Sorry it took me a while, I had to re-edit this several times. Anyways, here we are. The final showdown. I hope you like it! Remember, feel free to leave a comment/review.

teresa. spanics - I'm glad you liked the last chapter! I didn't really want to reveal anything until after I finished this story, but you more or less hit the nail on the head for the course of assimilation. I hope you enjoy this chapter as well!

Achilles453 - Thank you! I did sort of feel bad about doing that to Ketsu, but I had to have a flamethrower be found in the storage room, so she had to be lured there and attacked. And the spaceship that they found in the beginning looked more or less like a submarine, so Saw's escape craft had to be similar. I hope you like the showdown between Saw and the last three humans!

Outpost 13, March 13, 1987, 0620 Hours

The Thing dropped down amongst them, right at the stairwell to the basement. It had cut them off from their last fallback!

The three humans stumbled back from it, but recovered quickly. Kallus and Sabine each threw their molotovs at the Saw-Thing. It stood there for a moment, silhouetted in flame. Enormous. Grotesque. Unearthly.

It had multiple arms, standing over eight feet tall. Half of Saw's face was still visible, with the other half consisting of a glowing red eye and a huge maw filled with jagged sharp teeth jutting out to the side. It looked almost like a T-Rex head. An unearthly scream came out of it's mouth and it strode towards Kallus and Ezra, the most dangerous because they had a flamethrower. Ezra unleashed a jet of flame, but the confined space hindered the fire. Merely a third of it lit up. The Saw-Thing's chest opened up and a tentacle came out, attempting to spear the two humans. Kallus pushed Ezra to the side and dove for the ground. The tentacle slammed into the ad building door.

Ezra ran into the kennel hallway, turning to try to burn the Thing, but it didn't come after them. It knew about the fuel on the ground. Instead, it had turned back towards Sabine. He glanced over at the weapon's locker to see the glass smashed and one weapon missing. Saw's revolver was gone, and Ezra had a sinking suspicion that he knew who, no what, had it.

Kallus had jumped to his feet and pulled the handgun out of his pocket. He saw the Saw-Thing moving towards Sabine, who was backed against the wall.

"Hey!" He fired a couple shots before throwing the handgun at the Thing. Quickly, Kallus ignited a flare and held up the bundle of dynamite. He lit the fuse. "I'll blow all of us up, you motherfucker!"

The Saw-Thing stopped, it knew that Kallus' dynamite could kill it. It spun fast and Kallus saw something in its hand. Saw's pistol! Kallus' eyes widened and he threw the bundle, but as soon as he did, he felt something slam into his chest. Kallus was thrown onto the ground as a bullet from Saw's revolver smashed into his chest. The pain coursed through him, and Kallus knew instantly what had been hit. His breathing became labored as he crawled down the corridor, through the door of Ahsoka's office. He leaned against Ahsoka's desk as he heard the dynamite explode.

Sabine had run down the corridor as Kallus had thrown his dynamite. The bundle had gone past the Thing and exploded near the fork where she was a minute ago. The shockwave blew apart part of the walls and sent Sabine tumbling down the hallway. She quickly somersaulted to her feet and ducked into the primary supply room. She dove out the window she had broken open only a few hours ago, out into the storm.

Ezra ran back to the fork just after the dynamite exploded. The Thing was caught by the explosion, and the dynamite blasted a dog-sized chunk off of it. The mini-Thing saw Ezra and ran at him. Slowly at first, but it became faster and faster as it sprouted more and more legs. It scrambled off the floor, up to the ceiling to escape the blast of flame from Ezra's flamethrower. Ezra had to retreat, there was no way he could face both Things at once. There seemed to be something else though. Faint, through the storm, Ezra thought he heard a mechanical rumbling, like a motor. He ran back towards the kennel, thinking as he went.

Kallus had been shot and was in no condition to do any more fighting. Ketsu was missing for a while and probably dead and absorbed. But he had not seen Sabine anywhere since the Thing surprised them. Two questions ran through his mind as he jumped into the kennel. Had it killed her? Was he now alone?

Ezra jumped into the kennel, prepared to make a last stand. The doglike-Thing charged around the corner and spotted him. It snarled and leaped at Ezra, but was met with a wall of chicken wire. Ezra had slammed shut the door of the kennel and backed into the far corner, away from both the Thing and the hole in the roof.

The Thing snarled as it melted into an octopus-like mass of tentacles and slid through the wire, but Ezra had other ideas. The jet of flame flew from the end of the flamethrower. It shot through the wire and slammed full force into the Thing. It writhed in the flames, before it's face split. A jet of some kind of acid shot out. Stunned, Ezra dodged. It missed his face, hitting his arm. The acid burned through the winter coat, before it froze in the intense cold. The Thing jumped through the hole in the wire it had created, still on fire, and attacked Ezra. Ezra again sidestepped and hit the Thing with another blast of flame. The Thing screeched before it fell to the ground.

