Apocrypha:

Overkill

Four traveling fighters, brought together by a common destiny...

Geonosis

Unknown ABY

The arena.

It figures the Overlord would take me to the one place I never wanted to come back to. The place where it all began. The place where a boy became a man, and the galaxy took its first steps into a much larger, much more profitable world.

It's funny how little has changed. The plastoid bodies still linger, piled high against their shattered attack ships. There's at least a hundred men here, all with the same face as me. Frayed circuitry looms to meet their corpses, droid warriors still eager to fight if their cognitive modules had not already been reduced to scrap.

Then there's that familiar sting of sand as the wind kicks through. In my experience, the wind is all that's ever left in these fights. Wind made a pact with time and it's all been downhill from there. Long ago the wind dried this blood, gathered up the sand, did its best to give these fallen soldiers a proper burial.

But wind can't warp away the memory. I still remember it all. Watched it from the sidelines when I was still too young, too naive. Didn't take me long to wise up.

Guess the Geonosian spectators have done the same. There's not a single bug left to occupy the surrounding stands. No one here to cheer for our glorious sacrifice. Not that I can blame them. These fights tend to get a little messy, even for my standards. And if all this wreckage is anything to by, there's not exactly anybody around clamoring to clean it up.

What a shame. You'd figure with the Overlord beaming us here like this he'd at least have the decency to call up a cleaning crew.

All the Overlord wants now is to see some heads roll. If I don't get to my post soon, he'll be putting mine up right next to my father's.

Every step further into the arena is a message in itself. Some steps speak of purpose, some to experience, others to the strain of twenty kilos of duraplast weighing me down.

Sometimes you just got to let your armor do the talking. In my case, that's all that's ever been needed. Covered head to toe like this, I might as well be the wet dream of every blacksmith this side of Mandalore. The breastplate's a graying green, scuff marks a testament to battles won and people killed. Rest of the kit is just as sturdy, one knock on the helmet is enough to crack open a fist. The hardhat does a lot more than that though. It's giving me a constant feed of diagnostics, its tinted visor eager to point out any heat sigs foolish enough to get in my way. As for the business end, today's specials are rockets and saberdarts on one arm, flame projector and a fibercord whip on the other. If that's not enough, there's still the EE-3 targeting rifle that never leaves my grip. It's the most practical tool this side of my jetpack - and with all this gear dragging me down it's lucky I've still got that thing to pull me back up again.

All that to say, I'm ready for whatever comes at the end of the three challenger's doors.

To solidify the fact, I finally stand up at my pedestal on the far end of our quaint little thunderdome. With my place taken, the Overlord's faceless voice calls out far overhead.

"Boba Fett."

I'd like to imagine there was a surge of excitement from the nonexistent crowd. A pang of fear at the very least. That name is still the stuff of legend. Vader doesn't call just anybody 'the best bounty hunter in the galaxy'. That's something you have to earn.

But a lull of silence is all that's there to greet the name. Attention is focused on the next challenger's approach instead, the next dead man. The gates open, and there's a glint of silver. This time the Overlord doesn't take quite as long to acknowledge the entrant.

"Captain Phasma."

Never heard of him before in my life.

I can certainly see him, though. 'Phasma' is either some highly-decorated Imperial warlord, or a fanatic with a chrome fetish. If it weren't for my HUD dulling the area's colors I'd be wincing at the reflective glare of his get-up. No armor that clean has ever been a good reflection of the one wearing it. It speaks of inexperience, of a rigidness when the going gets tough - an inability to adapt.

And they said this was going to be a challenge.

Still, size might pose a threat. His first step onto his plinth all but confirms that concern. The guy's taller than most of the Wookiees I've had to put down.

There's another echo before I can go completely blind. Another gate opening to the right of me.

"General Grievous."

But, hang on - isn't he already dead? By a good twenty years if I remember the rumors right. Apparently not, the four-armed cyborg doesn't let a little thing like death keep him from standing atop his podium.

