1.0 - Acquisition: The Hyperdrive Specialist

Acaatha runs after Lin, Fuzil and Ralph -- not quite catching up to them, but closing the distance somewhat. As she runs, her blaster fires off a series of shots at the tumbling and standing Ralph who seems to have the presence of mind to dodge one particularly close shot -- but he's unbalanced by his twisting and turning.The mark keeps running -- but he's puffing and puffing, running flat out for a significant amount of time is not in the job description for hyperdrive engineers. Nonetheless, he manages to pull the distance between him, Ralph, Lin and Fuzil to 'long' and to Larry to medium. Larry stands and his hand goes to a blaster pistol at his side. Seeing the speeder chuck around the corner with the elegance of a bantha that's gotten into the blue milk, he turns and continues to run after the engineer -- opening the distance somewhat to Lin and Fuzil -- but not quite edging into long range.

Ralph, on the other hand, has his eye on two marks and a speeder and he's not happy about what he sees. The blaster pistol comes out and he takes a shot at Lin. A hail of blaster fire -- set to stun -- ensues and Lin's vicinity is peppered with shots. Lin takes a hit but keeps standing. Lin's pistol, however has taken several shots and sails through the air before crashing into Fuzil and his soup. Unfortunately, the soup doesn't surving the encounter with a hot, high-speed pistol-as-a-rock and it too crashes to the ground causing Fuzil to exclaim madly at his lost soup and his gently burnt hand.Mala's speeder piloting is... well, it's not why she's on the crew. Unfortunately, her turn around the corner is a bit wide. And by a bit, I mean pedestrians -- who have heretofore enjoyed the scamps and their gunplay start dodging to the side with shrieks of alarm. Akhrirar ducks as part of a lamp post collapses at the rear of the speeder after a gentle "kiss" that just ate up the damage deposit. Some sparks fly out of the console. But they're probably harmless and don't mean anything. Like that time Lin opened up the astrocomp to "Give it a good talking to." That said, while Mala doesn't quite to the mark, she does manage to close the distance to him and Larry from long range to medium with her, uh, "driving".Akhrirar is duly convinced that he's going to die any moment now -- and his ability to aim while the speeder careens through the street causing passerby to dive out of the way and sparks to fly out of the console is somewhat impaired.With some careful aim and a cautious pull of the trigger the Green Mamba lands a hit on the mark who stumbles into portable waste processing units, scattering them like mouse droids running from a wookiee. As the bolt streams past Lin into the mark, he pulls his other gun out and fires at the guard standing in front of him. Somewhat miraculously, despite the short range and the barrage of fire -- he misses. Every single shot. One of the shots goes wide and slams into the mark's head -- but at a range where the power of the bolt has diminished to the effect of being hit in the head by a pillow (wielded by a particularly hefty Klatooinian). With the double hit from Akhrirar's blaster rifle and his head ringing from Lin's.. uh... expert shot he stumbles and falls prone amongst the waste processing units.

Fuzil cuts behind Lin, Ralph and between them and Acaatha on his way to the speeder, though the speeder is, well, speeding (if somewhat dangerously) so he winds up chasing after it as it skitters by with Akhrirar exclaiming loudly about either his impending doom or his mad skills depending on the moment.

Acaatha's blaster nearly drowns out her scolding of the partially disarmed pilot and she land a shot on Ralph who doesn't like the idea of another adversary showing up, but manages to shrug off the hit all the same.Your hyperdrive engineer target stumbles upright from amongst the scattered recycling units and looks around wildly before seeing the course Larry is instructing him to take. He ducks back down an alley like some rolly, polly, little bat-faced Toydarian. He is able to get far enough down the alley that he's no longer directly visible from the street. Larry, for his part moves to take cover amongst the recyclers and takes a shot at Lin. The blaster fire comes thick and heavy from Larry, but Lin manages to dance his way out of the range of fire -- but not so elegantly that he doesn't manage to trip and fall to the ground, prone.Ralph sees Lin take a tumble and turns his stunning blaster fire towards the Togruta that wants to tango. Acaatha takes a hit from the barrage of fire and shivers -- but manages to remain standing.

