A/N: One last time for this story, two chapters in one day. Enjoy!
Chapter 44
Ezra POV
Before the Portent could leave the planet's atmosphere, Ezra managed to catch up to the ship and discreetly attach himself to the outer hull. Then, as the ship flew into space, Ezra reached up and pressurized his helmet to allow himself to breathe. Then, he looked up as the light overhead was suddenly blocked off, and he saw a number of other Seventh Fleet Destroyers flying into a defensive formation around the Portent, one of which was now blocking the light of the sun from reaching Ezra, which explained the sudden dramatic increase in darkness.
"Guess it's a good thing I got on before the ship left the atmosphere," Ezra muttered to himself. Over the last seven years of mostly working alone, he had developed a habit of talking to himself as he worked, and clearly that fact hadn't changed, not even after he'd met… Sabine.
At the thought of his cyar'ika, Ezra's mind clouded over for a moment with the thought of her, leaving him perfectly content to sit here for the rest of the day with only Sabine Wren on his mind. He still couldn't believe what she'd told him just before he'd left. She had said that they would go back to Mandalore to say the vows when he returned. Basically, she had finally agreed to their marriage, and Ezra couldn't possibly be more thrilled.
As immediate marriage was the common practice among Mandalorians, Ezra had never expected to do "dating" in his life, if indeed he ever actually was lucky enough to fall in love with someone, but he hadn't minded it so much. Months of patience spent on Sabine had only made Ezra love her even more, and to be honest, he thought she was well worth all of it. He would've waited years more for her if she needed it, but he was glad that she was finally ready.
Seeing the Seventh Fleet ships begin to prepare to leave, Ezra shook his head hard and tried to shut these thoughts out of his mind. He needed to focus on his mission, or these dreams for the future could still be rendered mere imagination.
Looking around at the numerous ISDs, Ezra decided that he needed to stop all of them from making the jump to hyperspace and getting the Empire's attention. But how? He didn't have time to attack and disable all of the command centers.
He pulled out his lightsaber hilt and looked down at it, considering attacking the engines, but once again decided that it would take too long. Besides, in their activated state, he'd probably burn up before he even got close enough to do any real damage. And on the off chance that he managed to destroy one ship's engines, the other ISDs would quickly be warned and then know to raise their own defenses. Unless…
A grin formed on Ezra's face as a plan formed in his head. Maybe he couldn't attack the Destroyers directly just yet, but he could make them face some technical issues. If he targeted their communications arrays, he could make them all face similar issues without suspecting the need to raise any alarms, yet also preventing them from making a synchronized jump into hyperspace. The fleet wouldn't try to go anywhere until they had done a full check-in. The only trick was that he would need to target the communications array on the flagship first, but luckily he was already on board.
Using his knowledge of the Destroyers' layouts, Ezra lined himself up with the Portent's communications array on top of the hull, then fired a short burst from his jetpack to launch himself in that direction. He then used his arms to steady himself and glide closer towards the array, staying below the level of the scans as he slowly but surely made his way over to the communicator. Once he reached it, he first patched his helmet into the ship's internal comm system, then used his lightsaber to destroy the external communicator system.
As soon as it was destroyed, he heard over the Imperial comms, "What the? We just all external communications. Our other ships can't hear us."
Another voice said, "I'll tell Admiral Thrawn that we're stuck here a little while longer. You get a maintenance crew out there to examine the problem."
Reassured that his plan had worked, Ezra then set about to complete the remaining parts of the job. He quickly and quietly flew from one ISD to the next, carefully staying out of sight as he disabled one communications array after the other. In total, he destroyed more than twenty different communications arrays between all of the ships, all without being seen. Doubtless, they all probably thought that they were dealing with their own isolated problems right now. Ezra had divided them, now he just had to conquer.
Flying back to the Portent, Ezra entered the ship quietly through the main hangar entrance on the ventral side of the Destroyer. Inside, there were dozens of Imperials, mostly pilots and stormtroopers. Ezra considered fighting them, but ultimately decided against it. Maybe he would eventually have to deal with them, but right now his focus needed to be on eliminating Admiral Thrawn, for which he couldn't risk any alarms being sounded. The only place that he could disable the ship's alarms was from the bridge, so that was his next stop.
