(A/N)- WHEEEEEEEEEW I'M DONE.
Saved the best for last, lol. Love my blueberry.
Disclaimer: Don't look at me I just rent space here.
Tales of the Spectres: Ezra
An untidy mop of dark hair peeked out from behind the alley wall. Bright blue eyes made a quick sweep of the street, sizing up his target, and then his head ducked back behind the tan stone.
Ezra leaned back out from cover, this time priming his slingshot.
It was a recent addition to his little arsenal. Not very powerful—at least not until he could swipe a stronger power cell—but hopefully stinging enough to dissuade anyone who might want to grab him. He'd had a close scrape with a couple of bored Stormtroopers the other week who thought it was just so funny to try and yank at his backpack and hair, that he didn't care to repeat.
He'd already tested it out on himself—his hand was still just a little bit tingly—but now he was ready for more... practical targets.
Ezra looked down the sight of his energy slingshot, peering across the street towards the knot of Imperial officers and troopers. The troopers were busy moving crates of supplies, purchased from a local business, onto repulsorlift platforms. The officers were busy standing around and looking important. Ezra had heard this was called "supervising".
He took aim at the back of one of the new ones. Myles Grint, a man as stupid as he was large. Ezra was pretty certain he was from one of the richer Core World families that had settled on Lothal in the early days right after the Clone Wars; he had the accent but it wasn't quite as posh and polished as some of the other Imperials he'd heard.
Ezra drew the crackling yellow strings of the slingshot back, pinning his sights on the center of Grint's back.
No... Ezra thought, grin twitching, mischievous.
He aimed just a little bit lower.
With a flick of his fingers, he let the energy pellet fly.
Grint gave a satisfying yelp and a little hop, slapping hands over his injured backside.
To his left, his companion—one Cumberlayne Aresko—gave a passive glance over and then a withering eyeroll. "What is it this time, Taskmaster?" he sighed.
The other man rubbed his buttocks in offense. "I think a nasty ol' bug just bit me!" he complained.
Aresko's eyes darted long-sufferingly towards the sky. "I told you to wear repellent," his smoother, more clipped voice said. "Starships knows there's plenty of horrid biting insects on this primitive backwater world."
Just for that, Ezra aimed a pellet at him too.
His screech was decidedly shriller and less dignified than Grint's.
"Officer!" he cried, flailing and stabbing arms in a useless attempt to drive off whatever bug he couldn't see. "I want this area fumigated at once!"
Ezra ducked back behind the corner, hand over his mouth to muffle a giggle. He firmly enjoyed the minor chaos his two little shots were causing.
Grinning, he drew back his slingshot again, leaning off the wall eagerly.
His fun was cut short as something tingled on the back of his spine. Ezra hesitated, tuning into the instinct, and wasn't surprised when a white-armored hand grabbed his wrist, yanking him back away from the opening and turning him around.
"Hey! This is a restricted area!" the Stormtrooper barked, one hand holding his blaster up at high ready. "You need to leave immediately!"
Ezra wrested his arm quickly from the man's hold, glaring sourly. "Or what?" he demanded, with all the sass and sarcasm his thirteen year old body possessed.
He could see the annoyed and unamused look in the trooper's eyes, even behind the blank optic lenses of his helmet.
"You wanna spend the night in a holding cell, kid?" he challenged.
Ezra lowered his eyes with sullen resignation. Better not to push it, his instincts told him. He'd gotten what he'd come for—his test of his new slingshot at least proved the concept—no reason to antagonize the Empire's forces any more than he needed to.
"No sir," he muttered.
The Stormtrooper jabbed with the barrel of his blaster. "Get moving," he ordered tersely.
Ezra gripped the straps of his backpack and shuffled quickly past the man, keeping his senses up and on high alert just in case the trooper got trigger happy. Imps liked to use him for target practice sometimes.
He walked forward down the alley, towards the other street. When he was almost to the corner he stopped, paused, looked surreptitiously back over his shoulder.
The Stromtrooper had his back turned and Ezra couldn't resist.
He got off a shot, popping it straight into the back of the white helmet, and then turned tail and booked it, pushing off crates and barrels and even someone's head to gain first an awning and then a rooftop, and then he was running and leaping pelter-skelter away from the crime scene, flying over Lothal's flat roofs.
The Empire's finest apparently decided it wasn't worth it to chase after a kid today, because he wasn't pursued. Felt nice. He liked when the Imps had more important things to do.
-SWR-
Panting to catch his breath, Ezra sat down on the edge of a roof, letting his feet dangle for a moment. He lifted his arm to marvel at and study his new slingshot.
Not bad, he decided. Could be stronger, probably need a new amplifier before long. I can work with this.
Having an actual weapon, even a paltry one, made him feel just a little bit safer. It was getting more dangerous for him out on the streets. There were more patrols, shopkeepers were on edge and nervous and that made them more attentive to his nicking and pickpocketing. His friend Moreena had warned him to watch out for slavers—they rarely bothered with children but he'd be a more tempting target the older he got.
So a new power cell was definitely on the list of things to get. Ezra leaned back on his hands, thinking. Ferpil might be willing to hock him one, if he got something out of the deal.
Rising to his feet, Ezra brushed off his hands.
Well, he'd better get back to work. Sun was still high in the sky so there was plenty of hours of daylight left for him to steal some credits and food.
Ezra walked along the edge of the roof, idly watching the people passing by in the street.
Huh. There was some new graffiti splattered on the walls. He didn't recognize the style. Looked colorful.
He had to chuckle at the stylized trooper helmet with its eyes crossed out. Good to know he wasn't the only one around who hated the Empire.
More and more of his usual scrounging and surviving time had been getting diverted to casual pushback and annoying the garrison in Capitol City in particular. Hey if they were gonna make things harder on everyone else just trying to live, he was gonna make things harder on them back.
In fact, he'd already picked out his next target. Supplymaster Yogar Lyste was down below next to a troop transport, "supervising" as he directed troopers to round up stray produce baskets that were against the new regulations about market table space.
His stomach growled right on cue. A flicker of anger burned through him as he watched the Stormtroopers halve one vendor's wares, over his protests, clearing out everything not either on the table itself or behind it.
Ezra pulled the strings of his slingshot all the way back for this one.
-SWR-
Minutes later, the bushels liberated from the Empire's grasp, lost in the chaos his little sniper job had caused, Ezra helped himself to a full backpack before leaving the baskets where the vendor could find them later, underneath the new anti-Imp graffiti. He bit into his self-claimed reward with satisfaction, wiping the juices that ran down his chin.
His instincts told him it was time to move on, so he finished quickly, hefting his backpack and disappearing once again into the crowd, an invisible little menace still beating the odds against him after all this time.
-SWR-
Kanan wandered casually into the next street, finished with his own mission and task for the day, and beheld with some bewilderment the ruckus by a troop transport. A low-ranking officer was holding his arms out stiffly, covered with fruit stains and dripping, and he was making it everyone else's problem, shrieking indignantly. There were splatters on the troop transport and a couple Stormtroopers as well, and the Lothal citizens were very busy looking nonchalantly elsewhere, as if the disturbance wasn't happening at all.
"Huh," Kanan mused. "Wonder what happened there."
(A/N)- I had so much fun with this one. Thanks for reading dears!