Hunter's Moon: Prologue
By Allison 'Teh Scaley' McCulloch
The dunes of Tatooine were silent. The wind was gently blowing, taking small sprinkles of golden hot sand with it. The sky was a bright clear blue and its two yellow suns were beating down upon the rough rocky landscape.
A small pale creature, hairless and awkward with long snouts and no tale, climbed up one of the rock formations. As it climbed up to the top of the rocky outcropping, it raised its head and released a long-lived trumpeting roar. Almost immediately, more of the creatures perked up from where they were searching for lichen beneath the planet's sandy surface, all of them looking in one direction.
A large black blur suddenly zoomed ahead of them, making them all make similar noises and stampede away in fear of the possible predator
Upon the zooming black skiff, Obi-Wan Kenobi was managing to hold his own, barely, as he applied as much strength as he could to his lightsaber to resist the two blades pressing against his. His face, betraying the actual amount of effort he was being forced to exert, had aged since that fateful and tragic day on Mustafar. His beard was now unkempt and graying, his skin burnt by sun and wind, with deep wrinkles and crevices. But his eyes still pierced a blue as bright as the blade of his lightsaber. A blue focused upon his enemy.
"This is… your last chance…" he grunted through the strain of resisting the pair of burning blades trying to edge their way down and end his life.
Its response was to press down harder upon him. Obi-Wan could see so many similarities to him in this creature's form. A few structural changes here and again… but it was like so long ago, against the most powerful non-Force user he'd ever faced… the same long, flexible metallic frame built around a gentle sac of preservative fluid and organs all tightly packed together. Perhaps the biggest difference was the face, or the lack thereof. It was no more than a mask with two wide holes for its wide purple eyes, both frozen in a blank look, unlike the two organic eyes that had portrayed the Separatist's most ruthless leader's absolute hatred of Obi-Wan and all his kind throughout their final duel on the landing platform.
The cyborg's body gave a sudden jolt that forced Obi-Wan backwards, causing him to trip and fall over backwards, the azure blade of his weapon vanishing in an instant as its safety device triggered and it skittered across the metal floor. It barely gave him time to regain his senses when its foot came crashing down upon his chest to pin him to the deck.
"Run away…?" Its voice was feminine, but tainted by the distortions of her mechanical body. "…I've spent a good amount of time hunting you… you and your kind…" Her foot crushing harder against Obi-Wan's chest capitalized her words, and he began to squirm beneath her. "But you above all… age has not done you well, Master Kenobi."
Obi-Wan slowly began to reach for his saber ever so slightly. Stretching out his hand, he reached into the Force, causing the hilt to vibrate slightly, unnoticeable to the cyborg whose blank face still seemed to almost portray a sense of exulting expectation.
"I did not predict this to be so easy…younglings put up more a fight…" She brought her sabers up to prepare her final blow.
The aging Jedi master suddenly tossed his hand up and the hilt flew at the cyborg, igniting in mid-air. She jumped back, but the blade ripped through her armored chest deeply. Putrid black fluid gushed from the wound and she was forced to step back from the Jedi. She looked at the wound, then at Kenobi, who stood up, raising his hand as his saber circled backwards, landing in his outstretched hand gracefully as he assumed another defensive stance.
Within the wound, he saw a lump of black flesh throbbing, held in place by all sorts of wires and tubes, pumping that same vile liquid. He raised an eyebrow. "So you do have a heart."
She twirled her purple sabers, one of them suddenly igniting a second blade. Another hilt zoomed from its resting place on her hip and into the glinting tendril of her tail, a blood red blade erupting from it. "…as well as more lightsabers," the wounded yet still dangerous cyborg hissed.
It was Utapau all over again, that same manic fury of blows. She began to twirl her blades and strike hard and fast at Kenobi, who was barely able to keep up with them all as she spun her double saber in one hand, twirling her body and striking out with all her blades, one quicksilver blow after another, strike after strike. It was the same style, the same incomprehensibly fast hailstorm of blows coming from this wounded but utterly lethal mixture of organic hatred and mechanical killing machine. Taking total advantage of her unnaturally flexible body and stunning agility, she struck again and again and again.
Something suddenly caught his eye, and in a surprise move, he thrust out his hand hard, sending the cyborg flying backwards into the steel railing of the Skiff as she reeled from the sudden Force blow. Jamming his saber into the skiff's control panel, he flipped up his hood and gathered his strength unto him as he leaped from the skiff and hit the sand far below, rolling with the landing.
The cyborg began to prepare for a similar feat when she felt something wrap its way around her leg and slip with lightning speed around her torso. She looked down to see it was some kind of fleshy tendril that was holding on with unbreakable strength. Another shot out from below to knock the skiff away into a nearby cliff where it exploded, but the Sarlacc had its prize.
She flailed her sabers about to try and free herself, but more of the tendrils pulled at her, immobilizing even her inhumanly flexible form. They quickly pulled her towards the center of the pit where the bulging beak-like mouth of the Sarlacc had already extended itself, its fat tongue wiggling around eagerly. The tentacles all suddenly let go of her at once, letting her plummet out of control towards the beast's hungry maw. As she fell within it, the first touch of the Sarlacc's corrosive digestive acid beginning to scald her mechanical body, all she could do was scream.