Moving through the ship undetected was infinitely more difficult than flying around outside. There were Imperials everywhere, and without Ezra's knowledge of their patrol routes, he doubted he could've possibly managed it. Even with the knowledge, Ezra found it tedious, trying to get around. He was a fighter, born and bred, and to be forced to duck around corners and hide every time he knew someone was approaching was ridiculously annoying. However, he exercised patience and managed to get it done, mostly by reminding himself repeatedly of how badly he wanted to finish this mission and get back to Sabine.
When he arrived at the command center, Ezra passed through the situation room and opened the doors to the bridge to find at least a dozen Imperials staring at him, only four stormtroopers while the rest were officers. They looked up at him in surprise, several of them tensing their grips on their weapons, but the sight of his armor seemed to make them hesitate. Most likely because it was Mandalorian, or maybe just because they'd heard of his recent exploits, but Ezra couldn't help but think that they were admiring the colorful designs drawn across his armor. He couldn't blame them if that was the case. It was quite the work of art, after all.
Knowing that he couldn't start blasting just yet, Ezra spoke up and said, "Sorry to intrude, everyone. Can any of you tell me where the refreshers are?"
After he'd said it, the doors finished closing once more behind him, effectively preventing most noise from escaping this room. The loud, metallic sound created when the doors sealed shut seemed to jolt the Imperials back to their senses, and all of those holding their hands on their blasters quickly leapt up to aim their weapons at Ezra, but he moved faster.
He abruptly drew one of his pistols and shot one stormtrooper on his right, then used his left hand to fire a grappling line at the stormtrooper in the same position on his left. The line wrapped itself around the stormtrooper's neck, and the Imperial soldier dropped his blaster as he reached up and tried to pull it off of him to allow himself to breathe, but then Ezra yanked on the line and roughly tugged the trooper towards him. Ezra then held the stormtrooper in front of himself as the other Imperials fired on him, but Ezra used the stormtrooper's body as a shield as he strode forward, propping the now-dead stormtrooper up with one arm while his other one held his pistol, which he fired at everyone in sight.
When only three officers remained alive in the room, Ezra holstered his blaster and dropped the stormtrooper's body to the ground, no longer concerned about incoming fire. One officer ran towards Ezra and engaged him in a fistfight, and Ezra dodged a couple punches before he noticed that a second officer was reaching desperately towards an alarm button.
Ezra quickly ducked under the arm of the officer that was attacking him, kicking him hard in the back of the knee as he went, then leaned down to his boot and drew his knife before throwing it across the room, where it impaled the second officer's hand to his console just a few inches away from the alarm button, making him scream in pain. Ezra then spun around and punched the first officer across the face hard, instantly knocking him unconscious, then walked slowly over to the second officer, who was now kneeling and shedding tears of pain.
Not feeling mercy for the Imperial, Ezra roughly tugged the knife out of the man's hand, making him scream again as he fell to the floor and clutched his hand which was now covered in blood. Ignoring the man's pain, Ezra looked down at his knife and scowled at the officer. "You got blood on my knife," Ezra accused him, then pulled out his pistol and quickly shot the man in the head before holstering the weapon once more. He then wiped the blood off of his knife and onto the officer's black uniform, then turned to leave.
However, when he turned, he saw the last Imperial officer desperately opening the bridge security doors and attempting to run away. Sighing with annoyance, Ezra just raised his wrist and fired an electric dart from his vambrace. The dart flew across the room and struck the officer in the spine, causing him to stiffen up and instantly fall over as his legs lost all strength at the same time as the dart shocked him into unconsciousness, causing him to slide on the waxed, polished floor and hit his head softly on the hologram projector in the situation room.
Looking around the room now that everyone was dealt with, Ezra then turned to the control console and disabled the alarms before he began to input the ship's controls into his vambrace. As he worked, he heard one of the surviving Imperials trying to silently get back to their feet behind him, and Ezra just idly fired one of his pistols behind himself, hearing a grunt of pain followed by the sound of a collapsing body.
