At last, the long-awaited battle scene begins! Sort of... kind of. In a bit. Glad so many of you like the ANH reference in the last chapter- hope you like this one just as well! 0w0
Also, good news! Thanksgiving Break is coming up, so updates will be faster for a week or so! Yay!
Disclaimer: I legit nearly had a heart attack when I realized it was the one-month mark until Star Wars VII. Do you think Disney's freaking out like that? ...Well, probably yeah, but not for the same reasons, 'cuz they actually own it. T^T
Ezra grunted, lifting himself from the vertical shaft and crawling forwards. That should do it- after having transversed that particular junction, he should now be on the fourth floor. He should know- he was rather acutely observing his surroundings, repetitive as they were, to keep on the look-out for any other trap-doors or other various traps Morden might have installed. He wasn't going through that again.
Alright Sabine- where are you? Ezra knew about the holes she'd blown in the walls, since they'd gone over her making those in the original plan. He'd figured she'd camp out near one of those, to allow for the easiest getaway- that meant he'd really only have to patrol on the outside edges of the tower.
Well, it didn't narrow it down by much, but it still narrowed it down.
Alright- I got the general area, now I need the specific location. Which, honestly, was a bit more effort.
The vents weren't the safest place to be in, right now. Morden had his stormtroopers checking the ventilation shafts, popping their heads in at random intervals to try and spot him. He'd only very nearly escaped one such detection- the bucket-heads had been unscrewing a panel directly in front of him, and it'd only been thanks to some quick changes to his travel route that he hadn't been caught right then and there. Ezra'd been wary of the stormtroopers and their checks, re-routing his path whenever he'd ventured upon a large group of them traveling together.
Even though his surroundings were no longer as safe as they had been beforehand, if Ezra was going to find Sabine without confiscating a stormtrooper helmet, he'd need to focus in the Force to find her signature. While it was nowhere near as familiar to him as Kanan's was, he'd been around Sabine and knew her well enough to pick out her distinct life-force from the masses of dull, bland ones.
Honestly, that was just how Sabine was.
But pinpointing such an unfamiliar signature meant taking a moment or two to concentrate and let down his guard- an activity that was not recommended in enemy territory. Especially in conditions like these- but that was why Ezra'd stopped where he was, right next to the vertical shoot. After all, there weren't too many stormtroopers that would be able to unscrew a ventilation pane embedded in the actual structure of the building itself- which this junction was. No matter what Kanan or Zeb teased him teased him with, he did take into consideration his surroundings.
Breathing out gently, Ezra closed his eyes and let his muscles relax, lying on the metal material and trying not to envision himself in an enclosed metal box- instead, the wide-open plains of Lothal. He found he could best concentrate when he pictured that specific scenery around him, and it did help him get into a state of meditation.
Focus, he could hear the beginning words of all of Kanan's teachings, just focus on the Force. There was the life-signatures of all the people on the floor below him... each a light in the void of nothingness, a candle. A speck of life. Ezra relaxed further, broadening his senses... the number of specks grew, lighting the darkness dot by dot, gradually filling the blank spaces left there. I wonder if it ever gets completely lit up... That would be a sight to behold, indeed.
Which one feels like Sabine?
This was the part that got Ezra- taking each individual dot, all the little specks of light illuminating his realm of awareness, and sifting through them until he found one that he knew. Well, it was a bit easier than that- it was like... going through grains of sand, waiting until he found one that was hot. Or cold. Either way, Sabine and the members of the Ghost crews all had their own... feel to them, and with Kanan's help he'd been able to gradually grow more and more familiar with those feels, to the point where just being in their presence brought a measure of calm to him. They were... home.
And Sabine- well. She stood out even from the Ghost crew. Ezra had yet to encounter a single being with her same exuberance and energy and... life.
Dull... dull... dull... dull...
There.
Ezra pulled onto that one flare of energy, of life and of Sabine, letting the other life-signatures fade out from his awareness. She... wasn't too far away, just...
Blue eyes opened abruptly, sharpening and focusing as he was instantly pulled from his meditation by the sudden introduction of pain. It only took a millisecond of assessment to conclude that it wasn't his- which, honestly, was more worrisome that if it would've been. Because that meant Sabine had been found, and that she was fighting-
And that that fight was going badly.
Sabine cried out, moving quickly behind the wall and granting herself a brief moment of reprieve in which to assess- well, there wasn't much to assess really, she knew it was non-lethal but hampering -the blaster-bolt the lucky bucket-head had managed to land on her right thigh. The stormtrooper armor took in a little of the pain- it really wasn't that efficient -but her secondary under-armor had been able to absorb most of the energy. The thing was, blaster bolts still had a lot of force behind them, and just the speed at which it'd hit her was enough to most likely bruise bone.
She gave herself one second to regroup- and then she flung herself out behind the wall, rolling on the ground, using her left leg as a cushion instead of the right, and was able to take out the one remaining stormtrooper in the room.
Of course, there was still Morden.
Her first shot in the fight had been to the door controls- no other back-up would be coming through there, especially not if Sabine still wanted to escape alive with Ezra. Her secondary shot had been towards Morden's communicator, which he'd taken out with one hand even as he'd operated his blaster in the other. After that, there really hadn't been much of a choice for her targets- it was running, moving, and dodging all the blaster fire, shooting whenever she possibly could at whatever target presented itself.
"I must congratulate you on getting this far, rebel," Morden spoke, firing a bolt that forced Sabine to spring away from her position and take cover behind one of the piles of fallen ceiling. "Especially on your ingenuity for taking one of my own men's disguises."
