So this is the next chapter, I have been reading some stories lately that have made me a little excited about this story. Especially since I figured out what the next few chapters and events would take place.
(Shaak POV)
Groaning I blinked open my eyes, my head pounding. Looking around I saw I was in some kind of compound, looking around further with more blinking I could see the padawans and Huyang a little to the left of me being suspended.
Trying to recall what happened, my eyes suddenly widened as memories of the imminent crash came back, this was then followed by concern and worry for what happened to Dead since he wasn't with the rest of us.
Now realising that I couldn't move either, I took a second look at where we all were. There was low playing music as well as laughing and cheering. The room itself was poorly lit. Focusing on the figures which were becoming clearer and clearer I saw they were Weequay and judging from the fact that myself and the padawans were suspended as well and Huyang had a restraining bolt on him, these were most likely pirates.
Suddenly I felt a breeze, causing me to shiver almost violently. Looking down at myself I almost gasped as I saw I was barely in underwear if you could even call it that, little more than strings it was hiding very little of my breasts or private parts.
Looking over at the padawans I could see that they were regaining consciousness, all of them trying to move their arms to rub their eyes, or at least they tried to. Another thing I noticed was that their restraints looked like they could be moved, or at the very least were closer to an exit.
Mine on the other hand was in the middle, between two exits. Gasps and soon shouts of surprise came from the padawans as they tried to free themselves, still not completely comprehending what was happening since they just woke up.
A pirate, presumably the leader, noticed this too and spoke up. "Ahh, so the Jedi awaken at last." He said taking a swig from his drink. This also caused the padawans to stop struggling and look at him.
"You know, this is almost like my birthday, a ship full of jedi and their lightsabers just crashes onto my planet." He continued walking up to me, also bringing the padawans attention to me as well.
"Especially you my dear." He said coming closer to me with a disgusting smile. This prompting gasps from them as they noticed what I was clothed in as well.
"Such beauty, and you chose to be a jedi, how wasteful..." He paused walking into the centre of the room, turning to face me before speaking again. "I had a hard time thinking if it was worth keeping you as a... pleasure slave hehe or to turn you over to the separatists." He finished, making me sick at the thought and the padawans shocked.
"But then I realised you would be worth quite a lot to them, they paid even more than I first thought when they realised you were a jedi master." He continued, before Aria spoke up.
"Is that all you're doing this for!? Money!? Who are you?" She yelled, just causing the pirate to laugh and smile. Approaching her he smiled again, "I like you my dear, you have a fire inside you." He said, before turning to the rest of the people gathered. "And as for who I am the great pirate Odnoh Onaka, and money is the only reason I do anything." He said with a dramatic flair.
"So you sold all of us to the separatists then." I said as he returned to standing in front of me, taking a few seconds to take in my figure. "Oh yes my dear, in fact they are sending someone to collect you, whether you're alive after that is another matter." He said grinning crookedly.
Turning to everyone in the crowd he lifted his drink. "And now, let's continue this celebration!" He shouted before turning back to us. His smile even wider is possible. "Although that Mirialan girl and the Mikkian one as well may fetch a nice price in Zygeria markets, after all I only said four jedi when talking with Count Dooku." He finished with a now evil grin. Making both Aria and Injia's and also my stomachs sink with a feeling of dread filling the whole group.
Even J'air who seemed to have quite the arrogant streak was quiet with a solemn look on his face. If we all got through this then this was sure to be a wake up call for him.
-o0o-
Hours passed, all the while we had to watch as the pirates continued to party, downing drinks and playing with some of their 'pleasure' slaves.
They must have forgotten to move Aria and Injia before the person sent to collect us arrived or simply didn't care because the doors to the room burst open, revealing Dooku's latest assassin... Ventress. That or maybe they would just say that they were a couple of woman they found on a raid of another ship or something.
She eyed the scene with a look of disgust, glaring at anyone who looked at her figure for more than a second with a perverted grin. Approaching Odnoh, who was playing with two of his 'pleasure' slaves before speaking. "So I see that you have indeed captured a jedi master..." She started looking at me, though as a woman she too was disgusted by how I was clothed turning her eye to the padawans. "And several padawans." She finished before looking at him again.
"Yes, now all you need to do is pay me and they are all yours." He said with a grin as he pushed off his slaves.
