Thank you for your review Cozzizzie. Whenever I see the notice in my inbox I get so dorkily happy, lol. I shall, I shall (follow those trails some day). ^_^
I hope you guys like this one.
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The crowd loomed before them, a hissing, shouting, screaming fray and they raised their riot shields as it spilled through the barriers and made contact. The permacrete squeaked beneath their boots as they were pressed back, and the plastoid of their shields rang high and loud, humming with the pounding of blows.
They struggled to maintain their ground and keep the citizens at bay within the parameters of force they were allowed to use. Better trained and with more strength than the average rioter, they were formidable in this endeavor, but not overly successful. They stood only four hundred strong against thousands.
Fox's voice crackled over their comms, calm but spoken in breaks, and they could tell that he too was in the thick of it.
"Hold the lines. Stop up those breaks! Hold out long enough...and they'll disperse. They don't have the stamina to keep this up." There was a sudden grunt and a clatter, then a huff of indignation in their ears. "Disable the crazy barves if necessary."
"Sir? Are you giving us permission to beat up civvies?" Ravi brought his shield up to meet the arms of a man raising an alloy rod above his head to strike. The lip of it caught the man below the elbows and he bellowed in pain, before he and the weapon were quickly swallowed up by the crowd. "Because I don't think they're keen on exchanging sweet nothings and flowers."
"Disable. I don't care how you do it."
"Copy that."
Surge put his weight behind his shield and rammed into a cluster of rioters bearing down on him. They stumbled back like a chunk of bricks plucked from a wall and were buoyed by the those at their backs for a moment, before smashing into one another and tripping over the feet of their fellows.
"Imaginary thumbs up!" Ravi swung his shield up and into a man's face, sending him sprawling back onto the permacrete, the crowd parting in his wake.
"Ravi! Disabling blows only!"
"That was."
"He'll get trampled!"
"He was waving a vibroblade around like a short-circuited tinnie! Him or the ten people around him he almost nicked."
Surge couldn't argue too much with that so he went back to buffeting the blows raining down on him. No matter how many he rebuked, more came at them.
"Maintain! Maintain!"
Ravi heard Fox's cry and jerked his head just in time to see a portion of the line give. He saw two troopers fall like the splintering of a dam, the crowd becoming a tide, rushing in to fill the gap with a swell of its fury.
And then the remains of the line shattered like a flimsi-kite snapping in the wind, shreds of it scattering in all directions.
Once surrounded, the shields proved nearly useless, tying up arms and mobility while freeing up backs for blows. Many were discarded, although a few clusters of troopers remained that had found safety in small circles of their own, backs against brothers. The rest of the Coruscant guard were resorting to hand to hand combat against their attackers, trying to hold onto some semblance of formation.
Ravi repositioned his shield in his arms and swung it in wild arcs at those approaching. The maneuverability was terrible, but he got a few good blows in by treating it as close to an electrostaff as he could manage.
If only he had an elctrostaff...
Some politician with his head in the atmo had decided it would present a better image if the Guard were unarmed throughout the duration of the protest, and had authorized only riot shields in the case of things turning rowdy.
Which it had, of course.
A protest against the GAR's unnecessary use of force in the war, which had, in the end, turned out to be an excuse for the crowd to use their own.
Ravi shook his head of it. It was pointless to try and make sense of it or the questionably sane people around him, so he stuck with what he did know.
Trying to not die that day.
A few rioters swarmed him and took hold of the shield, attempting to wrench it away from his grasp. He brought it down sharply and jumped over it, swinging a leg out and knocking them back. They fell to their knees as their assault was taken up by others and Ravi brought his arms up in a position of self defense. He circled slowly, trying to keep his eyes on each one without leaving an opening by which they could overrun him. He was no longer worried about playing nicely, and had no illusion he'd be shown mercy on their end.
He fought for long minutes, time measured by blows and dodges, circling and tracking. Arms ready and eyes sharp. The movement between him and his enemies was a dance of close and far, engaging or watching, their bodies against his or at his feet.
Then a cry of pain resounded over his comm, sudden and sharp, and he saw Surge struck down by a blow to the side of his head out of the corner of his visor. The medic hit the permacrete on his back and didn't get up.
Ravi turned on his heels and pushed and shoved his way through the crowd, previous opponents forgotten and ignoring the blows that rained down on his back. A few rioters, one woman and two men lingered around Surge, even as he lay motionless on the ground, still kicking and peppering the fallen medic with blows.
Ravi caught hold of the back of the woman's shirt and pulled her off bodily before shoving her into the crowd. One of the men raised the bit of scrap he held to deliver another blow to Surge, but Ravi caught it and slammed a knee into the man's chest and head-butted him hard enough to spill blood as he doubled over. The last man closed in, his eyes wide with the rage and craze of the riot washing over him, lost to the senseless fury in the air. Ravi raised the scrap piece, fully prepared to club him with it, before the man was struck from behind and collapsed in a crumpled heap at his feet.
The private looked up to see Lex there, standing heavily on one foot, a CSF stun baton in one hand. His other hand was pressed to his left thigh plate, and Ravi could see the jagged edges of the armor beneath, the sergeant's leg dripping blood trails down his shin.
They both fell to their knees beside the medic, and through fortune or fear, those around them were keeping a small distance for the time being.
Ravi removed Surge's helmet which had taken a heavy blow to the side and had left the visor distinctly cracked. He put a hand to his friend's neck for a pulse, heart in his throat and swallowed, eyes squeezing shut.
It was there.
Lex and Ravi both let out a shared breath of relief and Lex leaned over to inspect the wound at Surge's temple. It wasn't bleeding too badly and after Ravi removed a few jagged pieces of visor caught in the cut, he determined it wasn't deep. No immediate danger due to bleeding, but it was anyone's guess how bad the head trauma was.
