Chapter 96 (Patreon)

Chapter 96:

Yoshiro:

He was down to eight men, and all they had to show for it was a shorted-out lightsaber and a bloodied lip. 

And he didn’t even know how the hell it happened.

He had four more minutes before the power supply ran out.

So far, she’d been mostly avoiding him. Instead, she preferred chasing down his men, disabling or killing them one by one.

If she kept that up, he’d just be inside a glorified box by the time she deigned to face him.

He had to make her want to fight him.

The Jedi stared at her saber, still sparking, a thin line of smoke wafting out of the opening on its hilt.

He shut off his suit’s external speakers, opening private lines to the eight Mandalorians still standing.

“Listen up,” he called. “Ramah, Koiur, Vanel, when I give the word, you three are running.”

There were immediate protests from his men; how much of it was real or reflexive bravado, he neither knew nor cared. 

“We’re not winning here.” His voice carried through their noise. 

“She’s down a saber, she can’t-”

As if hearing the man’s words, there was a sudden, screeching wrench, a squeal of protesting, shorn metal as Dallon tore a jagged piece of piping from the wall. The crude tearing gave the thing a jagged, toothed edge.

With her raw strength… it would cut.

“I am not arguing and I am not asking!” he snarled, acid burning deep in his heart. A toxic, searing hate coursed through his veinsas he stared at the glowing cybernetic eye piercing the gloom. It mocked them, reminding them again that she could be hurt.

They were just too frakking weak to do it. “You three are retreating. The remaining five will give us cover.”

“Us? Sir?” one of his men questioned. 

“Gonna ask what’s left of you one more time…” Dallon sneered, and he could read on her face that the Jedi wanted them to say no. Wanted them to give her a reason. 

Heh. A Jedi with the taste for a fight.

He almost liked her in that moment.

“Surrender,” she demanded.

He ignored her, instead continuing to instruct his men through the sealed-off comm link.“Yeah,” he answered them succinctly. Smirking with black malice that would be hidden by his helm, he added, “I need a second to get her attention.”

His men were hesitant. Afraid. Five of them were being laid up as sacrifices, pieces on the board. And they knew it. 

“Vanel,” he called. “I’m transferring the suit’s cams into your personal datapad. Retrieve it and run. We need that data. I don’t care if it’ll take another six months, but we’ve seen her get hurt. Something in this footage has the answer on how.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Koiur, the servers and data storage units should have been purged already, but they haven’t been. Don’t know why. Go and see why the others haven’t done their damn jobs. Purge all the data on the project.”

“Got it.”

“Ramah… retrieve the Sith.”

“What?”

“She hit her,” he explained. “She’s the only one that’s done that, as far as we know. Maybe she knows how she did it.”

He doubted it. Frankly, he’d been close enough to see the surprise on her face with his own two eyes. But, maybe afterwards, she’d realize something. Some Force trick. Something he or the others hadn’t seen in the heat of the moment. 

Between that, or just sacrificing a sixth man, the choice was obvious, really.

“Is she even still alive?”

“You’re gonna find out.” He shrugged. 

Even so, Ramah didn’t sound pleased as he bit out his confirmation.

And Dallon was done waiting.

Her improvised blade sliced through the air, its jagged tip pointed downwards, and she lunged.

“GO!” He roared, and the five men ordered to intercept her did so, rushing in with defiant cries on their lips, blades and blasters in hand as the other three rushed to take off.

He didn’t bother seeing how it ended, he already knew, and he needed every precious second.

If the Jedi was going to go after his men, well.

Two could play that game.

—

Dennis:

“Take Vicky with you; it’ll be no problem,” he muttered in a mocking tone under his breath. “She’s older now, a Jedi now, responsible now-”

He stopped griping for a moment as another earth-shaking crash echoed somewhere off in the distance. Dennis was getting a remarkable feeling of deja-vu, being here. Vicky flying off to bust through walls and heads and to take on the biggest fucking thing available with the subtlety of a brick to the face, while he and the rest of the ‘heroes’ had to keep their eye on the goddamn ball? Very familiar territory!

And he wasn’t getting hazard pay out of it this time, either!

A blaster bolt splashed off his armor. The heat scored the plate and the thermal bleed felt wonderfully unpleasant against his pectoral. He leveled his returning shot, clipping the Mandalorian in the hip as he and his fellows pulled back.