He's trying to distract me- keep focused on the fight. Morden was still in the center of the adjoined, less destroyed room, in the middle of the desk Sabine had been using earlier. He pretty much had a view of the of both of the rooms, and cover from whatever angle Sabine tried to hit him with- he was a smart man, and those were the hardest to fight against.
"Considering your fighting skills and the fact you hacked into my facility's scanners-" Sabine leaned out from behind cover and took a shot, ducking back as Morden returned fire, "you are not in fact the Bridger boy- meaning you are the Mandalorain cadet that defected from her proper place so long ago."
Sabine narrowed her eyes. "The fact that it has to be called my proper place only highlights the fact that it is not-" Sabine called out, springing out from behind the pile of broken girders and ventilation and rolling once more, seeking refuge against the wall opposite the one she'd ducked behind before and taking a wild shot at Morden, "-and even if it didn't the Empire is no place for a Mandalorian." Sabine hissed, keeping her voice steady but cradling her abdomen out of view from the commander. He already knew her leg was hurting- he didn't need to know she had a separate major injury as well. That would be a game-changer... in the worst of ways.
"Why? Because they hold more power in their grasp than all of our planet combined? I recognize power when I see it- and it doesn't take a genius to know that following the source of power keeps it in your grasp."
"Ha! So you'd rather lie over on your back like some trained dog instead of standing proud like a fighter?!"
"I'd rather do what I need to ensure power remains in my hands, so I can use it to eradicate those who stand in my way."
"You mean in the Empire's way."
"No-" Morden rounded the corner, and Sabine cursed as she realized he'd kept talking to distract her just like she'd warned herself not to fall for "in my way, like you are now."
Sabine kicked her left leg high and out to the side, ducking simultaneously as Morden fired his blaster. He grabbed her foot just before it collided with his side- and Sabine used his grasp as a springboard, jumping off the ground with her right leg and rebounding off of him with her left, to send her flying backwards further into the destroyed room while also providing another opportunity to fire the blaster at him.
The stunt was fancy, and landed her behind the same pile of junk she'd been using as cover before, but it was costly. Both her leg and stomach throbbed, simultaneously winding her and forcing her to curl up on herself. The maneuver might have saved her life, but it had most definitely left it's mark afterwards.
"You are injured, rebel. If you know what's good for you, you should surrender now." Sabine grit her teeth, listening for footsteps. He was literally only a few feet away from her poor pile of cover, but even he- no, especially -knew not to engage an injured and cornered Mandalorian unless they had absolutely no weapons.
"If you haven't figured it out already, I'm sticking with the true Mandalorian code- I'll never surrender to someone beneath me." Sabine gripped her blaster tightly, preparing to leap out of cover and fire once more as soon as her abdomen stopped pulling the rest of her muscles into a tight knot.
"Is that your final choice?" Morden asked, and Sabine heard the tightening of his blaster. She narrowed her eyes.
"It's the only choice. I'll never give up fighting against the Empire as long as I have people to fight for." Sabine raised her blaster, distributing her weight evenly across her toes and readied herself to launch straight over the junk pile to shoot once more at Morden. He snorted, and Sabine twisted so as to get her angle right-
"Then you'll die for them." Sabine leapt and Morden fired his blaster at the same time- but the bolt didn't hit her. It did worse than that- it hit the pile of junk she'd previously been hiding behind. If she'd stayed where she had been, nothing would have happened except a few pieces would have hit her armor and she'd be exposed. Since she'd turned around, however, the shrapnel and ventilation and odd pieces that'd fallen from the ceiling exploded in every direction-
And absolutely nailed her exposed abdomen.
Sabine screamed, falling onto her back as her legs gave out, and she curled protectively around herself. She could feel the cauterized and treated wound opening up and bleeding again, and bruises were already forming around the entirety of her stomach. Her lungs couldn't seem to get enough air into them at once, and the double-layering of the armor didn't help- it certainly hadn't with the chunks of metal. Blaster fire was one thing, it was nothing more but energy- solid parts of the ceiling weren't.
"I told you you should have given up while you could," Morden stated, walking the few feet over next to her and towering above her. Sabine's blaster was on the ground behind her- and she wasn't moving anytime soon. "Because now, I'm obligated to go by my word and kill you." Sabine pried open her eyes to glare at Morden, and the gun he was holding over her head.
"You would have made a fine Imperial, had you not defected," he said, and Sabine was content to let her glare speak for her. "That's why I gave you a chance, you know- but I guess your pride is more important to you than your life. Typical Mandalorian stubbornness."
Sabine looked away from Morden, sickened that she'd been defeated by him, hating herself for letting her injuries land her in this state. Never before had she been so humiliated and beaten, and now she was about to pay for it. After all, Mandalorians didn't often take prisoners.
"Goodbye, Ms. Wren."
She heard the squeeze Morden's glove made against the trigger as he tightened his grip-
"NO!"
And then Ezra was there, bursting from the ceiling and the blown ventilation shaft in a blue blur, his lightsaber flashing through the air even before he landed, deflecting the now dozens of blaster bolts that Morden was aiming at him.
Sabine reacted- she forced her hands under her and pushed off of them, propelling her to roll the opposite way across the floor to pick up her blaster and roll away from the scatterings of junk that Morden had blasted around her. Her everything protested, and she had to cringe and curl further in onto herself as she felt the blood oozing out with its' own slice of pain, but she was now in a crouching position with a weapon in hand as opposed to lying on the floor defenseless, so she could care less about the pain it caused. That and, of course, she was still alive and able to feel it.
Always impeccable timing, this one.