Chapter 41
Ezra POV
Turning away from the body of Imperial Governor Megus, which now had a smoking hole in the center of his forehead, Ezra walked back to the governor's desk and grabbed the two lightsabers from underneath it, then tossed one across the room to his friend standing in the doorway, who tried to catch it but failed, accidentally dropping it to the ground and needing to lean down to pick it up.
As he attached his own lightsaber onto the back of his belt, even though it would no longer be very well hidden with his cape burned off, Ezra asked his partner, "How is it that you were actually better at catching things when you were blind?"
Kanan Jarrus scooped his lightsaber off the ground and clipped it onto his belt as he answered, "I got used to not needing to see it. Just like becoming blind is a process of relearning how to do things, so is regaining your sight."
Shaking his head, Ezra said, "I still don't get how that one worked."
"The Force is a pathway to many miracles, Ezra," Kanan answered as he walked towards the recently rebroken window.
Turning to follow the Jedi, Ezra said, "Yeah, but fixing your eyes? And why now? Why not before?"
Shrugging, Kanan said, "If I had to guess, I'd say that my near-death experience gave me one last blessing before I was supposed to die. I planned on dying, and the Force warned me beforehand that last night was supposed to be the end for me, but I guess it didn't count on you joining me. Or maybe it was just me that didn't expect that to happen."
Tilting his head with curiosity, Ezra questioned, "Can the will of the Force be cheated?"
Kanan shrugged once more and said, "I can't be sure, but… maybe. If I really was supposed to die, something you did stopped it. Maybe it's because you're a Force-wielder, or maybe something about your reckless nature confused things. Whatever it was, I'm personally just glad that it seems to have worked."
"Did it, though?" Ezra questioned, poking his own chest beneath his scorched armor. When that massive explosion last night had consumed them, their Force powers alone hadn't been enough to save them, not even when they were combined, and Ezra had been forced to cover Kanan's body with his own, letting his beskar armor take the brunt of the heat while they contained themselves in a small bubble of relative safety. The flames had melted almost all of the paint off of Ezra's armor and left him with some bad burns beneath it all, leaving him unable to even remove any of the armor without extreme pain, but Kanan had gotten out of it relatively unscathed, and more importantly, they had both survived.
"Are we sure we're not dead? Are you a ghost?" Ezra asked, reaching out to instead poke his finger into Kanan's cheek.
Kanan just grabbed his wrist to stop him and said, "No, I'm not a ghost."
"That's exactly what a ghost would say," Ezra argued, and Kanan sighed at him and shook his head in exasperation.
He then looked out the window and said, "We need to get back to the camp. The others have some experience with this Force stuff, but if even we don't fully understand how we survived, they definitely won't. They probably think we're dead."
Looking down and grimacing to himself, Ezra quietly said, "Sabine…"
Nodding in understanding, Kanan added, "We need to get back and let them all know that we're alright. Especially Hera. She's in no condition to be dealing with this kind of grief right now."
Frowning at him, Ezra questioned, "'No condition?' What does that mean?"
Looking down, Kanan responded, "Nothing. Just… Something I felt from her last night. The Empire's torture tactics were bad enough, but this sort of emotional pain could be even more dangerous."
Still confused, Ezra just shook his head and said, "Well, getting back to the camp won't be easy, I'm afraid. I barely managed to get my jetpack working enough to get us up here, and now it's fried completely. We'll need to fight our way out of the dome, and then cross the Imperial-filled city while they're preparing for a parade, somehow without attracting attention, and my armor draws enough eyes when it isn't shining like a mirror like this."
Kanan nodded his understanding and asked, "Are you sure you can't take it off? If you could, we could put it in a bag and just walk out of town. I look pretty different now, and I doubt anyone would suspect who I am, and the Empire will be looking primarily for your helmet, not your face."
Looking down, Ezra reached up to grasp at part of his chestplate, attempting to pull it off, but the slightest pressure made him wince in pain as the sensitive skin beneath the armor protested the slightest change in conditions. He continued trying to increase the pressure by small increments for a few seconds, but ultimately released the plate and let out one final gasp before saying apologetically, "I'm sorry. I can't. I'm gonna need a lot of bacta patches after this. I could probably get the vambraces off, but somehow I imagine that that would hurt more than it would help."
Kanan nodded in agreement and held up his lightsaber hilt before saying, "Well, at least we got these back. If we have to fight our way out of here, having lightsabers will help."
Suddenly, Ezra looked down at Governor Megus, and then his eyes gleamed as he had an idea. "I have a better plan," he told his Jedi friend with a smirk. Kanan just raised an eyebrow at him, silently wondering what the plan was.
