Disclaimer: I do not own Titanfall or Star Wars Rebels. I do not own the cover image either.
"Blindfold"
Unknown continent
500 miles from Angel City, planet Cerberus
Kanan lay flat on the sand, his custom-painted helmet missing and his R201 split into half by the concussion hours ago. He blinked slightly, only to realise he has lost half of his sights. As he attempted to get back on his feet he felt a warm liquid running down his ear, and his wound burning fiercely.
He screamed out painfully, but his scream won't be heard by anyone, as the craft transporting him has crashed on a desolate dune on the planet of Cerberus. He managed to muster his energy to sit up straight and turn around to the wreckage of the dropship. Its head was buried within the sand and its tail was burning, with what's left of the fuel inside the engines ignited.
He had no idea who was responsible for shooting down the dropship he was in. All he remember was seeing a prototype imperial battleship painted with English words that spelled IMS Draconis and a barrage of missiles flying towards the squadron of dropships. Kanan reached for his medkit and slapped the first piece of cloth he could grab on his wound. And as he did he couldn't help but cry out in pain. His left eye was now inoperable, rendering him visually impaired.
No this can't be. No Titan will ever allow me to link with him.
He struggled back to the militia dropship and salvaged every weapon he could find, while looking for a way to secure his bandage every twenty seconds. He flipped and tossed the bent steel and straps around him, but all he could find was a R97 that will need half a clip to kill an imperial grunt, and three extra clips for his P2016.
Glad the ammunition is still in my favour.
After finally strapping his dressing in place, he climbed out of the wreckage with some rations and extra ammo. He landed on his knees as he hopped off the edge of the dropship, but they were protected by his orange and green knee guards that extended to his shin.
He wound still hurts, but it was nothing compared to his loss on Demeter. That was the exact place and battle where he lost his wife, and he's been fighting alone in the Saber Corps for moths, with a few recruits under his command.
He still remembered the times he and his wife fought together on Ryloth, where the two pilots' path crossed. And the times they pulled batteries out of an Atlas Titan and dominated the fuelling stations on Fracture. Afterwards they went from teammates and friends to lovers, despite the fact she wasn't human and had two tentacles extending from her brain, which scared many recruits and riflemen among the 1st militia fleet when she was first inducted into the Saber Corps.
His broken heart to her loss was still hanging over his bones, but he had to move on regardless to his pain. Cerberus didn't earn its name for no reason. The outskirts of the planet was home to the Raiders, a predator that feeds on the flesh of any species, especially humans.
He strolled away from the dropship with his R97 on his back and his recovered helmet clipped to the side of his waist. He put his full attention to the mapping systems in his helmet, but with the skies now dark, he wasn't able to tell north from south.
Kanan marched on for another few hours, not daring to eat his rations despite his instincts urging him to. Pieces of smoking hot steel marked his route to civilisation, a long 300 miles to go before he even reaches the outer regions of the Angel City.
On the way he ran into the feared Cerberus pack, starving for dinner. The Cerberus proved to be a challenge to him, but their size gave Kanan an opportunity to tackle them and use his guns against them.
His energy was dangerously low though. And the only possible mean to keep him alive was to cook the Cerberus corpses. And that's when he took his only break throughout the journey, sitting down on a stone and trying to start a fire with his fire starter.
It took him another half an hour to start a stable fire, but the Cerberus flesh totally made up for the energy loss. He was now capable of walking another few hundred miles, with his rations untouched and sitting inside his tiny backpack above his jumpkit.
He walked on for hours with the nightfall approaching as he marched through the desert. But as he climbed a ridge stretching along the desert the sight below him made him go prone instantly. Imperial drones and grunts filled the plain below, with several dropships and a deactivated green Titan parked beside the grunts.
Looks like that Titan is my only hope.
Kanan had no suppressors on his firearms. So a single shot is going to alert the whole camp. He knew he had to pick his shot carefully, but he was hesitant to start with a single grunt. He scanned the are for explosive materials, a technique his old friend Lastimosa taught and demonstrated in front of him during a Gauntlet run.
Right now he has lost half his visual intel, but that didn't stop the SRS pilot from picking a target patrolling near the edge of the campsite. His shot rang across the desert, alarming the troops and Spectres below him.
Kanan swiftly got up and activated his cloaking device after confirming his kill, rendering himself invisible for a few seconds and allowing him to get a new vantage point. The drones below detected the anomaly and hovered further away from the infantry to investigate, allowing Kanan to take down take down them one after another.
He was finally located near an improvised office when he broke the neck of a grunt in front of a squad of imperial soldiers. The remaining drones spat out clusters of ble energy bolts, but none of them were fast enough to reach the pilot before he relocated himself at the other side of the box shaped office.
He was fired upon by several grunts when he tried to move once more, but a few imperial ground troopers weren't a problem to him, even if his eye was crippled. He paced sideways, and aimed for their heads, sending their helmets flying off them and killing them almost instantly.