There was a shadow on the wall cast by the fires now ignited by Kallus' dynamite. A large humanoid figure was creeping towards him through the hallways. Ezra had no escape that way, his only path was to retreat into the storm. While it was slackening, the weather was still inhospitable, but Ezra had no choice. All other entrances were blocked off except for the hole in the roof.

He jumped, hoping that nothing would be there to meet him up on the roof. He hauled himself up through the hole as the Thing came into the kennel and he took off in one direction. Where could he go? There was nowhere safe anymore. Back from somewhere in the base, there was a snarl as the Saw-Thing realized it had just missed him. Then there was nothing, except for the mechanical rumbling he heard before. What could that be?

-0-

The mechanical rumbling neared the wall of the lab before the tractor, used for clearing snow from the outpost paths and towing the helicopter into the hanger, crashed through the wall. Its enormous shovel tore half of the roof to pieces immediately. In the driver's seat sat Sabine. Her eyes glinted with a wild, untamed fury; she looked stark, raving mad. The beginning of frostbite on her face looked somewhat like black war paint. A stick of dynamite was clenched in her teeth like a buccaneer's cutlass, the rest of the bundle of dynamite still hooked onto her jacket.

The tractor came to a halt, and Sabine yanked the explosive from her jaws and bellowed, "Okay Saw! It's just you and me now! Stay on your toes cause I'm about to do some remodeling!"

She gunned the throttle of the tractor and the vehicle smashed through the wall into the infirmary. Medical equipment, that survived the Thing's sabotage, went flying in every direction as the powerful machine destroyed the prefabricated walls with ease.

BOOM! The tractor ran through the mess hall, then the pantry. Everything went flying as Sabine continued on her rampage: tables, chairs, utensils, plates. Sabine began to sing some flying song as she destroyed everything in sight. Her eyes continued glancing around the rooms, watching anything and everything.

The tractor proceeded to plow through the kitchen, the roof behind her beginning to crumble inwards. The powerful vehicle carried on as Sabine continued to sing. She yelled out again, "Chime in if you know the words, old man!"

Sabine plowed into the pub. She stopped, backed up, and grabbed a bottle of vodka from the bar. She called out again, "You like vodka? Come and join me! It'll be good for you! Grow fangs on your chest!"

She took a drink and rammed into the rec room. The tractor stopped and Sabine jumped off of it, igniting a flare and holding it next to the extremely short fuse of the stick of dynamite. Her eyes darted from everything to everything else: the hole in the wall she just made, the burned remains of the Gooti-Thing, and the doors. She winced as the cold wind blew in through the path she just made.

"Come on Saw, you old geezer! It's going to get pretty cold in here soon, and I'm only one person. From what I can tell, you must really hate me as well. I mean, you must be pretty pissed off that we ruined your trip." She took a swig from the vodka bottle before putting it in the pocket of her jacket. "That was a pretty spiffy little contraption you had there, wasn't it? You would be somewhere warm by now, right?"

A slight tremor in the foundation caught her attention. All she had to do was lure it out now, "But your real problem is those looks of yours." The tremor strengthened and Sabine's adrenaline began to pump harder. She so wanted Saw to show himself now, then she could get to the basement stairs. "That's it, Saw! I know you're around here somewhere!"

The ground began to shake and the tractor lifted up, revealing the gaping maw of the Saw-Thing. A claw shot out, barely missing Sabine's face by a few centimeters. She lit the short fuse and hurled it, she just needed the distraction now. The dynamite exploded, blowing the tractor apart and disorienting the Thing.

Sabine was long gone, diving through the path of destruction she had made a minute ago. She rushed across the main corridor and nearly flew down the basement stairs, jumping over the railing towards the end. She expected the Thing to follow her, but there was nothing. She lit another flare as she backed into the center, by the generator room. Most of the charges had been removed, but there were still some, and the buried hydrogen tanks would still explode.

She looked out at the darkness around her, the flare her only light. The flare cast weird shadows across the walls, and bathed the white walls in an eerie reddish glow. Sabine yelled out, "I know you're here somewhere! Show yourself!" But only silence followed.

Sabine let out a deep breath, calming her racing heart. "This is satisfying, in a way. I'm still here, and as long as I do, you will lose. I am human, and I have what you, your otherworldly race, doesn't. Not an imitated, but a bred in the bone instinct, a driving, unquenchable fire that's genuine. I'll fight, fight with a ferocity you may attempt to imitate, but you'll never equal! I'm human! I'm real! You're an imitation, false to the core of your every cell!

