LordDarthYoda- If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck...it's a duck. Sascha and Nara are just willing to take the risk that whatever trap is being planned isn't quite enough to ensnare two Jedi.

SpeechBubbleMe- I love Ackbar! Unfortunately he's right (It's a trap!)

thejoker122 - Odds are you are right!

A/N - The nice thing about writing fanfiction is that it is detached from reality. I kind of wish this was a happier chapter, because I think some people would like to read a happy chapter about now. Unfortunately, my works are about putting my characters through hell (sorry!).

Anyways, all reviews, follows, and favourites are deeply appreciated as always.

Please enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter 32: Consequences

"I had set the trap perfectly, and lured the Padawans into my trap. All I had to do was give the order to fire and the two young Jedi would be blown off the map. But I paused. The Jedi just looked so young, and they were only doing their duty. It's the hardest part of the job as a soldier to take the lives of his enemies. I just wished there was a cleaner, more compassionate way to do it. But there wasn't. So I gave the order to fire.

A good soldier follows orders though, no matter how disgusted he is by them. And I am nothing if not a good soldier. Sometimes I do hate this job though."

-From the Journal of Pravin Ecalt, Thirteen days in to the Invasion of Ubrora

Arslan Ivalice watched pensively from a distance as the two young Jedi carved through a squad of battle droids. They made it look so easy. Watching the Jedi fight the droids was like watching poetry come to life. The Jedi didn't fight so much as dance, moving with incredible grace and ease. It was like their opponents moved in slow motion.

But Arslan wasn't pensive because of this fight; no he'd be surprised if the Jedi broke a sweat the fight against the droids, he was worried because they were acting on intelligence that he had provided. So if something went wrong, it was his fault. Even though the Jedi had said that they thought it was a trap and were still going anyways, it made Arslan's stomach roil to think about what would happen if his intelligence led to the deaths of the two brave young Jedi apprentices. The Jedi just meant so much to Ubrora and the resistance in general. They were their best fighters, their moral code, and perhaps impossibly, Arslan considered them his friends. He wasn't sure that the Jedi would say the same, but they were friendly towards him.

The young human and the young Togruta finished slicing the battle droids into useless parts and quickly made their way towards the building that was housing the new communications tower. So much for stealth, Arslan supposed. From when he had overheard the Jedi planning their mission, Sascha had been the one more in favour of stealth whereas Nara favoured a direct attack. He supposed that Nara's plan had won out in the end.

From his safe hiding spot inside a nearby house, he glanced around at the small reserve force that the Jedi had left behind to help them out if they called for it. He, Lirri and a handful of other Ubrorans were all the 'reserve' that could be called upon if the Jedi needed help, and he wasn't really much of a fighter. He preferred the background, preferred leading from behind a desk. His brain, his experience and knowledge made him useful to the resistance, he was only here today because the resistance was still badly shorthanded. If he had to fire his rifle today, it was probably something had gone horribly wrong.

He was just bringing up a datapad that would have allowed him and his fellow resistance members to watch the Jedi's broadcast, which had been set to private, of course, only those with the password, like Arslan, could view it. Then from outside he heard something that started as a low rumbling, but quickly gained in volume. A half second later, the floor started shaking. Then after a brief moment, it stopped. Arslan suddenly remembered when he had felt something similar, it bore a striking resemblance to when he had been passing alongside that school that suddenly had exploded…

Oh no. Please don't tell me...

Lirri was on her feet in a flash, and unconsciously, he rose to follow her. Despite being dressed in tan robes that were unlike any clothing that a normal Ubroran would wear, Lirri commanded with an air of authority that did not need words. Lirri didn't need to say 'follow me,' everyone just did.

The Ubrorans all rushed out of their hiding spot, and Arslan was able to see what had happened. The communications tower was a smoking ruin, only the first floor remained slightly intact. What was left of the building was blackened and on fire in numerous places. Pieces of the building still were floating gently to the ground in an almost mockery of the destruction that had been unleashed. Whatever had hit the communications tower had been absolutely huge.

But maybe, Arslan hoped, the Padawans hadn't reached the tower by the time it exploded. Then, he froze in place, for his eyes saw something he hoped he would never witness. Lying unmoving, and unconscious on the ground, just in front of the remains of the communication tower were the two Jedi. Coming to finish them off from the opposite direction was a company of battle droids.

