He, the Nameless One, the Jedi Killer, roams around the rubbles of his former residence like a beast, covered in Kora's blood. The blow he inflicted was violent, but not precise and it let the badly cauterized wound bleed excessively. He denied his followers the pleasure of slaughtering the useless Twi'lek themselves.
He didn't even try to bring her to their side – her resolve is single-minded and simple.
„You bunch of dirty losers," she hisses and clashes with the Jedi killer. She's strong and resilient, and doesn't falter to use some of her dirty street-wise tricks. Their sabers clashing, she spits their leader right in the eye and kicks him violently between his legs. But his pain tolerance is remarkable – probably one of the traits that Dark Side enhances – and he soon transforms the pain into strength. Her rage makes him only stronger and she knows it. The battle is over even before it started. She knows that his stern resolution to fight with her alone and not to simply cut her down with his treacherous comrades is not an act of compassion, but of pure and undiluted sadism.
„C'mon," she shrieks at him, her face covered with her own blood. „C'mon, you pitiful mother-f***er! End it already, you c*nt!"
And he indeed does, slicing her throat in a single blow that almost detaches her beautiful Twi'lek head from her shoulders. Even then, she doesn't die immediately. She gargles curses or words of the Jedi credo – it's all the same to them, anyway, as they leave her to her agonizing death.
„Take her saber", Jedi killer commands, licking her arterial blood from his fingers and his face. „Destroy it".
„But Master..." Korwin tries to protest at the destruction of such a powerful weapon, but soon chokes.
„Just do as I say," the leader retorts coldly and lets his grip fall.
Turning to Irin, his black eyes set ablaze with hatred, his lips curled up in disdain, he commands him and Irin shivers, remembering all that he's done against the master. His eyes glance back at dead Kora and his mind remembers the merciless stroke that practically halved her.
„Irin."
„Yes, My Lord?" Irin comes to his side, hunching down to appear as small as possible.
„Protect the rubbles," he hisses. „If he tries to come out again... stop him."
A futile task – everyone saw what happened and none of them detected any life from under the rubbles even after almost the whole night has passed – but Irin is now wise enough as not to provoke the Jedi Killer's wrath.
Whipping his head in the direction of the Temple, he sniffs the air. Anakin's saber feels heavy in his hand – it's split, just like he is. It is no stranger to carnages like this one. But this is still a Jedi sword – it murmurs sorrowful, irritating things to him. The damn thing pleads with him and wails in the same frequency with that Twi'lek's saber, reconstructed from Obi Van's own.
He howls at both of them. „Enough!" He screams and throws Anakin's saber far away from him. Plucking Kora's saber from dazed Korwin, he does the same.
(The remaining traitors shudder, fearing he has lost his mind. Who'll bring them the power they so craved for and were promised?)
Then, a sound of roaring engines breaks the deadly silence of the island.
This ship is of a kind none of them has ever seen before – it is an imposing black shuttle that folds its long wings up as it lands: raptorial, elegant and deadly. A squadron of Stormtroopers comes rushing out – the traitors are delighted. This is something they have heard only as war time stories as they were children.
But their leader seems unimpressed. He gestures at them to stay away and stay back as he strides forth. He knows exactly who he's expecting.
„Inquisitor," he snarls.
„My Lord Ren," the unnaturally tall humanoid in the peculiar armor grins and bows, mockingly. There is a crest resembling black sun on his shoulder-plate: everything that the Jedi Killer promised, is indeed unfolding as he predicted. The humanoid glances over Killer's shoulder and sees the rampage, the dead Twi'lek on the ground and the fire ablaze. "I see you started early."
"Skywalker hastened our plans, nothing more," the Jedi Killer answers wryly.
"Is he dead?" Inquisitor pierces Snoke's new agent with his gray and red eyes, typical of Pau'an race.
"Can you sense him?" The Killer replies in the same tone of voice.