The General's tall, well-armored, menacing enough, I'll give him that. It's just hard to take anything he does seriously when he's hacking up a storm. The sand's doing a number on my filter systems, I can't imagine what it must be doing to his lungs. Sympathy is still the harbinger of weakness. Even with all my gear on display like this I never bothered to pack with an asthmatic in mind. If all goes well he shouldn't need to worry about breathing much longer, anyways.

The courtyard remains relatively quiet as he takes his place, save for the occasional cough attack. A final gate opens on the far end and the ensuing blur of black is all the more surprising.

"Darth Maul."

Guess they were saving the biggest bombshell for last.

Maul's the one you'll still hear rumors of in the underworld. The kind of guy that you're never really sure quite exists. The shadowy assassin that's always there but never present. But the dark lord really is here now, bloody tattoos glowering in all their glory as he takes his place. And his presence is confirming my biggest suspicion about this entire ordeal.

All of us are here because we've cheated death. Now it's just a matter of seeing who can do it again.

Four fighters. Four cardinal directions.

One man to be left standing.

"FIGHT!"

With the order granted, I can instantly tell I'm going to have to keep my distance from phantom hornhead.

I've seen what those crimson lightswords can do up close, and with one flick of his staff, Maul's daring me to deal with two of them. On the other side of the field, it looks like the General's doubled that damage output - literally. With his four sabers all whirling around like that I'm halfway convinced he's got a side gig as a juggler. He plods around far slower than his counterpart, but a buzzsaw doesn't need to be fast. It might be a gimmick, but it's just as deadly as any of the voodoo Black Sun training that Maul seems to be applying as he charges into the fray.

Then, there's Phasma. He's still taking long, dignified strides, never faltering. No style, no finesse, no need. Has that sense around him like he owns the place. Chrome fetish is still up for debate, but he's definitely got the air of an Imperial.

As for me - I'm already at bad odds. My jetpack works, sure, but only in a limited capacity. Something the Overlord kept calling a "nerf". All I want to do is keep this fight at a distance, but everyone else seems so damn set on closing in.

As if to telegraph the point, I feel gravity caving in around me, dragging me closer, practically uprooting me from the ground. I'm not the only one. Phasma and Grievous are both stumbling towards the arena's epicenter, reeled in by some invisible force. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, the first was with a Jedi bounty who wanted to play tug of war, one who I had to make a point of burning alive. There's only one Force-user here this time, and Maul couldn't be making his intent any clearer. Magnetized boots should be kicking in to help me here, but there's no kriffing metal for them to magnetize to.

There is a lot of chrome though.

Still tossing and weaving through the sand, I don't waste any time kicking into my jetpack's thruster supply. Next second I'm torpedoing across the landscape, headed on a collision course with a Captain who doesn't seem so dignified now that he's out of his element. We crash with about as much finesse, blaster rifles careening away. Tossing and turning, and ending up just out of reach of Maul's Force-induced gravity well.

On the other end of the field, Grievous starts twirling his sabers away, giving the dark lord more than he bargained for.

Even still, as far as bargains go, I'm pretty sure I got the raw end of the deal. Phasma's enraged. You don't rocket headfirst into a Chrome Wookiee without a backup plan. For now it's kicking and screaming and pretending like I know how to engage in fisticuffs while he tries to cave my skull in. Then the adrenaline starts boiling and it all falls into place.

There's a lot of talk about a Mandalorian's fighting style. How it's this ancient art, well-practiced and evolved over hundreds of year. And maybe in part it's worth those rumors. But at the end of the day, it's just you and your bare hands.

When you have gauntlets with more uses than your standard pocket tool, the fighting tends to come easy. The first punch Phasma misses is a chance to capitalize, and I do, with all the force of a grav-train. Doesn't even leave a dent in his armor. So I wail again, harder. There's an echo as the blow resonates throughout the metal, but still nothing. Two more punches, two more dings of defiance. And then a bit of laughter emanates from his vocal modulator, as if it to reinforce that it was all for naught.

And yet Phasma's chuckle sounds oddly... feminine.