A deep, primal fear struck at the heart of Arslan Ivalice. Death was coming directly towards him, and his evolutionary instincts told him to abandon his friends and flee in the opposite direction with whatever speed he could conjure. He was still frozen in panic when he saw Lirri racing towards the droids and the downed Jedi, blaster rifle in hand. Lirri fired her rifle as she ran, screaming a guttural war cry.

Arslan wanted to flee in terror, he really did, but seeing the Jedi defenceless on the ground had galvanized something deep inside of him and he screamed. His scream wasn't as much of a war cry as Lirri's, it was more of a scream of abject horror, a scream at the idea he had abandoned all rationality for the vain hope that they could save the two Jedi, if they were still alive at all. He charged towards the oncoming battle droids.

Arslan had taken more than a dozen long strides when he realized that he had left his weapon behind in the house. Oops. He really wasn't much of a soldier. But that didn't matter right now, all he wanted to do was get the two Jedi and get out.

Shots rang out around him. From behind him, the Ubrorans were firing wildly, and incoming fire was starting to come in from the incoming battle droids. The fire from both sides was wildly inaccurate. Arslan kept his head down and his movements varied, making himself a difficult target. He may not have been a fighter, but he knew how to listen to instructions.

He gained a remarkable amount of ground in a short amount of time, whether that was the adrenaline or survival instincts kicking in he wasn't sure. The fire from behind him seemed pitiful compared to the incoming fire, but at least the droids were still too far away to get a good read on their targets.

Lirri reached where the two Jedi had fallen first but she did not bend down to check on them, she simply laid a withering hail of cover fire towards the oncoming droids. Several fell from her efforts. Arslan was the next to reach the Jedi and he felt himself pale as he looked down at them. Nara seemed to be in worse shape of the pair, her eyes were closed and her breathing was barely discernible. Her limbs were akimbo, she had several deep gashes, including one across her forehead, and one down her right thigh where her robe had been ripped away, revealing the bare skin underneath. Her delicate montrals had a deep cut on them as well, and there was blood on her robe from numerous other cuts that he could not see.

Sascha was unconscious as well. There was a long laceration down his right arm that was bleeding heavily and there was a deep gash along his leg. His robe was dashed in innumerable places and it was more red than gray. His breathing came with a wheezing rattle from his lungs, which Arslan assumed was not very good.

Arslan grabbed Nara, pressing his right hand against the gash in her leg, and ran in the other direction. He saw Sekac lifting Sascha before turning to run as well. A third Ubroran he didn't know grabbed their fallen lightsabers. The rest of the resistance fighters provided cover fire for a second before following them all in an extremely hasty retreat.

Arslan marveled at how light the Togruta felt in his arms. He wasn't a big Ubroran by any definition, and though Nara was taller than he was, she seemed to weigh almost nothing in his arms. He wondered if that was the adrenaline again. He kept his had pressed against the gash in her leg, when he looked down, his hand was covered with blood. Arslan commanded himself to not think about what that meant and to just keep running.

The resistance fighters that had stayed and fought briefly and Lirri passed him and Sekac who were carrying the Jedi. A short while later he and Sekac were directed him to a house that he did not recognize. Finally, his muscles seemed to strain and as he got inside, it was all he could do but to lay Nara on the ground beside her fellow Jedi. Quickly the other Ubrorans started bandaging their wounds, but he instantly knew that would not be enough.

Sascha's breathing was still laboured, and it seemed to be getting worse. Nara's dark purple skin was paling quickly and the Ubrorans treating her had to switch out the towels they were using to keep pressure on her wounds with alarming frequency. The Jedi seemed like such fragile little beings laid out on the floor. Without their supernatural, ethereal presence, they were just two lightly built aliens, hardly unlike the warriors that they had been minutes ago. It seems when you came right down to it, the Jedi were indeed mortal. It finally seemed to dawn on Arslan that these two Jedi were just teenagers really. Just kids.

"They aren't going to make it, are they?" someone said quietly from behind him. An uncomfortable silence broke out over the room, only Sascha's rasping breathing seemed to make any noise at all.

Lirri rose from where she had been bandaging Nara's leg, and pointed at two Ubrorans, "Facie, Strava, go to the hospital and bring back some doctors, I don't care if you have to bring them at gunpoint just get them here." Two young Ubrorans nodded and swiftly exited.

"But how will they know how to heal them," he said evenly, "We don't know how different human or Togruta physiology is from our own."

Lirri snapped her fingers as if she had just realized something at that very moment, "Their comlinks! We can use them to talk to their Masters. They'll have medical information available, I'm sure of it."

