Chapter 10 - I'll Walk Through Hell With You
"We will never arrive on Coruscant before it's been destroyed," Tech warns. Hunter is there, and he cannot let his brother die. He may not be fully certain the destruction would harm him, but he cannot be certain it will not, either. That is not a risk he is willing to take. Not again. He harmed them all enough already. The images never fade from his mind.
He never forgets. His memory is too clear, and that is to his benefit, though whenever he remembers his little brother's screams echoing in his mind, he wishes he could do anything to make it stop, but that was Tech's choice, and he deserves to be haunted by this forever.
"What do you suggest?" Echo asks from beside him.
"Perhaps if we merged our powers, we would be able to create a hole in reality enough to transport us to Coruscant." He looks over his shoulder – Wrecker, Omega, and Crosshair are safely aboard, and Ahsoka's standing on the ramp still by General Kenobi.
"It's dangerous," Ahsoka warns, "But you're right that there's no time."
"Are you coming?" Omega asks the Jedi Master.
"I will have to get my lightsaber."
"Rrrright," Ahsoka agrees, "And where's that?"
"In the desert."
"You buried your lightsaber in the middle of the desert where it could be eaten by mice?" Omega squeaks.
And here Tech was beginning to believe the Jedi could not irritate him any further.
**w**
Speaking of being a waste of time, though the Jedi would not have had a reason to anticipate such urgency. Though, Tech was under the impression that Jedi would constantly carry their lightsabers. They changed, too, after the war.
"What do we do?" Wrecker asks. He's lost without Hunter, and admittedly, so is Tech. He is not aware of what happened while he was unconscious. All he knows is that on top of losing Emerie, they also lost Hunter. Just like on Daro, though Hunter is not presently captured.
"We can try meditating again," Omega volunteers.
That is an effective method for Jedi, though Tech is no Jedi. It does not function the same for him as it does for them. Perhaps because, like Echo once said, he has had enough solitary as well.
He never said what the statis is like. Crosshair was fortunate to never have to endure that. It's a sleep-wake state, a merging state between the two, but Hemlock could never allow them real sleep, or their minds would heal and free themselves of the programming he so meticulously worked into them.
Tech was mostly aware of it, hours of nothing, his mind too dull to focus but too awake to be blank – hours and hours of nothing but the red glaring light. It's red it was always red – and the chamber's door two inches from his face.
Lengthened silence, dark spaces sends his mind into the void, and to do nothing for such lengths is a waste of the minimal time he and his brothers already have. It is not something Omega could ever truly understand, because that was not a life she lived, and her life was a life of peace without purpose. She was always made to be more.
"Do we know of another way to transport us?" Ahsoka asks.
"Wrecker can warp reality," Tech replies, because that was apparent to him the instant he first used his powers on Teth. "Theoretically, he should be able to transport us."
"And what about the consequences of breaking a hole in reality? That's what the Mother wants," Ahsoka objects.
"We cannot leave Hunter there to fight her alone." Tech had felt it when she was on Tantiss, her icy cold crawling into his mind, catching his violent rage and stretching it, twisting until all he could do was explode outwards with every last shred of rage he's ever felt in his life. That wasn't himself. It was her.
His mind is what makes him special. It always has been. Tech doesn't know how it is that people can keep violating it. First the Empire, then the Mother, whatever exactly she is. They're up against something he doesn't understand, and never could. He has little idea how to calculate any type of approach. He doesn't have enough information to know what the best possible option would be.
"How do I do it?"
"I'm afraid that's something you'll have to figure out on your own," Ahsoka responds, "Just try, and do what feels right."
Wrecker sits back, closing his eyes. His irises are red again. It is almost disconcerting to see him this way, but it is only his younger brother, and Wrecker could never be a threat. Tech very pointedly opts not to remember the hand crushing his neck. Bracca was the first time in his life that he was truly scared.
He feels the shifting, the warping, and reality outside the ship rewrites itself. They are on Coruscant again. It is... different to be here a second time. He can feel it, which is an entirely foreign sensation. It is unlike anything Tech has ever experienced before.
This is also where they first encountered the CX's.
Coruscant is... in flames. Well, something is burning, anyway.
"We better land the ship," Echo says finally.
"If Wrecker can turn blasters into bubbles, I think I better get Lula and I outta here," their ship announces, "I don't want to get bubbled."
"It would be ideal to avoid the direct vicinity of the destruction, yes," Tech agrees, "It would not be inconsequential if we were to lose our ship." He would have blown up the Marauder in the future. If not for whatever warping that happened, for being sent away to Mortis and absorbing these abilities. It has aided them significantly.