"Pilot spotted!" A grunt below the slope shouted out. As the garrison approached Kanan, he boldly slid down the slope, ignoring the heavy fire coming at him. The second he touched down he leaped off the ground and double-jumped, rendering several grunts to be disorientated.
With the grunts now crammed together, Kanan pulled out a frag from his vest and pulled off its safety ring, igniting a fireball behind him and giving him sufficient momentum to wallrun on the Vanguard and jumping on another grunt below.
A second imp approached him and kicked his SMG off his hands, but before he could attack him further, the pilot slid his knife stocked on the stomach of his vest and sliced his leg. The grunt fell and pulled out his sidearm in an attempt to take Kanan with him to death, but it was Kanan's turn to snatch his gun, and he was finished off after Kanan fired two rounds into his head.
Kanan examined his newly acquired RE45 quickly and primed it. He spotted a Spectre turning its chassis and aiming its rifle at him. Without a second thought, Kanan aimed his pistol at its thin legs and fired a short but deadly burst into it, tearing its right shin apart and throwing it off balance.
As he launched a kick into the data brain of the Spectre another grunt tried to wrestle him, but was stopped when Kanan countered his jab and stabbed his knife into the stomach of the grunt as many times as he thought he needed. While he was fighting the grunt in front of him, he scanned the area around him for an approximate headcount to judge where he should double jump to next.
And as he did, he noticed a series of green tubes flash in the distance. He was looking at Titan batteries, fully charged ones, that will allow him to activate the captured Vanguard Titan and hopefully, obtain some info that will ensure his survival.
Without another option at hand, he slid underneath the squad of grunts and Spectres and sprinted towards the batteries with all his strength. "That pilot's still alive! Use your Ticks!" He heard a female grunt shout out and turned his weapon at him, unloading shots at her and another couple of troopers with spider-like machines on their hands.
Kanan wasn't exactly the best of all pilots. In fact he was stuck in the middle of the leaderboard on the Gauntlet run, with his comrade Ezra Bridger and a certain Tai Lastimosa constantly competing against him. But he knew well how deadly and effective Ticks were, and without a second thought, he made a run for the batteries without even looking back.
The only grenade he had left was used on the wave of grunts minutes ago, and he was forced to take out the Ticks the hard way. By firing bursts with his full-auto sidearm on two of the self-destruct crawlers, he managed to detonate the rest of the released Ticks by starting a chain reaction within them.
"Kappa three, move in on the batteries!" Another grunt ordered from nowhere, and out of Kanan's sights. At that point there wasn't any grunts or imperial machines in the area, which gave him a moment to catch his breath and install the batteries into the hip of the green and orange striped Titan.
He still needed one more for the Titan to be combat ready, but two would do to him, for now. "Power at two-thirds. Datacore reinitialised. Ocular systems online." Announced the bulking green and orange mech. "Warning. Hostile infantry detected. Transferring power to acolyte pods." It continued as its thin grey arms extended from its back and deployed a pair of missile launchers, shredding the last of the grunts and Spectres moving in towards the duo.
The Titan turned to Kanan after it tore the last Spectre apart. "Activating facial recognition. Name: Kanan Jarrus. Rank: Staff sergeant. Physical status: Visually impaired..." Kanan cut it off before it could blurt out its pre-programmed statements. "Yeah. I know I'm hurt. Who are you?" He asked.
"My serial number is VT-01. I am a prototype Vanguard-class Titan of the Frontier Militia. You may call me VT until you come up with an acceptable nickname." Replied the Titan. "Okay. VT. Catchy name." Commented Kanan as he tossed his RE45, now out of ammo.
"At my current state I am functional, but I will require a third battery to restore my limb motors. If you will, we can ambush the imperial reinforcements and acquire the battery." Said VT. Kanan supported his head with his fist, wondering if he was even capable to counter more imperial forces.
"It is up to...warning. Enemy titanfall detected. 2 miles out and closing." The Titan continued as the sound of thruster engines grew louder, followed by a muffled crash. "Looks like it's up to them to decide." Kanan said to his new ally.
"Unlikely. The only means I can calculate is to destroy the enemy Titan and obtain the battery. You may use the Rodeo manoeuvre. It has been proven to be effective by my programmers." Replied VT, who was reloading its missile pods and training it towards the incoming Titan transport.
"What is the Rodeo manoeuvre?" Kanan asked. "It is a trick introduced by a twi'lek pilot of the Saber Corps. By using your jumpkit you can hop onto the auxiliary battery slot of a Titan and take it for yourself. Some pilots also throw explosive weapons into the slot. It's not exactly the same, but similar." VT explained to Kanan.
A salvo of missiles emerged from the shoulders of the friendly Titan as Kanan scanned the area for the hostile mech. The projectiles adjusted their course and hurtled towards the white dropship, followed by a grey and crimson explosion from the sky, sending the ship plummeting to the ground in flames.
"Enemy Titan spotted. Unknown class. Get ready pilot." Said VT as a silhouette emerged from the ridge and slid down towards the two of them.