You see? I told you guys I'd get the next one out soon... though we're quickly coming up on another problem. I've once again gone past the amount of content I actually have pre-written.
I have most of the next chapter done, but I'm experiencing a little difficulty on actually writing out everyone fighting everyone, so if there's a delay of a couple of days that's most probably why. Fear not though! I literally have nothing else to do in my free-time but write my stuff, so it shouldn't take too long for updates... but keep in mind that I have school. But I will work tirelessly to get more content out for you guys... it's what I write for.
And, thank you thank you thank you all sooooo much for over 100 reviews... it was a big thing for me with 'Abducted,' and it's a big thing for me with 'Deadly Intrigue,' especially since you guys hit that mark sooner and with fewer chapters. Thank you, all of you, from the bottom of my boogidy, boogidy, boogidy shoe (who knows what song that's from?).
Disclaimer: I don't own the song, I don't own the story... I'm not even sure I own the computer I write this on, it might be my parents. Eh.
It hadn't actually been Kanan's intention to jump into Ahsoka's fight with Vader. After all, the main reason he had run over there had been to get Ahsoka out of her funk and retreat.
But the thing was, retreating wasn't exactly an option when the Dark Lord of the Sith was on your tail. They had to fight until something happened that gave them an opportunity to get away without being pursued: perhaps like Ezra taking control of the turret back. Of course, that had only made Kanan's worry go up a few levels.
His initial fear of Vader taking an interest in Ezra had been confirmed the moment he had asked where the Padawan was, and since then Kanan had experienced a knot of panic in his stomach that only wound itself tighter and tighter with every passing second. And that was only a natural reaction to have, with the man that was Vader on the trail of his apprentice.
So, when Ezra had inadvertently joined the fight through the turret of the Phantom, his emotions had been very mixed indeed. Of course he was proud in his Padawan, but Ezra had now also shown himself to Vader, had made his presence known.
So it was with a renewed vigor Kanan continued to pound against the Sith even as Ahsoka and Ezra focused their talents and weapons on him as well. With the added danger of Ezra's shots firing down at him, Vader now had three concerns to worry about, which left Kanan and Ahsoka with more opportunities to get in an attack or two.
It was like playing a game of holo-chess against an equal opponent. Without any outside interference, there wouldn't be a clear winner, instead a tie. But if something else was thrown into the mix, then it varied up the game, and gave either player an advantage over the other. With Ezra providing that outside interference, there were twice as many possible attack maneuvers either party could employ. Just like in the matches he'd played against Chopper and the rest of the crew.
Except Vader wasn't an equal. And this wasn't a game of holo-chess.
Currently, Ezra had only shot once, forcing Vader to leap away and towards Ahsoka, who was ready and waiting for the Sith. Kanan ran towards them, preparing to intervene just in case. As soon as he got near, however, Vader turned to him and spoke, pressing his lightsaber down hard on top of Ahsoka's two.
"Bridger pulls stunts like this often, you said?" It made Kanan's skin crawl to here Vader say Ezra's name, even if it was just his last one.
Another blast from the turret shot out, making Vader leap straight up into the air in order to avoid it. Kanan stopped himself from running straight into the blast zone, and immediately swung his lightsaber in front of him to block Vader's powerful downwards sweep as he landed. Ahsoka came running in behind him, making the pressure on Kanan's blue blade ease as Vader was forced to block the Togruta's green ones, but he continued talking.
"Then he's like me." More than hearing Vader say Ezra's name out-loud, hearing those four words had a pronounced impact on him. Ezra? Like Vader? Yeah right. To even consider that possibility was laughable. No way Ezra was like Vader. No fricken' way.
"You're dead wrong about that, Vader. He has his moments, but he's nothing like you!" Vader rotated in a quick circle, throwing off two different attacks at once, before answering Kanan: "It is you who are mistaken, rogue. Bridger is still young; the signs are merely hidden beneath the surface where you can not see them." Kanan narrowed his eyes, once again taking swings at Vader.