Before she could even reply and blaster bolt hit him in the head, sending him crashing to the ground, startling everyone, the rest of the pirates assuming Ventress had something to do with it, to avoid paying them as they immediately pulled out their weapons and started firing at her.
They obviously didn't care where they aimed as several bolts came near myself and the padawans, one even scratching Aria on the cheek causing her to let out a scream of pain.
Ventress then worked her way through the less than skilled pirates, cutting one down after another, leaving no survivors.
Now it was just us and Ventress. "Well now I don't have to deal with their filthy eyes looking at me, or paying them." She sneered, spitting on one. "Now, what to do with you?" She said walking around us with a smirk before placing her lightsaber near my throat.
Before I could say anything, the lights which were just barely lighting this room went out, plunging the whole room into darkness except for Ventress' red lightsabers casting a red glow.
Then they came back on, but flickered on and off intermittently, this caused Ventress to remove her blade, stalking the room to see if there was a survivor somewhere.
As she made her way to the centre of the room, a black smoke started to fill the room, making it even harder to see. Seeing it Ventress got in a battle stance. "Show yourself!" She yelled, no reply came, but from the doorway, a pair of blue lights stared through the black smoke.
Slowly footsteps could be heard, as the lights moved closer and closer till the figure of Dead could be seen standing only a few metres away from Ventress, this causing everyone except Ventress to gasp in shock, we all thought he was dead.
"Who the hell are you!" Ventress sneered, though not too worried from her body language, after all she had the lightsabers.
Unsurprisingly Dead gave no reply, he just reached down to his sides, grabbing two things, before lining them up in front of him. Then a burst of black and white energy erupted from them as two lightsabers, one black with white arcs in the blade and the other white with black arcs in the blade.
This caused everyone to gape, it was such a strange sight, there had only been one lightsaber that looked anything like his before if I remembered correctly.
Then I saw him point them at her when I realised what he was going to do. "No Dead, you can't fight her." I called out with worry as he just made a come at me gesture to Ventress, he still was inexperienced in lightsaber combat, prompting her to release an angry screech of rage as she charged him, swinging her lightsabers at him.
He just raised his to meet hers as they stared at each other across their blades. Pulling back Ventress went for another swing followed by a feint, before going for an overhead slash. Dead meeting her every swing and not falling for the feint.
For a few minutes this continued, Dead dodging or blocking Ventress' strikes before making a couple of swings of his own. By now everyone could see that Ventress was tiring, soon enough she would be out of strength and then lose.
Realising this too, she deactivated a lightsaber and grabbed a couple of grenades before chucking them at him and making a run for it.
Dead just waving them away from him and into a pile of pirates, causing them to explode and unfortunately send blood and guts everywhere, thankfully none on us.
Not bothering to chase after her he just deactivated his own lightsabers and turned to us the smoke disappearing at the same time, this prompting me to remember I was wearing very little.
Now we all just stared at each other as an awkward silence filled the room, broken after a few seconds by Aria.
"Dead?" She questioned through the pain, causing him to nod. "How are you alive, the crew quarters and the mess all broke off from the ship, that means-" before she could continue to question him I coughed slightly.
Prompting both of them to turn to me. "If you would be so kind Dead, perhaps you could get us down and then tell us how you survived." I suggested as he just simply nodded in reply, grabbing his lightsaber and cutting us all down.
Once, he cut everyone down, he handed me his half cape in an effort to cover me up a bit. Taking it I put it around me, covering the essentials before he reached to the back of his belt holding out all our lightsabers.
"What about my robes?" I asked, if he got my lightsabers perhaps he got my robes as well. In response he reached behind his back again, holding out a bunch of ripped and shredded material which used to be my clothes.
Sighing I just hugged the cape closer to my body, thankful for his kindness as he removed the restraining bolt on Huyang.
Now that we were all free and had our lightsabers, we all fell silent, no one had a clue on what we should do next.
Seeing no one was going to speak up, Dead just started walking to the entrance he entered and motioned for the rest of us to follow. Having no other ideas we followed him outside, through a few winding corridors with some more bodies filling them before arriving in front of a dock, several ships parked there, taking a vote we chose to take a ship which had a w formation of engines at the back.
Boarding it, we saw it was not unlike the last one we had been on, if anything a little better, it had an armoury that with a bit of modification and remodelling would be perfect for Huyang to keep lightsaber supplies.
