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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 1962037" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 125: Red BloodAfter a long hour of weaving in and out of crowds and tiny streets between buildings, Akan found the right one. It took nearly another hour to actually find a level with an entrance, and Akan couldn’t help remembering one of the only lighthearted discussions after they’d taken Coruscant. He and Rulae, the only other pilot in the squadron to survive, had been trying to find their way to a meeting in one of the nondescript buildings among the chaos of the planet. Even the assault on the planet hadn’t slowed down the citizens. One regime to another didn’t seem to be anything new to them. Akan and Rulae had been two hours late to the meeting because of getting so lost. They had even taken two aircabs with no success. This wasn’t just a place the two of them decided they wouldn’t want to live, but it sure as hell wasn’t any kind of place to visit either. Even the natives(if anyone was native to this planet anymore, at least) didn’t know where they were going. Why the New Republic hadn’t just left the Empire to get lost on their own planet, neither of the two pilots knew. It would have been easier...and less friends would have died...    But that was years ago. Obviously, not too much had changed on the planet itself. Seemed to be the way of things in the galactic Core. Akan found a spot that wasn’t bustling with people, next to a large column that, about twenty meters up, had some kind of statue on it that he couldn’t see. Leaning against it, he looked over to the building’s entrance. There was no evidence of what kind of building this was now. Sure, three years ago it had been and Imperial defense command center for this sector of the planet, but that could easily have changed. It could even be empty. No, that was wishful thinking. It would be full. Just like everything on this damned planet. So just barge right in and find out the hard way? That was starting to look like the only option...    There was an odd feeling all of a sudden. Akan raised an eyebrow and had a look around him. Why he looked, he didn’t know. The feeling wasn’t really from around him. Naturally, he checked his link with Shadow. Distant though they were, it was still as strong as ever. But no...she was...not really ignoring him, but dealing with other things. Good. Her focus was staying on Jen’s training. He suddenly wished he was there making sure things were alright. This was a mistake to come here and leave an opening for things to go wrong. Some part of Akan managed to get a hold of his brain and shut those thoughts off. But that wasn’t where the feeling was from...    Again, he had a look around. Nothing. Well, more like everything with nothing important in it. People went back and forth, talked, somehow managed to stand still in the center of the mass of people, and just doing whatever they were doing. Nothing to account for that odd...something. Maybe it was just that building. He looked up again. Looked up so far that his neck cracked and cringed slightly at the noise. No use waiting around like this. With a deep breath and stealing himself to the current course of action, Akan made his way to the entrance. When he got close enough, the main door, which reflected his image and made it look like he was about to walk into himself, slid open to reveal a large, yet boring, lobby. Akan stepped in to find six turbolift shafts, three on his left, three on the right. There were a couple of desks and tables off to the sides an opposite end of the lobby, but no sign of people.    Six turbolifts. So...which one? Akan walked to the center of the room and looked to his right. Then, to his left. He sighed and closed his eyes. There were two ways to do this, and each required a very large amount of faith. Either he had faith in his ability to guess, and just randomly picked on, or he put his faith in the Force and let it pick. Both ways was arguably putting faith in his own lack of wanting to go up and down six times until he found the right one. When that thought came to mind, he decided to let the Force guide him. Without thinking, and just allowing himself to be moved to the ‘right’ place, Akan found himself walking to the center left turbolift. Out of an odd feeling, Akan buttoned up his old military jacket. Sure it didn’t have anything but ‘Captain Maxwell’ on it now, no real rank insignia, department marker, or even anything to really prove it wasn’t just a little joke. But something told him it was a good idea to look like he was part of the military again.    Before he reached the turbolift, it slid open. He nearly panicked and ran off as quickly as he could when he saw three New Republic security agents step out. They eyed him, but seemed to notice the uniform(without really noticing it at the same time), and just walked past. In a staggered and still somewhat nervous way, Akan stepped into the now empty turbolift. He had the sanity to wait until the door slid closed to let out a sigh of relief and slump back against the wall. That had been a little too close. Trusting the Force was most definitely a better idea than trusting his random guessing. Otherwise, he might not have buttoned up the jacket...then they just might have stopped him to comment on him looking all unkempt. Then...then...well, then he would have been running. Opening his eyes again once the relief had passed finally, he looked to the panel on the side of the tube. It listed a map of the building. Thinking on it, he then reached over and hit the small button to take him to the very top of the tower. No use in waiting around. It would be best to just get this over with and get right up there.    