Small Ubroran paws searched the belts and pockets of the unconscious Jedi. Lirri pulled out a comlink from Nara's badly scarred belt, but as she did, it sparked and wires fell from it. Sekac, who had knelt beside Sascha pulled out his comlink and handed it to him.

He examined the device quickly and came to an understanding of how it worked. It was actually not all that different from some of the comlinks that were produced here on Ubrora, fortunately. He found the number for Aurine Brynar, who he had shared some brief conversations with earlier, and dialed. The Jedi Knight answered almost immediately, "Brynar here, what happened?"

His throat suddenly went dry, how was he supposed to deliver the news that her apprentice was on the brink of death? Suddenly charging towards battle droids seemed like the second hardest thing he'd done today. He found his voice, it quavered as he spoke, but the important thing was he was speaking. "Uh, Master Brynar, there has been an, uh, accident."

"I know my apprentice has been hurt, just tell me his condition," Aurine replied testily.

He tried to speak, but he felt faint. A lifetime of working behind the scenes in newsrooms had not prepared him for delivering such bad news.

Lirri grabbed the comlink away from him, "Sascha and Nara are both unconscious and have sustained serious injuries. I've sent for doctors, but…I don't…I don't know if they'll make it..."

There was a very long silence in which Arslan could almost imagine the despair on the other end of the line, yet when Aurine spoke again, her voice was strong, unwavering, "I'll send you all the files I have on human and Togruta physiology, it should help the doctors when they arrive." Another pause, "Sascha and Nara are very strong, they are Jedi. If anyone can make it, they will. Please keep me updated." The line went dead.

Lirri went back to bandaging Nara's wounds, cleaning the ones that she could and all in all, doing everything she could. Arslan, just leaned against the wall in shock, too stunned to realize that his paws were still matted with blood.

Not half a minute later, he and Lirri's datapad buzzed, indicating a file transfer from the Jedi Knight. He quickly scanned the file, but it mostly contained medical jargon that was far beyond his understanding, though he assumed it would make sense to the doctors, if they ever came. He spared another glance at the Jedi, Sascha had paled considerably from when he had looked over, minutes ago, though his wounds had been mostly patched, it seemed like he might have given too much of his blood for Ubrora.

Nara was in dire straits. He saw Lirri looking for a pulse on the Togruta's right wrist and she was having trouble finding one. That was the final straw for him. He just couldn't watch this. As he exited the impromptu medical ward, he almost collided with a trio of incoming doctors. Mechanically, he handed one of them his datapad with the medical information on it.

Arslan couldn't watch the doctors go to work, he didn't have the stomach for it. He didn't have much experience with death, but he was a newsman, he had seen it. He knew that those two Jedi were teetering on the brink of death. A skilled doctor, operating with a full complement of nurses and the latest in medical technology on hand might have been able to save them. These three doctors had been dragged from a hospital with barely any equipment, and asked to heal a pair of aliens that they had never treated before. It seemed like nothing short of a miracle would save Sascha and Nara. Arslan, being a reporter, a being of logic, knew that when you were praying for a miracle, you had basically accepted that things were beyond your control, that you needed some sort of divine intervention to save the day. And usually that intervention didn't come.

Outside, where the remainder of the resistance had gathered, the mood was eerily similar to a funeral. As he emerged, he was bombarded by questions about how the Jedi were doing. He didn't have the heart to answer them truthfully. Or at all.

A few of the older Ubrorans knew what that meant, and the despair spread across the room quickly. "It's over then," said someone, "the droids will conquer Ubrora. We'll be a colony world to some mad despot."

"No. It's not over," said Lirri. Arslan hadn't heard her follow him out of the room.

"Without the Jedi we are nothing," said that same Ubroran.

Lirri marched up to the Ubroran who had spoken, a young male that was maybe twenty, and slapped him across the face. "How dare you say that, and now of all times." Lirri stared at young man furiously, there was a wildness to her eyes that he had never seen before, "The Jedi fought, bled, and maybe died for us, for a planet they had been on for less than a week before this started. And now Hassaq, you repay their sacrifice by saying that it is over? Get out of my sight!"

The chastened young man quickly scurried out of the way, his tail puffed out in distress. Lirri continued to command the floor, looking around and making eye contact with everyone in the room. "This fight continues until we are free from oppressors, free from tyrants, free from the droids! It doesn't matter if we have Jedi or not! This is our world! Our City! Do we want to fight for it?"

"But we can't win," said an older Ubroran cautiously.

