Author's Note: I can't apologize enough for the delay in updates and the worst part is, I can't promise that it won't happen again. Darth Real Life is on the rise and there's no Obi-Wan Kenobi to cut him in half for me. Though, considering how that worked out for Obi-Wan, no doubt Darth Real Life would just be resurrected meaner, madder and with a pair of magical mechanical legs.
The Lightning Strike
Talasea, Colonies Regions
Largely abandoned by the descendants of its original colonists, Talasea's island continents were rife with decrepit buildings and half-ruined factory complexes. Which made the entire fekking planet the perfect hideout for any barve on the run from the law. Especially when said barve had a taste for abducting whole families - before eating them.
There were a lot of sick wets in the galaxy. Before joining up with Ro, Wren just hadn't realized how many - or how sick.
Lightning flashed outside; the glare through the broken windows was bright enough to turn his night-vision white. Wren snarled as he was forced to pause, waiting for his vision to clear.
Fekking thunderstorm. Of all the kriffing mud-licking planets to choose from, this rat had to crawl back into his hole during the height of the monsoon season. He strained his ears while blinking against the glare of his HUD, but the following thunder echoed through the abandoned processor complex in deafening waves.
It didn't last more than two seconds, but during that breath, he was effectively rendered blind and deaf and. He. Karking. Hated. It.
The HUD cleared.
Wren rose from his protective crouch behind a support girder, DC-17 gripped tightly in both hands. The blaster pistol felt ridiculously small and light to the trained sniper, but there was too much junk stored in the debunked processor plant; too many blind corners and tight turns to properly level and aim a blaster rifle.
The wrap-around vision of his HUD showed he was clear; nothing out there but cannibalized machinery and rusted clankers.
Where the gfersh was that fekker?
Better yet, where in all Nine crinking Hells was Ro?
Wren dashed from cover, keeping low, eyes fixed on the surrounding darkness - deep enough to hide an entire Sep tank.
More lightning, a dozen-pronged fork of it, and the shadows leaped at him; sharp as fangs in the harsh light. Between one heartbeat and the next, his blaster came up, ready to shoot...
Wren spat a curse - he'd turned the outer mic of his helmet off ten minutes ago - and quickly bit his tongue, fighting down the impulse to clench the muscles in his fingers and shoot...
Shoot what, kark? Your own effing shadow?
One blue plasma bolt from him and the barve would know Wren's position.
The lightning came down again, tearing a tree in two and the resulting crack echoed in the booming thunder.
The thunder. The lightning. The continuous, pounding rain. They vibrated deep in his bones.
Wren shook his head violently as Talasea began to waver in front of his eyes; the rundown processing plant replaced by the cracked walls of a bunker, back on Jabiim. No matter how deeply entrenched, there'd been no escaping the sound of the perpetual thunderstorms that raged over the planet. It never stopped raining on Jabiim, just like on Kamino and towards the end, it had been impossible to tell thunder from the boom of the cannons; the flash of lightning from muzzle fire; the pat-pat-pat of the rain from the blood dripping out of the wounded.
Fek this. Where was Ro? He was going to kriffing wring her scrawny neck when this was done.
Never mind that splitting up had been his idea.
The rain was coming down hard now. Wren sidestepped a miniature waterfall, courtesy of a hole in the building's roof. In his HUD's night-vision, the water was the green of algae.
Footsteps in the darkness; quick and uneven. He swung around just as another flare of lightning broke through the remaining windowpanes and his vision went white again with over-exposure.
He was blind; fekking blind and without cover!
The adrenaline came hot and quick; his heart began to pound in his ears in sync with the rolling thunder.
Two seconds and the layered green of the landscape began to reestablish itself.
Movement! To his left and out of the corner of his eye.
This time, Wren let his instincts rip.
The blaster pistol bucked in his hands as he fired four shots in rapid succession. Lightning split the sky, the blue of the plasma merging with its edges as it washed the abandoned processor plant in pure, white light - white like trooper armor before the first taste of blood; white like the medcenter hallways; white….white like the sheets pulled over the corpses.
"Wren!"
His index finger froze just before firing off another shot.
Cast in the eerie purple-indigo light of her lightsabers, Ro's teal eyes stared back at him through the intermittent darkness.
"Holy dark matter sprinkles! Cookie, mind watching where you aim your best piece?" Despite the casual words, there was an unmistakable tremor in Ro's voice. She was staring at him as if he'd just stepped out of a micro-wormhole, while the rat they'd been hunting writhed beneath her, foaming at the mouth in mounting fury. The little Jedi was crouched atop the barve like a shriek hawk on a clawmouse - she must have jumped straight down onto the man, feet first, from one of the upper gantries.
The force of that fall had saved Jedi and madman alike, sending them tumbling to the broken ferrocrete before they'd wound up riddled with plasma bolts.
Wren lowered his blaster slowly, his breath rasping in his ears. He'd nearly shot his partner; there was a char mark on one of the rusted machines no more than an inch from her right ear.
His sniper's deadly aim hard at work.
He had the sudden urge to wipe his mouth, but what came out instead was a hot, angry tirade. "Effing son of a crinking bastard nerf-herder! What the fek is wrong with you, cheeka, jumping out like that?"
Ro spluttered in disbelief, knocking their rat out cold with the butt of one lightsaber before turning flashing eyes back on Wren. Beads of sweat gleamed on her brow in the next strobe of lightning. The thunder crashed and never seemed to want to stop.
"Wrong with me? How's about yousa check your own impulse-mometer before rattling your blasters, Cookie. Your self-control-circuits could use some fine tuning."
He snarled in response, ripping the binders from his belt and throwing them at her, totally ignoring the fact that she had her own pair of binders. He just needed something for his hands to do, to disguise the slight trembling in his fingers.
"Just kriffing tie the bishwag up, cheeka. I'm crinking tired of him, you and this Sithspit-forsaken, rain-soaked fraggin' mudpit of a fedding planet!" He turned on his heel and strode out, holstering his blaster and leaving the barvy rat to Ro. As with his hands, his legs needed something to do, to cover up the sudden weakness in his knees.
Adrenaline, he tried to tell himself. It was just the aftereffects of his adrenaline rush; his body coming down from the high of the hunt.
Outside, it continued to rain, as if the heavens were trying to drown the planet.
If only.