15: The Frenchman Lives!
"Do you hear that?" Kagura asked quietly. Their hair ruffled as a faintly humming Valkyrie passed overhead. It wasn't using its searchlight, so it apparently had a destination in mind. "We're near."
The clouds had parted somewhat, admitting starlight that seemed oppressively bright after their long journey in darkness. Now they could see the running lights of an Imperial shuttle ahead; its engines growled as it prepared to take off. "They're moving everything," Yomi commented. "Guess our ship's really important to them. Why, I wonder?"
Kagura fingered the disk in her pocket and held her peace.
They finally came to the edge of the artificial clearing. Two stormtroopers stood outside of ship's hatch, white armor gleaming in the starlight, blazing goggles making them seem like monster insects. One of them glanced over when Tomo stepped on a branch, but he couldn't have heard much over the shuttle's purring engines.
"Okay…" Kagura took out her blaster. "There's really no graceful way to do this."
"What do you have in mind?" Yomi asked.
"Give me your flashlight." The soldier dialed its strength and radius to the maximum, gripped it firmly under her blaster, then walked confidently into the clearing. The stormtroopers looked up in surprise and yelled when their goggles couldn't compensate for the sudden brightness. Kagura coldly shot them both.
The hatch slammed down when the troopers within realized something was amiss, but unfortunately for them, their foe had posted herself at its base and blasted them with almost freakish accuracy as they became visible- kneecap, head, kneecap, head. Without pausing, Kagura advanced up the ramp.
"H-holy shitake mushrooms!" Tomo cried, making her partner jump. When the Honorable Captain wasn't making all kinds of noise, it was easy to forget she was there. "Did you—she—would you look at that! Have you ever seen anything…?"
Yomi had to admit that she hadn't. In her short stint in the Imperial military, even shorter career as a bounty hunter and interminable run as smuggler alongside Tomo, she had never seen such a display of skill or mercilessness. "Shut up," was all she managed to say. "Let's go, Tomo."
Meanwhile, deep in the forest, a group of three stormtroopers wandered, wondering why they couldn't raise anyone else on their comlinks. They were more than a little concerned—they'd heard blasters go off, random thumps and crashes, and seen strange lights through the trees that vanished before they could investigate.
"Where's that sodding shuttle?" the leader growled. "I can't see a thing in this damn helmet!"
"Do you hear something, sir?"
Sure enough, a very slight hiss reached their ears. "What do you guess that is?" the third said softly, "Sounds like a really small repulsorlift." A bolt lashed out of the darkness and struck his knee. "OW! What the--?"
"Commander, we're under fire!" the group's lead called, but his comm raised nothing but static.
"Your fellows can't help you now!" an artificial voice boomed, "I killed 'em all!"
Another bolt struck the second trooper's neck, making him yelp and stagger to the side. "Dammit! Where is that coming from?"
"From your doom!" the voice answered, "I'm going to slaughter the lot of ya!"
"How, by irritating us to death?" the lead barked back, pointing. The other troopers looked; a training remote buzzed through the trees nearby. They tensed but didn't draw immediately.
"I'll whittle ya down right!" the remote howled, sweeping towards them—right into the mouths of three blasters. It backpedaled frantically. "We- we can talk about this!"
"Chiyo-chan…"
Wha-? The girl snapped out of darkness to find herself drifting in an overcast void. A constant warm breeze played through her hair and tugged at her clothes as she hung impossibly over nothing. "What-- who's there?"
"Chiyo-chan," that was definitely Sakaki-san's voice… but how could that be?
"Master Sakaki! Have I… am I…?"
"Don't worry Chiyo-chan, you're still alive." Sakaki faded into being, standing on nothing before her, every ounce as serene and strong as she had been in life. As soon as the Jedi fully appeared, her voice became clear. "They'll have a harder time getting rid of you than that."
Chiyo stared at her for a long moment, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. "How are you here? You… you died!"
"Well, I…"
"You said you'd be with me always!" Chiyo cried accusingly. "What am I supposed to do now? That monster wants to kill me and now I'm… I'm alone!"
"Well, I didn't plan on getting cut in two," Sakaki pointed out.
"Oh!" Chiyo put her hands over her mouth. "I'm- I'm so sorry! Are you okay? Does it hurt?"
"Um…" Sakaki blinked. "I'm fine."
"But what should I do?" her student asked, quickly returning to her original tack.
"I was getting to that," Sakaki laid a hand on the girl's head. "There is still somebody who can help you learn the ways of the Force. He lives on the swamp planet Dagobah."
"How can I find him, though?"
"He'll find you."
Chiyo tilted her head back so she could look at Sakaki's hand. "Is he the one who slashed up your hands?"
"Yes." Sakaki pulled her hand away and looked at it, a nostalgic light appearing in her eyes. "He's a little… disagreeable sometimes. You'll want to tread lightly around him for a while. And it might be good to bring a box of good cigars as well."
"Cigars?"
"He likes cigars. And you should, never, EVER call him cute."
"Um… okay." Sakaki started to fade again. "Wait! Where are you going?"
"I have no idea," the Jedi replied, unconcerned.