Next thing I know I'm being tossed aside like a faulty hydrospanner. Even on the soft bed of sand my HUD's screaming that it doesn't like all this abuse, visuals going on the fritz for a few critical seconds. When I'm done seeing 'stars' I can feel her fist wrap around the heft of my breastplate, raising me a good half meter off the ground. She's got the other fist rolled back now, ready to drill into the part of my visor that's already cracked.

Halfway through her swing I'm bringing my legs up to counter, yanking down right around Phamsa's waist, just enough leverage to send the giant stumbling to the ground, me along with her. Still in arm's reach I know I don't have much time to work with. There's a glint of metal and it takes me all of a second to realize I'm staring at the business end of my EE-3 targeting rifle just meters away. There's no time to grab it though, not when it's out of arm's reach, not when she's already lunging for my ankle.

Except, nothing's really out of arm's reach. Not for Boba Fett.

I hit the side activator on my gauntlet and the fiber-cord comes billowing out, grapnel meeting its mark with the blaster rifle. This cord's supposed to be used to tie target's down, but something tells me Phasma would tear through it like wrapping paper. The newly-acquired EE-3's a far more practical approach.

Now that Phasma's dragged me by the leg and got my head back into bashing range she's got a little more than she bargained for - a blaster muzzle staring right back. One pull of the trigger and it's lights out for the Captain.

Or so it seems. Blast definitely hit, that much is for sure. But even after the billow of smoke reels away, and there's a scorch mark clawing at her helmet, Phasma seems oddly at peace with it all. And not in the dead to rights sort of way.

Before I can add another couple of shots for good measure I'm getting dragged back into battle - quite literally. The glow stick twins have fought to a stalemate, and Maul's in desperate need of something new to slice and dice. Guess that's me.

Grievous clearly isn't taking kindly to being ignored, he's hacking up a storm. Between his lungs and his lightswords that's one hell of a mess. By the time Maul's Force-kinesis has me back in stabbing range we're all engulfed in a miniature sand storm, courtesy of the General's four-armed death flails.

With those four beams of death twirling on one end, and two more charging forth, this is most men's worst nightmare, but I'm not most men. As the two duelists converge, their blades thrust forward, expecting to skewer me at their end. Instead their swords are greeted by thin air, as my pack jets me up a good ten meters into the air.

Up from above, this almost looks like the Jedi battles of yore. Crimson saberlight on one side, emerald and sapphire on the other. Except all the Jedi are dead now, and if they can be beaten, so can these two nerfherds.

Already getting low on fuel, I opt away from the flame projector. There's another toy on my gauntlet that's just as useful, and just as explosive. Another punch of the side activator and the trio of wrist rockets are launching directly at my two targets. The incendiaries pack just enough thrust to cut my jetpack out altogether. As missiles are launching forward, I'm careening down, knees crunching beneath me.

Meanwhile, the explosives are landing with expected ferocity. For a moment the clearing before me is a column of sand and flame batting away at each other. By the time it all dissipates there's nothing left to see. No bodies, no heat sigs. Grievous and Maul are gone.

All in a day's work.

Except the work's just beginning. The once vacant stands are billowing up all around me. No crowd full of bugs here to cheer on my victory, just droves and droves of hungry lions clawing their way down towards the field.

Nexu. A throwback to the pit fights of old.

If it wasn't apparent before, the Overlord's not holding anything back. This has to be every last beast he's got in reserve. Unfortunately, I can't afford to be so frivolous with my own arsenal. I've only got about one decent jump left in my jetpack, and if I don't move fast one jump's not going to mean much. Rifle in one hand, saberdarts armed on the other, I've got everything I need.

It's not long until I'm lighting the arena up with blaster-fire. Carefully calculated blaster-fire - my HUD's feeding me a constant churn of information, highlighting vitals, dissecting weakpoints. Soon there's kitties sprawled all around, with scorch marks in all the worst places. But these Nexu are a bit different, they've got a pack mentality that's strangely separate from the untamed variety. The kind of behavior that's only learned when you're tortured on a daily basis by the same man, united by the same hatred.

Or maybe it's just because they think I smell good.