Looking at how many levels this place had, even at the speed this turbolift went, it would probably take a couple minutes to reach. Akan could feel his heart racing. So here he went. Confronting demons of old. He couldn’t help but wonder if demons got stronger when they were buried for so long. What was he going to find up here? Why was he really here? Part of him felt like it was more than just facing his past. Facing his fears. It couldn’t be just that...that was too simple. Too...no, it was perfect. Exactly the kind of thing any student of the Force, Jedi or not, would eventually have to do. Akan knew that he was no Jedi. Not anymore at least. Probably never was. It had been a nice thing to pretend for a while, but that was childish. This was really about confronting what he feared the most. His past. It was about growing up and accepting that one couldn’t change the past. But that was all only intellectual thought. Even Akan knew that when he got to the top, no matter what it was that he found up there, all intellectual thought and idea was going right out into hyperspace without him.     Things in Akan’s life always seemed to happen on cue. It was never something he’d wondered about, and in fact something he just thought of as normal. If anyone else had mentioned that things like that only occur in old holodramas, he would have given them the same confused look that Shadow always used when someone made a sarcastic comment. Complete lack of understanding. Therefore, it wasn’t any surprise to him that the second his thoughts had ended, the turbolift door slid open. It also wasn’t a surprise when he saw a familiar place.    He stepped out of the corridor and looked both left and right. One long corridor. Now he knew exactly where he was. Down the right would be the old control center. He and Mare had planted six charges in there to disrupt the orbiting Golan platforms’ targeting systems. There would also be another corridor branching off to reach where the old turbolaser batteries had been. The five they’d taken out. The sixth....the one...the one that had shot down Mare was back towards the left. Towards the landing platform and the small guard room. Doing his best to ignore the mix of pain and nostalgia, Akan allowed his feet to lead him. They went left. In fact, his eyes didn’t even look back to the right. Back there he’d succeeded. No, they had succeeded. It was this way that he had failed.    Following the grey, boring corridor, he remembered where the blaster scorches had been on the walls. He remembered where his shots had missed and struck...where her’s had gone...where the stormtroopers and the other Imperials had fired. And then, before reaching the turn that would take him farther down to the platform and guard room, he saw it. Just to the left, branching off back at an odd angle, was the corridor that led to the turbolaser battery they had missed. He had missed. This place would be new to him....and it was where his feet were taking him. Turning, pivoting around that corner on one foot and following it to the end. To the open. A small, narrow pathway without railings jutted out from where the actual corridor ended. The pathway was open to the air, providing anyone that wasn’t accustomed to such heights with sudden and likely fatal feeling of vertigo. Four meters out, was the large, metallic grey box of a turbolaser battery. The access door for the gunners was just at the end of the pathway. It was still there. Still there...after all these years, it was still there.    Akan stood at the edge of interior and exterior, staring at the turbolaser battery with a horrid sense of reality. Part of him had expected it to be gone. Hoped. Needed it to be. But it was still there. As strong as ever...his first real failure in life that had cost the life of another was still in one piece. Shock faded, giving way to something else. Something more dangerous. Slowly, Akan undid the buttons on his jacket and reached inside one sleeve to retrieve his lightsaber. Looking at the hilt of the weapon, he remembered how this had helped them to plow the way in. The sheer intimidation that this weapon provided had been enough to get them moving forward and open the Imperials up for some easy shots. But he had missed four Imperials. This weapon had missed four. Shadow had mentioned once that an Alraxian should never draw a weapon without taking blood. This weapon had been drawn years ago. But somehow, it had taken no blood.    Gripping the weapon tightly in his right hand, Akan walked forward again. Three short steps took him from the interior corridor to right in front of the entrance to the large weapon. He wasn’t even phased by the bottomless oblivion on both sides of him. His free hand found the switch to open the hatch. There was no access code. The Imperials, arrogant bastards that they were, never worried about that. No surprise that the new owners were getting the same way. Very slowly, and almost resisting the urge to do it, Akan pressed the switch. When it opened, slowly and with a fairly loud scratching noise of an old door, three faces turned in surprise.    