The Green Mamba knows how to use a blaster rifle. And once more, the collective team is impressed and, truth be told, somewhat surprised, that he's able to line up a shot from a moving speeder at a target pretty far away who is crouching in cover and just plug him with the rifle. The stun-bolt from Akhrirar's rifle smacks right into Larry's left shoulder spinning him away from his cover to land in a small pile of noisy waste recyclers -- down for the count. Smiling at his work, he is shocked by some sparking control panels, distracting him somewhat from what's going on about him.

As Mala steers the speeder by, Lin quickly sweeps up his blaster and takes a shot at Ralph.Mala manages to steer the speeder without causing undue harm to any passerby, herself or the Green Mamba -- or even Fuzil, who's headed over to hop in and help out. She pulls up just short of the alleyway without even bumping into one of the many rolling cannisters or setting the speeder down on top of Larry.

Lin skitters to the side, sweeps up his gun and plugs Ralph with a stun-bolt. It staggers the bodyguard, but doesn't drop him. He grimaces as he takes the hit and does not look at all happy with how things are unfolding.

Fuzil, meanwhile, runs past Ralph's back towards the speeder which cruises on by, Akhrirar swearing off-handedly at the lost damage deposit, the sparky console and his slightly singed hand. Acaatha works on getting closer to the mark -- closing the distance to the alley (and the rent-a-speeder now at the entrance piloted by her crew-mates) and turns to fire back at Ralph, but unfortunately misses.The hyperdrive engineer seems to be trying to get into hyperspace through the effort of running -- he's shooting down the alleyway at full tilt. Doing so gets him several dozen meters down before he hangs a right down a parallel street to the one you're on.

Larry snores. Quietly.

Ralph decides that dropping one or two of you might be to his advantage, so he turns his blaster pistol on Lin and fires off several stun bolts in his direction. Lin is hit by one of the bolts.

Akhrirar spins in position, lines up Ralph and peppers the region with several shots from his blaster rifle. Fortunately for Ralph, the range is enough to impede the Green Mamba’s aim sufficiently that some careful situational awareness and dodging ensures that he stays out of the line of fire -- unfortunately for Ralph this leaves him somewhat disadvantaged on his next action.

Mala guns the speeder -- it whines unhappily as she punches it, surging forward. Unfortunately for Mala -- it’s got a little more torque -- or misaligned gravimotors or something -- and it pulls sharply to the left as she guns it. Mala’s able to yank the speeder right and slaps the controls repeatedly to make the speeder behave. The speeder doesn’t appreciate the abuse -- either through the wheel or on the dashboard. It develops a loud whistling sound near the gravimotor and spits several more cascades of sparks at Akhrirar.Fuzil manages to use his two maneuvers to close the distance from where he was to the speeder to medium range before Mala guns the thing again and speeds off, jinking left and right -- seemingly out of control.

Some yokel on a speeder bike pulls around the bar where the fight is still in full swing and practically runs into Lin and Ralph. Skidding to a halt he learns the lesson of why he should have his seating restraints fastened as the bike dumps him off the side as it kicks to a full stop.

Lin uses the distraction to land a couple shots on Ralph, who staggers -- but remains upright. Disgusted with the state of play -- and Mala’s driving in particular -- Lin commandeers the speeder bike nearby, hopping on with a "it’s in the name of justice" tossed to the confused yokel who is about to see his speeder bike disappear around the corner.Acaatha keeps running towards the alley -- she closes the distance to the alley to ‘short’ range in doing so, right around the time Mala speeds off with the landspeeder and Akhrirar in varying degrees of grumpiness.

Ralph, for his part, is a little overwhelmed at everything going on -- but decides to continue to plug Lin with his blaster pistol and lands a hit just as Lin hops upon the speeder bike and gets "name of justice…" out of his mouth.