The Rise of Pulsar Company

by PygmalionKK

The son of a Mandalorian, two escaped slave girls, and an astromech from the Clone Wars work together to escape Tatooine. As they transition from greenhorns into famous mercenaries, they get into considerably larger amounts of trouble - from murderous pirate lords and serial killers to bioterrorists and ancient horrors of a long dead race, all in the pursuit of more credits.

19. Path's End

I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates. Life has been super fucking busy for me, what with me graduating recently and also working on getting my driver's license.

Anyways, Brigador is cool. It's actually given me a lot of inspiration for one of the later arcs.

Read and review.

---

Nax kept flicking through the Pather database with Sidewinder's assistance, trying to produce something of value that they could use to end the Path. Kyra and Lexi were also in the cockpit with him, but the two of them were listening to INN while Nax worked. "…In other news, there has been a recent spike in terrorist attacks against hospitals, government buildings, and other essential infrastructure, with the most frequent targets being hospitals overloaded with patients suffering from CRV-02." Fay said, her voice crackling against the datapad's shoddy connection. "At the moment, these attacks are mostly limited to suicide bombings and skirmishes with law enforcement. Bodies of these attackers have been recovered, and they appear to all carry iconography similar to the Path of Ludd. Officials are still investigating, but If anyone has further information, please call-" Fay extrapolated, before Lexi switched the datapad to some music to take their minds off of the situation.

Lexi turned to stare out the cockpit window. Out of the group, she was far and away the most upset, and none of them could really blame her. To her, it seemed like everything bad in her life had happened because of Pathers. Both parents killed, Pathers let a virus loose, and now the lower levels were basically under siege from the myriad Pather cells that had hidden right under the Empire's nose.

Kyra stopped nursing the bruises on her arm and turned her attention to Lexi, nudging her gently. "You alright?" she asked, concerned for her friend. Nax said nothing, but had begun to halfway pay attention to them.

Lexi had her head half-buried in her arms, and she turned her head to look at Kyra, barely trying to stay awake. "You tell me, Ky – do I look fine?" she snapped bitterly. Kyra had already expected that sort of response, and opted to hug her friend. "I-" Lexi stammered, catching herself. "Sorry for snapping like that, it's just that these things keep happening, and it just… takes a toll, you know?"

Kyra nodded in understanding. "I know what you mean, Lex." she replied, before looking out the window with her. "What you're feeling now is just about what I felt like on Tatooine. It's like you said – things kept piling up for me until I reached a breaking point." Kyra continued, before pausing for a second. "We've got less broken bones now, though." she remarked sarcastically. Lexi slowly straightened herself out, chuckling at the joke, before resting her head in her palm. "Want to play another round of Battlegrounds?"

Lexi pursed her lips before sighing. "…Sure, why not?" she said, sounding drier than she probably intended, before getting up and heading to the crew lounge, with Kyra quickly following her in tow.

Nax waved after the two of them. "Sidewinder and I'll be in here if you need us!"

The two girls sat down at the holotable, and Kyra slid the datacard for Galactic Battlegrounds in, setting a duel game up and letting the game generate a scenario and battlemap for them to play. While they waited on the game to generated, Lexi shifted her gaze from the table up to Kyra. "Hey, Ky?" she asked, and Kyra hummed a response that signalled for her to continue speaking. "I know you told me back on the Bantha that you didn't remember who you were, but is there any chance you've maybe remembered something since?"

Kyra paused once the game had finished generating a scenario, which had turned out to be the Empire versus Holdouts. "…There's that painting of that woman with the white hair in the hold. She looks familiar to me, somehow, but I can't pin why." Kyra answered, before tapping her chin thoughtfully. "…That, and I've been having these… dreams, I guess."

"Dreams?" Lexi pressed as they heard the faint sound of rain pattering against the ship's hull. "What kind of dreams?" she continued, before selecting the Separatist holdouts.

Kyra rested her arms against the table. "A few recurring ones." she said, before closing her eyes and trying to think of a way to put them into words. "…There's one where I'm climbing a mountain range with a few others. No faces, just… shadows. It's cold and snowing, and we're all in heavy clothing. When dawn breaks, I turn to face the rising sun, and I see the outline of a palace, or castle, or something. Someone comes up behind me and touches my shoulder, and I turn back. The dream ends before I can see who it is." Kyra revealed, before selecting the Empire for play.

Lexi twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. "A palace, huh?" she repeated, tapping the side of her head. The game revealed the map to be a jungle. "Sithspit." Lexi cursed at the game as the two of them selected their bases. Kyra set hers up in a large village of sympathetic locals, while Lexi built hers in a crashed Lucrehulk, and the match began.

Kyra had been sluggish with deploying her troops and buildings, clearly more focused on talking about the dreams than actually playing. "There's another dream where I'm on a balcony, looking over a multi-tiered city in a valley. The place is gorgeous – no skyscrapers or air traffic to ruin the view, just glittering lights along the streets, and a long, winding river that runs from near the building I'm in, all the way down and out of the city. In the middle tier, the river pans out into a large pond with a massive tree at the center, its leaves fading between luminescent reds, pinks, and blues." Kyra detailed meticulously while setting up defenses around her base, and Lexi by this point had been completely infatuated with what she was describing.

"…But even though I should be amazed, I'm not. I feel like I've seen that sight hundreds, maybe even thousands of times before. If anything, I feel like I'm alone, and I'm angry at someone close to me. Someone else comes up to me and leans on the balcony railing with me, and we start talking." she went on, practically rambling at this point. By now, Lexi had already secured her half of the map, while Kyra was only just getting her scout units made. "It's mostly inaudible to me, but I know she's a friend. Someone I could trust. The dream ends when she leaves." Kyra finished off.

Lexi clasped her her hands together. "You know, Ky, that was pretty flowery of you. You sure you didn't do opera before?"

Kyra had a pensive look about her. "Pretty sure." she responded. "There's another dream, but…" Kyra said hesitantly, before deciding to focus on the game. An easy roll for Lexi wouldn't be much fun for either of them. The game went on and on, both sides taking significant attrition from the landscape. Kyra's troops and commanders came down with cases of Red Haze, Xiu's Disease, and Malablood, while Lexi's had their joints rust and fall apart, which meant Kyra had enough of an opportunity to gain some ground despite the disadvantage. Firing a salvo of defoliator shells at Lexi's lines to burn her cover away. Then, and only then, did she bunker her forces down along a river embankment that divided the map. "Your move." Kyra taunted playfully.

Lexi examined the holographic battlefield, significantly annoyed. "What the hell is this bantha shit?" she cursed, pouring over her admittedly limited arsenal for a solution to her seemingly unsolvable problem. Her standard battle droids suffered attrition too quickly to be effective when coming to the front, and she could field only so many specialty droids. "Seriously, what the shit? That's cheating!" she accused.

"You gonna throw in the towel?" Kyra suggested, further sparking Lexi's competitive fervor.

"Like hell I will!" Lexi replied, before returning to her arsenal. She had a very brief epiphany, and moved her vehicle and infantry production buildings up to a control point practically right on top of her own lines, before pumping out fresh waves of droids and vehicles, mostly AATs and supported by a few defoliators. Before Kyra could comment on what her line could see, the defoliators fired, blowing a massive hole in the center of her lines. Kyra quickly scrambled to fill the gaps, but freshly built B2 rocket droids had crossed the river and gotten into her trench line, making short work of her Stormtroopers. The rest of Lexi's army quickly followed through the gap, and her lines easily collapsed from the sheer number of droids.

"Well played." Kyra congratulated, before immediately surrendering, her base's hologram exploding in a shower of fire and debris from a self-inflicted orbital strike.

Lexi was confused. "Huh? Why'd you surrender?"

"Because you had already won the game. There's not much I can do about defoliators without bombers, you know." Kyra explained as the game went into sleep mode, waiting for further inputs. "No point in fighting an already lost battle."

Lexi seemed to take that to heart, before cracking her fingers. "So, about those other dreams – want to tell me about them before we move to round two?"

Kyra nodded and got into a more comfortable position. "…Right, so, third dream." she said, preparing herself for any adverse reactions she might have to retelling this one. "I always start out in a beautiful garden in the early morning. There are side pathways forming a square around the garden, and the central area is large enough to hold a small crowd. I'm walking through towards an entrance gate, with a presence similar to the friend from the other dream. The gates swing in towards the garden, and several shadow people come through it." she spoke slowly and deliberately, Lexi hanging off her every last word. "One figure is an overweight man who I swear I've met before, another is a man who had a build like Nax, but he seemed more… I don't know, I guess 'professional' would be the word for it." Kyra continued, tapping her finger against the inactive table, sparking minor holograms in reaction.

