(A/N)- Takes place somewhere between "Imperial Supercommandos" and "Legacy of the Darksaber", mostly because of a certain character appearing.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Nooooope, still don't own.
Chapter 2
"Remember, keep your head down," Sabine cautioned, as she and Ezra stepped out of the Phantom II. "We might be on the opposite side of Mandalore from Sundari but there's still heavy Imperial presence here."
Ezra glanced around the crowded street as they stepped through the hanger doors. "Given what you've told me about Mandalorians that doesn't surprise me," he commented. "Must take a whole army of Stormtroopers to keep them in line."
"Just about," Sabine chuckled, appreciative of Ezra's respect for her people's stubborn and defiant nature. "That's probably why they had to recruit major clans to serve them. Had to establish some form of legitimacy."
Ezra nodded, falling quiet behind her. As they walked, the noise of the crowd grew louder, filling the space where their normal easy conversation would be. There seemed to be high-wound tension in the air, something vibrating and palpable. Ezra kept a wary eye scanning the street, noticing now that the mass of bodies they'd joined outside the hanger seemed to be flowing in a very deliberate, purposeful direction, stuttering and stopping occasionally but gradually moving down the long, glass and durasteel-lined boulevard.
The noise resolved into shouting, furious voices blaring out from one direction and another. Far up ahead of them they seemed to be coalesced into a fervent chant, harsh Mando'a ringing out.
"What are they saying?" he whispered aside to Sabine.
She frowned behind her helmet, mentally translating in her head before relaying it to Ezra. "It sounds like they're mad about the Imps arresting someone. Baron Kray."
"You know him?"
A headshake. "Not personally. But he's known for a few assassination attempts and clan attacks on other houses."
Ezra squinted at her. "And they want him back?" he asked, with a bit of incredulity.
Sabine shrugged. "He is still Mandalorian. The only thing Mandalorians hate more than other Mandalorians is outsiders trying to push us around." She paused a moment to recheck the mission notes in her gauntlet's holoprojector. "The city's been a hotbed of rioting and protests for a few weeks now, according to Hera, so this is probably just the latest item in a whole series of grievances."
"Well that's good, isn't it? That they're mad at the Empire?" Ezra asked hopefully.
Sabine, oddly, frowned. "Civil unrest has its uses in rebellion," she said, "but the mob mentality can be dangerous. It's chaotic, often undirected—or misdirected—and frequently unfocused."
"Lemme guess," said Ezra, beginning to grin, "we're here to provide that focus."
She smiled as she held up her handheld sprayer. "Yup," she confirmed brightly. "A little starbird here, a shouted anti-Imperial slogan there, enough to keep the protestors fighting with Stormtroopers rather than with each other."
"So what do you want me to do?" he asked eagerly.
"A mob is only as intelligent as its dumbest member, and you have telepathic mind-influencing powers," she said. "I'm sure you can figure it out."
He nodded. "Right," he confirmed, and the two of the slipped into the crowd.
-SWR-
For several blocks they watched and observed and moved with the flow of the throng. Sabine picked a couple visible places to tag her starbird, scrawling hasty Aurebesh and Mando'a underneath, street signs and alley walls mostly. ("The paint's washable but I still don't want to cause shopowners any hassle," she explained to Ezra.) Ezra, for his part, faded in and out between gaps in the crowd, Force senses extended and... slightly overwhelmed.
The mood of the crowd was, as Sabine had described it, very chaotic, the expected traces of anger and discontent ever-present but with a shocking undercurrent of something darker. Something primal and violent, hovering under the surface like a dark shadow under the waters. More than once, he instinctively reached out to calm the beings around him, feeling uneasy and nervous by the energy in the air.
Wherever his mental hand touched, the mood of the crowd cooled, their shouting pausing and quieting down for a moment.
It became harder to ignore the discordant noise as they rounded a corner and started moving into, what felt like, a much more unstable part of the crowd.