"I'm up and away," Marauder announces.
"Bye!" Lula calls, waiving, "See you soon, I hope! Be careful!"
"You too," Omega agrees, and Tech lowers the ship to the edge of a landing platform.
The main columns of smoke are rising from the Senate building and the former Jedi Temple, now Imperial Palace. Well, that is a sentiment Tech can thoroughly share.
"How do you suggest we get over there?" General Kenobi inquires.
"There's got to be a speeder we can use," Echo answers. "But it doesn't look like she's after us right now."
"Maybe we'll get lucky, and she'll take out the Emperor," Ahsoka suggests dryly. Tech can appreciate her dry sense of humor, anyway. He thinks he rather likes it.
"What happened to the Ones before?" Tech inquires.
"Well... the Son killed the Daughter, the Father stabbed himself, and Anakin killed the Son," Ahsoka answers slowly, "The dagger of Mortis is supposedly the only thing that could kill them, though I don't know if it'll work on this."
"She did react when I tried to hit her with it," Echo says, "It's probably the best chance we have. We have to stop her before she levels the entire planet."
"That would be wise," Tech agrees, collecting a nearby speeder, "Through Wrecker and I can fly." It would be significantly more ideal than taking multiple speeders – they don't have time to waste right now.
"We'll be right behind you, then," Ahsoka agrees, climbing into the driver's seat. Tech watches a minute before willing himself into his other form and jumping from the platform. The rush of air against him takes his breath away, and for a moment, all he can remember is flashing smoke, burning and the tearing of metal.
But he is on Coruscant, a city planet, not Eriadu and a place of trees and mountains.
He does not need to concern himself with falling.
Wrecker is beside him, and they fly together towards the flaming palace.
In his mind, Wrecker laughs. "Maybe she's not so bad. This is some good work!"
Tech scans the fire again. He fully approves.
The cloud is twisting in its middle, tentacles flailing and flinging back rows and rows of stormtroopers and regs alike firing at her. Her body is dark, too hazy and murky to fully make out, but her huge purple-red eyes stand out amidst the center, turning and mostly hidden by her constantly sprouting extremities.
Hunter is standing out amidst the chaos, aqua swirling around his palms as he tries to block and counter her attacks. A black figure is beside him, a red lightsaber in hand as he cuts and slashes at the misty-gray tentacles coming their direction.
General Skywalker, Tech knows somehow. He sees it in his mind and in Hunter's.
The Force twists, its currents ripped and upended. Tech lands on a nearby platform, but he feels the wave of energy that crashes outwards, and the stormtroopers stumble, dropping. Then, one by one, they pick themselves up, turning their blasters on the two Force-users.
Wrecker jumps down, bubbling away all the blasters, twisting the way the Force's currents flow over them and morphing them into red, sparkling liquid.
A jagged, whirling blast of lightning comes down, and Tech shields them, twisting the time on every electron forwards to its future landing and disbursement in the metal of the building, some back into the air, tearing the bolt in half and disintegrating it.
Hunter stumbles, nearly falling.
A shuttle lifts off, attempting a failed escape out of the palace's hangar for the sky. The Mother lashes a tentacle out, snatching onto the shuttle and snapping its wings right off, unbothered by the engine searing against her. Tech feels the same awful tearing in the Force, and the outside of the ship is misted away along with most of its occupants. The brutality of it he thinks even amazes him.
She snatches out its last passenger, pulling him down, closer to her face. She's dangling him by his neck. "Hello, Darth Sidious."
Tech pauses, looking up – this is the Emperor. Actually, everyone is dead still.
The Emperor – Darth Sidious, every bit a Dark Side user as Tech is himself – tries drawing a lightsaber, but the Mother flickers them away into two bright red fluttering butterflies.
"Remember when you forced my sons to turn on my little girl? Remember when you left me, abandoned, alone, to die, in a desert?"
The Sith struggles against her, sending a blast of lighting down towards her main body.
"Oh, you think Anakin can help you. My best friend. If I can't have him, you won't, either. No, no, no." Her voice is deceptively gentle, sinister in a way that he knows is a promise of violence. The tentacle tightens, and there's a loud snap.
The dark, twisted presence fades away, and the Mother tosses the body over her shoulder as though it weighs and is nothing to her. She's radiating a smug relief, and when she turns around, little trials of sparking electricity following, she seems significantly more relaxed.