Line Break
"There's no way this is going to work," Kanan sighed sadly as Ezra finished zipping up Governor Megus' uniform on him.
Ezra then smoothed out the wrinkles on the shoulders and said, "Relax. I've accomplished crazier plans."
He then stepped back and examined Kanan for a minute before saying, "Well, you look… horribly pretentious."
"Then I definitely look like an Imperial," Kanan said as he tried in vain to make the sleeves of the uniform come all the way down to his wrists. Governor Megus was a shorter man than Kanan, and the outfit didn't quite fit him, but they could only hope that it would be close enough to fool anyone who didn't look too closely, especially after Kanan donned the governor's blast helmet and torso armor.
Meanwhile, Ezra stepped back, spread his arms, and spun around slowly to show off his own new outfit to Kanan. Kanan watched the whole thing, but frankly wasn't quite convinced that it would work.
Dragging the two stormtrooper guards that Kanan had knocked out earlier into the room, they had stripped one of his plastoid armor and strapped it over the top of Ezra's beskar armor, making Ezra look extra wide. Luckily, he didn't have his Mandalorian helmet, or Kanan imagined that he would try to stuff it inside of the stormtrooper's helmet. Still, you could see Ezra's charred flight suit underneath both sets of armor, sticking out the sides with numerous holes in it. He looked like a stormtrooper, but one that had bloated severely and walked through a volcano before remembering to put his armor on.
Sighing, Kanan told Ezra, "Not gonna lie, it looks… something. But I guess it's the best we're gonna get, so we'll just have to make do."
Looking back into the room at the dead governor and the unconscious stormtrooper guard cuddling on the ground together in their underwear while the other stormtrooper was unconsciously sitting in the governor's chair with his feet propped up on the desk and his hands behind his head like he was relaxing, Ezra smirked to himself as he put on his stormtrooper helmet and said, "Whoever comes into this room next is going to get the shock of their life. I hope it's Thrawn."
"Tell me again, why did you have to pose them?" Kanan asked as he donned the governor's blast helmet.
Ezra just shrugged and said, "To confuse the Empire? For fun? Take your pick." Kanan just shook his head as he led the way out of the room.
As he picked up his jetpack and followed after the Jedi, Ezra tried to convince himself, "It'll be fine. This plan's totally gonna work."
Line Break
Half an hour later, as Ezra drove an ITT out of Capital City at full speed and Kanan stood on the roof deflecting blasts from two other pursuing ITTs, he heard Kanan yell down to him, "Ezra! This is not fine, and the plan did not work!"
Setting the autopilot to keep them going straight, Ezra leaned out on one side of their transport and began to fire one of his pistols back at their pursuers as he said, "Well, it would've if you hadn't failed to use that Jedi mind-trick on the deck officer!"
Deflecting another blast, Kanan argued, "That wasn't me that failed it! In case you forgot, I tried to do one on him, but then you insisted on doing it yourself! You told me, 'Don't worry, Kanan. I've got this.' Well, guess what? You didn't have it!"
Ezra leaned back as a blast flew over his shoulder, barely missing him, and he shrugged as he said, "Well, what did you expect? It's been a while since I tried one of those things."
"Then next time, let me handle it!" Kanan yelled down to him.
"So you admit that there's gonna be a next time!" Ezra called back as he suddenly jumped out the side of the ITT while grabbing the top of the door frame to swing himself up and back onto the roof next to Kanan, then stood up and drew his lightsaber.
Kanan didn't respond as they both began to deflect the incoming blasts together, but said, "We can't let the Empire follow us back to the camp."
Ezra nodded in agreement and said, "Then we'd better take these guys out fast. Bident maneuver?"
Kanan nodded once and ordered, "Go!"
At the same time, both he and Ezra ran forward and each jumped onto a different one of the following ITTs. When he landed on his own target, Ezra's first order of business was to draw one of his pistols with his free hand and spin it around on his finger before he shot all but one of the six stormtroopers positioned on the sides of the transport, then jumped down towards the last one and stabbed him through the chest before using the leverage of his body to swing inside the transport through the open door on the side.
With one slash of his lightsaber, he then decapitated both pilots while also destroying the transport's controls. Despite knowing that there was one final stormtrooper in the transport with him, Ezra then made to leave the transport without even giving the frightened soldier a glance, but as he leaned out the door, he sensed the stormtrooper aim his blaster at his back, and he quickly brought his lightsaber behind his back to deflect his blaster bolt back into him, still not looking at him.