"The third is a woman, and I feel some kind of animosity towards her, but that's not important – what is important is the second guy. Every time I have this dream, whenever I see him, I always get chills." Kyra continued to reveal, and Lexi's expression had now taken a far more curious look. "There's just something wrong about him."

"Wrong in what way?" Lexi pressed out of curiosity.

Kyra snapped her fingers trying to bring the details to the forefront of her mind. "Wrong with him as in he's done something horrible, but he's hiding it behind a polite façade." she tried, feeling as if she had failed to adequately describe him. "It's like there's a manipulative evil brewing inside of him. He takes my hand and kisses it as the woman introduces us, but I can't make heads or tails of what she's saying." Kyra continued, gradually getting more and more disgusted with herself. "I feel like I want to cut my entire arm off and burn it to the bone just to get his touch off of me."

Lexi tapped the side of her face in thought. "That's… odd." she remarked, pursing her lips. "Maybe once we're done crushing the Path, we can look into those dreams of yours."

Kyra brushed her bangs out of her face and cocked her head to the side. "Nax was already planning on helping me look into who I was, actually." she revealed, before straightening up. "Anyways, round two?"

"You're on!"

---

Nax stared at the terminal with tired, almost dead eyes. He'd poured over every single Pather cell they had info on, and yet found nothing that could give a clue as to where exactly the Path's leaders were operating from. Going from cell to cell would be a tremendous waste of time and resources, and would alert the Path's leaders that they were being hunted down.

Burying his head in his hands out of frustration, Nax let out an annoyed groan. Sidewinder twittered a question at him. "I know we're getting nowhere, Sidewinder, just… run the sweep again." he ordered, and Sidewinder chirped once, initiating the system sweep. After a few short minutes, Sidewinder chirped a negative, and Nax hit his head against the console in anger.

Lexi had apparently heard Nax's frustration and came into the cockpit. "You're still up?" she said in shock, heading over to his side. "You find anything useful?"

Nax let out a frustrated groan. "No." he answered, falling back in the chair and looking up at Lexi, letting her get a good look at just how dead he looked. "There's nothing on what we stole from the Path that even hints at a place the leaders could be hiding."

Lexi bent over and looked at the terminal's readout of Pather files. "Nothing?" she pushed.

"None that I could see." he said. Lexi tapped her finger against the console impatiently, before stepping back and pulling out her datapad, connecting it to the terminal. "What're you doing?"

"Running one of my own programs that'll go through the files and find anything hidden." Lexi answered curtly, before throwing her hands on Nax's shoulders. "It'll take a while to find anything. Probably a day or so, so that means your ass needs to get some rest." she chided. Nax didn't complain at all, and instead got up and headed straight to the crew quarters, his walk looking more like a shamble. Lexi followed him, making sure to catch him pre-emptively whenever it looked like he was about to fall over. As soon as he was in the crew quarters, he threw his duster and shirt off and practically dived under his bunk's covers, already asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Yawning, Lexi was briefly tempted by the prospect of slipping into something more comfortable and jumping into bed with Nax, but she decided against it and headed to the crew lounge. Grabbing some soda out of the conservator, she hopped into the lounge seat and set the table to play whatever it could find off the holonet.

Lexi popped the tab on the can and began to drink, taking the alone time as a chance to ruminate on things. Specifically, Nax – there was just something about the way he treated both her and Kyra. Any normal person his age would've seen the signs the both of them had been giving and would've pounced at the chance. Instead, Nax seemed to be single-minded about whatever job was at hand, and wasn't too terribly interested in a relationship outside of platonic ones.

There was a faint metal waddling coming from down the corridor, and soon after, Zeethree entered the crew lounge. "Ah, good evening, Master Sapphyra." he greeted in the jovial tone typical of his line. "I trust you are doing well?"

Lexi nodded in response, sipping from her can. "Could be a helluva lot better, Zeethree." she said, before sitting forward. "I wanted to ask you something about Nax, actually." she offered up, catching Zeethree's full attention.

"Certainly!" Zeethree said, curtly bowing his torso to Lexi. "What did you want to know about Master Strag, Master Sapphyra?"

Lexi pursed her lips to briefly think of a first question for the droid. "Why does he act the way he does?" she questioned.

Zeethree cocked his head to the side, and if his face could move, he'd have one hell of a confused look, but dimming his photoreceptors would have to suffice. "I'm afraid you'll need to elaborate, Master Sapphyra."

Lexi clicked her tongue a few times, trying to grasp for a way to put it to words. "I'm talking about the way he treats Kyra and I." she explained, and Zeethree tilted his head back in a kind of 'ah-hah' way. "He's overly protective of the both of us – I could have just as easily patched my wound from Rest's droid myself, but he insists on doing it for me. Same thing with Kyra, even Kelah and Nevda, two people he's barely known."

Zeethree waddled over and sat down opposite of Lexi, and she shut down the holonet feed to focus on the conversation. "Ah, that." Zeethree said in a flat tone, his receptors briefly dimming. "Master Sapphyra, if I may ask – don't you think it would be better to ask Master Strag about this, rather than going through me?"

The corners of Lexi's mouth twitched in brief thought. "Nax hasn't told me anything about this., Zeethree." she answered, cracking her fingers.

"He has told me nothing of this either, although I have my suspicions as to why he acts this way." Zeethree replied, before getting up and preparing to leave the lounge. "It is not my place to say what is or is not going through Master Strag's head, Master Sapphyra. Good night." Zeethree finished, before leaving Lexi to herself.

Having decided that she was actually going to go to sleep now, Lexi got up and headed for the cockpit and launched herself into the chair Nax had been sitting in earlier. After triple checking her gear to make sure the gear would run overnight, Lexi closed her eyes and quickly drifted into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

When she came to in the morning, she found a freshly brewed mug of caf on the terminal, and her code was about ninety-seven percent done. "…Shit, you're a light sleeper, huh?" she heard Nax say, even with her mind as fogged as it was. "Morning."

Lexi stretched and rubbed her eyes, before she turned the chair to face Nax. "…Morning, Nax." she greeted back, before yawning. "…Where's Kyra?"

"Making breakfast. She's been nagging me about letting her do it, and I couldn't be assed to make breakfast – too tired." he answered, and Lexi gently pushed Nax in a joking manner.

"…And that's what you get for last night!" Lexi teased, poking him.

"You're one to talk, Lexi!" Nax retorted, amused with her antics for once. Once the two of them were done pushing each other's buttons, Lexi's expression faded, and Nax noticed right away. "Something bothering you?" he questioned, and Lexi nodded once, motioning for him to sit down, to which he obliged. "Spill it, Lex. What's going on?"

Lexi remained silent for an uncomfortably long time. "…Why do you treat Kyra and I the way you do?" she eventually blurted, only serving to encourage Nax's confusion. She easily picked up on this and turned to face him fully. "I mean how you're so overprotective of us both. You insist on taking care of wounds we could easily handle ourselves, every time we go somewhere potentially dangerous, you make it a point to be the one leading us around, and so on, and yet when we hit on you, you just take it and move on." she trailed briefly, trying to figure out how to put her thoughts to words. "You protect us like your life depends on it, but you're intentionally staying distant from us. Why?" she finally managed to get out.

Nax's expression hardened. "…Lexi, the three of us are bounty hunters. We don't exactly have great life expectancies." he said as he clasped his hands together. "I could get closer with the both of you, take on a job, and next thing I know, I'm alone again. It's better for us to just stay friends and partners than get any closer."

Lexi furrowed her brow. "Nax, I know there's something you aren't telling me, but I want to ask you this – don't you think you would be happier if you weren't so… detached?" she questioned. Nax shifted in his chair slightly, but otherwise didn't respond. Even though he didn't speak, Lexi interpreted his body language as some kind of mixed answer. "…I see." was all she said, before getting up and leaving the cockpit, looking hurt.

---

The Arch-Canon and Reika observed the barely functional equipment in their new command center. "Well, it's no Scarif, but it'll do." the Arch-Canon mused as he brushed his fingers along a dead monitor.

