Jaina wasn't sure if removing a prisoner's footwear was a standard Imperial practice.
She could sort-of understand why the Imperials had taken her boots off her - she'd had a holdout blaster, fighting knife and two throwing blades concealed inside them, and she'd watched with a frown as the stormtrooper officer with the red shoulder-pad methodically stripped the hidden weapons out, and added them to the pile which already included her lightsaber, blaster pistol, comm-band and utility belt, collected rather awkwardly in the arms of one of his white-armoured subordinates.
But the most important weapons carried in her boots were the wedge-heels that added extra inches to her height, a tactic she'd stolen from Aunt Mara, with the difference that with boots designed for comfort in the cockpit rather than dodging bad guys and climbing skyscrapers, hers weren't narrow blades designed to snap off when she needed to run places or cut something. They were just nice boots, ones that made her taller and more confident without making her toes and ankles hurt.
Back down at her real height, she felt annoyingly vulnerable. Of course, it didn't help that she was standing with her bare feet on the cold metal deck of a Star Destroyer, with an entire platoon of stormtroopers standing guard around her, stun-cuffs on her wrists, punch-drunk and disoriented from the stun-blast that had knocked her out, and her Force skills still fuzzy as a side-effect.
The stormtrooper officer had finished humiliating her footwear, and was talking to a quarter-sized holo of Grand Admiral Thrawn, displayed on a palm-sized projector disk - gesturing at her boots, or more likely at her lightsaber.
Jaina frowned.
She could probably gather enough brute strength from the Force to knock over a few stormtroopers and try and run for it, but she wasn't sure how far she'd get before she just got stunned again, and she figured, in a hazy way, that she wanted to shake off the effect of the last one before she let herself get shot again.
"Very good, Commander," Thrawn was saying. "Make sure she's properly secured before she's able to think clearly. We don't want her regaining control of her powers too quickly."
Bastard, she thought, feeling annoyed that Thrawn had a clearer view of her mental state than she did. Was he reminding her of that just to annoy her?
The stun had scrambled her ability to focus her Jedi senses - she couldn't find the precision she needed for things like picking the computer lock on her wrist-binders, or mind-tricking Imperial goons, but it wasn't just that. She didn't feel the confidence and clarity that told her when and how to act.
"All right," one of the stormtroopers said, jabbing her in the rear with the front end of his blaster. "Into the turbolift, you Rebel scum."
She was vaguely impressed by the way that the stormtroopers could shift from a circle around her to a box-shaped marching escort, and then narrow into a triangular formation to file into the turbolift.
Another jab from the blaster, and she stumbled into the 'lift, finding herself standing in the centre, with stormtroopers back in a circle round the walls, now two ranks deep.
Did they all come in with me? she wondered.
The floor began to move beneath her feet, the weird directionless acceleration of a turbolift speeding up while deck gravity made your feet think they were standing still - which was probably more confusing when you were still disoriented after being stunned. Normally she'd be able to tell if they were moving up or down.
Maybe they were heading aft along the same deck - main detention aboard an ImpStar was at the stern, wasn't it?
"What you think the Grand Admiral's going to do with this one?" a stormtrooper asked, voice filtered into harsh anonanymity by his helmet speaker.
"Cut that chatter," a darker voice replied. "We're taking her to the forward shuttle hangar, straight on a prison barge to Mount Tantiss."
Kriff it, she thought, and hooked the legs of the one behind her out with her bare foot. She used the momentum of his fall to bowl him over her back, using him as an improvised blast-shield to block incoming shots from his platoon-mates, and she spun a waist-high kick into the next one on her left, sendling the ranks on that side toppling neatly round the circle of the 'lift. A heel to the armoured jaw of the one on her right, and she was twisting his blaster out of his hands - or at least, grabbing the gun and making the shots go past her flank. She remembered to click the setting of the next blaster she got hold of on to stun, and simply sprayed blaster bolts in a circle around her until there were no stormtroopers standing between her and the bulkheads.
At some point during all that, she'd dropped to her knees, and she was now up to her shoulders in broken stormtroopers.
She decided to stand up. At least then the stormtroopers only came up to her waist.
She looked around the wreckage for her boots.
Apparently stun-shots didn't do much damage to your body's unarmed-combat instincts, she decided, though the way she was thinking felt like she was drunk.
And stormtroopers could shift formation flawlessly from a smart ring around the bulkhead into a surprisingly deep pile on the floor.
She was pleasantly surprised by the chaos she'd created - the sort of thing her brother was normally good at. The sort of thing the two of them had done together when they'd been kids.
But then someone grabbed her ankle, and decided to introduce her face to the turbolift door. She suspected they'd been aiming to introduce her to the deck, but she wasn't sure if the fact that white-armoured limbs had broken her fall half-way down was progress.
Apparently a turbolift full of knocked-out stormtroopers was really good camouflage for ones who were still fighting, and her escort still had enough brute numbers to grab the gun off her, twist her arm up behind her back, pistol-whip her with the long end of a carbine, and beat her front off the armoured bulkhead until she agreed they'd won.
She realised that what felt like a whole 'lift full of troopers was mostly just the commander. She could see his red shoulder pad, sense some of his focused fury in the Force, and realised from the way his body jolted that she was still kicking and trying to wriggle free. She could taste his glove between her teeth, white armour on top, black synthide on the palm.
Maybe if I stop biting him and kicking him, he'll stop punching me in the face with this door.
She tried that.
Kark. That didn't work.
Was the lift decelerating?
Had she confused stop biting with close your mouth completely?
She tried kicking him in the body armour instead.
"Kriffing... Rebel..."
The door chimed, and she somehow slid out along the deck, face-first, to come to a stop against the shiny polished boots of an Imperial officer. She scowled at them, then looked up past the breeches, the belt with its chrome buckle and big holstered pistol, and the broad lapels with the neat squares and shiny clips of rank insignia, as the officer looked down, and gave her a wink and smirk, a look that any watching stormtroopers woud hopefully think was just a gesture of Imperial amusement.
"We'll take it from here, Commander," he said, doing a surprisingly good job of not grinning, except in the Force.
Jaina dropped her head back onto the deck, hoping that that looked like a gesture of defeat when she really needed to hide her own grin and her shake of silent laughter.
"Kriffing... bit me," the stormtrooper commander muttered. Jaina didn't get the sense he was really paying much attention to the officer who'd just commandeered his prisoner.
Is it bad of me I want to kiss my brother?