather be because he wasn't thinking at all.

The wild fray that had engulfed the arena for the first thirty seconds of the fight had thinned into something far more interesting. Only four mercs remained. Zen, Iisska, the man who called him green and a dishonored Mandalorian judging from the armor. It was them against six cavalry. Iisska set the same trap again. But this time it didn't work. This rider gave him more space than his fallen comrade and was able to line up his spear with the explosive little upstart. Had Iisska not thrown himself prone immediately he would be dealing with a foot long blade stuck between his ribs. He felt it bite into his rear lekku leaving nothing more than a scrape. But now he was flat on the ground with those teeth coming down on top of him. He rolled to his back, dropped his weapons and caught the jaws of the beast in his hands just before they were able to snap shut. It felt like he was being squeezed between two sides of the universe. The steed's jaws and his arms quaked violently with the effort it was taking for it to continue to bite down and the effort it took for him to keep those teeth apart. He writhed, grit his teeth, and hissed. How many pounds of pressure was he holding? How long could he keep this up? What did death by being bitten in half feel like? He shoved the questions away, struggling to breathe and focus again. He struggled to draw on the force as the muscles and tendons in his arms started to tear and give out. There was a popping and crackling noise in his shoulder as the animal wriggled its massive head around trying to get better leverage and ground him deep into the sand. Then he saw the glint of the spear in the sun. The rider raised it high and aimed it for his skull as he lay helplessly pinned. But the next sound, instead of being steel through bone and brain, was the deep and sudden whir of a light saber.

The soldier's top half hit the ground next to him. Suddenly the beast's jaws went lax and Iisska found himself holding up its dismembered head. He threw it away immediately and found Zen standing over him. The man wore a look on his face that scared Iisska worse than death. It was grim, furious, and utterly vacant at the same time.

"Get your weapons. Now," Zen told him.

Iisska did as he was told. Scrambling up and pulling his thrown weapons to his hands with the force. Now he could see that the arena was still. Bodies, body parts, gore, fluids, weapons and armor littered the place. Most of them scorched with saber cuts. The other two mercs were down. It was just them now.

So why did he still feel it?

"It's still here," he told Zen, who seemed to ignore him.

Iisska wandered the site of the massacre as if searching for something. He rolled the body of one of the soldiers over absentmindedly with his foot. The face plate on the helmet had been knocked slightly ajar. The face underneath, though alien, looked and felt wrong somehow. As if it wasn't the right shape. He felt repulsed and yet drawn to it. With a sort of sick, nagging curiosity tugging at him Iisska knelt and tugged at the face plate. Only to find that it was bolted down. He gripped it in both hands and wrenched it away. It took a few good tries, but the faceplate suddenly snapped out of place, taking bolts and clinging tendrils of flesh with it.

Iisska threw the piece of metal to the ground and lept back screaming. He fell back where he rushed away in a flurry of panicked movement until he was a good ten feet away from the damned corpse.

"Zen! ZEN!" he screamed and continued to back away slowly. The color was draining from him.

Where a Geonosian face should have been was nothing but a gaping hole and the remnants of a lower jaw. As if the entire front of the skull had been hastily hacked out with a dull saw blade. And inside was nothing. There was no bone, no flesh, no light, no shadow. Simply nothing. A limitless blackness that could swallow up everything in its path. Iisska did not stop until his back touched the far wall of the arena where he stood frozen with fear. The crowd had quieted to a loud burble of murmuring. The announcer who had been so excited to go shouting about their victory now sounded confused and hesitant.

It was a few more moments before he noticed that there was another merc who had survived the fight standing by one of the open gates. Except this human man didn't look like a merc. He was barefoot, dressed in dark grey robes and had minimal plates of armor on his chest, arms and shins. His face was tattooed and he carried a black sword that shimmered in the sun. When he walked it was flawlessly smooth like a dancer. He made no sound and left no footprints. The space around him seemed to be in a constant vacuum. The crowd was growing quiet and nervously shouts were thrown about. This man had not been with them at the beginning. Iisska's chest felt like it was crushing in on itself and he quickly realized it was because he wasn't breathing. He gasped, but nothing. He couldn't breath. A hand went to his throat and he went to his knees, trying again to get a breath in, but failed again. It was as if someone had filled his lungs in with cement and he was suffocating. 

The man stopped, raised a lazy hand toward Zenithar and gave him a disinterested "come here" motion.