Reika, however, was not impressed in the slightest. "This is where we'll be coordinating the Uprising?" she questioned as she picked up a cracked datapad and dropped it back on the table where she found it. "I could just as easily get us an asteroid base in the outer reaches of the system, or get us an abandoned garrison, or-" she rambled, until the Arch-Canon shushed her.

"This will do just fine, Reika. Bring the others in so we can get to work." the Arch-Canon ordered.

Reika bowed her head. "Of course, Arch-Canon." she said, before heading back out the door to fetch the Arch-Canon's most loyal followers.

Now that he had been given a brief amount of privacy, the Arch-Canon reached into his robe until he found a very familiar weapon, no larger than a glowrod, similar in shape to one, too. It had a chromium finish with a ribbed grip that, while technically being a plastoid compound, felt like softened bantha hide. The Arch-Canon flicked the red switch on the side up, letting the white-orange blade come from the top of the weapon, accompanied by the usual snap-hiss. The energy blade crackled and hissed as power coursed through the hilt, bathing the room in its tinted glow.

The Arch-Canon cracked a sickening smile as he pulled his hood and mask down, revealing a nearly ruined face, marked with scars and burns everywhere, the only semblance of humanity being his eyes, which were bloodshot, making his sickly yellow-red pupils stand out as even more menacing than they would without the damage. "…Do you see, Master?" he murmured, closing his eyes and reaching out. "Our dream is becoming a reality – soon, all those who took our Order from us will pay – them and their damnable monstrosities."

The Arch-Canon felt something reaching out to the back of his mind. Something familiar, but also something he had learned to detest, and he mentally pushed the feeling away, snuffing it out like one would a candle's flame.

He felt Reika's presence approach the door, and quickly shut the lightsaber off, storing it in his robe and throwing his hood and mask back on right as she came back in. "The others await your bidding, Arch-Canon." Reika stated humbly, bowing before him.

Tapping his fingers against his arm in a wavelike motion, the Arch-Canon huffed in an approving manner. "Very good, Reika." he said, gesturing to the derelict equipment in the room. "Have them set up the communications equipment in here before anything else."

Reika bowed her head once again. "Of course, Arch-Canon." she accepted, turning back and pausing in the doorway, as if a question had crossed her mind, but she let it go.

Within the hour, the comm specialists and technicians had done a very basic job of restoring the old equipment to a functional state, which, while insufficient for the Arch-Canon's long-term plans, sufficed for his immediate usage. The Arch-Canon approached one of the active stations and ordered the comm specialist to prepare a message for dissemination amongst the cells, an order he complied with at a remarkable pace before clearing himself from the station for the Arch-Canon to record his message. He took a deep breath, and prepared himself. "…Followers of the Path, hear my word!" he declared in a grandiose fashion. "The Uprising is upon us, and with it, the fall of the butchers in the Synthskin Union will soon be at hand! For too long, them and their ilk have led ruin to our lives and families – our youngest may not remember the devastation wrought by the Clone Wars, but many of us do – we've lost friends, family, even lovers to the technological decadence and corporate greed of the Confederacy, and the Synthskin devil have taken in many of those same Confederates." the Arch-Canon continued, giving particular pause at the mention of lost lovers, before moving on with his speech. "Even now, our virus sows ruin and dissent amongst the ranks of the Synthskin devil, their numbers whittling with each new case as divine punishment for their degradation and butchery of the natural form. Soon, the entire planet will be trembling before our feet, and with it, the Synthskin demons will be no more, and then the Empire will bow to our demands!" the Arch-Canon finished, mustering every bit of pride and zealous fervor from within, before stepping back and letting the comm specialist prepare his speech for dispersal.

Subconsciously, the Arch-Canon patted his lightsaber, thinking fondly of what he would do with it. Vader and the Emperor both would surely fall to his hand, and he planned to savor every last second of their end. The silenced voices of the Order demanded it, and the Synthskins were just a stepping stone.

---

Against all odds, there had been something hidden on what they had stolen from the Path – the location of a disbanded cell's base located on level 867, dating back to ten years ago. The base itself had been marked as condemned by some forgotten Pather leader, but the sheer fact that it was hidden on the files in the first place served as reason enough for them to investigate. Maybe it had some sort of clue towards where the Pather leaders were. Hell, maybe it was where they were.

Nax, Kyra, and Lexi disembarked from the ship with Sidewinder and Knockout trailing them, the latter wearing the Magnaguard's torn cape as a battle trophy. Anything lower than level 1000 was effectively out of Imperial jurisdiction, and mutations began to crop up at exponential levels the further down one went, so much so that they the three of them had come out of the ship fully geared – Nax and Kyra in their Mandalorian armor, the latter's helmet adorned with another tally mark for bringing in Rest, while Lexi had partial plastoid armor on, in addition to a full-face respirator, her reasoning being that it was best not to risk catching an underworld disease.

The group warily walked to the nearest magtrain station, passing by a few weary onlookers who looked like hell, and were paying just as much as attention to the foreigners who dared intrude upon their turf, utterly undeterred by the death glares Nax and Kyra were giving off with their helmets, or Knockout's imposing stature and outline in the dim neon lighting.

They descended the stairwell into the station, vaulting over the turnstiles and past a decayed checkpoint with the glass broken in. The further they went, the darker it got, the lights barely getting any power from the local energy grid. The instant Nax clicked his helmet-mounted glowrod on, there was a huge spark that came down from one of the lights further ahead, and the whole station finally went dark.

Lexi traced her fingers along a piece of graffiti that read NO REST 4 THA WIKID. "Sheesh, conduit worms did a hell of a number on this place." she remarked, earning puzzled looks from Nax and Kyra. "Conduit worms, you know, little bastard pests that'll wreck a freighter worse than a pack of Mynocks? Hello?"

"Never heard of 'em." Kyra said, fingering her blaster's trigger in anticipation.

Lexi shrugged in response. "…Eh, doesn't surprise me. You don't really see many of them off-world anymore." she replied. Just then, there was the sound of what may have been a decent sized chunk of metal being dragged across decrepit tiling. Sidewinder flew into the darkness ahead and turned his light on, shining it onto a single metallic tendril that seemed to be moving on its own in a snakelike manner. Tiny little capacitors and batteries branched off of the tendril, being dragged along the ground lazily. The 'head', if you could even call it that, consisted of a scomp link plug with a set of headphones for 'eyes', its vision constantly trailing Sidewinder as he circled it. "That," Lexi pointed. "is a conduit worm." she finished, before flicking the safety off on Thel's blaster and giving the creature a nice burst of hot plasma. "Was a conduit worm." she snarkily corrected.

Nax's first reaction was to walk over to the dead worm and pick it up, even as it leaked oil and other, probably corrosive liquids. "You called this a conduit worm?" Nax asked, glancing over his shoulder at Lexi, and then returning his attention to the worm once she nodded. "Back on Tatooine, we called them cablebugs. Didn't know there was any other name for them." he commented, before throwing the worm aside and moving further into the station.

They all came out to the main platform very soon after, the two tunnels for the magtrains already being occupied by long decommissioned magtrains, their repulsorlifts having given up years ago. Curiously enough, the magtrain on the right seemed like someone had been using it as a passageway recently – there was a door ripped from the train and set over the gap between the passenger car and the platform. "…That's weird. Looks like someone's been here recently." Kyra commented, poking at the door with her foot.

"You think it was Pathers?" Nax asked.

Before Kyra could respond, Sidewinder twittered aggressively, shining his light at the dented frame of the magtrain door. "Oh, for the love of-" Lexi swore, rubbing the unevenly shaped metal. "It's not Pathers. It's an ogre." she continued, poking her head inside the train and finding the seating ripped up and torn, like an animal was chewing on it. "It's definitely an ogre. Knockout, you've got point!"

Kyra and Nax exchanged glances. "Ogre?" Kyra echoed.

"Coruscanti Ogres. You take a biped the size of a Devaronian, and make it look like a hairy Eopie nugget." Lexi elaborated, stepping inside the train fully and half-looking over her shoulder at the others. "Mean, ugly bastards that'll tear you apart just as soon as look at you, then eat whatever's left. Hate 'em."

Nax followed Sidewinder into the train, and initially they planned to head down the left tunnel, but that had been bricked off by the Empire – or the Republic – years ago, so that only left the tunnel on the right. "You've seen these things before?" he questioned as they moved through the car.