There is definitely a smile in the cloud somewhere.
Anakin lunges at her, his red lightsaber cutting at her middle. She shoves him back, and there they are, locked in a straining battle against each other. He's furious. The death gutted him, ripped apart a shard of something in his mind.
Anakin loved him. Tech cannot understand why, how it would be possible to love someone of such nature, but love does not make sense. He cannot fathom or Crosshair can love him, either.
"We're a family, aren't we?"
"Then why don't you act like it?"
"You killed the Emperor," he snarls, respirator cycling rapidly as he stumbles upright.
The stormtroopers are moving in on Hunter again, and he throws up a shield around himself. Wrecker flies at them, bodily knocking them down and aside with his now bottomless strength.
The energy everywhere is overwhelming, layers and layers of memories, people from millennia ago now long gone and forgotten. Pain and hurt, death and loss – so much, layered until it's been drowned and forgotten.
Pain like his own, and what he and his brothers share.
Someone fires a blaster at him – the stormtroopers are mindless. He can sense the danger, but not their intent to hurt him. He spins around and lashes out, throwing the white-armored figure off the landing.
"Well," the Mother says, "I don't like order. He's obsessed with it."
Anakin stands again, sprinting at her.
The cloud seems to melt in some sort of sorrow. "Anakin," she says gently, voice echoing, yet more mortal than she has been this entire time. "You're the one I was never meant to fight. Why did you come here?"
"You threaten the Empire and the galaxy."
"Not if you help me burn it."
"No."
It reaches up, the Force twisting over its tentacles as they hover in front of the Sith, curling in around him in some sort of cage. It's a mind prison of sorts, he would imagine.
Anakin falls, or he would have if she hadn't caught him, tentacles gripping either side of his helmet. And then the ground rips apart beneath them and she throws him.
The black figure falls over the edge, down and out of sight between the buildings and into the darkness below.
"Anakin!" Ahsoka's panicked, terrified voice catches his ears, her fear burning in the Force, bright and vibrant.
The duracrete shifts, closing over him again, trapping him below as though entirely undisturbed. She just buried the strongest Jedi they have ever heard of, perhaps the strongest there has ever been, somewhere far beneath Coruscant's surface.
He's gone. Fallen somewhere between the buildings in a fall Tech would not once have believed anyone capable of, except he himself.
Echo lunges at her. He doesn't wait, and she jerks back as he cuts and slashes at her with the dagger. Electricity flashes between them, sparking and rolling, burning with torrent of his fury, a trail of sparks falling behind him. She bats his arm and the dagger flies aside. Tech dives forwards to catch it out of the air, shifting back to his human form and rolling over as the blade lands in his hand.
"You should have been –"
No.
This isn't Tantiss.
And this is not a vibrosword, not with the strength so overwhelming it sends on to his knees.
It's burning.
The blade is burning in his hands, singing his skin and burning even deeper – deep enough Tech thinks it's trying to rip something out of him, and he sees it, though bits and flashes of a life millennia ago.
He sees a face, a woman, with platinum hair and features sharp but softer than he thought for her.
He sees a life, her family – two children and their father.
A life they had, calm with chaos.
He sees her pull the siblings off each other, hold them in her arms with a gentle "you were meant to be one. Don't hurt each other." She watches them as their world falls around them, falling in the face of strife and plague.
"I won't let them die," Abeloth tells the Father, her voice firm.
"Death is a natural part of the sequence of life," the Father tells her.
"If you won't do anything to stop it, I will."
She walks out, leaving him behind to scour a galaxy far, far away, unwilling and unable to walk away and give up on them.
Her children are dying.
She finds a world, unlike any other, soaking in the depths of its strength and warping the entirety of the galaxy. Of her family, freezing them in time eternally. He sees the power eat out her soul, rendering a void.
An all-consuming void, her body absorbed by an open well of power.
A void desperate to fill itself, unable to control the chaos it wields – and the Father strands her on the far away world and comes to Mortis.
And there she stays, in a galaxy far, far away, trapped and isolated until something rips a hole in reality, opening a path for her return.
She died for her family.
The same way Tech once did.
She did not start out the way she is now. She was fighting chaos, because she couldn't accept the death she was surrounded by, and she gave herself to save her family. Before becoming the one thing they feared.
The same thing happened to Tech. He wanted the Empire destroyed.
He became one of them.
The Mother hated death.
She became the one to feed on it. Her powers are too strong for her to contain them in a body, which is why she's in her cloud form.