He then swung himself onto the roof of this transport just as he had with his own and summoned the Force to leap back onto their own stolen transport, where he landed at the same time as Kanan. They both deactivated their lightsabers and gave each other a fist bump as they jumped back inside their ITT while the other two transports behind them crashed into each other and flipped over before exploding.
Closing their transport's doors and looking forward out the viewport, Ezra smiled as he saw them approaching the mountain where their camp was, and he said, "Ah, it's good to be home."
However, it seemed that he had spoken too soon, as their transport suddenly began to shake uncontrollably under a heavy assault of blaster fire.
As they shook around in their seats, Kanan looked around, trying to determine the source of the attack, and said, "Oh, come on! The Empire's got reinforcements already?"
Looking up through the viewport at the sky with dread, Ezra said, "Unfortunately for us, no. It's much worse than that."
Up in the sky, Ezra could a familiar, colorful form diving towards them with a jetpack on her back, looking beautiful as always as she rained down fiery destruction on her enemies.
"Sabine," Ezra said fondly.
Unfortunately for them, Sabine couldn't hear him, and Ezra remembered too late that they were currently in an Imperial vehicle. They both looked up at her as they saw her fire a rocket at them from her jetpack, and Ezra said, "Well, this isn't exactly optimal, but it's fine. She's just firing one of her paint rockets to blind us."
Once again, he was unfortunately proven wrong, as Sabine's rocket struck the front of their transport and burst into the more traditional type of explosion. Due to the transport's heavy armor plating, the explosion didn't do too serious damage to them, but the ITT slowed greatly against the flames and rocked violently, nearly throwing both of them from their seats.
Gripping the controls in front of himself tightly, Kanan mumbled to himself, "Why is it that once I get my eyes back, most of what I see is just giant explosions?"
Ignoring him, Ezra struggled to steady the transport and said, "Ah, great. Looks like Sabine decided to help herself to my personal weapon storage. What a time for her to decide to use more lethal force."
"She's more pissed than usual at the Empire," Kanan warned. "She's gonna tear us apart."
Looking out the viewport again as the flames cleared to reveal Sabine coming around for another bombing run, Ezra quietly commented, "Yeah, but she's gonna look great while doing it. Take the controls, Jedi!"
Not waiting to see Kanan take the controls from him, Ezra quickly left his seat to open the side door and pull himself up onto the roof.
When Sabine saw a more personal target emerge into her sight, she adjusted course to instead fire her next rocket directly at him rather than the front of the ITT, and launched the rocket at the ground right beneath Ezra's feet. Ezra ran towards the back of the transport to get away from the rocket, and jumped up into the air just as the rocket landed behind him, using both the Force and the power of the blast to get high enough so that Sabine crashed right into him as she flew back.
Grappling with Sabine in midair, he struggled to say, "Bine, wait!"
However, his use of her nickname only seemed to enrage her further, and she shoved his hands off of her arms before throwing him to the ground, and on the way down, she shot him in the chest, where her blast easily burned through his stormtrooper plastoid and pushed him down into the ground.
Sabine POV
Zeb accidentally using Ezra's nickname for her was one thing, but there was no way that Sabine was going to let some chunky Imperial get away with using it, and she made sure to execute that one with extreme prejudice, tossing him to the ground from twenty feet in the air and shooting him on the way down. "Good riddance," she growled down at his fallen form, then turned around and took off after the ITT.
She was surprised and a bit disappointed to find that this transport seemed to have very few guards. No stormtroopers lined the sides of this vehicle, meaning that she wouldn't get to kill very many Imperials by stopping it. Unfortunately, the only reason she could think that it would be so desperate to reach their camp with so little security was that it was some sort of suicide bomber. That fact just made her all the more determined to stop it before it reached its destination.
She didn't know how the Empire had found them, but they weren't going to succeed in attacking them, especially while they were planning their attack on tonight's parade in Capital City. After losing both Ezra and Kanan, Sabine felt ready to bring the entire city down avenging them, even if Hera wasn't on board with the plan.
Hera had reluctantly agreed to support their plan, but she still kept insisting that they ask the Rebellion about their next move. Sabine ignored all of it. By now, she was through with the Rebellion. As far as she was concerned, the Rebellion had been a big part of what got Ezra killed, though she was of course still to blame as well.
If she could go back and do it all again, she wished that she could've just stayed with Ezra on Mandalore, accepted their victory for what it was and moved on, leaving the rest of the war behind. But now her choices had been made, and they'd cost her everything.
She didn't know who she was anymore without Ezra. What was she supposed to tell his mother? Her own parents? Her brother? They'd all loved Ezra, and now she would have to admit to getting him killed. She'd promised Bo-Katan that she would protect her son, and now Sabine had broken that promise in a way that still devastated her and always would.
