Mortal Kombat tournaments never made sense to me. They weren't tournaments at all. You just fight everyone. So, if there were, say, 16 fighters, wouldn't you only actually fight four of them? And with all those fatalities, you'd run through your roster pretty quickly, even if you tried to justify it as a round robin tourney.
Anyway, I agree that Jinsen would be OP, and would need to be significantly nerfed if we were to include him. That being said, I do have several martial characters that would fit. Remember that, when heavily enchanted, Daneera stood toe to toe with Kahr. Donagut is also a hand-to-paw fighter, although he would certainly be an underdog (
). Sundar Elarion is also a talented hand-to-hand fighter. We've also seen Tryst fight, Gale has shown some dexterity, and there's always Sava Pith, as well. If the prize is rich enough, Vasilias might make Renn fight, who would be over-matched, but very difficult to hit. Ethal is a warrior, but she wouldn't do well out of water. Raiker Venn is a surprisingly talented fighter, but his powers put him into that same OP level, so best not to include him. Finally, we could put Nick D'Arteri in. He could probably fit.
Hrmm... I don't think I would have too many characters to contribute to this, I'm afraid.
I can't see Beryl ever participating in something like this of her own volition. She already feels enough guilt about hurting people when she feels like she has a good justification for doing it; I don't think she'd ever engage in recreational violence. She'd have to be under a very dire compulsion of some sort.
Also, she'd probably burn the arena down, which would sort of tend to bring proceedings to a premature halt.
I think that Gale can be a very dangerous, very athletic fighter when she needs to be, but her style of brawling is optimized for settling a bare-knuckled dispute in a grog hall, or knifing a raider on the deck of a pitching ship. I think she would be very hard to hit -- she moves very well, and she has a superb sense of balance to go along with great reflexes. But she's no swashbuckler. Her violence is close-range and opportunistic -- it wouldn't translate very well to this sort of affair. And, again, I'm not sure why she would want to participate -- fighting's not how she gets her thrills.
Tryst would be interesting, but, again, I don't think this is the sort of format she'd thrive in. She's very lethal at close range -- she knows how to kill with her teeth and claws and tail, and, my sense is that, once the scent of blood is in her nostrils, she would be a very scary person to fight. But she's exclusively a bare-hands sort of killer -- she doesn't ever carry a weapon. And, while I think that she could take down even the most skilled warrior with the biggest ax, she'd be relying upon the element of surprise to do it. She'd be waiting for you, in a dark corner, at the one moment when you thought you were absolutely safe, when you assumed that no one could possibly get to you. That's when you probably feel a little pinch at the base of your spine, as her tail slides surgically between two of your vertebrae, and -- suddenly -- your legs don't work anymore. Then, the next -- and last -- thing you're going to see are a pair of yellow eyes with slit pupils glinting at you through the darkness as Tryst rips your throat out with her bare claws. If she's going to kill you without siphoning your life essence out through your skull, then that's probably how it's going to happen. And that's not exactly conducive to a gladiatorial-style contest.
Honestly, Jackie would be the most interesting combatant among the bunch, assuming that she could hitch a ride off of Jakkard, and that she was allowed to bring her revolver. Trouble is, she's not interested in this sort of contest. She treats violence as a tool of her profession; it's not something she engages in for sport. I'm reminded of the meeting I imagined her having with Merritt, Raven's shootist:
Quote:
Merritt moved to stand next to the black-clad woman, who was sitting at the bar. She did not stand up as he approached.
"Suppose I were to invite you to step outside, right now," he said, laying his hands flat on the bar's polished wooden top as he did, so that, were she to decide to pull on him, no one in the crowd of hushed onlookers could possibly accuse him of having made the first move. "What would you say to that?"
The woman did not turn to look at him. Her eyes remained fixed on her glass, which she drained, before motioning for the barkeep to bring her another.
"I'd say I'm no shootist," she said, "and I ain't fixing to become one. I don't fire at a man unless I intend to kill him, and I don't kill a man unless I have a good reason." Her shoulders shrugged. "In my book, a good reason is he's threatening me, or he's wronging me, or he has something which I very much want. You haven't wronged me, so far as I know. You haven't threatened me -- yet. And I can't see that you have anything I much want."
"I have my honor as a shootist," Merritt said. "That's rarer than iron, and it's worth more than gold."
"Don't get me wrong," the woman said. She turned to face him then, and he saw her red eyes staring back at him from beneath the brim of her black hat. "I put a lot of stock in honor myself. Right up until the moment it threatens to get me killed, that is. I don't like to steal what I can't spend."
He held her gaze. He had not moved his hands. They were still pressed, palms-down, against the bar.
"I know you're fast," he said.
"So I've been told," she said.
"I think I'm faster," he said.
"You might well be," she said. "If you really want to find out, you can always draw on me." She stood up then, and fished around in the pocket of her serape for some coins, which she left on the bar. "But I can tell you this much right now. I suspect that the Waste would be a less colorful place without you in it. I know it would be less colorful without me."
She smiled at him, and touched the brim of her hat.
"The Waste needs color, Mister Merritt," she said. "Why spoil a good thing?"
And, with that, she walked past him.
His hands didn't budge until he heard the saloon doors swing shut behind him.
So, I don't think Jackie's going to fight in this tournament.
She would, however, rob the betting window blind while everybody else was preoccupied with watching the fight.
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