Tech's connection with time has given him a special connection with her as well. He understands her, and this is the first power she broke by stopping time over what was left of her family. She saved them, though they are now gone, anyway.
The Father created this dagger to kill her, but he didn't have the strength to do it.
They fled instead.
Tech dropped the dagger in his flashes, his hand still burning. It is not a pleasant feeling – the dagger was made to combat the Mother's powers, and Tech has a branch of hers with his ability to alter time.
The Imperial Palace is halfway burned down, explosions ripping through it over the cacophony of blasters firing and speeder engines, and the lightning that broke overhead at some undefined point in the fight.
The lightning is doing well at keeping General Kenobi distracted attempting to avoid electrocution.
Echo snatches the dagger, jumping at the Mother when her back is turned – she's fighting Hunter and Ahsoka as they cut at her endless array of tentacles. She flings him backwards without looking, dropping him through a flashing portal somewhere else on-world. His disgruntled frustration burns in Tech's mind.
"We're gonna need a diversion," Ahsoka yells over the noise, "Something big."
"I have an idea," Tech calls back, "Wrecker, I am going to require your assistance."
"What do ya need me to do?" he asks.
"I need a reality hole. A door back to Tantiss."
"Are ya sure?" Wrecker is looking at him now, in his non-human for or no.
That's his biggest regret. "Yes. Do it."
Wrecker crouches, the Force shifting and another hole being ripped through it, the portal red-rimmed and in front of Tech, sized just for him. The same place they went to before, where his mind was ripped away and he harmed Crosshair. He has caused so much damage that he is the only one who can rectify.
He has done so much.
"We're a family, aren't we?"
His palms pool with green energy as he steps into the darkness.
Tech has been here so many times. He could never forget this place. His power makes it impossible to forget anything.
It feels of death. Destruction. All his doing, just as what the Mother did.
The debris pile of the mountain is towering, and Tech snaps himself back into his other form to fly to the top center, letting it and the Force carry him.
He remembers burning this place. How good it had felt, until he remembered what he did and who he was killing. He did not mean to cause what he did. The same as when he shot himself free from the rail car.
Just like –
Crosshair's hand.
He harmed his little brother. He harmed Crosshair, and that is not something Tech will ever be able to make up for.
All he can do is give him back – back –
Something.
Someone.
"Rise," he whispers, pressing his hands to the ground.
The time twists, the world flaring with a surge of green, and Tech feels the people, their minds linked with his, all and every one of his brothers and sisters held here. The power crawls across the ground, crashing and rolling outwards as his energy infuses with them. Tech has led the CX's before, and this isn't any different. They could use a backup.
He sees them stand, one by one, the dirt and debris shifting and everyone – he sees all of them.
Tech stands, scanning the CX's and the regs held there.
There's – there is something –
Something is not right.
There is a spot in his memory again. Something he does not remember, though he should, and something feels abnormally calm. That is not related to Tantiss.
It's something else – not everyone here are soldiers, and it is related to that, though he cannot remember where they are.
The gaps in his memory were supposed to end after his dream, after he relived his life, but there are still so many blank spots, things he knows but cannot remember, even though that should be the one thing that his abilities fixed.
He tries to turn back time to relive it, but it slips away again, a memory lost to the past, and with the chaos back on Coruscant, rescuing the rest of his squad until they find a way to get close enough to the Mother to defeat her is his priority.
Not figuring out the cause of the struggles he is having.
Tech doesn't need to tell them of their mission – their connection with him has them already knowing, and they follow him across the broken ridges of what was once the training room, out onto the bridge.
Wrecker shut the portal behind him, and Tech reaches back to him, nudging his little brother's mind in request for him to allow their return. It will not be much, but they might as well fight for something once in their lives.
(There is still the strange feeling of warmth in his chest, on his back and arms like someone embraced him, though he doesn't remember the occurrence.)
Wrecker reacts immediately, as he always does when one of his siblings are in danger, ripping open a portal again. Tech steps through, his army following behind.
The chaos they return to is still raging. Crosshair's panic is ringing in the back of Tech's mind, his desperation to escape and hide, the way he always used to. Crosshair has never been a fighter, and Tantiss stamped out the rest of it from him.
The Empire has destroyed all of their abilities to fight, and Tech does not understand how they were given these powers.
They still have not located Emerie, though he is beginning to theorize the Mother absorbs people. Somehow, she merges their souls into hers.
She is going to destroy the entire galaxy. Tech can already understand why the Father locked her away on the far off world. If he and his brothers survive this, it will not be easy.