"All right. It's a showdown now. You know my plan. You, with your mind reading. You've lifted the idea from my brain. You can't do a thing about it. You have to come and face me, or else you'll die. You have to try to stop me here. I'll blow up this base and you as well. I'll die, but I'm taking you with me."

There was a noise to her left, coming from the old storage room. A figure stumbled out, emaciated and covered in small, writhing tentacles. Sabine recognized the mutilated face immediately, "Ketsu!"

The Ketsu-Thing staggered towards her, coming out of the shadows. She fell to her knees, and looked at Sabine pleadingly. "Help me." The voice was pained, raspy, almost as if Ketsu was still inside, and fully aware of what was happening to her. "Sabine... help me. The... pain. Too intense. It wants... to kill you. Make you... suffer."

Sabine backed away, horrified at the hideously mutilated visage of one of her closest friends. The Ketsu-Thing's head rolled as she moaned as she pleaded with Sabine for some, any form of relief. Sabine's horror intensified as the planks in the back of the storage room shot up and something large rushed towards them. Sabine dove to the side into a couple barrels as the Saw-Thing neared her. A large tentacle shot up from where she was standing. Another came from under Ketsu and burst through her chest and mouth. The Ketsu-Thing screamed as the large tentacles ballooned outwards.

The Saw-Thing emerged through the floor, dragging what was left of Ketsu into it. Sabine scuttled back from it even further as the Saw-Thing drew itself up to its full height. A roar emerged from the T-Rex like maw and it stared down at Sabine. From the remnants of Saw's mouth, the Thing spoke to her. "The others wanted you to die, Sabine Wren. But where I see revenge, I also see opportunity."

"Why are you doing this?! What did we do to you?!" she yelled back.

"Now why should I tell you? Do you have any reason to trust me? Because I have no reason to trust you. I want you dead because you've revealed and killed a lot of our brethren. I assume you'd try do the same with me. Most likely, only one of our species is getting out of here alive." The Thing laughed, a hideous sound coming from the misshapen head. "If you detonate that dynamite, you'll kill the both of us."

"I mean it when I say, so be it!" Sabine snarled.

The Thing laughed again, "Always focused on violence, aren't your kind? I'm willing to forget about the others you killed. If you help me rebuild my ship and get off this planet. Or we can both die here."

"You killed a lot of my friends here, and now you want me to risk everyone else on this world based on nothing but the word of a misshapen talking dinosaur? Maybe you know you're cornered now, and that's why you haven't attacked yet. Maybe you know you can't win, but I don't care anymore. You killed them, you killed them all! Zare, Sumar, Saw, Gooti, Jai, Mart, Jyn, Ketsu, and now probably Kallus and Ezra."

"Some of those deaths were... necessary, some accidental. You don't know what you're doing. I know secrets that can give man the stars, if you just help me." Met with silence, the Saw-Thing sneered, "You'd deprive your race of priceless secrets, for nothing but a petty vendetta?"

Sabine snarled as she lit the short fuse of the dynamite, remembering the word her parents had taught her to respect. Settling scores. "Skira. You may not know what it means, but I do." She smirked as a look of fear flashed across the Saw-Thing's face. "Who is more afraid of death now?" She taunted.

The Thing snarled and roared at her, "Then you will die." It launched at her, attempting to engulf her before the dynamite exploded.

Sabine turned and dove off the small ledge leading to the generator room. She somersaulted to her feet and turned. "Well, fuck you too!" She flung the bundle of dynamite, the fuse nearly burned away, and took off for the generator room. She slid and found some shelter underneath the destroyed generator.

It was the turn of the Thing to scream in terror as the fuse burned away completely, and the bundle exploded. The explosion ignited the other charges of dynamite and thermite in the storage room and the hydrogen tanks. Sabine felt a searing heat as she and the remnants of the generator were blown back into the wall of the generator room. The last thing she saw was the blinding light before everything went black as half of the base went up in a massive hydrogen-fueled fireball. A fireball that blew the Thing apart and burned it all away. It's last thought was that out in the snow, a severed limb from itself had gotten free, scuttling away into the snow. It might have to wait a long time to find another victim, maybe another 100,000 years, but it would still live. The Thing would rise again.

-0-

Half of the camp had been obliterated by the fireball and burned to the ground. The intact rooms were Ahsoka's office, the ad building, the crew quarters, the greenhouse, the secondary supply room, the kennel, and the radio room. All the rooms above the basement, the ones Sabine had plowed through during her rampage, were obliterated. Off in the distance, the glow from the burning ruins of the tool shack could be seen.

A lone figure stepped through the damaged hallways, a blanket covering them like a shroud, from their shoulders to the ground. Sabine was hunched over, attempting to put out the fires with an extinguisher, but it was futile. She gave up. Sabine walked into the pub area, which was mostly destroyed. There was an unopened bottle of J&B Scotch lying in the snow. Sabine picked it up and grabbed the half-empty bottle of vodka from her jacket. She took a swig from the vodka bottle before putting them both in her jacket pockets.