Once the controls had been connected to his vambrace, Ezra turned around and began to walk out of the room, now heading towards Admiral Thrawn's office. Along the way, he used the new controls in his vambrace to lock small groups of stormtroopers in their corridors so that he could quietly eliminate them. Maybe he wouldn't manage to do much damage to their overall numbers, but it still felt satisfying to get rid of as many stormtroopers as he could.
Soon, he arrived in front of Thrawn's office and drew both of his pistols before opening the door. Seeing Thrawn sitting at his desk, Ezra instantly aimed both pistols at Thrawn and fired, not wanting to waste a moment. However, Thrawn simply pressed a button on his desk, and a small rectangular shield suddenly appeared over the top surface of the Admiral's desk, absorbing the blasts that had been meant to kill him.
Then, Thrawn stood up tall and calmly folded his arms behind himself as he said, "Captain Ezra Kryze, you never disappoint. However, I must say, I had rather expected that you would've been here sooner, no more than a few moments after our external communications were compromised. Did my soldiers give you more trouble than you expected?"
Remaining unfazed, Ezra stepped into the room, keeping his pistols trained on Thrawn through his shield, and responded, "Not trouble. Just annoyance. For you, I decided to work a bit quieter than I normally do."
Smiling, Thrawn said, "Ah, yes. Of course. That's what I admire about you, Captain. You are a man of action, like all of your people, but unlike most of them, you are also a man of principles, of vision. The Empire was foolish to ever let you mean so little to them, or perhaps foolish to let you mean so much."
Unsure of where the Admiral was going with this, Ezra held up his pistols and said, "Don't you get what's happening here? I cornered you in here, alone against me. And you made the mistake of getting on my bad side. You're not walking out of here alive, Thrawn."
Not reacting, Thrawn just calmly walked around his desk towards the wall, where he kept his collection of art and trinkets, including several of Sabine's paintings. "Yes, I don't imagine you have any intention of letting me live, and I cannot defeat you in single combat," Thrawn admitted as he leaned towards a large piece of stone with Sabine's orange starbird painted on it. "But what about… Emotional combat? Or psychological? After all, somewhere beneath all your people's armor beats a mighty heart of iron, as the center of your chestplate represents. And strong as that heart is, able to resist damage from great force, it can be melted."
Fed up with the Admiral's games, Ezra stepped threateningly closer to the Chiss and said, "Enough riddles, Thrawn! What are you talking about?"
Thrawn smirked at him and said, "I am speaking, of course, of your great ability and desire to feel something, Captain, especially love. Warriors love deeper than perhaps anyone else, for they alone can truly understand how much there is to lose. For example, when I took Captain Syndulla from your little group. You were so desperate to rescue her that you risked the full wrath of the Empire, and paid the price. You lost Kanan Jarrus, not just to capture, but to death."
Thrawn then took a slow step towards Ezra, who kept his blasters leveled but somehow couldn't fire, and Thrawn kept speaking. "From what I gather, I imagine Jarrus felt like a father to you, and Captain Syndulla a mother. No wonder you were so determined to aid them. Yet, I suppose you have some experience losing people, don't you, Captain Kryze?"
Thrawn took another step forward and Ezra held his ground, saying, "I… don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course you do," Thrawn argued, still slowly approaching him. "After all, your so-called mother, Bo-Katan Kryze, has never been married. Never given birth. Yet according to secret Clan Kryze records taken by the Empire, Bo-Katan's sister, on the other hand-"
"Watch it, Thrawn!" Ezra warned, jabbing his pistol towards the Admiral, but Thrawn was unmoved.
"And supposedly the Duchess Satine Kryze had an interest in a certain Jedi Master for some time, an Obi-Wan Kenobi," Thrawn continued, now so close to Ezra that the younger man was slowly backing away.
"I said shut up!" Ezra yelled angrily, but Thrawn once again refused.
Internally, part of Ezra wanted to pull the trigger on the Grand Admiral. There were no more shields between them, and his weapons were still pointed at Thrawn's head. Just one small movement could end Thrawn's life, yet there was another part of Ezra that couldn't stop listening to what Thrawn was saying.