Lirri moved to the speaker, moving with a predatory grace that was very unlike an Ubroran. "Ah, Ovans. You've suddenly become an expert in military tactics? Or perhaps can you see the future?" Ovans looked down in defeat. Lirri continued to speak in a low, but powerful voice, "this is not about winning or losing, it's about fighting for what is important. The Jedi knew this, even though they had been taken from their parents as younglings. They know that freedom is the most important thing in the galaxy. What are we if we don't fight for ours?"

"Yeah!" cried someone. Arslan was shocked to find that he had been the person that had cried out in support. In fairness, it had been a strange, nerve-wracking day, and Lirri was a great speaker.

"Our Ubrora. Our city. Our fight." Lirri said, her tone strong, catching the eye of everyone in the room.

"Yeah!" yelled a number of Ubrorans.

Lirri pointed directly at him, "Will you fight?"

"I will."

Lirri turned to the Ubroran next to him, "Will you fight?"

"Yes."

Lirri went around the room asking each Ubroran in the room if they would fight. She skipped no one. By the end, an odd sort of confidence had emerged in the room. Lirri's magnetic presence had somehow galvanized something deep inside of the generally peaceful Ubrorans. The resistance may have been formed with the promise of working with the Jedi, but right now they were ready to die for Lirri Boikana.

The young leader of the resistance moved to the middle of the room, "We are the resistance. As long as we live. Ubrora can be free."

A wild cheer echoed throughout the house and into the streets. Arslan hoped that whoever was commanding the droids heard their cheer and a little chill went down their spine.

"That was a good speech Lirri."

Lirri smiled sadly, "It needed to be done, the resistance was dying in that very room…and I just couldn't let that happen."

It was hours later. The dead of night. Most of the members of the resistance had left returned to their homes. The doctors were still operating on the Jedi. Sometimes one of them would come out and request a tool or device and someone would be sent to retrieve it. No one dared ask how the Jedi were doing. Everyone assumed that because the doctors were still working, that there was some hope for them. That meant at least one of them was still alive. Sometimes it was better not to know the details and cling to hope as hard as possible.

"What will we do if they don't survive?" he asked softly.

"The same thing we'll do if they live," said Lirri, quietly but passionately, "we'll fight." He nodded, he hadn't really expected another answer, but was making conversation for the sake of it. Lirri wasn't done though, "I'll need your help Arslan. I'll lead the fighting, I know you are no good at that, but I need someone to help keep things organized. I can't think of a better person than you."

Arslan was flattered, and was about to voice that opinion when a doctor emerged from the impromptu medical ward, his head shaking slowly. The hope that remained seemed to dissipate in a second. Arslan looked down, his heart felt like it weighed five hundred pounds in his chest. He had provided the Jedi with the information that killed them. He decided if it was the last thing he would do, he would try to avenge those two apprentices.

"What's the news, Harstem?" asked Lirri.

The doctor paused for a second, "I think that they will make it," the doctor said in a disbelieving voice. "Those two Jedi are remarkable creatures, truly. They both lost a lot of blood, and had serious injuries, but they seem to be getting better. They won't be in fighting shape for a long time, but I think they'll live."

A cheer went up amongst the few that had waited to hear the news. Lirri hugged Arslan tightly, so tight that his ribs were protesting. He didn't voice a word of protest. Lirri, although several years his junior, was a very striking member of his species, and he was quite infatuated with the way she had spoken earlier today. He tried very hard to supress those feelings, given the somber nature of this moment.

Lirri broke the embrace and grabbed the doctor in what must have been a similarly crushing hug, "Miss Boikana…really…ow," said the doctor, and abashedly, Lirri released him.

"Thank you for what you have done here Harstem. We might have need of you again."

The older doctor nodded, "You can have my comlink code, but next time, try not to remove me forcefully from where I am working, okay? I am sympathetic to your resistance, but my job comes first. One of us will watch over the Jedi until they wake."

Harstem and Lirri continued their conversation, but it didn't interest him. Instead, he walked over to the room that contained the two Jedi. Inside, the two Jedi were lying on makeshift beds. Both had been heavily bandaged and dressed in whatever spare Ubroran clothing that they could find that fit them, which gave them a different appearance than usual. They were still unconscious and pale, but both seemed to be breathing fine. The Jedi seemed to have their ethereal presence back as well, they no longer seemed frail, despite their physical appearance and the fact that hours ago he didn't think they would make it through the night.

Arslan exited the house and walked into the cool Ubroran night, thanking a god that he did not believe in for providing this miracle.