- and hovered.
It took twice as long for everyone to realize it wasn't falling than it took for the thing to break free of its tethers. The music stopped mid-song. Wedge cranked his neck to look over his shoulder. Bouncers stared in shock. More rushed in through the archway, but stopped short. Still recovering from the rushed retreat to the edges of the room, the crowd stared up confusion until they all realized what was happening.
Luke Skywalker hadn't moved from under it; he simply closed his eyes and turned his palms to the ceiling. Kess Lendra hadn't scrambled off the craps table; she simply rested on her back and closed her eyes like she was about to take a nap, brought her hands to her shoulders and turned her palms to the ceiling.
The X-Wing hovered, nudging gently in pitch, yaw, and roll, as if being held by giant hands.
Nik kept one palm back to keep others from joining him as he stepped to Luke with a low mutter, "How can I help?"
Luke took one hand to pull his lightsaber off his belt and blindly pressed it into Nik's chest to take. Once Nik did, dumbfounded at this symbolism, Luke blindly pointed to a different part of the ceiling.
Nik glanced up and opened his senses. There was someone up there. With the music silenced and the crowd staring wordless, they could hear it too. A body scrambled across the durasteel rafters and fiberglass ceiling panels.
"I can't reach it." He murmured as he stepped under the noise and listened to follow it. The crowd parted further from Nik and the green lightsaber blade, giving the man space for whatever was about to happen next. The body scrambling above was quickly reaching the edge of the room. Nik shouted in frustration, "I can't reach it!"
"Throw it!" Kess shouted quickly.
Nik's eyes shot around at anyone nearby in a silent warning, and everyone darted away to crowd hard at the other end of the room. With a pinched mouth, Nik threw the lightsaber up to the ceiling where it tumbled 180 degrees on its way up, and just barely curved enough to slice the durasteel frame holding up the fragile fiberglass tiles.
The green blade knocked back to spin the other direction on its way back down, but with it came sliced tiles of fiberglass... and a body.
Nik launched in to carefully snatch the falling lightsaber out of the air and pulled it out of the way in time not to hurt the body falling with it. Bones cracked audibly as the man fell two stories to the floor in a cannonball position, but Nik angrily stomped and grabbed him by the collar to yank him to his feet.
The culprit growled in pain.
"Get out of the way!" Wedge yelled over his shoulder at Nik, his arms and body still wrapped around Yana by the hall.
Nik shoved the villain into the arms of a bouncer, and several bouncers converged on the man at once. Still with lit saber in his hand, Nik turned his eyes back to the X-wing and stepped back.
"Get. Out. Of. The. Way." Luke commanded without opening his eyes, but his tone carried a touch of old humor.
"Do you have it?" Kess responded with a shout of almost marital frustration.
Luke angled his chin and gritted his teeth. "I'm going to drop this thing on you on purpose if you don't move."
Slowly, Kess opened her eyes and her hands gently released from their concentrated efforts. The X-wing rocked slightly, but Luke had it. She scrambled quickly off the craps table, taking the offering hands of the crowd to help her down and yank her farther to safety.
Now standing aside with the rest of the onlookers, she closed her eyes and lifted her palms again, returning her assistance. "We're going to kill that table."
"There's nowhere else to put it," Luke called back.
Instantly, Nik, Wedge, Ommis, Janson, Rogan, Jewie, the bouncers, Civilian heroes, and Rebel veterans all turned to launch into crowd control, backing people up as far as they could, scooping as many people out of the room as possible so no one got hit by shattering objects when the X-wing crashed down.
Yet, it didn't exactly crash. With Luke at the aft end, and Kess at the port wing, Red Five lowered hesitantly, slowly, to descend atop the craps table. Its size spread over several other tables as well, like a mother bird too big for her own nest.
"Let it go."
"This table's not going to hold it-
"Let it go."
Kess opened her palms and opened her eyes, taking another step back, pressing into bodies pressed against the wall behind her. Luke opened his eyes and watched as his grip gently released. "Take cover!" He called to everyone, unworried, and twitched his fingers further open.