They all dropped out of the rear car with Knockout making a rather loud stomp that shook the dust off the tunnel ceiling. "Yeah, I've seen them. A few've gotten up to 1313 and ripped some Stormtrooper squads apart, took like three hazard troopers to down them each time. They're tough bastards," she said to Nax, before tapping on Knockout's plating. "But with him? We're gonna be fine."

Knockout locked up straight. "Analyzing tactical information on 'Coruscanti Ogres.'" he boomed, his mechanical voice echoing down the tunnel seemingly forever. "Threat level moderate. Recommended tactic if encountered; volume of fire."

Lexi grinned and tapped his plating again. "See? We're gonna be fine if we find the ogre."

Knockout apparently detected Nax's doubts and turned to face him. "Master Strag, please, do have some faith in my abilities." he quipped to his Master, flashing his micro missile launcher and tri-shot as assurance.

Nax acquiesced to the droid, especially since he handily dispatched the Magnaguard earlier. They proceeded down the tunnel, constantly on alert for the slightest disturbance. The hour seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, before they found themselves in an area of the tunnel that had teenage and gang graffiti replaced by esoteric symbolism and religious iconography of the Pather variety. The tunnels also showed intermittent signs of Ogre presence, and they never once let up their guard.

By now, they were practically on top of the old Pather cell, yet they couldn't find the entrance. The maintenance corridors in the tunnel were all welded up and blocked off, so that was the easy way ruled out. Their search would have been fruitless had Nax not heard a peculiar sound – a very faint series of a woman's sobs and sniffles. They weren't coming from within the tunnel, there wasn't an echo. Instead, the noise seemed to be coming from inside the walls on the right. Pulling the group to a stop, Nax paced along the wall, trying to find the point where the noise was at its loudest, running his fingers along the durasteel walls to find any signs of tampering. Very quickly, he heard the sound of his gloves running against metal disappear entirely. A few taps confirmed that the wall had been replaced with some sort of plastoid compound that was barely noticeable in terms of how it looked compared to the surroundings. "Found the entrance." Nax blurted out as he tested the integrity of the plastoid by pushing against it. The compound must have either decayed severely, or it was flimsy to begin with, because even the slightest applied pressure would cause the plastoid to bend.

The others looked over at him in bewilderment. "Nax, that's a wall. There's been nothing but walls this whole trip." she stated, crossing her arms in annoyance. Nax backed up and lowered himself, very obviously planning to run into the wall. "Don't you fu-" Lexi started, stopping herself the second Nax barreled through the weak wall.

They could just barely make out Nax giving a cheeky thumbs up in the large cloud of dust. "I'm fine!" he shouted, picking himself up and dusting himself off as the girls came to check on him. "Kyra, I just said I'm fine." Nax complained as Kyra religiously checked him for bleeding.

Just for good measure, Kyra whacked him on the helmet. "You keep charging into things, you're liable to break something." she chastised in annoyance before flicking him on the helmet. "And I don't do bits and pieces."

Nax laughed it off, before they all focused on the now opened tunnel. The woman had mysteriously stopped crying, probably out of shock from the sound of the wall being busted open. "Hello?" Nax called out, receiving no response. Out of caution, he drew his scattergun while Knockout took the lead. The esoteric symbols on the tunnel walls were even more intense than outside, growing stranger and stranger the further they went.

At the end of the tunnel was what seemed to be an abandoned pumping station for this part of the level. Corroded and ruined pipes littered the station's floor, with water damage very much everywhere. There was a rank, disgusting smell in the room too that overpowered their filters, like a mix of moldy food and a decomposing corpse, causing the girls to gag before they could control themselves. Guard railings and turbines in the station were draped with waterlogged banners and tarps bearing the symbol of the Path. There were even a few weapon-shaped shadows floating around in the water below.

Directly across the station was a control room with a faint blue glow emanating from behind the glass. From what they could see, the room was relatively well preserved, so Knockout led them over. They didn't find any sign of the woman, and the station seemed to only have the one exit, which they had already come through, which begged the question of how exactly she got down here in the first place. A chill went down their spines. Something wasn't right, and they could all feel it.

The walkway creaked and moaned against their weight, but didn't give in, thankfully. The control room door was also, rather curiously, unlocked, and it slid open for them on its own. Entering the room, they found that the blue light was, in actuality, a terminal that had been left on for all these years. How the power was still on was unknown to them, but seated in front of it was a skeleton in torn Pather robes with a rather large hole in its skull, the source of the hole not far away from where the skeleton was resting. Knockout immediately scanned the skeleton, before grabbing the chair and throwing it at the wall, leaving Nax to see what was actually on the terminal. Trying to move the cursor around, Nax quickly realized it was actually locked up, so he rebooted the terminal.

Several minutes later, the terminal was back on and no longer locked up. The very first thing Nax decided to do was check the communications, and there, he found one very recent message, only a couple of hours old, among other, nearly decade old ones. Deciding on checking the second most recent one first, he opened it to find a rather disturbing note, most likely from the skeleton they had just desecrated. "The Uprising has failed – a traitor within our ranks led the Synthskin devils and the Empire to many of our righteous places of retribution. I fear that ours has been compromised as well, so I have ordered the sole remaining entrance sealed with plastoid and made to mimic the surrounding walls. None will know we were here, and most of our men have already taken the ultimate sacrifice, and I, too, shall join them. Ludd preserve us all." the note read.

That seemed to satisfy Nax's curiosity, so he backed out of that message and went to the most recent one, finding a call for another Uprising, threatening not just the Synthskins, but also the Empire itself. He turned his head to Lexi. "Can you track where this message came from, Lex?" he questioned, and she knelt over to look at the terminal.

Lexi pulled out a thumb drive from her jacket and plugged it in, gently pushing Nax aside. "Give me about ten minutes." she requested, getting to work. Nax nodded and fell in next to Kyra, holding position near the door.

"Some cell." Kyra dryly remarked, giving unimpressed looks around the room. "Here I am thinking this place was gonna be some big gauntlet chock full of Pathers to blast, and it's just… empty."

Nax removed the magazine on the Deecee, before reinserting it, just to make sure it was secure. "I know, right? Talk about a letdown." he replied, leaning against the wall and sticking the weapon under his arm. "Whole place is locked away on the Pather databases, and it's just a flooded pile of bantha shit. Boring." Nax continued, before looking over at Lexi, working away on the terminal. "At least we have a lead on their leaders."

"That's one way of looking at it." Kyra responded, cracking her knuckles in anticipation. "…How the hell did we even get here, anyways?" she suddenly blurted out. "We go from tracking down a murderer to stopping a planet-wide insurrection. That's one hell of an escalation."

Nax shrugged. "When you put it like that, yeah, I suppose it is." he offered, looking over at her. His mind briefly flashed back to when they first met in Mos Eisley. It was honestly kind of hard for him to rationalize the fact that, just a few months ago, she was nothing more than a scared girl fearing for her life, and now she was his confident, gun-toting partner. She was so accustomed to fighting by now that the fact that she was complaining about the lack of one had caught him off guard. It actually kind of worried him how her family might react if they were to reunite. If.

Kyra suddenly began to rub her arm, before looking back into the flooded room. "Is it just me, or did it just get really cold in here?" she questioned, shifting her gaze to Nax. Now that she mentioned it, it did feel colder. Actually, it felt pretty damn close to freezing.

"Yeah, what the hell?" Nax commented, looking into the main room with Kyra. The water on the floor had all frozen up into ice, and the bodies seemed to have turned to statues. Out of caution, he raised his blaster and pointed it outside the door. The hairs on everyone's necks stood straight up at the sound of a woman's sobs, significantly closer now than before. Flashing their lights around the room, Nax and Kyra landed them both on a woman in a soaking wet white dress that draped down to her calves, her hair a stringy black and skin alabaster white. As if that wasn't enough to set alarm bells off in their heads, she seemed to be floating above the ice, and whenever her toes would touch the ice it'd tear a tiny bit of skin off and stick, leaving very small but very noticeable blood trails that didn't freeze with the rest of the water.

Nax half-lowered the blaster, but kept his finger near the trigger. "…Hello?" he eventually mustered. Seemingly in response, the woman's body twisted around the waist, a sickly crackling of bone and glass accompanying the inhuman act. They both pointed their weapons at the woman out of a mixture of paranoia and fear. "Who the hell-" he started, being cut off by the woman's back arching so that her face was fully exposed. Her eyes were a dull, bloodshot black, and her mouth was slacked.

