Retaliators

[Krytos]

OOC: Doesn't sound like a bad idea Tofu - keeps me from slowing the story to a crawl and from screwing up current continuity. I'm open for ideas, and I guess we can use the other thread for OOC discussion again.

[Evaders99]

OOC: Just for the record, I try to keep this environment as PG-13 as possible because there probably are kids on the site. I will add it to the automatic word censor, but I generally am not going to be patrolling for these kinds of things. Just do you best to keep things tasteful and not make this site full of junk.

[SOCL]

OOC: Just for the record, I try to keep this environment as PG-13 as possible because there probably are kids on the site. I will add it to the automatic word censor, but I generally am not going to be patrolling for these kinds of things. Just do you best to keep things tasteful and not make this site full of junk.

Sorry, E. I didn't think that in that particular context it would be considered a cuss-word.

[DarthTofu]

OOC: Because Karat Sal's namesake told me to get on with the story.

 

IC: I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this planet. Well, moon. Thing. Less than a week. These people had shown up less than a week ago; one of them had literally broken my roof down, and now I was giving them all refuge in the home I'd found and risking my lives for them. I was presenting myself as a target for the one man in the galaxy with the greatest desire to kill me, and I was doing it from over two hundred stories up, directly beneath a Yuuzhan Vong shaping facility.

 

"Ah, hell, what was that?" I'd stepped in something white with black specks in it that oozed after my boot landed in it. It was a pile of crap. Whether it was Vonduun Crab crap, Amphistaff crap, or sentient-being crap I didn't know. All I knew was that I was standing in it, both metaphorically and literally.

 

I stomped down on the floor and dented it. I stomped again and dented it further. On the third try I made a tiny hole into the floor below me, affording me a view of an office just as bad as the one I was standing in. The fourth stomp finally created a decent-sized hole in the duracrete, though an old metal skeleton, so oxidized by now that it was impossible to identify, barred any further progress along that stomping path. I swore one more time for good measure, and scraped my foot clean on the metal.

 

The hole had been only partly to scrape my boot clean, mostly so that I could drop down to the next level. With Micus separated from me by just two holed walls and Vong separated from me by only a ceiling/floor depending upon perspective, I wanted a new position.

 

If I kept good on my promise to Hohass (And I still wasn't sure that I wanted to) I'd be flying out into the air right in front of Micus, and I didn't want to have to do that from a predictable location. The metal skeleton presented a problem, though. I couldn't just kick through it, despite its highly oxidized state, and it would create too much obvious noise if I took out my blaster and shot through it. I needed something that could cut through it, which I didn't have.

 

A hand suddenly came into view, clawing at the floor. A Yuuzhan Vong hand. A head that looked as though it had lost in a battle with a fruit peeler followed, hauling itself up. The Vong was covered in blood, dribbling from his head; a large chunk of throbbing brain matter was visible, sagging out the backside of his head. For all intents and purposes this creature had no business being alive, much less climbing up to me.

 

I readied my blasters and hunkered down, staring him in the eye. He snarled, and continued to climb. He knew that he was dying, and he figured that he may as well try to take me with him. Just as the warrior was pulling his legs up and over the lip of the door frame I grabbed the old, useless bar stool and threw it, hard. It missed for the most part; aimed at his head, only the very tip had caught, but I'd been lucky in that respect. Despite my lack of skill in throwing objects due to a lifetime using blasters, the tip of the stool snagged the Vong's exposed brain tissue and tore it free, along with some more that seemed determined to stick to the stuff.

 

The warrior fell forward in a twitching, spasming head, his legs apparently trying to walk as what was left of his brain told them to walk. I edged over to the wall and bent down to examine the corpse. Something made to bight me I did so, but its fangs couldn't find purchase in the armor around my shin. It struck again, very quickly, but my hand was quick enough to catch it behind the neck with my thumb and index finger. I squeezed, hard, and forced the mouth of the amphistaff open.

 

It hissed loudly at me, but its body became rigid as my fingers forced a response from it by pure luck I'd found a pressure point and a weapon for slicing through the floor. Now I could drop down a story, cut through another three walls with a weapon that wanted to kill me, and fly out in front of a psycho with an oversized blaster.

 

I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this moon.

[DarthTofu]

OOC: babababum!

 

IC:

 

Cut through the floor. Check.

Walk out to the edge of the building. Check.

Don't get shot. Hopefully check.

With a last, longing look at the ground beneath my feet I fired off my jet pack.

Immediately my HUD started to screech at me- active targeting sensors were going off. Maybe Micus had tapped my conversation with Hohass. Maybe Hohass had sold me out.

I cut thrust and dropped a bit, then fired it again, rotating so that the blast would send me back toward the building. A stun beam shot past me and grazed my foot. The foot spasmed, but the beam wasn't concentrated enough to take me out. The farther down from it I got the harder a time it would have of killing me.

I dropped a second time and flashed past a transparisteel view port faster than was probably safe. The contour of the building face changed and I activated a second blast to avoid smashing myself upon a sudden outcropping.

A second stun blast flew down and hit me full on, but my rate of decent had brought me down so far that it was an almost meaningless hit- I shuddered a little bit, and I felt a cramp in my calf, but other than that I was fine. A few more controlled burns and I'd be down on the ground.

A blast so close that it actually melted the beskar on my arm ripped through the air. Micus had switched it back to sniping mode. Lovely.

I glanced at the digital speed reading on my HUD. I was currently moving at approximately 100 Kilometers per hour thanks to controlled bursts from my jet pack, but that was still too much to just suddenly stop and veer into another building on a whim. The ground was still another kilometer away, and I was counting on my jet pack to save me.