To his right, Asajj was fending off three more of the armored bastards. She’d already managed to take down two, her lightsaber slipping past the beskar plating by finding the gaps.

It still didn’t change that they were on the clock.

Dennis knew Mandalorians. Probably not as well as Hannah did, but when you live around a people for the better part of ten years, you picked up a thing or two.

Mandalorians, no matter what ideology they followed, were stubborn. They dug in their heels and did not move on whatever it was unless you moved them. Or at least cut off their legs at the ankles. Satine, for all her ‘breaking away’ from the old ways, was exactly like that on the subject of pacifism. And even Alexandria had trouble chopping off her metaphorical ankles.

So, a force of this size, and with this much organization, and this much stupid pride? The fact that they were retreating at all was a cause for concern.

So he followed after them, keeping pace, pushing through withering levels of fire with time-frozen bits of cloth or crates for cover. Ventress, for her part, deflected their blaster bolts right back at them, keeping pace. He was not letting this particular group out of his sight. 

They were deep in the facility, now. Three of the royal guards that had been following him had broken off to chase another group. The sounds of fighting echoed through the facility, making it impossible to pinpoint what fight was happening where.

“Hold them off! I need more time!”

‘Bingo’

“Asajj!” he called. She rounded on him, eyes still aflame with bitter anger over her previous close call. 

An issue for later.

One Mandalorian tried to shoot at her now-exposed blindspot, but a flick of a saber sent the attack back at the attacker and a Force grasp sent the main sailing into the ceiling with bone breaking force before smashing him headfirst into the floor.

Definitely an issue for later.

He pointed with his gun. “They’re up to something! Gotta stop ‘em!”

She snarled, and sailed across the room with a tremendous leap, lunging for the Mandalorians that were guarding the doorway.

Dennis moved to rush after her and give her some backup, but something crashed into his back and knocked the air out of him as he was smashed face first into the ground.

His blaster flew out of his grip, and Dennis rolled, getting on his back to see what had happened just in time to see a Beskar covered fist coming down to punch him dead in the face.

He jerked his head to the side, the fist smashing into the floor grating beside him with a deafening bang that made his ears ring; but his hands still managed to touch the Beskar vambrace.

The piece of armor was frozen, and Dennis heard the Mandalorian’s startled and confused ‘What the-?’ before he cocked back his leg and mule-kicked at the armored shin as hard as he could to knock the guy’s foot out from under him.

The Mandalorian fell, and his arm locked in the gauntlet’s now-unnatural position made the fall both awkward and painful.

That gave Dennis room to lunge up, coiling his arms around the man’s shoulder so he could pull him down even further.

Something shifted inside the arm - not broken, but definitely dislocated somewhere.

The Mandalorian screamed, howling in pain and fury. Dennis could feel him looking to pull a weapon from somewhere with his free hand. 

Dennis was just faster.

He brought his leg up, pulling his knee almost to his chest as he reached, drawing his holdout blaster in the ankle holster before pressing it flush into the Mandalorian’s side, right where there was no beskar, pulling the trigger three rapid times; feeling the body jerk once, twice and then be still by the third.

Extricating himself from underneath his now-dead opponent, Dennis took a second to catch his breath before shambling to his feet and plucking his main blaster off the floor, and finally moving after Ventress.

—

Victoria:

[Sorrow] [Remorse]

The emotions floated around the back of her thoughts, truthful and sincere. 

It had been a long time since Victoria had gotten hurt in any real way and Fragile thought it was her fault.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she promised.

Because it wasn’t Fragile’s fault.

It was hers. 

Overconfident, stupid.

Well… she was done playing now.

The five Mandalorians met her charge, each of them moving almost in slow motion. She noted the other three, but the emotions she got from them weren’t hostile; they were looking to escape.

But the surprise, and the one that worried her, was the old man in the armored suit.

His presence still churned with malice, a foreboding in the Force that thrummed across her senses like a pulsating heartbeat. 

She couldn’t afford to waste time with these five.

The tight, controlled tether she held on her aura unfurled.

Like an invisible wall, the mind-altering energy crashed over the five Mandalorians. The effect was immediate.

Vicky could see it, feel it: the yellow haze of fear, the orange of dread. It built and built in their minds, breaking through the bravado and bravery like a brushfire quickly growing out of control.