The woman gasped and raised an open palm out towards the two of them, a black mist intermixed with what looked like small embers coming from her hand. Before either of them could shoot her, she disappeared in a puff of that same smoke. Taken aback, they decided to step back into the control room. "Lexi, how much longer?" Nax asked, still focused on the doorway. "…Lexi?" he asked after not receiving a response. He glanced over at the terminal and saw her on the floor, completely unconscious. Instantly forgetting his previous worries about the woman, Nax dashed to Lexi's side, only to seemingly be tripped and fall flat on his face, suddenly extremely drowsy and sickened to his stomach. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the woman walking towards an idling Knockout, leaving blood and water in her wake.

When the three of them came to, they were back at the station they started from. The drowsiness and stomach-churning, however, had not gone away. "…Son of a bitch." Lexi cursed as she sat up, leaning onto a pillar to prevent herself from falling back to the floor. "What happened? Why are we back at the station?"

Knockout marched into Lexi's field of view. "There was a leak of an unknown gas inside of the cell's base." he half-boomed to answer her question. "I carried all of you to a safe area, before completing the trace."

"A gas leak?" Nax echoed, nursing his left side. "Why didn't you tell us before it knocked us out?" he demanded to know.

"I suffered a total system crash shortly after we entered the room." Knockout offered as a reason. "When I managed to reboot, all of you were on the ground, unconscious. I made the immediate decision to evacuate you all to safety. Once I completed the trace, I carried all three of you back to this platform." he explained. "I have no idea how the gas got past your filters, but I apologize deeply for my near failure, Masters."

Lexi rubbed her arm and tried to stand up, barely holding herself together. "If you had a system crash, that means I need to pick at your brain later. Where's the thumb drive with the trace on it?"

"In your right pocket, Master Sapphyra."

Lexi dug her hand around in that pocket, and sure enough, pulled the thumb drive out. "Nice." was all she said, before returning it.

Kyra had, up until that point, been silent. "…So, no ghost girl?" she blurted, earning strange looks from Lexi and Knockout. Or at least, about as much of an expression that a three meter tall killing machine could give off.

"Master Kyra, I suspect that the gas had certain… hallucinogenic properties." Knockout tried to reason, finding the very concept of spirits illogical. "Please, do try to shrug off anything you think you may have seen."

Kyra took that advice to heart as they all moved to leave the station, but there was a niggling feeling in the back of her mind about the woman. Gas leak or not, whatever she felt back there sure seemed real.

---

As it turned out, pulling the data from the message was actually fairly easy. What wasn't easy, however, was actually decrypting it, which Lexi and Sidewinder had made partial progress with, before shifting their focus to the matter of Knockout and his total system crash. Nax, Kyra, and Lexi were all seated in the lounge with Knockout by the table, offlined and hooked up to Lexi's gear for diagnostics. There wasn't really much going on, even when Arfive and Katy rolled in to join them. "Hey, Kyra," Lexi started, half-focused on her work with Knockout. "Have you told Nax about your dreams?" she said, momentarily forgetting that he was sitting right next to her.

"Dreams? What dreams?" Nax asked in response, and Lexi instantly realized her mistake, shooting Kyra a sheepish, apologetic look. "And about what?" he pressed.

Kyra sighed and rested her head in her hands. "I'm not really sure, Nax." she answered truthfully, tapping her fingers in a wave-like motion. "I think they're about who I was. Before Lostur, I mean."

"Tell me." Nax requested. Cracking her fingers and stretching, Kyra launched into a retelling of what Lexi had already heard, skipping most of the flowery prose and giving it to him straight. "…A multi-tiered city that has a big pond in the middle tier, with a huge tree that changes colors?" Nax said, wiping his mouth before pulling out his datapad to check something. "…That sounds… familiar, actually."

Kyra's eyes lit up in an instant. "Familiar? How?" she pressed, suddenly getting all excited at the prospect that maybe Nax knew one of the locations of her dreams, assuming it wasn't made up in her mind.

Nax poked around on his datapad for a few seconds more, before tilting it back and looking at Kyra. "I've heard a couple drunk spacers talking about a city on Alderaan that fits your description pretty well. Just give me a second, and…" he trailed, before turning the datapad to Kyra. "Here, it's a city called Dawnglade."

Taking the datapad into her hands, Kyra flipped through the images of the city, eyes widening as she fitted the pieces together. Everything in the city appeared as it did in her dreams. "This is it." she said, taken completely aback by just how… simple it was that a piece of her past had just fallen into her lap. Kyra continued flicking through the images, before coming across one of a gorgeous looking palace at the highest tier. She turned the datapad to Nax and pointed at the palace. "This is where my dream takes place, the one where I'm looking over the city."

Nax took the device from her and tapped around, eventually getting to some public information about the palace. "Looks like the whole city is pretty much owned by House Moryne, one of Alderaan's Great Houses. They oversee it from that palace there." he read off, tapping the information about House Moryne itself. "Let's see… the House is overseen by Lukan and Beleza Moryne, who…" he continued to read, slowing down and stopping himself upon seeing Beleza's image. Instead of saying anything, he just enlarged the image and turned the device to Kyra, who stared at the image in shock.

Beleza and the painting in the hold of the woman with the white hair were the same person. In fact, Kyra felt that same uneasy connection of familiarity with Beleza, especially moreso now that she knew the woman's name. While it was a lead, it didn't exactly prove anything. She may have just known people in high places, but now they had a semi-tangible connection to Alderaan.

Lexi sat up straight and stretched. "Hey, I hate to break up what you guys are doing, but, uh, something's happened with Knockout." she revealed, causing the pair to look at her with wary eyes. "I'm looking through his brain right now, and I'm seeing a lot of inaccessible memory, but what's even weirder is this system log file I found." she explained, idly tapping on her equipment. "Seems like he was passively logging system events after the crash, because about three minutes after he crashed, there was a huge chunk of his code that got changed."

Nax frowned, looking over at Lexi's readouts. "That doesn't sound good. Can it be rolled back, somehow?" he asked.

Lexi gave a half-shrug. "Probably, but from what I can tell the code changes are benign and don't really touch the directives I gave him the first time around." she continued, getting back to work. "I need to do a full check on everything, but for now, I say we keep Knockout powered down, just in case it's not harmless."

"Agreed." Kyra said, having been snapped from her awe at her past life.

Nax conceded, running his hand through his hair. "I suppose that would be the smart option. I doubt my dad's gear could stop much from Knockout if he went haywire, anyways." he said, before crossing his arms and sitting back. Lexi unplugged her tools from Knockout, done with her examination and ready to focus entirely on decrypting what they had pulled from the cell. "How long will this take?"

Lexi bit her lip, perhaps out of doubt for her own abilities. "Probably a few hours at best, a day or two at worst." she responded, tapping away at her keys as Sidewinder twittered a question at her, one that she responded to with a nod.

"Anything we can do to speed that along?" Kyra asked.

"Not unless you want me bouncing off the walls." Lexi replied, half joking, half serious. Nax and Kyra took that as their cue to leave her to her work, both of them intending on heading to bed to catch up on some sleep.

---

A scant few hours later, and Lexi had decrypted the data they pulled. As it turned out, the source came from another warehouse on the opposite end of the planet, many levels deeper than even the abandoned cell base.

At the moment, the three of them, including Sidewinder, were posted on a building that had more or less total sight on the base. Compared to the Synthskin warehouse they broke into when they first came to Coruscant, this Pather base was massive. There had to have been hundreds of Pathers on the grounds. What could be assumed to be drill instructors were drilling the decent handful of guards through what was probably the morning routine in the center courtyard, a cadre of probable officers overlooking them.

Somewhere in that mynock's nest was their target. They could probably remove a decent chunk of the Path's leadership coordinating the cells planetwide, and the whole insurgency would collapse on itself.

Biting her lip as she looked over the threats, Kyra gave a passing glance at Nax. "You sure you don't want to leak this place to the Empire and let them handle it?" she asked, hoping Nax had changed his mind.

At first, he seemed to consider the suggestion, but shook his head, clearly turning it down. "We're too far down for the Empire to get here fast enough. We leak it, we let everything slip away – we'll probably never get another chance like this." he offered, continuing to analyze their area, when Sidewinder suddenly gave an alarmed chirp, quickly getting into something resembling cover. Very soon after, a LAAT came by, carrying a huge cargo container.