Sabine walked over to the overturned weapons locker, grabbing Jyn's remaining charges of thermite. The Saw and Ketsu-Things may have been killed, but Ezra and Kallus were still missing. She had to be ready to defend herself in case one of them was the Thing.

A moan from Ahsoka's office pulled her attention. Slowly, she walked in to see a pair of human legs sticking out from behind Ahsoka's desk. She rounded the desk to see Kallus leaning against the desk, clutching his chest. A frozen pool of red liquid lay on the ground next to him, and Kallus' jacket was stained a deep red.

Kallus opened his eyes and smiled weakly, "Did you kill it?"

"I don't know. Are you still Kallus?" Sabine warily asked.

Kallus smirked and chuckled, but his laugh devolved into a coughing fit, "Bullet hit my lung. I don't have much time left. You still have flares, the blood's right there." He pointed to the puddle next to him.

Sabine nodded and ignited a flare, she still had multiple of those left. The blood didn't react and Sabine sighed. "Where's the first aid kit. I can help you."

She turned to leave, but Kallus grabbed Sabine's arm. He motioned for her to sit, and she did so next to him. Kallus chuckled again, "No. My time is past. You can't do anything for me, and I don't want you wasting your energy on me." He started coughing again. She handed him the bottle of vodka and he took a drink.

A tear started to fall down Sabine's face, "You didn't have to come after the Thing back there. But you did, and it's going to cost you your life. Why'd you do it? Why'd you save me?"

Kallus smiled sadly, "Because I failed before. Ahsoka gave me an order to keep you all alive, and I've failed eight of you. I failed Jyn. I failed Jai. I failed the rest. I felt I needed to do something. And when I knew I could do something to save my remaining friends, I knew I had to do it. Ezra's still out there, I know he's still alive." He began coughing again before he was able to speak, "I don't have long, so this is my last order Sabine. Find your boyfriend and get out of here. Get out of this place somehow and survive. You've still got a long life left to live, and live it. Live your life with Ezra for me, for all of us."

Kallus coughed again and closed his eyes. He slumped down into Sabine's arms, finally at peace. Sabine's eyes began to flood with tears as she shook Kallus, but it was too late. Alexsandr Kallus was dead.

Sabine closed her eyes and cried silently. She had seen the others die, but had not held any of them in her arms as they passed. The adrenaline had worn off and now Sabine felt nothing but exhaustion, hopelessness and despair. There, leaning against the desk, still holding Kallus' lifeless body, Sabine slowly fell asleep.

-0-

Sabine jumped as she became aware of someone approaching. She stood up and turned to see Ezra in the doorway. The beginning of frostbite marked his face, and he held no weapons. "Sabine, you're alive!"

He rushed towards her, but Sabine backed away, pointing a flamethrower at him. "Ezra, don't. I don't know... Are you... Ezra, are you human?"

Ezra put a hand up in a consoling manner, "Sabine, just take it easy. It's me. Ezra. I'm right here. We're safe now. We'll be okay now." He opened his arms, offering her a welcome hug.

"We're not safe yet. It still might be out there. I don't think I'll ever be okay again."

Sabine continued to back away. "You're not Ezra. You're not the Ezra I love."

Ezra put up both his hands in front of him, "Why would you think that? It's me, Ezra."

"Ezra would never be so trusting. He'd be just as wary as I am. You know how I knew you were human earlier during the final confrontation? Ezra had a twin scar on his cheek, you don't."

Ezra reached up and touched his right cheek. Sabine sighed, "It was your other cheek." Ezra put his hands in front of him, "Sabine, please don't. Let me explain."

Sabine tried to figure out whether she was seeing the truth, or whether she was hallucinating. She depressed the igniter trigger on the torch and tearfully raised it to his head.

A tear ran down her cheek, "The Thing copies your cell's DNA, but things like a dental filling or scars are the result of outside events, so you can't copy it. The Thing inside you didn't copy it."

"NO! Sabine, it's me! Please don't!" Ezra screamed as he realized what she was doing. Sabine tried to convince herself that Ezra's face was elongating and that his voice was becoming less human.

"Ezra, if you're still inside there, forgive me. Please." Sabine pulled the trigger; and she screamed as her heart shattered.

Another cliffhanger? You must hate me right now.

I know what you're all thinking. But Ezra was alive in Chapters 1 & 2, right? Don't worry, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out and the ending of this chapter will be explained by the next one. Hint: Sabine falls asleep with nothing but thermite, then has a flamethrower in her hands.

Next Chapter: The Aftermath