Inquisitor holds and his nostrils widen a bit. He's unsatisfied – the boy strokes a nerve with him. He was nowhere near as strong as this wretched newly appointed Knight of Ren.
"No," Inquisitor finally replies, dryly. He'll pay for this, he thinks.
"Good", the Knight replies. "Now, get us out of this Jedi rags. We can't go like this to the Supreme Leader."
With the help of the squadron and Inquisitors, they break through their defenses and into the temple. The slaughterhouse continues – Ehart falls first, with Arlunia soon to follow. Ceth and Gaman scatter around, bawling, as they have seen their comrades falling around them. They'll face the traitors on their own.
Jessa found the second Ahsoka's saber hidden in the temple and now rushes to the meditation room, its high windows overlooking the ocean. How that body of water appears peaceful, cold and unattached, in stark contrast to the demolition that is on its way inside. Jess shivers. The both moons of the planet have set behind the horizon – it is pitch-dark in the room, but she relied on her other senses more than on her vision all of her life, so she sneaks into the room as quietly and as flexibly as a cat.
If only she manages to stay alive long enough, get to the old X-wing on time and escape… but the traitors came rushing in too early, breaking their latches and their barricades like they were nothing more than house of cards.
Her heart stops. She was never strong, ever. She always considered herself weak. She had Kora to protect her, but even the tough Twi'lek used to chastise her for her softness. "You have to toughen up, Jess, otherwise these buffoons will swallow you alive", she used to grunt. Jessa admired Kora for her strength and her beauty. And now, she's gone. Her best friend is gone.
The little Tatooine girl curls up into a fetal position, sitting on her feet, and cries into her knees.
"Force, help me," she whispers in her mind.
There is a resounding bang at the door – she bolted them herself. They yelp as if they were alive, but resist the blow.
A new voice, a threatening and distorted voice with a disembodied quality to it comes from behind:
"Jessa Schimbke! We know you're inside! It's your last chance, Jedi – come with us or share the fate of your friends!"
The girl jumps to her feet and tenses. Oh, if only I had the voice, she thinks. But her disadvantages are actually the virtue in the world of Jedi – that's what her dead Master told her, time and time again. She remains silent, but focuses in the Force.
"I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me."
Through the Force, she sees them all – the Stormtroopers, the Inquisitors – both things of the past that came back to haunt her. She sees six figures, all clad in black, and armors menacing and diverse. And she sees the man behind one of the armors, or at least the remnants of the man he was. Ben. It was Ben's voice. Even her refined hearing couldn't recognize his voice, distorted beyond recognition in that abominable mask.
And as she tries to gather all her resolve to fight them all and die honorably, like a Jedi should, she hears his old whisper in her head.
"RUN," he howls.
She doesn't have enough strength to reply. Perhaps, it wasn't even his voice. Perhaps he is altogether gone, and this is only her mind and her own nerves, tensed to a breaking point.
But whatever it is, the voice has a point. The self-sustaining instincts prevail. There is an opening in the floor of the meditation room that leads directly to the cliff.
The X-wing is hidden in the cave beneath the cliff.
She might even have the time to escape.
Tucking both of Ahsoka's sabers in her belt, the little girl finds the aperture in the floor and barely escapes through the narrow tunnel, wide enough to receive her small frame, but not the entire Order of the Knights of Ren.
Outside, she stumbles and falls on the slick rocks, almost losing one of the sabers after the violent fall. But she struggles back to her feet and flees to the edge of the cliff.
The rain that began only minutes before as a light shower now is being transformed into a relentless downpour. Her hair and clothes are soaked within minutes.
Only few hundred feet and she'll be free. She'll inform the Council about this. They'll come back and stop this evil. And then… Ben will be killed.
She loses breath and loses strength at the notion. No, she thinks. No. He was deceived, they all were.
There is still hope.
A not-so-distant buzz of a plasma beam stops her where she's standing. Jessa whips her head back and a silent scream forms on her lips.