"He's more grown than you'd think. You don't know anything about him!" Vader kicked Ahsoka to the side, allowing himself a brief moment to lock lightsabers with Kanan and press his considerable strength against the Jedi.
"Don't I? Young, adventurous, brash, caring just a little too much for his friends, handy in battle, charismatic... That is your Padawan, is it not?" His words sent chills down Kanan's spine. How... how did he know? He had perfectly described Ezra without ever having met him. The Inquisitor piecing together who Kanan's Master had been had been one thing, but this was completely different. And Vader seemed to see Kanan's shock and confusion.
"In the past, these words described me as well, Jedi." No. That's impossible. Ezra's nothing like him. He can't be. Ahsoka came flying in once again, but she had no effect on the doubt and fear Kanan was experiencing.
"Yes, and then the Darkness came and changed that boy forever into what I am now. The same will happen to Bridger." No... "He will be swallowed up by the Dark, just as I was." No. "He will turn from the Light and become a monster." No! "It is his destiny, just as it was mine..."
"NO!" Kanan erupted into a frenzy of attacks, his strikes twice as fast as they normally were. Besides him Ahsoka was also fighting her hardest, a snarl on her face, but Vader was just taking it all in, without breaking a sweat... "You don't know anything about him! Ezra will never fall to the Dark again!" Vader parried his lightsaber away forcefully, swinging Kanan's arms out to the side. Another shot from the Phantom made them all scatter before more action could take place, but then Vader was standing up tall once again.
"He will. Or he will die." And he attacked them once more. The only thing was, it wasn't with his lightsaber.
For the first time in the battle, Vader threw out his left hand and connected to the Force, pushing both Kanan and Ahsoka across the floor of the hangar until they were a ways away from Vader. Managing to land on his feet, Kanan was up again just in time to witness one of the most terrifying things he'd seen in his entire life: Vader's red blade swinging through the air, heading straight towards the distant outline of Ezra's horrified face.
.
.
You see, I was sooo tempted to just end it here and make you guys wait for the next chapter to find out what happens... but I'm not that mean. Not yet, anyways. :) Keyword yet...
"No!" Kanan flung out his arm, trying to connect to the Force before the red blade could slice through the glass and reach his apprentice- but he was too late.
The lightsaber cut through the view-port like it was nothing, carving through the glass as it did air. Kanan saw it disappear inside the ship, and moments afterwards come rocketing out the other end of the ship, already flying back towards Vader's outstretched hand.
"EZRA!" In desperation, Kanan ran towards the Phantom, casting out in his mind for the feeling of his Padawan, to make sure that he was alive, that Vader hadn't made his saber slice through his flesh like the glass of the ship, that his heart was still beating-
And for one heart-stopping moment, he felt nothing.
Then Ezra's signature came through Kanan's haze of panic, still pulsating, still fluctuating, still alive. He didn't know how the teen had pulled the stunt off, but he was sure grateful that he had.
"Kanan!" Ahsoka was yelling out behind him, and a single glance backwards told him why. He hadn't been the only one running towards the Phantom. And now he had made the whole situation worse by tenfold by bringing Vader even closer to what Kanan had struggled to keep him away from.
Bringing his lightsaber up in front of him, Kanan only barely blocked the savage swipe that the Sith sent down on him. Apparantly Vader had brought his lightsaber back around and into his hands while Kanan had been running. "How foolish, running towards a lost cause. Do you know what a ship does when its' engines are breached?"
Kanan sucked in a breath as the implications of the Vader's statement bore down on him. Of course his lightsaber would have gone through the engines. And unlike the time when there had been just a simple fuel-leak from the Phantom, this time it was full on destruction. And Kanan did in fact happen to know what happened to ships who's engines were destroyed like that.
"You...!" His sentence was cut off by the arrival of Ahsoka once more, making Vader block a strike to his left side. But the save hadn't come quickly enough.
