The Legion’s Foil

Glarc and ZS-24 look like they are about to race back towards the center of the room and join the scrap against the rebels who had turned on the pirates.

Then, there backs are against the door frames, and they both draw blasters. They hunker down, clearly hearing something you don’t. Another moment, and you hear the comms chatter bouncing around the quiet, burned-out room that Hss’kas had broken into earlier.

"This way! Sounds like a fight!"
You watch as Glarc suddenly spins around the door frames, and fires off several blaster shots into the dark room! Red streaks of light briefly illuminate the white armor of the Imperial Stormtroopers waiting within. The large, pig faced pirate is back under cover in a second, but already preparing for another volley!

You watch as ZS-24 rummages through their pack, and pulls free a small grenade. Similar to Glarc, he spins out of cover, and tosses the thing into the room! It erupts, but the droid is already on the receiving end of Imperial firepower, and blaster shots ring out from the dark.

The shots take the grenade-throwing hand off at the elbow, and the droid’s appendage sparks terribly!

"Hit!" the fanciful droid screams, as he slumps down behind cover, cradling his ruined arm! The grenade had at least quietened the blasters for a moment, though the Imperials inside were surely only stunned!

Polk watches as the large Rodian winces; his blaster shot going wildly off the mark! Rather than lining up another shot, Plok sees that it is the pirate’s intent to ram him with the massive chair, and his massive bulk upon it! He bears down on the plucky bounty hunter, seemingly happy to ignore the cries of his comrade by the doorway!

---

Given that C4PQ had been brazen enough not only to steal the pirate’s blaster, but to fire it in anger at its former owner, this was personal. the squid faced pirate momentarily looks to the door, and C4PQ thinks he might run to their aid.

No…

Instead, the pirate reaches behind themselves, and pulls a wicked looking blade from somewhere. Not as effective on droids as it would be on biologicals, it still looks brutal enough to take pieces off of the protocol droid…

---

Redd, perhaps made of sterner stuff than his comrades, does actually pull away from his tussle with AC-D3.

Whether it’s the sturdy droid’s unwillingness to move, care for his co-plunderers, or fear of the blade suddenly being wielded by the Gonk Droid!

He races to the door, and unleashes a nasty volley into the dark room, and then races to ZS-24’s side!

A scream rings out from that blackened room, as Redd’s shot finds armor, and a stormtrooper slumps to the ground dead.

There would surely be no mercy now, for pirate nor rebel alike…

Hss’kas does his best to hide both himself and the lightsaber’s bright beam from sight. Throwing lights and wreckage between himself and the approaching Imperials, he hunkers down.

He hears a swish of the outer door, and then a quick second swish that lets him know that they were entering the room.

"Eyes peeled. We’ll take them by surprise!"
Hss’kas hears them say, as they scan the room, and move to complete the pincer attack on the elevator shaft.

Just as they are about to slip into the next room, something alerts them to the Jedi’s position. Was it the smell of the door melting in its frame, or the flicker of light and roasted metal?

"Come out, pirate scum!"
The voice is authoritative, and accompanied by the sound of blasters being leveled at Hss’kas’s barricade. The Jedi only needed another moment, as he watches larger chunks of door start to slip away…

"Aaaiiieeee!" Knibbec yowls as he swings back and forth on the rope as that stupid gonk droid above does something not conducive to Knibbec's continued safety. "Did you start a fight AGAIN?!" The jawa shouts up as he continues his frantic climb out of the hole.

Knibbec hoists himself up and over the lip of the walkway, and the scene about him is chaos. Blasters pew and grenades crack. Plok looks to be getting rammed by the large pirate, while C4PQ looks like he’s about to be cut into two!

C4PQ barely had time to register the glint of metal before the Quarren lunged. The wicked blade slashed through the air in a crude, brutal arc, and though C4PQ attempted to step back, he wasn’t built for speed. The blade bit deep into his chassis, sparks flying as delicate servos and wiring were sliced through."Oh dear—!" C4PQ gasped, his voice crackling with static as the impact sent him stumbling sideways. His left arm jerked, servos misfiring from the damage, and a garbled string of Binary escaped his vocabulator as he struggled to remain upright.

Still, he wasn’t programmed to simply give up. With an awkward, jerky motion, he swung the stolen blaster up and squeezed the trigger. The shot went wide, searing through the air just inches from the Quarren’s face. The pirate flinched, his tentacles twitching in alarm, but it only fueled his rage further.