The attacks were panicked now, desperate. The pinpoint aim that was visible in their previous attacks was gone. Their hands and legs were shaking. Some didn’t even shoot, their minds racked with indecision.

The emotions washed over her, pervading her senses like a thick, cloying miasma. She could barely breathe with how suffocating it was.

And then it was too late. She was already on them.

She ducked under the first shot, the red bolt sailing over her head to crack into his friend’s visor. He fall back with a cry as Vicky swung with her improvised blade.

It wasn’t a lightsaber. 

It wasn’t beskar.

But it was still a piece of steel moving with 14 tons behind it, and, for all intents and purposes; it was indestructible as she shifted and molded the Fragile One’s barrier to extend, coiling around the blade to give it the same durability she enjoyed.

It carved through armor, flesh, sinew and bone like it wasn’t even there.

Her shield flickered, but it was back in time to block the blood that would have showered her, arterial spray gushing from the now-missing leg. Its former owner screamed in pain, clutching at the stump.

Four to go.

Another blaster was drawn, pointing dead center at her face as her free hand reached out, clenching shut, and the Mandalorian’s limbs were suddenly crushed to his side, the blaster pressed into his hip, struggling with straining muscles as she heard him breathing rapidly. A split second later, her kick crashed into his chest, folding the chestplate as it sent him sailing across the room with a mess of shattered ribs.

Three more.

The one that had shot her first readjusted his aim, taking one shot that splashed against her temple, causing her shield to flicker out as she dodged his second shot and turned her body around to avoid the third.

Then her shield was back, and her ‘sword’ was facing him.

She thrust, and the ‘blade’ punched through beskar like rice paper, digging into his gut before she yanked it free and kicked the gun away.

Two to go.

The second to last one turned and ran. His fear - or rather, the fear her aura placed in him - overwhelmed his discipline and bravery. It was poisonous and sickening to her senses, but she could feel it.

Then the one that had gotten shot in the face at the start finally got his bearings again, trying to bring his blaster rifle to bear before it was sliced in half before he could blink.

He drew a knife-

And he lost his hand.

She turned to the one running, jetpack thrusters howling as he rushed to the nearest exit. She readied to pursue.

Then her senses flared-

—

Iskt:

“Stop squirming.”

If she were not wearing a helmet, Iskt was pretty sure the girl’s response to the command would have been to try to bite him.

Master Anjr and Knight Lisen were ahead of them, pushing deeper into the facility. Four of the Mandalorian royal guard were providing support at their backs, gunning down retreating Mandalorians and securing the base room by room.

Iskt followed them from a safe distance, the prisoner firmly in his grasp.

He didn’t have anything to tie her limbs, but he was far, far stronger than her, so holding her in place wasn’t difficult; just annoying.

The Trandoshan Padawan spread his senses through the base, trying to determine what exactly was happening across the facility. He found only chaos and madness in the cacophony of battle. Even the conflict around Master Dallon, deep in the heart of the base, was impossible to truly follow. All he could tell was that his Master was alive and that many of Mandalorians that had followed her were not.

“Ba'buir Kelir kyr'amur gar bal wear gar pel'gam trandoshan”

He didn’t know a lick of Mando’a. But he knew enough about human ‘tones’ to understand when he was probably being insulted. 

“Quiet,”. He hissed threateningly by rumbling his throat, and tightened the hold he had on her forearms behind her back.

“Gar jetiise's ve'ganir meg's coming at kaysh.”

She uselessly tried to jerk out of his grip, and Iskt felt his irritation spike again. He didn’t let it show on his face, though. 

“Ba'buir Kelir ganar kaysh beskad guuror a troph.”

He pulled her arms perhaps a bit higher on her back than was strictly necessary. “I sai-”

He stopped.

His senses flared, warnings of danger echoing in the force. The two Jedi ahead of them sensed it, too, pausing mid-pursuit as the whole base seemed to shake around them.

Then, again.

And again.

His warning came too late-

“GET-”

The wall was torn down.

The machine that rushed out of the opening was a behemoth of a thing. Larger than a fully-grown Wookie or Trandoshan, it hulked at roughly five meters, maybe more. A crackling spear weapon was in its hand, and a heavy repeater was slung on the underside of its forearm.

Iskt saw one of the Mandalorian royal guards’ skull get crushed by falling stone. Another’s arm snapped like a dry twig. The two remaining guards tried to bring their weapons to bear.