Whatever the case, a trio of them manage to bolt right through my crossfire, vie for my jugular. The first one tries to at least, it goes flailing over my ducked form in dejected agony. The second cat comes from the side, and is just as promptly taken out with a no-look saberdart straight to the muzzle. It's the third Nexu that gives me trouble, plays it smart, keeps low to the ground and works too fast for a jump from my jetpack to matter.

It slams me down instead, gets me right where it wants me - flailing on the ground with a face full of claws. Ten years worth of brothel experience leads me to believe this is not a good position to be in. But there's nothing I can do. Not when it's already got my hands pinned down, not when it's every bit of 200 kilos, not when my helmet's being torn to shreds by a pair of fangs three rows wide.

Even for the man who bested the Sarlacc Pit, this is looking pretty grim.

There's no tool to protect you from getting trampled on, no tool that can keep you from suffocating in this close a proximity, not in my arsenal. But there is one one-size fits all method - a lightsaber stab straight to the cranium. As the Nexu's four eyes go limp at once I'm pushing the beast off me, turning to acknowledge my savior.

Maul glowers back, double sword still raised in defense. He looks no worse for wear than when I last blew him up, the kind of guy that never really figured out how to stay dead.

"You're mine to kill," he hisses.

Not sure whether to be terrified or flattered, I settle on irritated. "Right now, we're theirs."

And as Maul pivots away from me, I think he realizes the same thing. With Nexu caving in all around us, we've found ourselves in an uneasy union. Allies by necessity, the only worthwhile kind.

I'm about to suggest he performs another Force-push trick, but the fact he hasn't already speaks for itself. Evidently turning the entire arena into his own personal blackhole took more out of him than he expected. All brawn and no brain.

Brawn might be all it takes, though. When you're fighting wild animals the only logical decision is to punch harder. Doubling down on the idea, I brandish the combat knife from around my boot leg. Maul's working all the faster, vaulting over the nearest quadruped, digging his staff across its spine and right through its tail. One leap over the whimpering beast and I'm greeting another Nexu with a blade of my own, wrenching it through the slender tissue it calls a neck. A splatter of blood paints my helmet, the only celebration for the feat.

If we weren't ghosts fighting for our lives me and Maul would make one hell of an animal control unit.

Even with all these carcasses piling up around us, I finally spy Grievous' body crumpled over in a heap, right where I left him. Pretty soon the Nexu's will be using his metal limbs as toothpicks for what's left of his flesh. If we don't work fast, they're going to have a little more to pick away at.

As if to save us from that eventuality, there's a whir of turbines far overhead. A sonorous engine cycle, primitive, but oh-so-familiar. Still fighting tooth and nail, I manage the quickest of glances upwards, and the sight that awaits me is greeted with a victorious war cry.

What four LAAT Republic-era Gunships were coming in to save us for, I couldn't tell you. All I know is that those hunched cruisers with their enormous troop bays were swooping in, and their side bubble-turrets were laying waste to any Nexu still dumb enough to be charging us. I see full contingents of clone troopers poking their heads out from within, spying their dead brethren in the surrounding courtyard. They've one brother left to greet them, though. And I'm not going to wait until their gunship's ground-level to do so.

One last heap of thrust from my jetpack and I'm bulleting up towards the nearest troop bay several dozen meters over the arena floor. I can hear Maul snarling somewhere beneath me, tries to yank me by the ankle, but it's too late for that. I'm stumbling inside, metal boots resounding against the cruiser's deckplates. A huddle of white armor gathers around to meet my graying green.

Before the battle began I was staring down a hundred dead men with the same face as me. Now I look up towards a hundred more and they're alive and well.

"Orders, sir?" The nearest soldier asks.

There's a pause, one that the faceless Overlord wastes no time in breaking from his perch somewhere far away. "Return to the battlefield! Return to the battlefield!"

"Get the hell out of here," I retort.

And so the pilots oblige. We're up and rising away, gunship turbines drowning out the Overlord's pleas. There's whoops and hollers all around, when you're genetically identical to everyone else in the cabin you tend to be predisposed to liking each other. By some stroke of fate I've made it out of this mess. No more Overlord, no more Nexu, no more...

"Who was the Zabrak you were fighting alongside?" One clone asks.

