"Oof!"
Slak grunted as the fist pounded into his gut. "You oughta thank me, really, Slak," Wass said, winding up for another punch while the other four players Slak had beaten held his arms, shoulders and neck. Thud! went the fist into Slak's stomach again, followed by another grunt from Slak.
"Remind me again why I should be thankful for this?" Slak said.
"Because I could've reported you, and you'd have gone to the Grey room for punishment. Whatever I dish out here? Bakka-feed compared to what goes on in there. Now, hold still, and…”
Swing. Thud! Grunt.
"I can believe it," Slak said with a gasp. "Where'd you learn to hit? The Imperial Hairdresser's Academy? I've been hit harder by younglings."
"Oh, really? Did you owe them money, too, Slak?"
Swing. Thud! Grunt.
"Or did you steal their money, too?”
Swing. Thud! Grunt.
"Wass, just so you know, if your goons let me go I'm gonna beat you within an inch of your death. Count on it."
"Wouldn't have it any other way, Four-Flighter," Wass said, pulling back for another hit.
And this time, he aimed for Slak's face.
Swing, Slap!...
There was no grunt.
Because this time, when Wass' hand was at its apex on the way to Slak's face, a much larger hand grabbed it, making a loud slap and stopping its progress. Wass turned to stare and see who now held his first like a child's hand in an adults.
Bondo looked down at Wass. "No," he said simply, and yanked Wass' arm hard. Hard enough that everyone heard a sickening crack as Wass' shoulder dislocated out of it joint.
#
Walking down the hallway, the three young officers heard Wass' screech of pain. Without a word between them, they began running down towards the lift, hoping that no one would be seriously damaged in the minute or so it would take them to make it down to the Cantina.
#
The four cadets holding Slak loosened their grip when they saw Bondo had joined the fight. They had assumed they would give this short lesson given to Slak, and then move on after they'd rifled through Slak's pockets and taken 'their' money back. Instead, Bondo had shown up and effectively neutralized the Flight Senior of Two Flight.
Unsure of what to do next, they faltered. Slak wriggled free, and took a swing at the nearest one of his former captors, hitting him hard enough that the bully went down into a sitting position, holding his jaw and wondering what had happened.
It was then that the rest of Four flight, followed by the rest of Two Flight, entered the Cantina They all saw Bondo holding onto a screaming Wass' arm, and Slak standing over a dazed cadet with his tunic open, his hair matted by sweat and his fist bloodied and bruised by the impact.
Some shouted, and Four Flight and Two Flight began a brawl that everyone on either side remembered to their dying days. Nearly sixty young men and a few women began throwing punches, kicks, and nearby pieces of unbolted furniture at anyone not from their group. No uniform shoulder flashes were needed, no call signs necessary. More than one fight was averted by a pair of cadets from the same Flight turning towards each other, recognizing each other instantly, and then searching for a different opponent. More than just defending the members of their group from attack, the tensions of being screamed at, threatened and under tremendous pressure to keep their place or keep from losing the place they had in the Flight to someone younger and hungrier for recognition and honors finally found an outlet in the opportunity to bash another person into a bloody smear.
#
The only member of Four Flight who wasn't present at all was Norrin. Proud of himself for having found the footage of the buildup to and actual fight of both Freddik and Dav, he was about to leave until Rex began to buzz, chirp and whistle excitedly, rocking back and forth slightly on his chassis to get Norrin's attention.
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"What now, Rex?" Norrin said. "Is there something else I should see?"
Rex whistled once, plugged his interaction wand into the panel whose covering Norrin was about to re-fix in place, hopefully with no one the wiser.
When Rex plugged in the wand, it began to spin as Rex found data and quickly hacked access codes. In seconds, new live footage appeared on the small holoscreen.
What had begun as a beating of Slak in the Cantina had become a full-fledged brawl! Norrin had hoped to hack a couple of security droids and send them to help Slak. Norrin had already gone for help from the flight, but now he wanted to do more.
And now he could see more! Through the security cameras, Bondo was fending off three other cadets with his left hand while gripping a squirming prisoner's wrist in his right. Jada…oh, Jada! Norrin had found himself thinking about her more and more lately! Jada was a red-headed whirling dervish, her fists windmilling without almost any forethought on first one opponent, and then switching to another without pause as soon as one went down. Slak was fighting back-to-back with Porkins, the chubby fellow whom Slak teased sometimes about his weight. But in the fight they seemed a good team.