The sound of glass breaking rang out all around them, Mandalorians clubbing curb cameras and storefronts with rods, rocks, sometimes outright shooting them out with blasters. Multiple fires were going, flickering on parked speeders and waste canisters. The shouts were louder too, bellowed out by hoarse voices harsh with anger.
Ezra glanced around in slight horror. "What are they doing?" he whispered aside to Sabine. "These are retail stores and apartments, not Imperial watchposts."
Sabine turned towards him sadly. "I told you," she said. "Mob violence can be indiscriminate. There are always opportunists and bad actors that come to take advantage of the chaos."
"This isn't right," Ezra muttered, striding away from her suddenly.
"Ezra!" she hissed, grabbing ineffectively for him.
He was walking up to a pair of very tall, very thick-shouldered Mandos in light armor who were wrestling with an older woman in the doorway of what was, presumably, her shop. The silver-haired elder was pushing at them desperately, trying to block their way in. Her sign was already pulled down and askew and they were bowling her over through sheer force of strength, sending her sprawling.
Ezra strode up without fear or hesitation and called out nonchalantly.
"Hey."
They both turned at the sound of his friendly tone, and that was when his eyes hardened sharply with focus.
"This isn't your target," he intoned firmly.
Both of them were helmeted, but their eyes seemed to glaze over as the Mind Trick washed through them.
"This... isn't our target," one of them mumbled.
"You should direct your anger at the Empire," Ezra continued, impressing the idea strongly through the Force.
They nodded dully. "We should direct our anger at the Empire," they both agreed in a monotone.
Ezra smiled faintly. "We're going to go pull down that propaganda poster," he finished.
Slightly more animated, body posture indicating excitement, they moved to do just that. "We're going to go pull down that propaganda poster," they repeated, walking past Ezra on either side. One of them jetpacked up to the top of the display and bashed it repeatedly with his fists until the electronics fizzled out, and a cheer rang up from the crowd.
His arm was yanked harshly to side and a furious Sabine pulled him away.
"What are you doing?!" she hissed. "You can't just openly bust out a Jedi Mind Trick on Mandalore! You're gonna get us caught!"
Ezra just silently pointed towards the elderly shopkeeper, slowly grabbing the frames of her front door in order to stand up, looking bewildered but grateful that the throng was now passing her little place by.
Sabine gave an aggravated growling sigh. "All right, fine. But be more careful next time," she warned him.
She kept him by her side, one hand firmly around his wrist, keeping track of him even as the crowd pressed in on them tighter, forcing them towards a choke point down the street. Sabine looked nervously left and right, feeling boxed in, the press of bodies too close and claustrophobic.
They were almost forced along, the shouts and slogans fever pitch now. Sabine bit her tongue with creeping anxiety, glancing back and seeing that Ezra's face was pinched tight, as if in pain.
"Ez?" she called quietly.
He ground his free hand into his face. "Too much noise," he complained. "Everyone's minds are all just..."
"I know," she assured him, looking around for avenues of escape.
Sharp blasterfire suddenly punctuated the din, eliciting startled screams and clearing a space almost directly in front of them. The low hum of a hoverlift platform rose to their ears, and Sabine's heart gripped her throat as she noticed Imperial Supercommandos piloting it, flanking a man with red-lined white armor, who looked over the crowd with disdain.
She tightened, digging her fingers into Ezra's wrist protectively. Gar Saxon.
The hoverlift had blocked the avenue, the blasters of the Supercommandos pointed threateningly towards the crowd, who shouted back spitting curses at them.
Saxon merely grabbed an amplifier and spoke into it to the crowd.
"This is an unlawful demonstration," he said. "Disperse now, or you will be fired upon."
"Down with the Empire!" one of the protesters screeched, a call that was quickly taken up by the crowd.
The anger of the mob didn't seem to phase Saxon, who reached into his belt for his blaster and lifted it, firing a couple warning shots into the air.
The crowd screeched and then silenced a moment.
Sabine waited with baited breath.
"We have reason to believe the noted Mandalore traitor, Sabine Wren, and her Jedi accomplice Ezra Bridger are among you," Saxon stated with callous disregard. "We know they have landed with the intent of stirring up discontent against our glorious Empire."