Another shot slammed sizzled past me, and I could swear that I felt the heat. I was a target over two kilometers away and Micus was still accurate. I had to give him points for that, but I took them away instantly for the fact that he was shooting at me.

Making my body a forty-five degree angle with the ground, I aimed for the building Hohass claimed he and Igens had holed up in. Somehow, miraculously, I made it. I moved in a relatively straight line, but I made it to the other side and survived.

"Hohass?"

"Yes?"

"I'm in your building. Is everything okay over there?"

"To a certain extent. The Vong came in on your friend."

"Did they kill him?"

"No. They threw thud bugs and such at him, but none of them hit. His blaster killed three of them before he flew away."

"Flew away... Alone? Is Omen still around?"

"Yes." That voice was a woman's voice. Dammit.

"Glad to hear that you're all alive. Are we meeting back at Base One?"

"Yes. We're not taking the sky route again, though. Too risky."

"Oh, great, we're using my least favorite method of travel."

"You aren't afraid to get your boots wet, are you, Krassus?"

"I don't like sewers. I can smell them through my air filter."

"Imagine how they smell to us."

"Probably about like you smell to me. Let's just go."

 

Three hours of stamping around through cold, wet bedrock sewers returned us to the Crematorium. It was raining when we clambered out, making the ladder rungs slippery. My boots offered less traction than the synthetic materials on everyone else's feet, and I almost slipped on the way up; it made me glad that I was at the bottom of the ladder.

As soon as we got into the Crematorium I was cornered.

"Who was that man?" Hohass asked. He smelled like a wet pack animal. He looked like a wet pack animal. If Igens weren't looming behind him I'd probably have let him know as much.

"He was Micus. He's a crazy man who's trying to kill me. End of story."

"He was a Mandalorian."

I snorted. "What, you think there's some sort of genetic code that makes it impossible for anyone but a Mandalorian to put the armor on? I'm no more a Mandalorian than Micus."

"Then why do you wear the armor, Krassus?"

"Because it's good and strong. It keeps me alive. Unlike standing still. End of story." I pushed past the three of them and walked into the rain again. Hate this moon...

[DarthTofu]

The rain made a heavy drumming pattern on the plates of my armor, but the water left no mark upon the coating of ash and blood that coated it. I remained a black silhouette of a figure.

 

I sat on the roof of the Crematorium and shut my eyes. It was a stupid move and I knew it- if a Vong patrol saw me, they'd probably throw a thud bug or two my way. But it was dark outside, it was raining, and I was short to start with- when I tucked my legs into my chest and sat against a dark background I looked like nothing so much as another lump of garbage. Even if I could be picked out, I probably looked like a burnt corpse. I certainly felt like one. Micus's blaster attack had left my nerves a bit raw, and the body checks I'd taken hadn't come without bruises. As much protection as my armor offered, it did nothing to negate the overall force of a blow.

 

My HUD gave a small beep and I checked the rear view on my helmet- Omen had come up behind me. Her lightsaber wasn't in hand, but mine were on my blasters in a heartbeat. I didn't draw them, but I kept them at the ready, kept myself prepared to dodge at any second.

 

Omen took no notice of me, however. She simply sat herself down cross-legged. Her clothing was dark, dyed that way. It seemed natural for her- it went well with her features, with her black hair. She seemed to drift into something resembling a trance. I briefly contemplated killing her, but determined that it was a bad idea. Hohass wouldn't like it, nor would Igens. I could probably kill them both with relative ease, but that would do nothing more than waste the charges in my pistols and leave me without resupply runs from the New Republic smugglers. I relaxed my grip grudgingly and stood to leave. I actually pressed off against the ground with the heel of my left hand, a sign to her that I was showing trust. I doubt she caught it.

 

As I walked to the hole I'd clambered up through, she spoke. "Wait a second." Her voice contained a certain amount authority and Hapan egotism to it, but it didn't contain as much as it might. There was malice in her words, but it was masked, shielded. She was trying to keep herself in check.

 

She stood from her stance and rainwater dripped from her ridiculously long hair. "We have to work together. As it stands, you don't like Jedi. I'm not a Jedi. You don't know anything about me."

 

I shook my head and took another step toward the hole. "I don't like Force users. I don't care what you call yourself- if you mess around with powers like that, I don't like you. End of story."

 

"Not the end of the story." An invisible hand gripped me at around the midsection. It wasn't a tight grasp, but it was a firm one. If i wanted to break it, I could. It wasn't meant to be a threat or a display of power- more like a hand placed on one's shoulder. My hands were on the hilts of my blasters when I stopped them. "Force users aren't all alike. It's like saying that all spacers are alike- there are some pirates, sure, but there are also law-enforcers and official military members."

 

"Bad analogy. All spacers aren't alike, but Force users aren't like spacers. They're more like glit-biters. I don't really give a damn why they started on their glitterstim, and it really doesn't matter. They're messing around with matters that are too much for them to control, and they let themselves get lost in it. They hurt themselves and they hurt the people around them trying to keep on hurting themselves."

 

Omen shook her head again, setting her hair to swaying. It was a rather hypnotizing effect, and I focused more on her hair than her words. "That just proves how little you know of the Force. You only know one side- the bad side. There are good sides to it."

 

"The Jedi Side, right? Or is it the Sith Side? Either way, I don't care. You're both messing with the same stuff. We're working together, so that means that I won't kill you until you give me a reason to. The second I even think I have a reason to, though..." I mimed drawing a blaster with my left hand and pulled the nonexistent trigger.

 

"Are you even going to bother listening to what I have to say, or are you just going to cling to prejudice?"

 

I turned away from her and took another step toward the hole and felt her Force grip vanish. "Prejudice, thanks," I called without looking back. I hopped through the hole into an empty room and entered the tiny bedroom I'd selected for myself, leaving her to fend for herself.