Though he didn’t truly see the faces at the time, Akan would remember them in horrifying detail later on. One of them had opened their mouths to say something, likely a ‘who are you?!’ type of comment. But it was cut off very quickly, by two distinct and equally dangerous sounding noises. The first, was Akan’s voice, growling in tones that most human’s couldn’t reach without actually hurting themselves. Akan would realize later that his throat hurt, “Traitorous Sithspawn!!”    The second sound the three gunnery officers heard was not Akan’s footstep that brought him that much closer to them all. The second sound, somehow more terrifying that the first, was a snap-hiss of which none of them had heard before except from Holonet reports on the Skywalkers or the old Jedi. Two of them had a chance to manage a cry of terror. The first, closest to the blade of the lightsaber, had his head cleaved into two at nose level before his eyes had even managed to widen. The sweep of the blade ended a half second later, and three mutilated bodies slumped down over the destroyed consoles and systems all around them. Breathing heavily, with the only sound an odd mix of the lightsaber’s hum and the sparking and crackling of the consoles within the turbolaser, Akan stared ahead without blinking.    Mind caught up with action, and he nearly stepped off into the oblivion. Hands...arms...everything shaking, he stumbled back to the safety of the corridor and fell to the ground on his backside. The lightsaber remained loosely held in his left hand, cutting gently at the surface of the corridor where he now sat. Staring forward. So much blood. Lightsabers never did that...they always created clean wounds. But that turbolaser gunnery station was red now. Somehow, his eyes managed to tear away from the carnage a few meters away to look down at his shirt and trousers. Blood. A splattering of it all across that old, already dirty shirt. His trousers had it, too. And his hands. And...and there was a short path of it from his boots. How was there blood? Why the hell was that his problem?! Of course there was going to be blood! He sliced the man’s head into two pieces! And the others...what had he just done?!    “Hands in the air!” echoed a shaky, young sounding voice from behind him. Very slowly, a look of shock still on his face, Akan turned to look over his shoulder. He saw a young man...boy fit better. The boy wore a New Republic security uniform, and Akan couldn’t help but be amazed at the resemblance to an old holo he always kept...sure, the hair was a bit cleaner, but he looked so much like a young Raan Maxwell. How far had Akan gone from that kid? Was he really so different now? Raan wouldn’t have murdered those three men like that...but...but how had he gone so far?! What had happened in those three years to turn him into this? What had he allowed himself to do? Was there more than this that he saw?! Maybe Jen wasn’t the problem...maybe he was...maybe...    “I said hands in the a—“ the last word was suddenly cut off in a loud gagging noise. Akan’s eyes hadn’t been focused enough to actually see what had happened until the loud thud of the body hit the ground. Standing over the body was a tall, heavy robed figure. Blood dripped from a clawed, left hand, and Akan’s mind put together what had happened even from the unfocused images. His mind or the Force? Or both? Either way, in a flash that took no amount of time he saw the young kid standing there, blaster aimed right at Akan. Then, in a lightning fast movement Akan had only seen from one other person, the heavy robed figure dashed up behind the kid, slid a clawed hand up through the back of his neck to the point where Akan could see them exit in the front, just under the kid’s chin, and then pulled out. That’s when Akan’s mind reverted to the moment, with the kid falling to the ground and the figure just standing there watching him for a long moment.    Akan would have opened his mouth to say something if he hadn’t felt just slightly grateful. That, of course, made him feel even worse. Of course this figure wasn’t here to help him. The only person he’d seen move like that was Shadow, and this wasn’t her. She wasn’t here. It couldn’t be her. She wouldn’t kill like that, anyway...leaving such a mess...such a...his eyes tried to tear back to the scene within the turbolaser battery that he had caused. His eyes didn’t make it, though, as the figure spoke up.    The voice was soft, cool, and impossibly dangerous. It was the voice of a casual killer. The voice that Akan worried his was going to sound like if he responded. The voice was also sexless, which was an odd note that didn’t escape him despite everything else, “Where is the Enai?”    Something else about that voice. It sounded like it wasn’t accustomed to speaking Basic. In fact, the Basic was stilted and forced out. This time, Akan managed to open his mouth. No words came out, though. Enai?! What did that mean? The word sounded familiar in the way that he knew he should know it somehow in an oddly distant way...but didn’t at the same time. It didn’t make sense to him, and neither did his rationale of trying to figure it out. Nothing made sense anymore. But the figure seemed to catch on to his lack of ability to find words. It flicked the bloodied hand slightly, sending a splattering of the red liquid off against the wall and the ground. A moment later, the heavy robe was shrugged off and Akan nearly choked from surprise.    