Sabine's heart froze with a sharp feeling of ice.
"Anyone who has information about these traitors and enemies to Mandalore will be granted clemency," he promised. "Anyone who conceals their location or aides and abets them, will be swiftly and summarily executed without trial."
Sabine hissed softly through her teeth, feeling immediately conspicuous in her colorful armor. She looked left. Ezra was paling slightly, glancing nervously at her, waiting for her direction.
She could also feel the eyes of the crowd, scanning for her, the heavy rolling hostility of the rioters shifting direction to focus on her.
She met eyes with an unarmored Mando and felt her stomach drop with dread.
The man raised a hand to point. "That's her!" he screeched. "There! There she is!"
The call was echoed by others around the plaza, and Sabine felt her heart rise straight into her throat as the hostile attention of the mob slowly turned inward, towards them.
"Sabine?" Ezra called anxiously, beginning to shift on his feet.
"Run," she ordered. She let go of his wrist and shouted it. "Run!" she cried.
He didn't need to be told twice. They both took off, helter-skelter, pushing through bodies in the crowd until they reached somewhere relatively clear. The angry shouts and yells followed them, blasters ringing behind their ears. Sabine felt a few shots bounce off her armor and thanked the Force for her beskar, too panicked to turn around and look who was shooting at them. Commando or citizen, it didn't matter.
"Split up!" she yelled, spotting the Supercommandos blasting over their heads, following their ground retreat by jetpack. "I'll try to draw some of them off!" she said, pulling out her WESTARs and blasting back at their pursuers.
She skidded around a corner, three Commandos hot on her trail, and could only hope and pray that Ezra was getting away safely.
-SWR-
Ezra's pulse was pounding sharply in his head and chest as he ran, skidding around people and debris. As if the Imperial goons weren't bad enough, it seemed like the entire mob had turned their attention and hostility towards him. In that moment it didn't matter how much they hated the Empire, how young he was, how he'd been part of them just seconds ago, he was a Jedi and that made him the enemy. He could feel their murderous intentions like a heavy blight in the Force.
After all what Mandalorian wouldn't jump at the chance to take down a Jedi?
Ezra dodged blaster bolts mostly by sheer force of luck and precognition, throwing his hands up over his head to shield himself.
A shrill warning came through the Force seconds before he took a hard hit. A rock, or some other hard projectile. Ezra felt it sheer past his head, smacking solidly into the spot right behind his right ear.
The blow knocked him senseless a moment, and he stumbled, tripping over his feet and falling to the ground dizzily. His head spinning, barely aware and desperately trying to get his bearings, he felt a heavy body land on his stomach, a dark shadow over him and a fist slamming into his chin, and he immediately grabbed for his lightsaber.
A mash of a button, a quick flash of green, and his attacker cried out in dying agony as the emerald blade pierced through his chest. The man fell to the side off of him, and Ezra scrambled to his elbows, nausea rising up his throat. The unarmored Mandalorian lay dead on the ground, eyes open wide with his death throes, creepy-looking and unsettling. Ezra pushed away from the body, feeling the dark undercurrent of the crowd rise again, horrifically violent, now that one of 'theirs' had fallen.
"Get him!"
"Kill him!"
"Blow his head off!"
The sheer Dark Side potency of it almost choked him, but he scrambled to his feet and took off at a desperate run, dodging arms and shots that came for him. He couldn't see where Sabine had gone, but half of the Commandos had taken off after her, leaving only two to pursue him.
Ezra swerved from one end of the street to the other, then took a hard left into an alley.
He'd taken three long bounding steps before he had to pull up short, seeing about ten rioters blocking his way, maybe not aware of his wanted status but an obstacle nonetheless.
He skidded to a halt and stumbled over himself to try to go back, but a white-clad figure dropped down into the alley after cutting his jetpack boosters, advancing slowly.
Ezra backed away with his hands up slightly, cringing into himself.
Ohhhhh—was what he managed to think, before the raised blaster fired blue rings into his chest.