"But…" Chiyo's eyes started to fill with tears again. "Will I ever… see you again?" She threw her arms around Sakaki, burying her face in her soft brown robes. "Don't go!"
"There's nothing I can do. Chiyo-chan, I can't stay, but remember that the Force will be with you. Always." Just as she was almost gone, something seemed to occur to her. "Oh… and… please don't tell Kaorin that I visited you."
"Kaorin? Who--?" Chiyo's arms suddenly swung into each other as Sakaki vanished. "Master Sakaki! Don't go…" She curled into a ball as the omnipresent wind turned cold. "Please…"
"Hey! Commander, over here!"
A group of five stormtroopers trudged through the newly starlit night, armor sloshing from their ride down the river. None of them knew exactly what had happened- one by one they had been hauled into the air and chucked into the water by thin air. Though their training had conditioned them against physical hardship, they were pretty miserable.
"What is it?"
"A kid."
They gathered around the unconscious child, only recently washed up from the dreadful current. The one who had discovered her clipped his medical scanner back to his belt and stood. "She's weak, but she'll live."
"Is that the one Lord Nochichi was interested in?"
"He said a young woman…" the Commander seemed to shrug. "We should take her in anyway."
But as a soldier bent to pick her up, something growled out of the darkness. Five blasters snapped up towards a pair of beady, gleaming eyes. The great white dog padded majestically into the starlight to confront them, growling viciously.
"Shoot it."
"Uh, Commander?" The forest around them was suddenly filled with savage, unblinking eyes. A great chorus of gravelly voices rose with their leader's. "Maybe… we should withdraw…?"
"We're not having any luck today."
The smugglers followed Kagura up the ramp, unsure what they would find. The shuttle was only a little bigger than the Red Spirit, so surely it couldn't hold that many soldiers, right?
The soldier stood pressed against a bulkhead, casting tense glances deeper into the ship. A short ribbed corridor led to the cockpit, and before they hastily took cover, Yomi could see glimpses of white armor past some of the arches.
"What gives?" Tomo asked, "I thought you'd be done by now."
"It's a little harder when they start shooting back," Kagura said dryly. "I can't exactly—" She was cut off as a hail of green bolts issued from the corridor. "Yeah. That."
"Well, we have to get rid of them before the others come back…" Yomi took out her weapon. It was about the size of a carbine, but when she released a catch on its side, crossbow-like arms snapped out on either side of its barrel.
"Is that a Valerian bowcaster?"
"Yep," Yomi withdrew a quarrel from one of her pants' cargo pockets and inspected it minutely. The bowcaster's line was almost invisible, palpably humming with violent tension. Kagura doubted she could have moved it by putting all of her weight against it, but Yomi easily tugged it back with three fingers and fitted the quarrel.
"How's that going to help?" the soldier asked.
"Just wait and see!" Tomo replied proudly. "She's gonna tear it up!"
"What are you so proud of?"
Yomi leaned into the corridor, but lurched back as another volley of blasterfire came. Once it had abated, she ever-so-carefully eased the bowcaster's snout around the corner and fired. There was a faint whiickt! sound, an anticlimactic tunk! and it was over.
Yomi's shot had carried such terrifying force that it had plunged all the way down the corridor, unhindered by the durasteel arches or the bodies hidden behind them. One trooper gave a startled cry of "Son of a bitch!" before staggering into the open and getting shot by Kagura.
The three troopers on the other side, after carefully weighing their options, came out with their hands in the air. Kagura stepped out and raised her blaster, but Yomi cuffed her out of it. "What are you thinking?"
"Look, they'll just—"
"I don't care. You three, into the brig!"
"Hoo, look at the big, bad stormtroopers," Tomo leered as they went by. "You got schooled by a bunch of girls! Oh, how do you like that?"
"Tomo, shut the hell up. I swear—I'm surrounded by lunatics!"
The brig's door hissed open, but before any of the prisoners could move towards it, something within gave a wild cry and a white-robed blur streaked out, scattering everybody. "Ms. Sakaki! You came!" Princess Kaori skidded to a stop in their midst and looked around, taking in everybody there. "Oh," she said flatly, "It's you."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kagura cried. "And what in space are you doing here?"
The stormtroopers submissively filed passed Kaori into the brig and sat down.
"Aren't you gonna fight back?" Tomo taunted. "Come on, guys!"
"We're scared of her," one of them explained, pointing to Yomi.
"Oh, yeah. You haven't seen anything yet. She can get crazy!" She grinned and slammed the brig door. "O-kay! So do we get a reward for rescuing the Princess?"
"We? And what did you do to help?" Yomi growled.
"Um… comic relief!"
The two rebels left Tomo and Yomi to their argument. "Uh, we came with Ms. Sakaki, though. She's around somewhere," Kagura said. "Got the plans, too."
"Ms. Sakaki's here?" For an instant, Kaori was overjoyed, but a cool, regal bearing quickly slid over her features. "I'll look forward to seeing her, then," she continued in a practiced tone, "Shall we go?"
Kagura grinned in relief. They had the part, they had the plans and they had the Princess. For once, everything was looking up. "Of course, your majesty."