Taking off, we set course to Coruscant, looking through out the ship to see if it had any clothes I could wear, so I wasn't using Dead's cape.
-o0o-
Now that we were under way and I had found some clothes and had tended to Aria's injury we were all except Dead and Huyang sitting in this ship's common room, or at least a room we were using as a common room. Everyone was silent, we were still coming to term with what had just happened and what might've happened had Dead not shown up.
Finally J'air spoke up and not in his usual arrogant tone, it was actually quite sincere. "Were they really going to sell them into slavery?" He asked, indicating to Aria and Injia.
Answering with a sad smile. "Yes, they would have... They would've done the same to me or worse if I wasn't a jedi." I added as he just looked down, thinking.
Once again we fell into silence, all we could think about was what if. What if Dead didn't come in time and Ventress had her way. What if Dead came but he was killed by Ventress.
Only a few minutes passed before footsteps were heard, Dead appearing as he walked through the doorway, carrying a sniper rifle over his shoulder.
Watching as he sat down at another table as he began to inspect the sniper more carefully, pulling it apart and cleaning it a little, minding his own business, not even sparing a glance at us.
Watching him for several more moments, finally Aria spoke. "How did you survive and why didn't they find you like they did us?" She asked as everyone broke out of the sombre mood they were in.
He stopped moving the rag he had cleaning the inside of the barrel, instead of speaking he just held up a holo-emitter, playing was a hologram of the wreckage, or rather a crater as that was the only thing of the crew quarters and the mess that had survived.
"That explains why they didn't look for you, there wasn't any point checking a crater for a person but that doesn't answer how you are still alive." Injia pointed out as he just shrugged, returning back to cleaning the barrel.
After a few minutes of thinking what had been bothering me. "You knew what they were talking about, you knew what they had said to us, you were watching us perhaps even before we woke up." I said as he started rebuilding the sniper.
The only reply he gave was a simple nod as he screwed in the barrel. Once complete he looked down the scope to see if everything was working. I guess he'd been keeping his eye on us then. That made me smile a little.
Aria now getting a bit more confident in asking him things then asked. "Dead, why don't you talk, or even remove you helmet?" This piqued the curiosity of the other padawans.
Since he was sitting away from us, he just looked over his shoulder at me and nodded while holding his index and thumb up before closing them together a little, turning back around after he did.
Seeing this I think I got his meaning, tell them, but just the basics, nothing too personal, not that I could anyway, he hadn't told anyone what had happened to him on Grievous' ship or his planet other than it was destroyed.
Sighing I started, giving Dead a couple of looks every so often to not only see if I was revealing too much and to see his reaction to what I told. "First things first, Dead does talk, he just doesn't when its new people or when he has a choice not to." I started as they all listened closely.
"It all started when he was a prisoner of Grievous, apparently he had been one for months, he feels around three or so but he has no accurate measure so it could be more. This wouldn't have been that bad but he was also tortured the whole time." I continued as they gained looks of shock and sadness.
"He escaped somehow, he hasn't told me how, to Christophsis where he met senator Organa, Master Skywalker, Master Kenobi, Rex and Cody and padawan Tano, they incidentally are the other six people he talks to." I added pausing and seeing him at least look like he didn't care at the moment.
"At this time he was still talking although his voice was a bit different because of the torture he went through. It all changed when a clone known as Slick betrayed everyone and blew up the base on Christophsis, Dead at the same time was caught in several of the explosions that destroyed the weapons depot. That is what caused him to talk less and less until he barely talks at all." I finished as Dead got up, walking over to us and pulled a glove off, allowing us to see his scarred hand.
Several gasps came from everyone including me as I had only seen his head, not the rest of his body, though from what I had seen from that, the rest of it couldn't be pretty. The padawans were the most shocked as this was the first time they had seen something like this.
Both Aria and Injia looked horrified, both of them also reached out to touch it slowly, Dead looked like he had an internal debate on whether to allow them to touch him or not. Just as they were about to touch him, he retracted his hand suddenly and put his glove back on.
This made them freeze and take their hands back, Dead then silently left the room, leaving the rest of us confused, but I had a smile on my face, I knew just what would needed to be done.
That action was the closest thing he done to talking to someone other than the seven of us. All we had to do was wait till we got to Coruscant and then I could put my recommendation forward.