-SWR-
Sabine's side panged painfully and her breath rattled in her chest as she leaned against the side of the wall, doubled slightly, hands on her thighs. Her fingers were still curled tightly around the hilts of her WESTARs but the three targets pursuing her had been brought down, lost to the mob. She didn't know how many were still looking for her; the immediate crowd in her hidden line of vision seemed to have lost interest.
She panted, swallowing, calmer but still filled with nervous tingling. Straightening up, she slid along the wall in order to peek out. The rioters were dispersing on her street, but from the shouts and crashing a block away seemed to still be going at it there. She moved back behind her cover, leaning her helmet against the wall. Worry crept through her stomach that she couldn't spot Ezra.
A side door in the alley opened. Sabine tensed, sharply bringing up a blaster, but the silver-armored Mandalorian that came through the door opened both palms to show her he wasn't a threat.
"Are you all right, Miss?" he asked with genuine concern.
Vaguely, Sabine recalled him, part of Clan Tyre. She'd seen several of them in their silver and blue livery posted in doorways and streetcorners, their long-range blaster rifles out on display, warding unruly protesters away from certain streets or certain buildings.
Shakily, Sabine lowered her blaster, sagging back against the wall again.
"Yeah... yeah, I'm okay," she said between gasps.
The other Mando approached slowly, reaching out a hand to place on her shoulder, almost in a fatherly manner.
"I got... separated from my friend," Sabine explained, forcing the words through her dry throat. She shook her head, her helmet shifting. "I don't know where he is."
"Come on inside," he urged, tugging at her shoulder.
Sabine holstered her weapons and let him guide her quickly up the steps and into the building.
The dim light shadowed them as the cycling air blasted cool on her shoulders. Several of the Clan Tyre guards were within, whispering in hushed breath to each other. Their long blue capes hung straight down, and a few of them had beautifully crafted beskar spears that Sabine was insanely jealous of, for a brief moment.
She moved to go towards the windows, pressing her viewport against the glass, straining to see what was going on outside through the glare of the sunlight.
She cursed under her breath. She should have held onto him. Taking a step back she pressed the button to open their comm line.
"'Spectre 5 to Spectre 6," she called.
No answer, not even static.
Biting her lip, trying to quell the horrible spike of fear and worry pushing its way up through her throat, she tried again.
"Spectre 6? Ezra, you there?" She waited on pins and needles for something, anything, to come over the line. "Oh stars, please answer me."
A commotion from outside drew her attention. Shouts and screams rang up from the crowd, and Sabine heard a loud hissing.
The guard behind her let out mingled curses.
"They're shooting riot gas canisters!" one of them barked.
The one who'd retrieved Sabine joined her at the window, looking out grimly. "They're clearing the street."
Cacophonous ringing of blasterfire punctured the air, loud and pounding even through the window. Sabine lurched for the front door, pushing it open by the handle, stumbling out into the middle of the road into the faint yellow haze that was drifting down from the other end towards her. Coughing, stumbling protestors lurched out of the fog and passed on either side of her. The Clan Tyre guard stepped out into the open as well, though stayed well back, close to their posts.
Sabine's heart sunk as the haze began to clear, revealing white-clad Supercommandos and a cadre of Stormtroopers behind them sweeping the street, blasters out and ready.
"Sabine Wren!"
Her teeth gnashed as she spied Saxon, strutting out haughtily in front of his men. The riot gas was rapidly dissipating, revealing a road emptied of protestors. Living ones anyway; she spied a couple crumpled bodies in the road and felt anger flickering through her.
Gar Saxon looked infuriatingly smug as he strode up, his rifle across his body at low ready. He stopped, him and his lackeys, about twenty paces away.
Sabine took a step back, one of her blasters out again, pointed towards the Imperial Viceroy, for all the good it would do. The other hand crept behind her, burying in her belt for a "just in case".
"What do you want, Saxon?" she demanded.
"I have a proposition for you," he said calmly. He took his hand off the rifle trigger and motioned to his side.