"You are a cancer, Ezra Kryze. A plague on everyone who ever loved you. What other explanation could there be for why your loved ones always abandon you?" Thrawn said, looming over Ezra and slowly inching him backwards towards the door. "Eventually, it always ends up the same way: You, alone, struggling to shoulder the burdens your friends and family heap on you, so frightened of failure that you never allow anyone to help you, not really. You hold so tightly to those you love, but you are different from them, so you push them away little by little until you can't bear to have them, nor can you bear to lose them. Face the facts, Captain. You wish to possess love, but you can never truly have it. You are impossible to hold onto. You are alone. Abandoned at every turn. You couldn't even be content in the Empire, and they gave you everything! Power! Authority! Prestige!"
Backing up another few steps, Ezra tried to argue, "I… Those things aren't important to me! I have everything I need!"
Raising an eyebrow and looking back at his collection of Sabine's paintings, Thrawn said, "Ah, yes. You have found love after all, haven't you, Captain? Or, at least, you believe you have. But how long will Sabine Wren and her family of rebels be able to love you once they learn what a burden you truly are? You've probably already been difficult for them in the past. I wonder if they'll even miss you after this."
And with that said, Thrawn's trap was suddenly sprung. Ezra took one last step backwards, and suddenly a door in the wall next to him slid open, revealing a black Imperial security droid, its glowing red eyes looking down at Ezra before it quickly struck out at him, punching him across the room into the wall with its enhanced strength, making him drop his pistols. As Ezra tried to shake off the hit, he saw Thrawn duck behind the droid to run out of the office.
"Thrawn!" Ezra called after him. "Get back here!"
Unfortunately, Thrawn didn't seem inclined to obey Ezra's demand, and as he got back up, he found himself facing other problems. Namely, the tall, powerful security droid marching towards him, followed by three others exiting from the same room.
Mentally, Ezra cursed himself for forgetting about these things and not suspecting that Thrawn would use them against him. Thrawn liked to train himself against these droids, as he'd shown Ezra months ago. They weren't the most dangerous droids the Empire had, neither the fastest nor the smartest, but they packed a punch when they hit you.
As the first droid threw its fist towards Ezra's face, Ezra shoved the arm a few inches sideways and just barely managed to keep it from hitting him in the face, causing it to instead dent the wall next to his head. Now, granted, his helmet would've stopped the punch anyway without even getting damaged, but Ezra had been trained to stop every attack his opponents threw at him and turn it into his own strike.
Once the droid's fist was firmly planted in the wall, Ezra grabbed onto it and spun his body over the arm to kick the droid in the face. Its head jolted sideways from the force of the kick, but then it just looked back at him, seeming only slightly damaged but much more angry. It then threw its arm, still with Ezra holding onto it, back behind it with great force, making Ezra lose his grip and fly into the room's opposite wall, denting the metal with his body and crashing to the ground with a groan.
Oh, and he was also thrown closer to the other three droids so that they could join in on the fun. Joy.
The other three droids converged on Ezra in a close group, and he rolled out of the way as the first one tried to punch him on the ground. Ezra jumped back up to his feet and used his jetpack to fly backwards, trying to get away from the droids, but the first droid had snuck up behind him, and it smacked him down to the ground once more.
Knocked to the ground for the third time in less than a minute, Ezra growled to himself and held up one hand before using the Force to crush the first droid into a ball of useless metal, making the lights go out in his eyes.
Then, he turned to the three remaining droids and got into a combat-ready stance, using his few remaining seconds before they reached him to calculate how long it would take him to defeat them in hand-to-hand. Too long, he decided, as he remembered that Thrawn was currently trying to escape, and Ezra had only seconds to catch up with him before the Admiral managed to get himself lost in the ship's halls, out of range of Ezra's scanners.
Suddenly, he remembered that Thrawn had once used some sort of stick to give himself an edge in combat against these droids. Deciding that it was a better plan than nothing, Ezra turned around and ran back into Thrawn's personal training room, where these droids had come out of.
Along the way, one of the droids managed to catch up to Ezra and grab his arm, and he extended the small blade from his right vambrace to cut the droid's hand off, then stabbed it in the chest and ripped upward, instantly tearing through its armor.