C4PQ’s photoreceptors flickered as he recalculated. "Ah… That was regrettable." His mechanical fingers adjusted their grip on the blaster. "Perhaps I should try again?"

There was no way to disguise the glow and hum of a lightsaber, so Hss'kas had hoped that the holomap display in the middle of the room, turned up to maximum brightness, was a good enough distraction. It wasn't to be. Hss'kas was convinced that they hadn't fully seen him and what he was doing, for if they did, they wouldn't have called out a warning first, not when dealing with the most wanted persons in the galaxy, more so than pirates even. The empire hunted Jedi, but thankfully these stormtroopers still thought he was a pirate hiding in a corner.

Hss'kas held his position. He was almost done carving through the door. Now he waited, either for the fusilade, or for some trooper to come towards him past the barricade he erected.

Polk scampers out of the way of the charging chair, then launches himself at the bloated mass riding it! The chair is speeding along dangerously — if he can shove Greeg’s mass of the thing…

AC-D3 works in tandem with PQ, getting in front of him to provide cover. He continues to spin, pulling Knibbec up the shaft, as he is tied to his body. With his knife extended, he turns into a mechanical whirling dirvish, slashing at the pirate scum that attacked PQ!

"Hold on, PQ!"

C4PQ makes his threat, as blaster fire intensifies in the next room. It was only for the three pirates that took cover by the doorway that the Stormtroopers didn’t flank the Rebel band and lay them low with a barrage of red laser fire.

Ivey looks about, as if he was thinking of joining the attack on the Imperials. But this thing with the droid had drawn blood, and not his own. So he presses the assault. He handles his blade skillfully, and C4PQ has to concentrate to keep the wicked weapon in sight!

"Bring it on, Droid!" he says, motioning ye droid forward with a wave of both hand and blade! It’s at that moment that AC-D3’s small blade cuts the pirate on the back of the leg! He kicks out, hoping to keep the weapon from striking again!

"Bring it on, both of you bolt-buckets!"

Knibbec is hoisted/climbs from the hole just in time to see the massive bulk of the Rodian pirate, Greeg, bearing down on Plok. Plok, and by unhappy accident, Knibbec himself. The Youngling can only watch on as the massive chair tries to ram the bounty hunter, only for the hunter to spring forward to meet it!

Whether he intended to or not, Plok pushes the massive pirate right out of the path that would lead him to crushing the small Jawa, and his bounty of blasters and blast-door codes. The Rebel pushes, punches and fights for control of the chair, before finally heaving the large Rodian off of his perch!

A warbling scream fills the space just overhead the Jawa. The large pirate goes head over heels, right into the hole, before a sickening thud and an equally sickening silence comes from the dark space.

The door finally starts to slough off its holdings, and Hss’kas can just make out the blue figure of Thorsh in the dark beyond.

More clacking, as Stormtrooper armor gathers in the pirate’s position. As quick as he had seen Thorsh, the Jedi just as quickly sees the white shape of a Stormtrooper’s helmet at the barricade, and looking directly at the Jedi!

"We tried to do this nice, pi…"
The Stormtrooper starts his threat, and then stops up short!

"It’s… It’s a Jedi!! All units, on my positions! Immediately!!"
The trooper tries to flee and rejoin the line, but Hss’kas has the drop on him!

PQ continues the fight with the pirate.

In the chaos, it doesn’t take long for the whole thing to play out! The Quarren steps forward, intent making one of the droids pay for attacking him, despite his beckoning you in close!

But then C4PQ’s blaster rings out, and the pirate slumps dead. Singed flesh stings those with nostrils to smell it! The pirate dies instantly, slumping down so that C4PQ has to pull his feet free from beneath the now-dead body…

C4PQ stood motionless for a moment, his photoreceptors flickering as the scent of singed flesh wafted through the air. He glanced down at the crumpled Quarren beneath him, his servos humming faintly as he wrenched his feet free from the limp body.

"Oh dear," he muttered, his voice jittering. "I do hope the Alliance doesn’t require too much detail in my mission report… Such violence is so uncivilized."

His photoreceptors tracked the struggling forms of Plok and Knibbec just as the massive Rodian pirate toppled into the shaft with a final, warbling scream.

"Oh my—this mission is rapidly spiraling into barbarism," C4PQ declared, joining his companions with its new found blaster at the ready.