Taking a few steps over to him was a near two meter tall lithe Alraxian. The creature wore a tight morphsuit, with no weapon anywhere. Two deep, piercing silver eyes beared down on Akan, drawing his vision from the strangely soothing tabby-like markings in the hair and tail. The Alraxian’s skin was darker than his and Shadow’s. Stopping a few meters away from Akan, the Alraxian just glared down and said in the same type of voice, “You coat yourself in that disgusting substance. It will not hide your scent...neither will that weak form,” there was a slight pause before the figure took another step and said, “I will not kill you like that. I will not kill a coward.”    Akan never asked himself why he morphed back to his Alraxian body then. It was almost like a strong compulsion had forced him to...yet he knew deep down it was his own will that had done it. His own choice. Ignoring the pain of his tail being both sat on and confined with trousers not designed for such things, Akan looked up into the other Alraxian’s eyes. Silver eyes locked with ice blue eyes. Later, when Akan ran this situation through his mind again, he would realize that there was a slight twitch from the other’s tail. And then, without anything but an almost invisible nod to him, the Alraxian sprang into action, diving forward with claws extended, faster than Akan had ever seen.    Akan was not in a good position. Looking over his left shoulder, sitting back in a near sprawled out position, and exhausted with shock. Yet somehow, his body moved in the short half second it had before claws dug into the back of his skull. But Akan still had one thing, and if not for a sudden focus on that soft hum to his left, slowly realizing that there was a metal cylinder in that hand, even moving would have ended both his and Shadow’s life. He didn’t move to his feet. Instead, pulling up with the lightsaber and spinning to face his attacker. The Alraxian was surprised by the sudden, bright flash of blue-green movement. Both of the extended arms, from the elbows up, were hacked off in one sweep. A second later, the blade was out of the way enough and the Alraxian’s body crashed into Akan’s face first. Forced onto his back, he didn’t see as much as feel that the attacker was already remorphing his hands and striking with the unfinished body parts. No doubt they’d be finished and sharp when they hit.    So Akan’s body reacted again. First his knees shot up, slamming into the Alraxian’s gut but not knocking the wind out of him at all. But Akan rolled back just enough to kick his entire legs up, glad for the extra strength this body had. It sent the Alraxian up and over him, rolling off and over the edge of the open corridor and out of sight. Akan’s momentum brought him back up like a pendulum, then to his feet. The lightsaber was still in his off hand as he looked back to the opening. His eyes shot past the blood covered turbolaser and saw no sign of the other Alraxian. Without another thought, Akan ran. He ran down the corridor, around the dead kid that was another casualty brought on by Akan, and out the main corridor towards the platform. Why that way?! There was a guard room(which was obviously occupied), and a dead end! Yet his feet took him there anyway. Rounding a corner, the lightsaber was switched back into his right hand. That was the same time that he saw the open air platform from so many years ago. For the second time, he nearly stumbled to the ground from shock.    This time, because of the familiarity of the scene. On that platform was an X-Wing. It wasn’t just like his...but so close that the image hit him just as hard as that Alraxian’s skull had. A moment later, three young looking security officers exited the guard room next to the exit of the corridor and the opening to the platform. The looked at each other. They looked to Akan. They saw the blood all over him. They saw the lightsaber. They saw his shock. And then, at the same time, they all drew their blasters and started to pull the triggers. Before they could, Akan reached out with both the Force and his free left hand. An invisible hand latched onto the blasters and he physically yanked his own hand back. At the same time, the three blasters were yanked out of the security officers’ hands, forcing Akan to duck not to be hit by the projectiles flying his direction. The three men didn’t have a chance to look surprised.    Right behind them, Akan watched a small, yet oddly coloured, bird drop from the sky. As it dropped, the body changed and he saw that same Alraxian. Why he’d thought it would be so easy to kill was a mystery now. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. Still in the air, the Alraxian’s left foot shot out and kicked one of the guards hard across the neck. There was a snap from his neck, and a sudden blank look appeared on his face before the body dropped. Just as the Alraxian’s feet hit the ground, a free, clawed hand slashed out at the second officer’s face. Four long, deep claw marks marred his face, blinding him and taking the ear in the same strike. He managed a scream, but even that was cut off when Akan saw a familiar yet horrifying attack. The second clawed hand shot up through the man’s neck, one end to the other, going all the way through and making a good mess of it while silencing the newly created corpse. The last security officer had a chance to strike, and even took it. However, his punch was caught without even a look from the Alraxian. The fist was crushed with a gruesome cracking noise, and then the Alraxian yanked the man’s arm around in a long, circular motion that took the arm completely out of its socket and off of the body. A scream of pain and horror from the man was ended when his neck was stabbed.    