Then, he grabbed Thrawn's bo staff off the wall of the room before spinning around and smacking it across the face of the nearest security droid. It only managed to faze it, but that was all Ezra needed to shove it backwards into the other droid, then shove the bo staff through both of their chests, using the Force to help him strike through both of their bodies and impale them together. Then, while they were distracted by the critical damage they'd just sustained, Ezra used his wrist blade to cut off both of their heads at the necks.
Two droid heads fell to the ground with a clang, followed by the two bodies, but Ezra didn't spend a moment reveling in his victory, just immediately took off after Thrawn, grabbing his pistols on his way out the door. He used his scanner and found that Thrawn was still just barely within sight, surrounded by six other bodies. If Ezra had to guess, he would say that Thrawn was trying to assemble a firing squad either to take Ezra down or perhaps just to hold him off while Thrawn made his escape.
Unfortunately for him, Ezra had a few tricks up his sleeve that Thrawn wouldn't be expecting. As he ran after the Admiral, Ezra pulled up his vambrace and pressed a few buttons which sealed the blast doors all around Thrawn except for where Ezra was coming from.
As Ezra rounded the corner and came within sight of Thrawn, who was clearly distressed to find all of his escape routes blocked, he closed the door behind himself to lock them all in, then began slowly approaching Thrawn. The six stormtroopers immediately began firing on Ezra, but he refused to let them slow him down. He activated his energy shield and drew his pistol in his free hand, then began running full speed towards the Imperials.
The stormtroopers' aim got worse as the major Mandalorian threat got closer, but it wouldn't have mattered either way. Using the Force to fuel himself, Ezra dodged every single blast effortlessly, and whenever he would fire back at them, his own blasts would hit them full in the face.
He shot the last stormtrooper right before he reached them, and as Thrawn raised his own blaster towards him, Ezra used his jetpack to rocket into the Admiral and shoved him down with his shield. The shield slightly charred Thrawn when it hit him in the chest, leaving a black mark on his previously-spotless white uniform as he was sent tumbling backwards.
Shortly after he hit the ground, Thrawn climbed back to his feet, and he straightened up and sighed deeply. "Alright," he said. "Get it over with. You have your vambraces and armor, and you don't miss. I know when I'm outmatched, and you won't let me live after all I've said and done. Just do it."
Ezra just glared at him for a moment, then slowly holstered his pistol and deactivated his shield. He then reached back and pulled off his jetpack, setting it aside, and then removed his vambraces, belt, helmet, and torso armor.
After this had all been done, Thrawn looked insulted and asked him, "What is this? An act of pity? Of mercy? I respectfully decline."
Ezra just shook his head and took a ready stance, then said, "No pity. No mercy. I just want to make this hurt."
Thrawn stood still for a moment, then unzipped and pulled off his jacket before tossing it aside and taking his own stance.
The two warriors slowly began to circle each other, just as they'd done many times before in spars, but they both knew that this was no spar. This was a duel to the death. Filled with anger towards Thrawn, Ezra made the first move, charging with a yell and a blow from above that he knew Thrawn would block, but then he instead switched to trying to sweep Thrawn's legs out from under him.
However, Thrawn saw the feint coming, and he used Ezra's split second of being off balance to spin him around and throw him sideways, sending him to the floor.
"If only I knew what kind of-" Thrawn started to say, but then Ezra ran towards him and cut him off by throwing repeated punches, saying, "No, Thrawn! No more words! No more tricks! It's just you and me!"
Ezra threw a kick at Thrawn that the Chiss caught, but then Ezra flipped over and pulled Thrawn with him, knocking the Admiral onto his back while Ezra landed on his feet. The young Mandalorian then strode purposefully towards the Admiral and kneed him in the chin as he tried to stand back up, making him split his lip and fall to his hands and knees.
Ezra then tried to stomp on Thrawn once again, but Thrawn grabbed his foot and pulled it forward, forcing him to the floor and knocking the wind out of him. Ezra tried to climb back to his feet, but suddenly Thrawn was on top of him, flipping him over and using his jacket to pull tightly on Ezra's throat, slowly suffocating him.
As Ezra was being choked, Thrawn pondered, "How could I grow to hate you so much when we used to be friends, Kryze? How did we get here? It's simple, really. You cost me years of my life. You cost me my mission. The Rebellion would've died if not for you. Over months of study, I worked it all out, every little detail I needed to crush the Rebellion utterly, but you ruined it. The one rogue factor in my equation."