The first man was cut clean in half before the rifle was even level, and the last was immediately under fire by the heavy repeater.

Master Anjr leapt forward, trying to interpose himself between the last standing royal guard and the rain of green blaster bolts that fell on him. The Jedi Master lasted long enough for Knight Lisen to hurl a chunk of fallen building at the mechanical monster’s head.

The thing turned, rounding on the approaching projectile before catching it in its massive fist and throwing it right back at Knight Lisen.

The Corellian Knight’s eyes widened as he lunged sideways to avoid the deadly return delivery. Master Anjr lunged, green Lightsaber thrusting straight for the center chestpiece.

The blade touched the thick curia, and a spark of electricity killed the Saber right in the Jedi Master’s grip.

Iskt felt his shock, the momentary alarm and the realization-

And then he saw that glaive slice the Jedi Master in two like it had the Mandlorian royal guard before him. 

“Ba'buir!”

The girl’s cry brought the machine’s single eye rounding towards them.

Iskt knew immediately - as Master Victoria would say - that he was in deep, deep shit. 

He shoved the girl to the side, pushing her as hard and as far away as he could. Both hands now free, he gripped his saber in a defensive stance as the monster lunged towards him with a burst of jet engines, its glaive raised high and coming down fast.

He’d fought with Master Victoria too many times to not know how to fight against something impossibly stronger than him.

He ducked and sidestepped, his blade coming up and angled in a way to let the glaive glance off to his side, its crackling edge crashing next to his foot. The counterweight came towards his face and Iskt rolled forward, into the monster’s guard and between its legs, careful not to let his blade touch the armor at all, lest he be down a lightsaber as well.

He got to his feet and had to throw himself on the ground again to avoid the sideways swipe that would have bisected him, using the Force to lift and rapidly pelt the metal monster with debris and chunks of pulped rock and twisted metal. 

The heavy repeater on its arm spat out green bolts and Iskt tried from his laying position to deflect them, only to immediately prioritize what would be immediately fatal, feeling bolts burn into his leg and exposed arm, still prioritizing his vitals above all else. If he wasn’t dead, Trandoshan regeneration could fix it later. 

Even so, the pain was blinding. A desperate haze fell over his mind as adrenaline and pure survival instinct kicked in. He wondered if he was going to die here as he saw the thing lift up its glaive for one more swing.

But the blow never came.

With a bang that sounded more like a bomb going off in his face, the thing was smashed aside, its body bouncing across the floor like a rock. Master Victoria was there, kneeling at his side, her eyes wide and worried.

He didn’t like seeing her worried. 

Iskt made himself smile.

“Don’t worry Master,” he panted. “I… only had to last long enough for you to get here.”

—

Yoshiro:

Warning lights blared across his HUD, all yellow signs

Just one hit. And already there was damage. 

Had she been holding back this whole time?

Still, he didn’t let it show in his voice. Huffing out a grim, satisfied laugh, he stared through the dust at the woman as she knelt at the trandoshan boy’s side. “Finally gonna stop flying around and fight?” he taunted when he saw her looking around the rest of the room at the dead Royal guards and the other reptilian Jedi. 

She turned her eyes back to him, glaring with naked anger on her face.

He snorted. “You go after my men. Only fair I go after yours.”

She stood, interposing herself between him and the boy still laying on the ground behind her. “I’m gonna turn that overgrown tin can into your coffin, Mandalorian.”

His eyes glanced towards the timer for the power supply.

One minute,  thirty-seven seconds.

“Stop talking and FIGHT ME!”

The engines burst to life, pushing him forward on a column of fire. The glaive crackled with forking tongues of lightning as the built-in heavy repeater spat green bolts of energy.

She didn’t have a Lightsaber; she couldn’t deflect it all. But still, he saw her move, strafing to avoid the hail of bullets, sometimes stepping between them as she met his charge.

He lunged for her, the blade thrusting straight for her head before she sidestepped that too. She swung that iron pipe she was using as a sword at his open left side.

He swung armored forearm in an attempt to bash aside the strike, but the titanic blow slammed into him, rocking the suit back with impossible force. It let up barely in time for him to regain his footing before she shoved with renewed strength.

His eyes went wide as he glanced at the plating that used to protect his forearm;the near half-meter thick metal had a deep horrid gouge shorn into it.