Just as quickly as it arrived, the ship dropped the container into the main yard and flew off. A small group of what were probably cargo technicians strolled up to the container and opened both ends, revealing the contents to be small power generators, probably meant to be distributed among cells, and that just might be their ticket for blowing the base. For now, though, they had to concentrate on their job of eliminating the Pather leadership, or whatever qualified for such.

"Anyone see a decent way in?" Kyra asked, hoping the others were seeing something she wasn't.

Lexi frowned, setting her macrobinoculars down. "I see exactly jack and squat." she regrettably confirmed. Sidewinder similarly gave a negative chirp, so either they had to find a way to do this quietly, or they turn the place into a warzone.

Nax sighed and looked more closely at the yard, suddenly getting an idea upon spotting the manholes that dotted the area. "What about maintenance access? I'm seeing access points all over this yard. Probably more in the actual building." he suggested.

Stroking her chin, Lexi scanned for signs of the manholes. "Well, seeing as the place locked up tighter than a Nar Shaddaa virgin, that's probably our only way in." she said, sounding a little annoyed at their limited options. "Kyra?"

Kyra remained silent for a few seconds, caught up in the sights of the base. "…Yeah, let's head through maintenance." she submitted, and the group headed to the closest access point – a manhole in the lot behind their building. Actually navigating the tunnels was a pain, but was thankfully eased significantly by their proximity to the base. Each access point into the base was marked with a Pather symbol that had to have been freshly sprayed over the walls. After some light guesswork, they figured that the closest access point led directly into the left wing of the main building.

"Ready?" Nax asked, one hand on the ladder and the other at his side. The girls gave him a nod, and he began to climb up. Once he reached the hatch, he pushed it up ever so gently, and was immediately met with a flurry of blaster fire, sending him back into hiding. "So, stealth's not an option." he dryly commented. Silently, Kyra pulled out her CR-2, checked and charged it, and then threw it up to Nax. He easily caught it and pushed the cover back up, spraying wildly around the room before fully coming out, double tapping most of the bodies, except for one Pather who was clutching his wounds and weakly trying to reach for his blaster, which Nax kicked away.

The Pather was scrawny, and probably young. Definitely scared for his life, though, so Nax wrapped his hand around his neck and applied the smallest amount of pressure to the kid's windpipe. "Hey, buddy." Nax said coldly, forcing himself into the Pather's vision. "Tell me where your leader is, and I won't crush your throat."

The Pather choked under what probably felt like a vice grip as the girls and Sidewinder came out from the hole. He opened his mouth, but didn't give Nax what he wanted. "…Go suck a Trando, hunter!" the boy cursed. Merely annoyed with the insult, Nax tightened his grip, and the kid squirmed, fighting and slapping at Nax's arm. "B-Basement! He's in the basement! Down the hall and to the right, across from the front door!"

Nax smiled underneath his helmet as Kyra came up behind him. "Thank you." he said gratefully, before turning to Kyra. "Do you want the honors?" he questioned, and without saying anything else, Kyra drew the '44 and shot the kid in the face with a stun blast, knocking him out. Getting up, Nax handed her the CR-2 back, and she tucked it into her jacket. "So, he's in the basement. Every Pather on base is probably scrambling to get here."

Lexi checked her blaster one last time. "Well, we don't want to keep them waiting, do we?" she joked, giving off a cocky smirk. Nax headed for the door, DC raised, and he opened it, sticking two shots into the unlucky Pather that was waiting in front of the door. They quickly moved through and fanned out, clearing out a fireteam of Pathers that had been waiting for them. Heading down the hallway like they had been told, intermittent groups of Pathers would run into their blaster fire and be quickly cut down. If these were what the leadership considered their top men, none of them were impressed.

After clearing more groups of Pathers, they found the basement and descended, keeping their heads on a swivel for potential targets, the stairs leading out into a long hallway that seemed to run underneath the main yard. Rooms were aligned symmetrically along the sides of the hall, but what they were interested in was the one at the end. If the leader was in there, he had nowhere to go, and if he wasn't, well, there were plenty more rooms to look for him in.

As Nax and Kyra pushed through the door at the end of the hallway, a secondary door shot straight down and sealed Lexi and Sidewinder off from the others, nearly crushing Kyra and Nax in the process. "Son of a-" Nax cursed, turning back to get a look at their current predicament. Lexi was banging on the door in a vain effort to get it open, and Sidewinder evidently tried to slice it, but quickly gave up.

"Is there any way for you to get it open from your side?" Lexi shouted, barely audible under the door's soundproofing. The both of them quickly looked around and found no such panel – the door was remotely controlled, probably in the room where the head Pather was.

Nax shook his head to answer her question. "Go ahead and see if you can't find an escape vehicle! We'll catch up with you!" he ordered, and Lexi nodded, turning back up the stairwell to hopefully find an easy way to escape the nest they'd just kicked. "We'd better get moving, too." Nax commented, heading deeper into the room and finding another door.

The pair pushed through to find that this new room was pitch black, and before either of them could turn their thermals on, the lights kicked on. The place was very obviously a main control center of sorts – there was a terminal in the center of the room that had security footage playing from all across the facility, and standing in front of the terminal was most likely the Pather leader, wearing robes in his group's standard colors, although with a little bit of an elegant trim applied to it.

At the sound of their weapons being readied, the Pather turned around and faced them. "Ah, guests. Had I known you were coming, I would have set the table beforehand. How rude of me to not prepare." he said calmly and methodically. "Is it dead or alive?"

Nax tightened his grip on the DC. "For everything you've put me and my friends through?" he responded, pausing for a second. "Dead sounds pretty nice."

The Pather shook his head. "I'm afraid that won't be happening." he retorted, before stretching his hand out. "Your weapons, please." the Pather offered. Before they could say anything in response, all of their blasters flew from their holsters or out of their hands and right to the Pather. "Ah, I almost forgot – a two on one fight isn't very sporting, much less two Mandalorians against myself." the Pather went on, directing his hand out towards Nax and pulling it into a fist. Nax was slowly lifted off of his feet, making hisses of pain and confusion, before he was flung clear across the room into a pile of rusted storage containers by absolutely nothing. Kyra stared, slackjawed. "Now, then." the Pather finally finished. "Let us dance, young lady."

Kyra braced for combat as the Pather pulled out a small metal rod, and with a snap-hiss, a white-orange energy blade came out of it, and the Pather charged her.

---

Lexi sped through the right wing of the building as fast as she could. She knew there was a garage here, somewhere – she had seen it from the outside. She quickly pulled herself into a corner, blaster ready to fire as a squad of Pathers ran down the hallway, oblivious to her presence. Quickly trying to get a handle on her breathing, Lexi sprinted at full speed down the corridors, glancing into side doors for any sign of the garage, or at least, a mechanic's area.

Eventually, she found what she was looking for, and practically kicked the door in, and she got a very good look at what the Path had for vehicles. A few AT-RTs, refitted to match an AT-ST's firepower, but the real star of what they had was a refitted Saber tank, situated right in the middle of the room. The blaster cannons on the side had been upgraded to dualies, and the missile pods visibly bulged out of their compartment. Even the top laser turret where the commander normally sat had been touched – replaced with a massive kinetic cannon that seemed to bend under its own weight.

Quickly checking her surroundings for Pathers, Lexi ran over to the tank and climbed on, going in through the commander's hatch. What she expected was a completely empty tank – what she got was someone punching her in the face and knocking her to the floor. Partially dazed, Lexi pointed her blaster at the hatch as she got up.

Rising out of the commander's hatch was a woman in a cloak. "Surprised?" she remarked, very much amused with how easy it was to sucker punch Lexi. "You know, for a freelance slicer, you don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of subtlety, Sapphyra." the woman continued.

Now she had Lexi's attention. "How the hell do you know my name?" she questioned, tightening her grip on her blaster. The woman simply laughed, before pulling out a tigerclaw knife and twirling it around her fingers like an overly cocky gunslinger.

"Have you been living under a rock, Sapphyra? Your face was all over the news when we bombed that cantina. It wasn't exactly hard to do a check on who you were." she went on, pausing for a second. "…Sorry, when I bombed the cantina." the woman corrected smugly.

In that moment, something clicked inside of Lexi's mind. She was staring at the person who had killed her dad. At first, she was frozen in shock, but hate and anger quickly overrode that, until she was practically seeing red. "You." Lexi said with a cold malice.