I give the fleeting arena one last regard, the rocky outcropping growing fainter in the distance. "No one important. Our goal should be putting as much distance between us and-"

There's a pocket of turbulence, practically swings me free of the open-air troop bay. I manage to grip the support beam overhead, glance outside. A waft of smoke is there to greet me.

"What the hell?"

The answer doesn't need to come verbally, though. Just off the horizon, a dozen starcrafts are shooting forth - each etched into the shape of an 'X'. If the gunships were familiar for all the right reasons, these X-wings were for all the wrong. Separated by twenty years worth of innovation, the contradictions don't seem to matter too much to their pilots - whether they be thugs, mercenaries, or insurgents. Soon the skies are ablaze with fire, and when you're a troop transport loaded with men, you're not exactly looking to add to the display.

With streaks of plasma chewing up the sky, we're not really left with a choice.

"Keep her steady!"

The order's given as much for my sake as it is the two soldiers that have already lost their balance and are halfway through a collision course with the ground. Words can't save them, but it's all the rest of us can cling to as the starfighters come whizzing past the troop bay. Explosions rock the nearest gunship in turn, flames expounding all along its cratering mass. There's no mistaking their intent after that display, whether they're Alliance swine or the Overlord's lackeys, all I'm certain of is that they're here to kill us.

We're returning fire just as fast. Our blasters aren't of the anti-air variety, but thirty rifles discharging in unison can do a hell of a lot more than the gunship's side turrets. One racket of cannonfire and those gunners find themselves trapped inside their spherical coffins, wheeling down through the clouds. Desperation is at an all time high, trapped here like this we're just victims of their next strafing run, fish in a barrel, womp rats waiting to be bull's-eyed by a farmboy. There's no honor in that.

It would take an act of divine intervention to save us now. God must have been feeling generous today. From the peaks of the clouds far above a half dozen new angels are screaming into the fray, trading fires of emerald with the X-wing's crimson. They were Naboo starfighters, hand-crafted by their Nubian architects. Thundering past us now, they're little more than streaks of gold and silver, laying waste to any pilot that stands before them.

Here our lone gunship stands, defiant as ships of all makes and models crumble around us. Once I was a gladiator, now I'm just a spectator caught in somebody else's crossfire.

In a dogfight like this you can only afford to be starstruck for so long before you're the next casualty. Our ship's already down a bubble turret, and with the next staccato fire we're down a troop bay - troops included. The blast comes swinging in from the rear, tears a hole through the cargo hold. With winds as ferocious as these we're sucked through the vacuum instantly. Some men collide with the ceiling, others get dragged across the deck, but it scoops us out of the cabin all the same, every last one of us.

For a brief moment, everything stops. We're free. The open air greets us, hugs us tight, lets us fly. And then gravity gets its way - we're falling.

I've never had to scream before, and I still don't. There's a dozen men with my voice screaming all around me. For a good kilometer of the way down that's all I hear, heart in my throat, prayer on my lips, jetpack out of fuel. Then survival instincts kick in and I see a way out. Flailing and diving, there's a speeder bike just out of arm's reach, must have come falling out of the rear cargo bay at the same time I did.

There's twelve dead men around me, but I've still got a chance. Arms snapped tight at my sides, I'm streaking through the air, a defiant force against gravity's fist. The speeder beckons nearby, thrusts itself down through the sky like a spear. For a second it looks like I'm going to sail past the bike, overshoot it by mere centimeters, but then my fist finds its handgrip and the rest falls into place. There's a reverse influx as the repulsor engines come screaming to life.

As twelve armored-bodies crater against the ground, I'm descending gracefully. Meet the sand dunes with all the force of a feather. The speeder's drifting to the ground, and with it, my heart from my throat.

Finally on solid ground, I readjust myself on the bike's seat, contemplate what just happened. You can only cheat death so many times before it starts becoming second nature. My surroundings are evidence enough of what the other side of that coin represents. Men and ships alike have splatter-painted themselves all across the surface, a ring of fire building in their wake. Up above, ships continue to battle, aiming to add more fuel to the burning flame. It's not the flames I'm focused on, though, it's the Zabrak walking straight through them.