Knowing that her jetpack only had one rocket left inside it, which wouldn't be enough to stop this transport before it reached their camp, Sabine instead flew up alongside it and drew the Darksaber from her belt, activating it by her side.
After losing Ezra, she'd nearly thrown this particular weapon away, barely able to handle its close ties to him, how he'd once told her that it was a part of him, which he trusted her to keep safe. However, she'd changed her mind at the last moment and decided that instead, the Darksaber would be what she used to bring down the Empire completely, letting this last surviving part of Ezra be the final word in the Empire's reign. She had vowed to herself that she would not rest until this blade had first been plunged into Grand Admiral Thrawn's chest, and then been used to decapitate Emperor Palpatine on his own throne.
But for now, it would be used simply to destroy this ITT. Flipping the blade around backwards in her hand, Sabine quickly stabbed the black blade of her lightsaber into one of the hoverlifts on the bottom of the transport, then flew forwards to cut a line all the way through the side of the transport.
The ITT instantly lost all hovering power on that one side, and then the starboard side engine gave out, causing the transport to turn sideways and begin to flip over repeatedly, crashing at high speeds. In the middle of the second flip, a single figure in an Imperial officer's uniform tumbled out of the open doorway and curled into a ball as he bounced through the grass of the field, barely avoiding getting hit by the ITT wreckage that flew right over his head and came to a flaming stop several meters away from the officer.
Smirking as she flew down to land next to the collapsed man, Sabine saw her other friends running up to stand next to the fallen officer as well, hesitantly lowering their weapons and looking amazed at what Sabine had just done single-handedly.
Grinning at her, Zeb said, "Sabine, I just want to say, that was-"
"Terrifying," Hera supplied.
"-amazing!" Zeb finished.
Ryder tipped his hat to her and said, "Well, it looks like we're all in good hands for tonight's attack. I barely even realized that we were under attack before you were already out here dealing with it."
"We all need to stay vigilant," Sabine said as she leaned down to rip off the Imperial officer's helmet and grab him by the hair before pulling his head up and directing her pistol at the side of his head. "You never know what sort of surprises are going to be waiting-"
Suddenly, the other rebels all looked at the officer's face and cut Sabine off with a collective gasp, and Sabine looked around at them before asking, "What?"
Hera pointed at the man's face and said, "Sabine, look at him!"
Wondering who this could be to get that kind of reaction from her companions, Sabine roughly tugged the officer's head backwards to look at his face. At first, she didn't recognize him, given that she wasn't used to seeing him with such short hair and no beard, but then she quickly released the man's hair as she gasped out in disbelief, "Kanan!?"
Without Sabine's hand holding him up, the Jedi Knight's face immediately fell back into the dirt, still unconscious, and Hera ran forward to kneel next to him and roll him over, wiping the dirt off his face and gently rubbing at the numerous scrapes on his skin. After a few seconds, Hera pulled back one of the man's eyelids to see his eyes beneath, then gasped once more as she said, "It- It's really him! It's Kanan!"
They all remained frozen for a few moments in shock, and then Sabine suddenly paled as she had a terrible thought. Turning around, she launched back into the air towards where she had thrown the stormtrooper earlier.
Within a matter of seconds, she arrived next to him, and she tossed her helmet aside and kneeled next to him as she looked beneath his plastoid chestplate to find charred beskar underneath, which explained why he had appeared to be so large. Most of the paint had been burned away, leaving the beskar plating nearly as shiny as it would be if it had been freshly forged, save for the scorch marks and small amounts of surviving paint drawn across the surface of the material.
Thankfully though, Sabine could see that while her blast had burned through the plastoid armor, it hadn't been able to pierce the beskar. Now, she just needed to hope that the fall hadn't killed him.
Ripping off the stormtrooper's helmet to reveal the face of the man she loved, Sabine shed tears of mixed hope and fear as she shook the man's shoulder and said, "Ezra! Ezra, wake up! Come on. Ezra!"
Suddenly, she saw his eyes slightly flutter open at the sound of his name, and looked up at her with dawning familiarity. Sabine let out a relieved laugh as she saw her boyfriend lying beneath her, somehow alive after he died yesterday.
As Ezra finally seemed to recognize her, he leaned his head back and smiled as he said, "Beautiful." And then, he closed his eyes once more and began to snore as he fell back into unconsciousness.
Sabine just chuckled and leaned down to lay on top of his chest, wrapping her arms tightly around him and snuggling into him. She knew that her friends were probably wondering where she'd gone, but they were going to have to come get her, because there was no way she was going to leave Ezra's side ever again.