The woman raised an eyebrow under all of her gear. "Yes, me. I bombed the cantina and killed your dad. Would you like a treat for figuring that one out?" she taunted, resting her hand against her hips. "Stars, I knew you Zeltrons were all freakshow dopamine addicts, but you're really taking it to a whole new level, Sapphyra."

Lexi narrowed her eyes at the woman. "You have no idea what hell I'm about to put you through, you murderer."

"Bring it on, xeno."

---

The Pather had been probing at Kyra's defenses with his energy blade for a while now – testing her reaction times and footwork, gauging how best to approach the situation, which was rather a moot point, since Kyra was unarmed. Clearly, he had something else planned for her, and Kyra's suspicions were soon proven correct.

"Why do you continue to resist?" the Pather questioned as he continued probing her, not even taking his attention from the mockery of a duel he had engaged in. "I sense great potential in you, young lady. More than I sense in either of your partners. Why lower yourself to their level, when you could join me and have more power than you could ever dream of?"

Kyra had begun to get into a rhythm for avoiding his probing. Sidestep here, duck there, and so on, like it was practically second nature to her. "Why the hell would I want power, let alone from a scumsucking terrorist like you?"

"Then why fight?" he questioned again, poking the blade dangerously close to her neck. "You have nothing else to gain here. Just a few lowly bounty hunters, not even chasing a payday. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose." the Pather went on. "We stand to gain far more together if you simply gave up and joined me." he continued. Kyra paused for a second, as if to give him the mere inkling of a thought that she was actually going to do that. Loosening her shoulders a little and easing up, the Pather smirked under his mask as he lowered his weapon. "I knew you would see reas-" he tried to get out, before Kyra socked him with the strongest right hook she could muster.

"Here's a counter-offer for you – go to hell!" Kyra replied, ready to strike him again.

The Pather stared off to the side wall, as if Kyra had just insulted his entire bloodline. He wiped his face off with his hand once, turned to look back at Kyra, and raised his blade overhead. "So be it." he said simply. Seeing an opening, Kyra moved to pounce on him, but something kept her feet locked down. Realizing she had no other options, Kyra raised her arms overhead in a vain attempt to protect herself, but when the blade hit her armor, it was caught against the plating, sparks flying in all directions from the blade, until the weapon just shorted out entirely, catching the Pather off his guard. "Beskar." he hissed. In that brief lapse of concentration, the weight holding Kyra down disappeared, and she took the chance to begin pummeling him as much as she could before he could correct his very severe mistake.

---

Lexi and Reika circled each other, knives at the ready. Both of them were bleeding pretty bad, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. "Is that all you've got, hedo?" Reika hissed, taunting Lexi by twirling the blade around her ring finger. Right beside Reika was Lexi's blaster – Reika disarmed her of it early on in the fight, and there was no way she could reach it without getting shanked in the back.

Lexi wiped the blood on her face off onto her sleeve, utterly static in her expression. Reika grunted and beckoned Lexi to attack her, to which she obliged. Not surprised that she had taken the bait, Reika went to sweep her off of her legs and end the fight, only for Lexi to actually jump over her legs. Thinking fast, Reika kicked her leg up to catch Lexi midair, knocking the wind out of her and putting her on the floor.

Standing back up, Reika tightened her grip on her knife and walked over to where Lexi was, her weak attempts at getting back up being utterly crushed when Reika placed her boot firmly on her chest. "That was pathetic. You're not even worth finishing off with my blade." she said disdainfully, crouching low and stabbing Lexi in the stomach with her knife, before getting on top of her, ready to strangle Lexi to death.

Between Reika's hands wrapped around her neck and the knife stuck in her gut, Lexi struggled to force Reika's grip off with what little strength she had left. As her vision started to blur and darken, Lexi stopped struggling and reached into Reika's jacket for something, anything, that could save her. Her hands found cold metal in the shape of a grip, and as fast as she could, she pulled the weapon from its holster, pointed it at Reika's stomach, and pulled the trigger.

Reika's iron grip on Lexi's neck faded almost instantly. She stared straight at – no, through Lexi, before gurgling something inaudible, clutching at the growing red stain in her stomach, and falling backwards, twisting over on to her stomach. Gasping for air, Lexi's vision returned, and she moved back away from the dying Reika. Her next immediate concern was the knife stuck in her gut, so she grabbed the grip, counted down from three, and yanked the blade out, hissing in pain as blood spurted from the wound and on to the floor.

As she recovered, she saw Reika trying to crawl away to safety. "You're not getting away that easy, monster." Lexi threatened in an ice-cold tone, before getting up, twisting the blade around, and stabbing Reika in the back of her foot and pulling her back. Once she was close enough, Reika turned over and tried to protect herself, but Lexi's quiet rage helped her power through, and soon enough, Reika would be crying, pleading for mercy, and begging for her life to be spared as Lexi hacked away madly at her.

She had no intention of sparing Lexi in the first place, so it only made sense to return the favor.

When Lexi was done and Reika had fallen silent, Lexi leaned against the Saber tank, clutching her wound. She took one look at the bloody mess that used to be her father's killer, and then to the blade that was still dripping her blood. A pit slowly developed in Lexi's stomach, and she felt like she was about to throw up. Not from the injuries, from the realization of what she had just done.

She had it coming, but the sole act of butchering her like an animal disgusted Lexi like nothing else could, and she only had herself to blame. At least her father's killer was dead.

---

The Pather leader managed to pull away from Kyra's onslaught. "Enough of this game!" he hissed, reaching his hand out towards Kyra, and that same feeling of being locked up overwhelmed her. "I have tried to be reasonable – merciful, even, but you are clearly not worth the effort." he chided in frustration, raising his blade overhead. "Die." he said, swinging the blade downwards over Kyra's head.

Before the blade could connect, there were three loud gunshots, causing the Pather to stop dead in his swing as dark stains of red began to spread all over his robes. Slowly turning around to face his aggressor, he was met with one final slug to the head, tumbling over back to Kyra's feet. Nax had, evidently, recovered from his throw and rummaged in the storage containers while the Pather was occupied, and managed to find a loaded slug pistol.

Getting up and dusting himself off, Nax threw the weapon by the wayside as he went to retrieve their weapons. "You know, I'm getting real sick of these types. Hate being out of a fight like that." Nax remarked as he kicked the dead Pather over onto his stomach, before tossing Kyra's '44 to her, which she caught. "You good?"

Kyra's initial surprise at just how casual Nax was about the whole ordeal quickly wore off. "Armor's burnt pretty bad." she responded, showing him the scorched bracers. "I'm fine otherwise. What about you? That was one hell of a fall you took."

Nax shrugged as he turned to the terminal the Pather had been standing in front of. "Bruised and battered, but I can still shoot straight." he replied as he disabled whatever security barriers would have been in their way to the garage. "We need to get a move on – don't want to keep Lexi waiting."

Kyra nodded and checked her '44, and as she was about to motion for Nax to follow her, something rolled to her feet. She looked down and saw that it was the Pather's energy sword, she briefly appraised it and after deciding that it may be worth something, she grabbed it before they left.

The run to the garage was actually rather uneventful, all things considered, with only a few groups of Pathers to mop up. Considering the size of the place, this sparked suspicion in the back of their minds, but basically being let go free was hard to complain about. When they actually got to the garage, they saw both Lexi leaning against a Saber tank, blood slowly pooling around her, and a mangled corpse not very far from her.

The pair immediately ran to her side, and Sidewinder came out from underneath a workbench nearby, eager to help however he could. Lexi coughed as she came back to consciousness and looked up to Nax through her matted hair with tired, dying eyes. "…Hey guys." she barely hacked out, her voice low and weak. "I found you a ride."

Nax immediately pulled out a bacta syringe and injected it into Lexi to stabilize her. "What the hell happened?" he demanded to know, putting pressure on her wounds to stem the bleeding while the bacta did its work.

With her arm shaking, Lexi barely managed to point at the corpse. "I killed the bitch that took my dad from me." she said coldly, before wincing in pain and throwing her hands on her stomach. "I was just going to shoot her, but then she clued me in that she was the one that planted the bomb. She tried to taunt and terrorize me, and I just lost it."