Sabine watched with horror as a pair of Supercommandos dragged out Ezra between them, dangling and stumbling on his feet. His hands were in binders behind him and he bled from a wound on his head. He seemed dazed and slightly out of it, struggling to focus his eyes as he was shoved down to his knees next to Saxon. The Commandos kept firm hands on his shoulders as they presented him, their blasters dangerously close to his head.
"Turn yourself over to Imperial custody," Saxon was posturing, "and I will spare the life of your Jedi friend."
Sabine's face hardened into steel, glaring at him for all she was worth. She flicked her gaze to Ezra, who looked up at her with a chagrined, slightly embarrassed expression, trying to be brave.
"Sorry Sabine," he strained out. "Took a wrong turn," he quipped.
She snorted, irreverently.
Gar Saxon's expression flashed with irritation and he took his rifle and slammed the butt into Ezra's cheek, making him whiplash and cry out in pain.
The sound sent furious anger into Sabine's chest. She could barely hold back from snarling. Her fingers tightened on the triggers. Ohhh when she got her hands on him...
Her internal fuming faded into the background of her thoughts as Saxon straightened again. "Now... I'm sure we don't want to make a big scene," he began diplomatically. "More Mandalorians have died today than needed to. Let's not add your Jedi to the list."
Sabine ignored him, focusing all her attention on Ezra, willing him to look at her, feel her intentions, know what she was planning.
He raised eyes, and a message passed between them.
Trust me.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Sabine drew her hand out and back and lobbed one of her bombs straight for the Imperial group. "Add that to the list, sleemo!" she yelled.
Gar Saxon's eyes widened with a satisfying look of fear, tracking the projectile, before he barked out an order to his men.
Ezra took that as his cue to wrench himself forward, flat onto his face.
The bomb exploded with a loud boom and a firecracker burst of color and sparks, bouncing off the street and windows and signs, popping on the plastoid armor of the Commandos and Stormtroopers, who yelped in panic and scattered as they took cover.
Into the chaos Sabine dove, knees skidding on the pavement as she reached Ezra. She didn't bother with the lock, just shooting a precise shot into the cuffs to make them spring open.
Ezra brought his hands forward immediately, pushing up against the ground and supporting himself as he lunged up to his feet. Sabine kept her hand on his arm this time, not letting go, even when he abruptly pulled up short and turned.
"Hang on a second," he told her.
Her insides screamed in frustration but she forced that down, waiting for him, watching his outstretched hand. From somewhere she didn't see his lightsaber came flying back to his palm, and he immediately whipped around as his fingers closed around it.
"Let's go," she breathed frantically, seeing over his shoulder Gar Saxon recovering from the shock of her firework, face twisting in fury and reaching a hand for them.
She pointed her blaster and shot straight past his face, nicking him in the side of the head. He shrieked and clapped a hand over his ear, stumbling back in retreat like the coward he was.
The other Clan Tyre members were engaged now, firing upon the Supercommandos, laying down a cover for them as the two teens ran frantically away.
Sabine didn't stop for anything, not even turning around to look at the chaos behind her until the noise had faded and the pop! pop! pop! of the blasterfire was far away. She dragged Ezra along until they were both exhausted, panting and laughing and exhilarated by their narrow escape.
They finally came to a stop, about a block away from the spaceport, and Sabine pulled up and began fussing over the gash on Ezra's head.
"You okay?" she asked, breathless, still reeling from the fact that he was still alive, the mob hadn't trampled him.
"Nothing a little bacta won't fix," he told her, batting off her hands gently as they poked him a little too hard. "Ow, hey! Leave that alone!"
She straightened, smiling under her helmet where he couldn't see, privately thrilled that she'd managed to pluck him from the jaws of death. "I think that's enough for today," she quipped lightly.
Ezra laughed, a wonderful open sound that made her heart warm. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's plenty of agitating for me."
Sabine grinned widely, pulling him in for a quick, relieved hug before she led the way back to their shuttle.
(A/N)- Some of you might remember from my previous fic "Bruises" that Sabine expressed a desire to shoot Saxon in the face for hurting Ezra. She gets her wish here lol.