And then, the two Alraxians stood opposite each other. Eyes locking again. For the first time, Akan really understood how much stronger Alraxians were compared to humans. But that, like many other things, was not something that came to mind at the moment. What came to mind was analyzing the situation in a way that only an overloaded mind could. Behind that Alraxian was his way off this hellish planet. But that was the problem. Behind the Alraxian. Akan was going to have to go through this monstrous warrior. This monstrous warrior?! Akan was no better. One monster against another, then. Killer to killer. They both knew it. They both felt it. And they both dove at each other at the same time.    Akan’s lightsaber strike sliced off the hand that had meant to ruin his face, spinning off to the left and leaving the attacker to spin the opposite direction. While one hand was remorphed, the other lashed out at Akan’s back. But Akan wasn’t going to turn and fight. He was going to get to that ship. It was an odd, and completely unhuman motion that got the lightsaber where it had to be again, chopping off another hand in mid spin, but Akan didn’t know it. His body was moving. Reacting. Stepping forward and at the same time, around this attacker. He defended the random and constantly dangerous strikes, each time taking a limb as payment. This didn’t phase his attacker, who would simply remorph it and be back for another attack. It was a long, series of the two of them spinning in circles around each other, with Akan’s attacker nearly finding an opening each time, and losing a limb each moment, and a bright blue-green halo like image around Akan, spinning back and forth as fast as they danced around each other that brought them to within only a couple meters of the X-Wing’s two closed wings.    It was Akan who had been backed into it. But that was only by luck, and they both knew it. The circular dance around each other was so random and had reversed direction so many times that it was impossible to predict which one of them would be trapped. And it was Akan. But he wasn’t about to die on this planet. He wasn’t about die like this. A strike towards his face was the first that didn’t result in a lost limb. Instead of lopping the hand off, Akan ducked low and swung his lightsaber back across the lower end of the wing behind him. This change in ‘pattern’ had caused a millisecond of surprise in the other Alraxian. It was enough time for Akan to pull back, rolling under the wing and grabbing the small piece of the wing that had fallen off onto the deck below. His attacked slid in with a heavy kick across the deck, and again Akan rolled out of the way. This time, bringing him up out from under the wing and a good distance back to his feet. His right hand finally stopped the spinning defensive movements of the lightsaber, and the blue-green glow just sat in front of him. In his left hand, he palmed the real weapon. Waiting. As Shadow had taught him, he turned the predator into the prey. His prey.    And his prey moved exactly how he wanted. It followed his roll, launching up to its feet and diving at him to create another series of even more vicious attacks than those that had brought them to this point. Akan swung his lightsaber in a long, vertical arc, taking off the entire arm this time. As he did so, he took a heavy, firm step into the Alraxian’s chest. Just before the other lost its balance, Akan shot upward with his left hand. A clawed hand from the attacker was also coming at him. They were face to face. Eye to eye. Both eyes widened at the same moment. Both of them took in a sudden rush of air. But the attacker shook violently before completely retracting its claws from Akan’s torso and stumbling back. The small, metal piece of the X-Wing’s wing was dug deep into the Alraxian’s stomach. There was a short amount of blue blood that seeped out of the wound before the Alraxian attempt to remorph. Everything in the face of Akan’s attacker showed realization of what had happened. Panic shot across the doomed creature’s face as a metallic sheen began to spread across its body. Spreading up and out through that wound like a horrible virus engulfing the thing. In a matter of seconds, it was over and the Alraxian was frozen in shock. Akan felt the adrenaline rush subside, and found his mind kicked right back in to take its place.    It was on instinct that he took the Alraxian’s metal body and stuffed it into the X-Wing’s cargo hold under the cockpit. That was the only action he could really pinpoint, as the rest of it was a blur. He didn’t remember climbing in and realizing the ship had two seats, one behind the other. He didn’t remember powering the ship up and taking off. He didn’t remember blasting his way through a defense platform to get to hyperspace range. Akan didn’t even remember ever deactivating his lightsaber. All he remembered were those three faces. The three innocent men in that turbolaser battery the second before he had murdered them. The second before he’d truly failed. Not only Shadow. Not even just himself. But Mare. He failed her again. And he sat in that cockpit alone in hyperspace, on his way back to Endor with a dead Alraxian in the cargo hold, knowing how much he’d messed up. Knowing that it was impossible to take it all back. Knowing that he’d not confronted demons at all...but instead found another way to run from them. A terrifying way. All of the blood was with him. On him. Its smell filled everything. And it terrified him even more, knowing that he had caused it. Even almost enjoyed it...</blockquote>

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