Resting awkwardly on the craps table, Red Five sat there as if looking at everyone with an expression of, I have a bad feeling about this.
Metal groaned, legs snapped, wood shards went flying, and the craps table crunched flat to the floor under its weight.
THUD!
The noise echoed away to a stunned silence.
Luke took a big breath and began to laugh. Kess sighed and grinned back at him as she shook her head.
"Everyone alright?" Nik called out. "Anyone hurt?" Ommis shouted. Murmurs erupted through the room like a sudden storm. Bodies stirred to leave, and bodies stirred to see it better. Wedge finally faced forward to look down at the woman in green silk he'd been protecting and - suddenly aware of his own maneuver- slowly, politely, let her go.
Yana stared up at his eyes. A dozen thoughts flowed through her soul, but none so loud as the words she wished she could say, Don't go.
"Sorry," Wedge murmured, backing his palms in a gestured apology at his forwardness, and turned away to let her free.
Kess stepped up and patted the transparisteel canopy with love. Luke stepped around the port wing to stand beside her and petted Red Five's fresh-painted hull with a lamenting sigh. The old codger former-Mash-Pit-owner rushed out of a crowd that was finally retreating from the scene. "Are you guys okay?"
They looked at him and nodded, grinning softly. "Sorry about the table," Kess shrugged.
The man smiled, shook his head, and sighed again. "Don't worry about the damn table."
Luke lifted his brows. "Did you know it was mine?"
"Yeah, I knew! That's why I picked it out of the scrap pile." He pointed vaguely to the other end of the building. "The other one's Vader's!"
Kess threw her head back. Luke dropped his smile forward. They all shared a calming laugh.
The party was over, but it took over an hour to escort everyone out of the building. Nik turned off the lightsaber and returned it to Luke. Key witnesses gathered by Red Five and the shattered craps table to report what they saw to authorities and management. Many bodies that were in the main room for the whole thing fought get a peek of the X-Wing stretching nearly the length and breadth of the side-room before they would be ushered out. Shoulder to shoulder to leave the main entrance, a fist fight erupted between two rebels and three imperials, which was broken up quickly by both rebel and imperial hands already at the scene. Police swarmed the place and helped bouncers with further crowd control on the street. One man - just one - was arrested and shoved by the head into one of the many speeders now parked out front with flashing red, yellow, and blue lights. People paused their disbursement to see how much of the scene they caught on their vid caps. Laughter. Cussing shock. "Did you see that?!" "Come on, let's get out of here." "Where are we going next?" "That deserves another drink..."
By the end of the night, Leia lounged in the center of her couch, rubbing her melon belly with smiling eyes on the newsnet BREAKING REPORT. Chewie sat beside her hooting low laughter. Threepio stood behind the couch with arms up and words of alarm. Ren stood beside Threepio and closed his eyes with disappointment at his old colleagues. Yana sat with poise in a side chair to watch the report with calculating eyes. Wedge stood behind her elbow with his hands in his pockets and erupted with a disbelieving chortle from time to time. Ommis, Jewie, Rogan, and Janson stood together around the kitchen bar in the back to murmur disbelief at it all. Nik sat in the other easy chair and rubbed his eyes every time he was shown or mentioned in the report. Luke dropped his back against the couch beside Leia, closed his eyes in peace, and patted the back of her hand. Kess curled her legs up in the corner of the couch, letting Luke's other arm wrap around her on the back of it, and watched the vid with a strange grin.
Blue-faced Wubak had turned to watch a new vid cap just now provided by one of the witnesses, this one showing that two Jedi had complete control of the situation, while a third, "Yes, that was the Momentary Emperor", used a green lightsaber to cut out and capture the terrorist who tried 'Throwing a Darverk' onto a room full of Rebel Scum.
When the clip ended in a frozen shot of everyone sighing smiles of relief, Wubak turned with a smug grin at her audience. "Nice try, though."