That… wasn’t possible, just by the sheer compositions of the two colliding steels.. 

Her weapon was a cheap, flimsy piece, little better than rebar; the suit was the highest grade of Mandalorian metallurgy available short of beskar. It could have shrugged off a tank shell. 

That ‘sword’ of hers should have snapped clean off like a dry twig before it even put a scratch on his armor!

How-?

His thoughts were cut off by Dallon’s bare fist smashing into his armor’s chest piece, driving him back. The metal warped, but it still held up well enough to let him swing his weapon again.

She flew back, out of his reach, returning with a dizzying corkscrew attack that would be impossible for anyone without the ability to fly. It was only decades of experience and pure instinct that let him track, or, more accurately, guess where that weapon was striking as she spun chaotically through the air.

This time, he activated his energy shield and it bloomed across his arm; the power reserves were unimportant in the face of that sword somehow being able to breach his armor.

The blow, like all the others before it, was titanic. The energy shield popped like a soap bubble. But, when the ‘blade’ struck his armor, it bounced off, its force expended on shattering the shield. He riposted with his crackling glaive. For a moment, it felt like it just bounced off her ‘sword,’ but the power field and superior make of his blade cut her bit of ragged metal clean in half with no resistance, as it should have from the very beginning.

He tried, in the follow up, to strike her with the heavy counterweight. The multi-bladed end of the glaive was more like a mace; one solid hit to the face and most sentients would be dead regardless.

Her fist lashed out, battering the glaive out of his hands with a single, monstrous blow that sent Yoshiro reeling. He roared in fury and frustration, lunging for her head with nothing but the suit’s fists, looking to crush her skull like a grape.

But she was too fast. Accelerating faster than his eyes could track, she was a blur of white and gold. He barely even registered her being out of his grip and inside his guard before both her fists smashed into his suit’s main body. Red warning lights flared as he was pushed back, his feet scrambling for purchase on pulped rock and crushed gravel.

He smashed into the reinforced wall, rebar and duracrete folding like cardboard around him and pinning his machine in place.

Then, Dallon started punching.

The blows were rapid, as fast as a repeater on full auto and loud as cannon shots. The sound. The sound felt like it was shaking his body to pieces inside his suit. His external cameras saw dust and rocks crumbling over him, her every blow smashing him deeper and deeper into the duracrete.

In front of his eyes, the metal chestplate was breaking apart with every titanic blow. 

The armor that should have theoretically endured her strength, that had held up until now, was rapidly giving way under the onslaught. Inside the tin can, his body was being shaken to death by the concussive force that rattledthrough all of the shocks, struts, and inertial protections.

He felt a trickle of blood down his nose and lip. His vision was losing focus, but his hands moved in practiced motions, pure determination keeping his fingers steady. His targeting systems activated, and the last weapons came online. Only a few seconds were left before his power supply would be empty.

The hands of the suit came came crashing down over her shoulders, both limbs locking in place to hold her. He tightened his grip as much as he could with the last dregs of power left.

Then, the shoulders of the suit suddenly popped open. An array of primed whistling birds, hundreds of them saling out of the machine’s hidden compartments.

And he saw it.

There.

There for a brief second. An instant. 

A sliver of nothing, so fast you could confuse it as nothing more than a trick of the light.

But he knew what he’d seen. He knew what was there.

Fear.

For the briefest instant-

He had her.

Then, the whistling birds, sailing on screeching wings, exploded in mid air, crushed by Jedi sorcery before they ever reached the target.

Yoshiro snarled; his vision going a hazy red.

How? 

HOW!?

The chest armor burst open, and the old man, with his battered body, his shattered leg, and nothing but the knife he’d fashioned with his own two hands decades and decades ago lunged for her.

Dallon’s cyan blue eye flashed. And Yoshiro barely felt her hands grasp his plunging fist; slim fingers almost caressing his before sheer, irresistible strength turned the blade back on him.

The knife plunged into his chest.

The air was shoved out of his lungs before he felt the pain.

The old Mandalorian coughed blood, spattering a red pattern over her armor and clothes.

With the darkness creeping along the edges of his vision… he saw that even that was slipping away. Sliding off of her. Leaving no stains. Never even touching her immaculate flesh.

How?

How… does it… work?

His eyes shut. 

The answer never comes.