He looked up to say as much to Lex, but was interrupted by a woman in a CSF uniform falling to a crouch beside them. The crowd around them was slowly dissipating, or at least moving away from them, and Ravi was shocked but relieved to see none made a move to stop the woman's approach. She glanced at them both briefly, a quick assessment with her eyes before she pulled open her bag and began scanning Surge. She read the readings carefully before pulling out some antiseptic and applying it to Surge's forehead.
"He has a concussion but no readings of internal bleeding or pressure. Can't tell much more than that until he wakes up, but if we're lucky he'll be just fine when he does."
After patching up Surge, the woman's eyes fell on Lex and she looked at him through narrow eyes.
"I told YOU to stay put." She huffed as she shoved his hand away from his leg and peeled the thigh plate off. To his credit, Lex didn't cry out when she did it but his voice was tight with pain when he answered her.
"Sorry, Ma'am. Saw my guy go down."
"You were already down yourself. And you NICKED my baton."
"You had another."
The woman gave him a look that was a cross between exasperation and a glare. She pulled the material of his suit back away from the wound and sprayed it with a numbing antiseptic before peering closely at it.
"You've got some plastoid shards in there. Hold on, I'm going to have to get them out."
Lex nodded, closing his eyes briefly against the pain as she began before reopening them and assessing the situation around them. Ravi followed his gaze and took in the crowd.
By the looks of things the CSF had finally arrived and jumped into the fray, and with their help and the weapons they possessed, progress was being made towards crowd control. It seemed the rioters had begun to disperse, although pockets of altercations still lingered, eddies in the drawl of the tide.
Ravi looked back at his sergeant and Lex handed him the stun baton, making a shoo gesture with his hands.
"Don't do anything stupid, Ravi," he said, his eyes passing over the still form of Surge. "No clever ideas. I want you all back in the barracks tonight."
"Sure thing, Sarge. " He turned to go then paused and looked back over his shoulder. "I am going to tell Turns you're a two timer, though." Ravi wiggled his eyebrows and looked purposely at the woman patching up his sergeant's leg.
Lex flipped him a finger and the woman caught sight of the movement and looked between them, confused. She hadn't heard any of the remarks that passed in their helmets. Lex quickly tucked his hand into the crook of his other arm and crossed his arms over his chest with a jerk of his head to tell Ravi to get going.
Ravi chuckled as he walked away, glad of the feel of the baton in his hand, and headed straight for a guy who looked like he was giving a couple CSF officers a hard time.
He suddenly found himself in the mood to give someone a very hard time of his own.
...
A few, rather one-sided, disabling sessions later, Ravi could see patches of the public square's ground that were no longer covered with people, standing or otherwise.
A long line snaked up a queue of those being processed by the local authorities for their participation in the riot, and the Coruscant Guard and CSF officers alike were corraling offenders in, or sending lingering onlookers on their way.
A few knots of discord remained, overflow that had spilled into the side streets off the square, and Ravi headed for one, rolling a sore shoulder as he walked. As exciting as the day had been, he was beginning to really feel it now that the adrenalin rush had passed, and he looked forward to getting a chance to check on Surge and everyone else.
He caught sight of Trust and Hatch still kicking and punching their way around a ring of rioters surrounding them and snorted. They were outnumbered, but not overpowered, and were subduing most of the offenders with slow and half-hearted blows. Ravi could see the tiredness in their movements, but also the enjoyment there of finally getting to use their training against someone besides each other.
They nodded to Ravi as he stepped in to join them, back to back and bringing the baton up in front of him and gesturing for a rather miffed looking man to come at him.
Ravi disabled him with a blow to the head, his eyes on the next attacker before the first man even hit the ground. The second man, although in appearance less menacing, was a better fighter by far. Ravi found himself having to dodge as much as he attacked, and actually becoming winded. Which only served to piss him off. He was growing weary of it all now. The protest, the fighting, the rioters which were out of their fekking minds.
The man lunged at him, causing Ravi to stumble backwards and lose hold of the baton. But the private had been trained for this his whole life and responded in kind, finally catching hold of the man and hurling him into a few of the onlookers. He sailed into a few of them, taking that part of the line down with him. Ravi watched the man get to his knees and spit out some blood, wiping a hand across his mouth as he rose. The people around him were backing away from him as they rose to theirs.
A girl from crowd used the distraction to suddenly make a charge at Ravi herself, and she collided with his chest in a flurry of screams and fists.
He blinked down at her for a second, caught off guard. He only had time to register that she had large dark glasses and she looked both angry and that her eyes and cheeks were pink from crying, before a shout arose from behind her and his eyes refocused on the man. With a loud cry, he came charging at Ravi again.
Ravi saw that the man now held a blade, long and thin and high, and he spun on instinct, putting his back to the attack and pushing the girl swiftly out of the way. She stumbled into Hatch, who was caught off balance by the collision and they both toppled into Trust. He faltered but recovered enough to prevent them them all falling over.
The shriek of the blade as it skimmed down the back of his armor made Ravi cringe, but he was otherwise unharmed by the blow. If he hadn't turned, the girl would've been undoubtedly slashed by the blade, though.
For some reason that really pissed Ravi off at that moment.
The man had backed away again, lingering just out of reach and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet.
Ravi began circling, hands up and eyes locked on the blade.
The rest of the crowd had halted in their pursuit of a fight to watch the two men between them go at it.
"Need any help, Ravi?" Trust asked.
He had one eye on them and the other on the remainder of the crowd in case they decided to try anything. Hatch had moved the girl away from the fight, and stood watching Ravi with a hand on his hip and the other on the girl's shoulder. She had her hands cupped to her mouth and was looking dazed.
" Not even a little bit."
...