Nax and Kyra exchanged glances. "We need to get you to a bacta tank, and fast." he said, before reaching under Lexi and picking her up. Kyra vaulted on top of the tank and opened the hatch so that Nax could let Lexi down inside, and then they followed her in. Nax poked at the controls briefly. "How the hell do I…" he trailed, before flipping a switch that caused the tank's repulsors to kick on. "There we go." he finished as Sidewinder entered through the hatch and settled himself next to Lexi. After messing with the controls, Nax found that the Saber controlled a lot like his old landspeeder did, and muscle memory quickly kicked in.

Hovering his thumbs over the triggers, Nax pressed down, and four blaster cannon rounds shot into the garage door, slagging it and throwing it down into the courtyard, revealing what may as well have been a platoon's worth of Pathers, staring at a few of their friends that had just gotten crushed under the door. The pause was short-lived, however, and the hull of the tank was quickly pelted by weapons fire, both energy and projectile, and Nax sped the tank out from where it was stored.

Instead of taking the time to precisely aim his shots, Nax just held the trigger down and pointed the front of the tank into the crowds, letting the cannon blasts do most of the work for him. In around twenty seconds worth of blaster cannon fire, the platoon had been reduced from nearly full strength to just a handful of survivors that were scrambling to get away from the tank. Now that the immediate threat had been dealt with, Nax turned his attention to the cargo containers in the courtyard, and began firing round after round into them, the hot plasma chewing through durasteel with ease. He repeatedly hit containers with explosive materials inside – ammunition, fuel cells, whatever. It was all gone, now.

Before long, the entire yard was going up in flames, and Nax felt a buzz in his ear from his commlink. "Arfive! You there?" he questioned, receiving a series of panicked twitters in response. "Kyra and I are fine, but Lexi's bleeding out pretty badly!" he briefed over the comms, not really caring about security anymore. "Warm up the engines, I'll be at the ship in a few minutes after I finish tearing the hell out of this base!" Nax ordered, receiving an affirmative gurgle as the commlink was cut.

With the yard burning to slag, that left the building itself. Looking up in his seat, Nax found a switch designated as 'Ordinance' and guessed that it was tied either to the cannon on top of the tank, or the rocket pods on the sides. Banking on the latter, Nax flipped it, and the tank lurched slightly as the pods lifted up, carrying a significantly larger load of rockets than designed for. Once again, Nax hovered his thumbs over the triggers and pressed down, sending rockets into the center building and blasting out huge chunks of duracrete. Satisfied with the damage incurred, Nax kept firing rockets at the building without a care in the world, and on his last salvo, the rockets penetrated deep enough that they actually hit something of importance – a gas line, or maybe an auxillary generator. Whatever it was, it rocked the entire block and the next five after it with an earth-shattering explosion that blew glass into shards, set off landspeeder alarms, and turned the entire Pather base into one catastrophic fireball.

Lexi had apparently been watching Nax unleash hell on the Pathers from the viewplate on the tank, barely conscious. "…Nice fireworks, Nax." she complimented, before passing out from her lack of blood, giving Nax a renewed sense of urgency. Kicking the tank's repulsors to their limit, Nax blew through the ruined gate and down the street for the next ten blocks. The Pathers had been dealt with, but Lexi needed urgent medical attention, and he'd already spent too much time finishing off the Pathers. Ignoring whatever counted for speeder traffic in the wake of an explosion that large, Nax rode the tank up to an alleyway that led to a large, open area that was big enough for the freighter to fit in. Throwing the hatch above him up, Nax grabbed Lexi and lifted her out of the tank, before getting out himself, while Kyra jumped out of the commander's hatch.

Together, they carried Lexi to the ship and brought her on-board. Kyra shouldered Lexi and took her to the crew lounge to try and get her stable with what they had on hand, while Nax bolted for the cockpit. "Arfive!" he shouted, already in his seat and readying the ship by the time he finished saying that singular word. "Set a course back to Hiver territory, we need to get Lexi to a bacta tank!" he ordered, and Arfive gurgled out a confirmatory chirp as he plugged in to the ship and plotted a course for the closest Hiver-held area.

---

Nax and Kyra practically barreled through the front door to the Hiver medical facility, Lexi passed out on their shoulders. Her bleeding had stopped, but she didn't have enough blood running through her to survive much longer. Thankfully, whoever was at the front desk was whatever the Hivers considered a medical 'professional', and he pulled the group to the back of the building, took Lexi off of their hands, and got her prepped for the tank. Now, all they had to do was wait and hope she made it through.

As he grew ever more impatient and frustrated, Nax's mind was left to wander. He briefly went over everything that had happened since they got to Coruscant – the heist against the Synthskins, the Path's resurgence and the release of Mau Sanir, Bullen's murders.

…He had almost forgotten about Bullen, and cursed himself when he realized the trail had probably long since gone cold.

Eventually, his thoughts drifted to his conversation with Lexi the other day. "Don't you think you would be happier if you weren't so… detached?" Lexi's voice echoed. He couldn't answer her immediately, but having had time to mull over that question, especially now, Nax had come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, that he could afford to let his act fade.

Kyra noticed Nax's expression and leaned over on to him. "Don't worry, she'll be fine." she reassured, her voice barely above a whisper. In return, Nax leaned over and wrapped his arm around her.

"It's not Lexi that I'm worried about, Kyra." he responded, taking her hand into his and gently squeezing it. "It's just that, well, I've been thinking about something she and I talked about a few days ago." Nax revealed. "About me keeping you two at a distance and just staying as friends and business partners and not, you know, wanting to get closer to you."

Kyra raised an eyebrow and looked up at Nax. "Getting closer?" she questioned with an incredulous look. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Not necessarily romantically close, but closer as in something more than just work partners and acquaintances." he elaborated, trying to save face so that Kyra didn't think he was getting too ahead of himself.

Kyra pursed her lips. "Why do you think you've been doing that?" she pressed, and Nax looked down at her with an expression that told her she already knew why. Kyra frowned at the realization, and leaned a bit further into Nax to try and comfort him.

They'd had a long day, and there was an even longer night ahead of them. It would probably be best to get some rest.

The two of them fell asleep together, practically in each other's arms.

---

That's this chapter done, and Coruscant is now more or less done. Next chapter is just tying up loose ends, and then it's off to the next arc. Again, I'd like to apologize for the two-month wait without an update – I don't normally fuck up my schedule that bad, but I was super lazy with actually writing the chapter on top of the stress of a job application that went nowhere and my driver's permit being a thing.

So uh, oops.

Anyways, since Coruscant is now done, I'd like to take the time to bring out the original plotline before I involved Tekti, Kelah, the Path, and the Ascendancy. While it is partially deleted now, I haven't touched the file in many months, so here's a rundown of the original Coruscant arc.

The gist of it is that a lot Coruscant was going to center on the AI heist at the very beginning. The Hutt that the Hivers sold the AI to would have actually snitched on the Hivers due to being part of a rival organization, and Underworld Police would go on a field day wrecking their shit. Eath, Vopa, and the three of them would have then struck back at the Hutt's holdings to cripple him financially as a final "fuck you" of sorts, and once that was over and done with, Vopa would've left. Then, another member of the Hivers would have contacted the group with information on the Stormtroopers at the Synthskin place, with said Stormtroopers being the personal detail of a Senator on Naboo that had some rather scandalous investments, namely owning a brothel. When the three of them would have been figuring out how to get in, they would have found out about a Zygerrian slave trader who was dissatisfied with her cut of the Senator's profits, and after approaching her, would smuggle the girls in to case the place and start bringing in weapons to give to the slaves there. They would have also discovered a ring of about 20 other Senators involved, and once everything was out in public, the Senators would be recalled to Coruscant while the RSF raided the place. The Zygerrian would then call in a favor with them to segue into the next arc of the story.

So, what changed?

Short answer, I watched JJBA Part 4 and played a lot of Starsector, plus some Deus Ex/Warhammer stuff got the Ascendancy in a bigger spotlight than initially intended. While I'm very happy with the current product despite being very dead-set on the original plotline, I've come to realize that what I had planned out not only probably would've been shit (as things tend to be when fanfiction writers handle something like what I just described) but also very juvenile. For example, the whole point of Kyra and Lexi being smuggled into the place raised a lot of problems for me story wise. Is Nax the one pushing for them to be brought in by the Zygerrian? If so, what the fuck am I doing, because that goes against what he's done so far. Is he against it, but are the girls fine with it? So on and so forth, shit like that. None of it was good, and I'm glad I didn't go with it, cause this would have gone on from chapter 10 to like, 24.

Until next time.

-Tweak