Maul.

His robes are torn to shreds, crimson tattoos trailed with blood. Guess he had a hard time finishing off those Nexu. But his double-edged light sword continues to flicker, and he's got that look in his eyes, the kind that burns a hole right through my tinted visor. For a second I feel the impulse to run away, to rev up my bike and turn tail, but then I reconsider.

I'm Boba Fett. I don't run from fights, I just choose mine carefully.

There's one crucial lesson I've learned, one that my father had to teach me by example. You never wait for an opponent to come at you, especially not when they have a lightsaber.

Feet digging tight into the stirrups, I let the speeder's engines howl out my intentions. With one hand corralling the handlebars and the other raising my blaster, I've got everything I need to go jousting with a Sith Lord.

Maul doesn't hesitate at the implication, he goes charging forth like a bull with those horns. Not one to be a follower, I'm hitting the gas just as fast, speeder covering the length of the field in seconds, EE-3 reigning hell in all directions. Maul blocks every shot, deflects them back at my blast-proof armor, comes sprinting right at me. This is where it should end, there is where my dad would find a way to get himself killed... but I'm not my dad.

I kick away from the speeder at the last possible second, go skidding to the ground as Maul's blade tries to clothesline my neck. Sands tossed in all directions, he's coughing and flailing as my speeder shoots off into the distance without me. Meanwhile, I'm pulling back on my rifle, emptying an entire charge pack right on him. In a second the dust clears and he's still standing there, defiant as ever.

"Damn."

We're left standing meters apart, in the same stalemate as we've ever been in. I'm out a charge pack for my gun, fuel for my jetpack, and two ribs that are threatening to poke out against my armor.

There's only a couple different routes this thing can go, and none of them involve me and Maul turning away from the other. That's how it would end in a vacuum, anyways. There's a hundreds factors here that have yet to be accounted for - namely, the sudden rise of a solar eclipse.

Except this couldn't be 'solar', because it wasn't the Sun, and it wasn't the moon - then again, looming out in the distance, it sure as hell looks like one. This was something different though, something far more destructive.

The Death Star.

Of all the relics the Overlord dug up this was the one that stretched believability the most. This was a fallen weapon, same as me, same as Maul. And yet there it hovered off on the horizon, shadowing out all that surrounds us.

Those shadows its casting boil over into an emerald hue, and I realize that it's charging up its main cannon, that it's finally time to brace for incineration.

Maul and I stand side by side now, our weapons at our hips. I feel the sand kick by us one last time and realize that pact between wind and time must still be on the books. Not that it's going to matter much now, not when it's all about to be crumpled to stardust.

...

...

...

Earth

Present Day

"That would never happen!"

A young boy exclaims, thrusting his Boba Fett action figure down onto the carpet in frustration.

"What do you mean it wouldn't happen?" His brother replies, a smirk across his face. "All the Death Star does is blow planets up-"

"Not this one, what would the Empire even be doing here?"

"Probably the same thing a dead Darth Maul, Grievous, and Phasma are doing here - being bad ass."

The younger boy growls out in frustration. "I had this cool tournament arc going and you just went and screwed it all up!"

"Tournaments are so boring though, who wants to see that when you can have hundreds of soldiers and ships in an all out free-for-all?" His brother counters, grabbing his discarded X-wing model and making a string of "pewpew" noises to reinforce the point.

"But the suspense, the drama!"

"You know, we could have just redone the pit fight from the movie but you had to go and get 'creative' again."

"Yeah, because I wanted to do something different than the movie, something better," he answers, gesturing towards the Geonosis arena with a sense of wonder.

The elder brother feigns sympathy, patting his sibling on the shoulder. "It might not have been better, but this was much, much cooler."

They both take a moment to acknowledge the results of their 'work', toy ships and torn plastic limbs scattered out in all directions.

Finally, the younger brother grants a nod. "Can't argue there."

"You want to go watch cartoons? I think we've got some Lunchables in the fridge."

As the two boys leave, two action figures remain. A Sith Lord and a Bounty Hunter, finally allowed to topple over in exhaustion.

End