They followed her to the cliff. One of the black-clad figures, wearing a hat resembling something from a very ancient Jedi tradition, falls on his knees, pierced from behind with a crackling, unstable, red blade.
"I told you, the girl is mine", the distorted voice growls from behind, as the dead body slips away from him.
"Why don't you run, like I told you?" The same voice growls inside her head.
Jessa ignites both of her sabers. Their dim white light illuminates the space between them.
She will not run. It is not the way of the Jedi.
"It ends now…" She whispers. "Murderer."
She doesn't know where this strength is coming from. She never fought like this, not once. The sabers in her hands sing and their strength is enhanced thousand fold compared to what she was used to with only one. There is a strange feeling that, somehow, these ancient blades recognize this exact same situation – like a major déjà vu, like they were already present here a long time ago.
She's being transformed into Ahsoka Tano, and he's Vader.
"I don't mind your lineage, Ben," she told him, timidly. She meant every single word.
But the damn macho snob in him couldn't bring himself to see her like anything else than an invalid – if she had Kora's beauty, or Ahsoka's stature, maybe he'd listen. But because she is just this insignificant half-blind mute with weird skin pigmentation, he perceives her only as something… pitiful. He doesn't listen to her, only smiles sorrowfully and with a flickering disdain in those damn, beautiful eyes of his.
Damn you, Ben, she thinks, as she pants under his attacks. Your damn cock decided instead of you.
Her own vulgarity (Kora would be so proud) startles her and apparently, he read those thoughts too, because now he falters. She uses this hesitation and makes a remarkable advance toward him, even making him withdraw for a moment. Jessa manages to inflict a wound near his neck and on his hip. Remembering some of Kora's street-fight tactics, she kicks him in the stomach – something she'd never even think she'd do before. He staggers, howling, but is soon to recuperate – she spins back and lands with her back facing him, his saber stopping only inches above her shoulder, put to the hold by her two sabers.
She spins again and whirls – again, the fact she's so small and only seemingly frail is her actual advantage.
"Schimbie."
Oh, the damn, pleading voice. And her damn nickname, the only way he ever called her.
"Please."
She shudders and shrieks in her own mind.
"Come with me. Stop this. Jedi are the true evil, the true decadence."
Jessa's knees lose their strength, as she loses her focus and resolve. The unstable plasma beam burns her ribs and she recoils.
She remembers how Luke's cold demeanor hurt him, how he strained under the ever strict expectations of his uncle. She felt ashamed for being a sort of Luke's favorite, when Ben had to suffer. She would've done anything to spare him the pain. He was her first and only love.
Jessa cries silently.
Gods damn you, she thinks.
"Help me build the new order. There will be no outcasts. No tears."
She turns swiftly to look at the face that spoke these words. But there is no face – only that monstrous metal-cast mask.
There is a moment of utter silence and peace as she stands at the very edge of the cliff, the ground beneath her threatening to collapse even under her minute weight and under the gushes of rain and wind.
Eventually, she lowers her sabers.
Far behind them, she senses all of her friends are gone – she is the only one Jedi remaining in the world, in the darkness before the sunrise, in this downpour with the Jedi Killer.
She smiles at the irony of all of this.
"No," she speaks but her unused vocal cords make no sound.
"Schimbie." He howls again.
"No," she speaks again, and into his mind this time. And at that, she makes the last desperate attempt against the Jedi Killer. They clash again – but the menacing red plasma beam goes straight through her chest like it's nothing. For a second, the perfectly cauterized wound doesn't even sting.
She feels nothing – no weariness, no pain, no rage: only compassion.
She smiles at him, again. Touching that cold, expressionless mask, she whispers into his mind:
"I should've kissed you when I had the chance."
The tainted amber plasma beam dies out and retracts back into its hilt.
The Jedi Killer recoils as his last victim falls down and over the cliff.
The ends of her white Jedi robes remain on the surface of the restless waters for only a split second, dancing on the waves like a small bird, and then they're gone as well.
And with them, the last remaining tatters of his humanity are drowned.