Wishing mightily he could be proficient in something physical, Norrin gritted his teeth and began tapping away at the holographic keyboard and dialing in the air as he moved the holocamera's perspective here, there and about, capturing the most important pieces of information, action and speech for later.
Maybe I'm better with a keyboard than my fists, Norrin thought, but I can use what I've got to pretty good advantage…
#
Bondo stood over three prone cadets from Two Flight. They were flat on the floor, and holding bruised and broken parts of their bodies parts that Bondo's amazingly powerful left fist had slammed into. His right fist was still curled in a tight grip around Wass' wrist, which wouldn’t be punching Slak or anyone else anytime soon.
Slak had, in fact, endured far worse beatings back in the Blue Sector, one of them being from his own estranged father. A number of solid hits from the old man in a drunken rage on Slak in his more formative years had left the optic nerve on the right side of Slak's head tangled and broken as a trampled stalk of dry grass.
And now his new eye, the result of that undeserved beating, had been the reason for another beating. Of course, since he was using his new eye’s ability to see through the Sabaac cards and thus cheat, one could argue that this beating was deserved.
Slak knew he'd brood on this later. He needed to stay focused on the fight right now, or someone would grab him again and perhaps rearrange his innards the way his optic nerve had been bashed and banged about.
Still, a calm corner of his brain couldn't help but notice the irony of the situation. He used move after move learned from dirty-fighting on the city streets in after-dark fights. It was because he'd been abused so much as a child and abandoned first emotionally then physically that he'd learned a surprising degree of self-reliance at an age when most children were still learning to spell their names. It was because he'd lost the use of his right eye that he'd become so proficient at using his left to aim when either throwing punches or firing a blaster.
Slak was actually surprised as to how easy some of these jokers from Two Flight went down. Once he'd broken free from his captors, he'd turned on the closest one, decking him in the face with a punch that was solid, but far from the best he'd ever thrown. The next opponent was a little tougher; he kept jumping and dancing out of reach of Slak's punches, until Slak stepped on his foot and then leaned in, slamming him in the face with a headbutt that landed so loud the fights around them stopped for a moment, then resumed their tempo of punches, kicks, war cries and yelps of pain.
After a few seconds he saw that Porkins, whom Slak had thought had cut and run, had instead only run to bring reinforcements. He was holding his own, blocking and giving punches as best he could, but was plainly tiring. Slak ran over and made a double-fisted slam to the back of the head of the bald cadet who Porkins had been fighting.
"I had him, you know," Porkins gasped as he caught his breath.
"Yeah, you were doing great," Slak snapped back. "Now watch my back while I watch yours until the blue-buttons get her and break up the party!" Porkins understood, nodding as he stood with his back against Slak's
Jada was a different kind of fighter. Where Bondo grabbed, gripped, crushed and decimated with single blows, and Slak used a series of moves designed to end a conflict quickly and give a show to a betting, cheering, often half-drunk audience, she'd grown up learning that a fight was something you threw yourself into cheerfully with wild abandon, with no forethought or strategy beyond the rapid pace of whirling punches she now threw. Aim hardly mattered as she battered her opponent, a tall cadet with a head that seemed too large for the rest of his body. Her blue eyes flashed with a wild fire as she rained blows on the Two-Flighter's gut, chest, arms and chin. Though he was taller, Jada had spent her life fighting her brothers who fell into the same category.
Big-head at first chuckled when Jada had landed her first few punches, but his laughter stopped short when she struck his chin. Granted, it was more by good luck than good aim, but it did the job well enough that he was still shaking his sizable cranium when she landed two more blows to his chin, and then leaped up and bloodied his nose.
That did it- catching a glimpse of his bloodied face in the mirror-wall on the side of the Cantina made something snap in him, and he began to strike back in earnest. His long arm shot out one, two, three times, finally catching Jada on the side of the head and knocking her to the floor.
Jada countered the way her brothers had taught her when fighting a larger opponent- she swept her leg across the ground, aiming for her opponent's right leg, the one he'd put most of his weight on.
She didn't knock him down- he was too heavy and she didn't have the needed leverage. But she did knock him off balance enough that he wobbled, giving her time to stand again and begin another round of whaling punches on his skinny body. She finished up the latest flurry of fury with a vicious stomp of her cadet boot to his knee, hyperextending his leg and making him fall down with a cry of agony.
And then Dav arrived....
TO BE CONTINUED....