Ezra pulled and tugged on the jacket around his throat, trying to draw in any sort of small breath, but Thrawn didn't waver, and Ezra's face was starting to turn purple from suffocation. He even tried to use the Force to stop Thrawn, despite the fact that he would be revealing his secret abilities, but he couldn't focus enough to do it.
And still, Thrawn wouldn't stop talking. "And now, I finally have you. How dare you make me resort to such primitive means of killing to get rid of you, Kryze? But no matter. As long as you die, here and now, I will be content. You will die here, one again all alone. No one to save you. Not Sabine Wren. Not Hera Syndulla. And most certainly not Kanan-"
Suddenly, the closed door next to them was blown inwards, metal crumpling and breaking under incredible force as though some large, heavy object had been thrown through it, though nothing was visibly there. Thrawn was tossed off of Ezra by the blast, crashing into the wall and letting Ezra breathe again, and both of them raised their heads to see what had come through the door.
Instead, they saw only a tall man stepping through the hole in the door, holding a blue lightsaber blade out to his side. "He's never going to be alone again," Kanan Jarrus said. "Not if we have anything to say about it."
His eyes widening in shock and amazement, Thrawn climbed back to his feet and said, "It can't be."
Suddenly, the Admiral was yanked into the air by an unseen force and held immobile in front of Kanan's face. "Actually, it can," Kanan corrected, then looked over to Ezra and said, "I'll make this one exception for him."
Ezra raised an eyebrow, surprised, then just nodded and used the Force himself to turn Thrawn around to face him. Then, as Thrawn watched in shock, Ezra's lightsaber flew from his belt into his hand, where he ignited it just as Thrawn flew towards him with a yell. Then, with a single clean stroke, Ezra put an end to the Grand Admiral for all time.
As he let Thrawn's body fall to the ground behind him, Ezra deactivated his lightsaber and asked Kanan, "You couldn't have arrived a few seconds earlier? I was kinda dying in here."
Kanan just shrugged and said, "The Seventh Fleet is under attack by the Rebellion, but they're not gone yet. I had some trouble getting in here. Besides, you could've handled it yourself in seconds if you hadn't insisted on losing your armor and toys."
Ezra spread his arms and called on the Force, and suddenly all of his armor pieces flew towards him one at a time and fit themselves back onto his bodysuit, followed by his weapons, and then his helmet flew into his hands and he placed it on his head. "Well, I figured I could get them back quickly enough," he said. "Now, you said those Seventh Fleet ships were still intact? Well, since you asked so nicely, sure, I'll help you acquire them. But we'll have to make it quick. We have an appointment on Mandalore that I am not going to let us be late for."
A/N: Alright, here's the thing, and please read the whole thing before freaking out. I'm ending this story here. Hey! What'd I just say?! Calm down! This story has gotten much longer than I originally anticipated, and I still have a lot I want to do, so I'm ending this story here and continuing with a sequel. But here's the trick: This is my equivalent of the end of the Rebels show. As such, some of you can end the story here, at least as far as you are concerned. Others can read the sequel, but it will diverge from the Rebels show considerably. Anyway, the sequel will be up soon, and it will be called Path of Honor. However, at the moment, I don't really have Star Wars on my mind very well, so it could be a little while until I get back into the swing of things. I could write the story anyway, but it wouldn't be as good, and I always try to give you guys the best content I can offer. However, I am currently working on another story that I may or may not post soon. (Just out of curiosity, how many of you enjoyed the new Spider-Verse movie?) In the meantime, I want to thank you for enjoying this story and sharing your thoughts, recommendations, and concerns. If any of you notice any mistakes or wish to share your thoughts on the story at any point, I am always reading each and every comment on my stories, even after I've completed them, and will always be willing to respond to you (as long as you remain calm and polite, as always, or your comment will be doomed to deletion and the dark void of nothingness). And also, as I mentioned at the beginning of the story, this was my first time writing a romance element, so please let me know how it was, if I under/overdid it in places. Now, one final time, thanks for reading!