The regs spread out behind him, drawing their weapons.
The Mother turns towards them, her eyes narrowing down at them.
Omega fires her crossbow, the shot slipping through the Mother's clouds. Ahsoka runs at her, lightsabers cutting down and aiming for between her eyes. It hits her tentacles instead, and the togruta drops into a roll.
"Come on, Snips. Really?" the cloud asks, a rippling form its center shifting and more cloudy but physical tentacles reform, sprouting.
"Don't call me that!" Ahsoka shouts. She's grieving, fueled by raw hurt and fury.
"You're still cute, but I would like it a lot more if you would all stop trying to kill me. You are all my children."
"We have no parents," Tech replies, drawing his blaster and firing at her. She swivels, dodging aside and the shot nearly hits Hunter. This is just another time he nearly harmed one of his brothers.
"We need to restrain her," General Kenobi's voice comes through the chaos. Tech can hear him somehow, even if he shouldn't, perhaps because he's listening. They did bring him in the hope he might find the answer. This would be the first time he offered anything of use throughout the course of this battle.
"How?!" Wrecker whines, "She's a cloud!"
"A shrinking cloud," Tech asserts, because her form is definitely half the size of what it was when he first laid eyes on her. "I believe the fight may be tiring her."
Nearby, Tech spots some of the Tantiss survivors firing at her tentacles with blasters they must have snatched from somewhere. The Mother swings it at them, flicking them aside like nothing. They are not dead – for whatever reason, she does not seem to enjoy the prospect of killing them.
"I've been sleeping for so many years," she accuses, "I'm not starting again."
The ground beneath their feet rips apart again, melting, forming miniscule rivers of orange-hot lava.
Another creature rises out of it, something massive with shimmering red eyes. A duplicate of her, its presence an offshoot and wrong, but not the main center branch.
The Mother leaps off the platform, taking off. towards the top of the building.
Hunter jumps after, wings catching his weight and carrying him up. Tech shifts again, jumping to Crosshair's side, and his little brother swings onto him, arms coming around his neck. Why he came to him before Omega, he doesn't understand – it's instinctive somehow. He knows Wrecker is meant to protect her, and he will.
He is capable, even if he is childish. His mind impedes many of his abilities, but not the instinctive desire to protect.
They fly after, landing gracefully on the ground opposite each other. Crosshair jumps off him, landing with a roll and raising his hands, wrapping the Force around her, trying to hold her still. Hunter is doing the same. Omega hops off Wrecker, glancing at them and raising her own hands to help.
Up here, they're safely away from where the regs and other civilians nearby are hopelessly outmatched against her. It's a better placement for a fight, if the palace was evacuated.
The Mother's presence is wild, her storm trying to break free.
"Distract her," Omega requests, her voice radiating through their minds. Tech reaches out instantly, trying to feel the Force around the Mother and see if he can twist it either forwards or back, warping her in time. She's frozen in time, too, but the energy she absorbed so long ago is almost faded.
He's thrown back from the efforts, the backlash cutting against his mind, and Tech drops to his knees, panting.
Crosshair is on her next, throwing up a shield around her mind, trying to cut her off and incase her away from everyone else, but she writhes and twists away, snapping free of his grip and he drops to his knees, panting, palms pressed to his forehead. Tech feels his pain as his own, throbbing and burning in his mind. It hurts.
Everywhere hurts. This is destroying them. They are not meant to contain these powers, and Tech is beginning to question if they will make it out of this alive.
Wrecker lashes out at her, but she throws him backwards into one of the towering pillars. He smashes through at least three walls before disappearing amidst the debris.
Omega stumbles back, panting, hand pressing to her forehead, but her eyes are a bright and furious green. "I found Emerie."
Hunter jerks. "What? You did?"
"Yeah. She's in the middle of the cloud. It's not one person. It's – there's at least three in there. Maybe four. We'll have to get her out somehow."
"That means we have to take her apart, not kill her."
"I believe you are correct," Tech tells him, throwing an explosive at her, even if it will likely cause very little damage.
"Stop," the Mother argues, lashing out, "You don't know what you're doing."
"We're stopping you," Omega snaps. "You're gonna destroy the galaxy. You took out an entire planet. Even the Empire hasn't done that."
"I can help you."
"We don't need your help," Hunter snaps back.
"I'll remake this world into something... better."
"How could we trust you?" Hunter demands.
"I'm almost proud you asked." She straightens, figure growing. "Because I'll give you anything you want."
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