With a deafening roar, the Phantom exploded, like so many other Ties that the Ghost had shot down. For once, Kanan appreciated just how much the bucket-heads went through as the shock-wave from the explosion threw him backwards, towards the spot he had been pinned down by the 501st members before. Ahsoka flew in the opposite direction, while Vader was able to leap out of the way unharmed. This time there was no graceful landing for him, instead Kanan fell onto the floor with a big enough impact to make his body protest.
He probably shouldn't have stood so close to a ship he knew was about to explode, but he couldn't have exactly helped it, he'd been pinned down...
Ezra.
Immediately Kanan was brought out of his revere. Ezra had still been inside the Phantom, had he not? Hastily Kanan hoisted himself up off of the ground, scanning the wreckage of their ship intently, looking for any sign, any flash of orange... but other than the smoldering flames of the ship, there was nothing.
The Phantom itself was in bad shape. It was mostly intact... but just barely. Pieces of the wings were separated from the body, what had remained of the view-port had been blown out of its' socket, pieces of the dash were scattered around, and there were simply twisted chunks of metal that were all that remained of their engines and the rear portion of the ship. Kanan himself hadn't come away uninjured, a sticky sensation running down the right side of his neck told him that his ear hadn't fared too well at being that close to the explosion. But Ezra was still nowhere to be seen.
"Ezra!?" Kanan nearly choked on the acrid black smoke that was winding its way towards him, and his eyes were watering. But once again, his main concern was the fact that he couldn't see whether his apprentice was okay or not.
Which was probably one of the main factors in why he didn't react fast enough to avoid a heavy, booted kick to the gut.
With almost as much power as the explosion beforehand, Vader's kick sent Kanan flying, the breath knocked out of him. And the thing was, just as Kanan could tell that Vader's suit gave him strength when he'd been in a lightsaber lock with him, he could definitely tell the Sith's suit enhanced his strength when he was on the receiving end of a kick like that.
Kanan flew across the hangar-bay once more, this time going almost twice as far that before and landing nearly twice as hard. Stars swam before his eyes, and he had difficulty breathing. He could feel his tailbone and back muscles bruising even now, and he didn't like the chances of not receiving a concussion from the landing. As it was, Kanan could barely get his chest to rise and fall properly, so the very notion of getting back up onto his feet was ridiculous.
So, when the fuzzy and slightly muted cry from Ahsoka reached his single functioning ear to 'Kanan move!,' he did nothing more than just sort of... flop... feebly as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. Not good. Not good not good this is really not good. Not being able to move while in the middle of a highly intensive battle was far from 'good'. But he still couldn't move.
"NO!" Another shout broke through his hazy perception, and Kanan was just able to put two and two together that he was not in a good position right now. That thought was confirmed when on the edge of his vision he saw a deep red glow. There was only one red thing in the hangar-bay.
Now, Kanan was not one to give up. He was not a weak man to quit when the going got tough, and the rest of the crew of the Ghost could attribute to that. Even when things were apparently hopeless, he was still the stubborn oaf that he'd been since meeting he'd promised himself he would survive after Order 66. That tenacity had allowed him to survive some pretty taxing ordeals, and to bring the rest of his crew along with him to survive strenuous situations.
But this time, he couldn't. He couldn't get out of the situation. He couldn't flee, he couldn't fight, he couldn't even move. Kanan wasn't the sort to give up, but there wasn't any way that he was coming out of his current situation, and he knew it.
Which was why, when an orange-and-blue blur streaked across his vision and blocked the red glowing from his sight, he at first didn't comprehend exactly what had happened. And then, he found himself suddenly able to move very, very fast indeed. Out of fear or concern he had no idea, but it was probably a mix of the two and then some other emotions related.
After all, Ezra had just leaped into the fray to try and defend him.
Oh noes! It's just like in 'FAtG!' Ish.
Just know (and fear) that I'm not held back by my viewers... unlike Disney, I DON'T have to make everything okay for small children... although, with my absolute love for the Ghost crew, it probably will work out. Maybe. Hopefully.
Like I said, I will work around the clock to get you guys the content you clamor for, but don't be scared if I don't post for a few days.
