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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2034637" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 151: Weapons of War“The last group of droids has been loaded onto Loki,” Nine said, stepping over to Ket’s desk and idly having a seat on it. She leaned back some to watch what was grabbing his attention on the small holoprojector on the other side of his desk. Oh. Her. Rolling her eyes and watching the two other Alraxians and those humans walking through the halls, Nine spoke up a little louder, “The brat is wandering around up here somewhere, too.”    Ket just nodded, obviously much more interested in watching his new toys than anything else. Sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder if his mind really was deluded by the need for revenge. Maybe getting his tail cut off had taken most of his sanity with it...no matter, he was still useful in the end. Sighing loudly, she tried again, “Perhaps it is time for us to leave, Ket.”    He glanced at her a moment before looking back to the holo, speaking distractedly, “Leave now? We should at least see how the droids perform.”    “She will likely defeat them,” Nine said honestly, even though she didn’t like that.    He just shrugged, “Perhaps. But that says nothing for their performance. She is an anomaly among her people.”“Then why watch it at all?” Nine snapped back, sounding very annoyed at this point, “They will do their job and tear through every other Alraxian. The longer we wait, the closer she gets.”    “It doesn’t matter if she gets here,” Ket said, finally looking her in the eyes, “The brat will deal with her. Besides...that human woman is interesting. I would like to meet her in person. Sadrak had such...unique things to say about her before he died.”    Nine sighed and rolled her eyes again. Fine. So they would wait. Nine couldn’t help but find it boring. Why should she have to watch all of the fighting? It would be much more entertaining to be involved in it! But no...right now she needed to conserve her energy. Why Ket insisted on toying with the clone, however, Nine would never understand. If he was going to kill her, he should just go ahead and do it. But no, he wanted to play. To have his fun. To get his revenge on the Empire for what he felt were horrible insults. Whatever. Nine honestly didn’t care about any of that. For her, all that returning to the Empire meant was a chance for power. And fun, of course...but Nine’s twisted version of fun was even twisted by a psychopathic killer’s point of view.* * * *The three droids charged at them like lightning. So fast that Shadow, who had been leading the way, had no chance to react before the lead droid was upon her. One bladed arm swept at her neck, and she easily ducked low under it, starting to side step around and sweep its feet out from under it. But she didn’t get a chance. Halfway through her movement, a sharp pain shot through her torso. The pain blinded her for a moment before she saw that the droid had copied her move, sending a blade straight through her stomach in the process. How had it been so fast...? How did it know...? As blue coloured blood seeped from the wound, Shadow remorphed her body, starting around the wound and spreading outward.     The blade was removed and a moment later, her body was also metal. Finally a use for this morph...no matter how odd it felt to be droid-like. Yet this didn’t phase the droid in front of her, which was already jabbing at her with another blade from its left arm. She reached up with her arm to block it, and in a loud clang they collided, with the force of the impact shattering the blade. If she could have smiled in the metal body, she would have. Since she couldn’t, she simply sent the feeling through the link to Akan...Akan! But Shadow didn’t get a chance to look back to the others, as there was a horrific event occurring right in front of her two hollow eyes. Ducking a swing at her neck again, she stepped forward and placed a heavy punch to the droid’s stomach. Though her eyes were on the blade that had snapped off. It was reforming. Growing. Morphing. It shouldn’t be able to do that! It shouldn’t! How could it?!    The others had a few moments to watch the flashes of movement between Shadow and the lead droid before a second had plowed around and was charging forward. Akan was next in line, and was already activating his lightsaber. The snap-hiss of its activation was accompanied only a half second later by a loud cutting noise unique to lightsabers. In the drawing of his weapon, he had brought it through a swing and sliced off an outstretched arm. The cut off half flew behind him, bouncing off a wall and nearly hitting Jen in the face. Titus then grabbed her arm and pulled her back a good couple of meters just before Akan swung again with his lightsaber, a long and powerful horizontal arc. It took off another arm of the droid in a second loud sparking noise, but by now the first arm had also reformed and was coming in towards Akan’s face.    He ducked under it, then saw the other arm reforming mid swing towards him, and took a quick step back. The second strike missed, thankfully, but the droid was still after him, and he was surprised to receive a heavy kick to the chest. Akan hit the hard floor and slid back with his head spinning from the force of the blow. He looked up, about to get to his feet, and saw the droid was moving to impale him. There was another snap-hiss above him, a humming around and a flash of orange right over him. Sparks flew, and with a thud, half a droid fell next to him. The upper half. And it was still moving.     The torso sized droid ignored its newest attacker, turning to face Akan as the lower half of its body began to reform into legs. But that didn’t matter to it. One bladed arm shot towards him and Akan quickly rolled out of the way. Remembering that the Voorts were just behind him, he controlled his own lightsaber swing to hack off the droid’s head. More sparks flew, and the lower half of the torso stopped its reforming. But now, the severed head had its own body growing out of it. Neck...torso...arms...    “By the Force, how do we kill these things?!” Akan cried out, getting to his feet and risking a quick glance to Shadow. She was now dealing with two of those droids...and didn’t look like she was doing too well. There were nicks and scratches all across her metal body, and on the ground were multiple limbs and pieces of the droids that she’d gotten rid of...yet the two droids were still in one piece.    Shadow jumped back out of the way of an upwards strike from the first droid, her feet landing hard on the ground before she charged forward again. A metal fist clanged violently against the first droid’s skull, denting it and cracking off a large amount of the metal. The droid stumbled back and its companion stepped forward, swinging a bladed arm at Shadow’s torso. She sidestepped the attack and grabbed the metal wrist, ripping the droid off of its feet and tossing it onto its back with an echoing thud. Of course, this didn’t stop the droid, which lashed out with a kick the second it had hit the ground. The foot collided with Shadow’s stomach, sending her back and right into the fist of the first droid. It hit the back of her metallic skull and scrambled her thought for a moment, just long enough for another good strike to her back to land.    Ignoring the droid that was just getting to its feet again, she spun around to face the first, her foot lashing up for a heavy kick. It hit, again slamming into the droid’s still dented face. Interesting...the skull hadn’t remorphed. The loud, metallic crack of her foot hitting the droid’s skull, this time knocking off the front plating on the face. Underneath, she could see a skeletal structure of more ‘normal’ looking metal. And behind it, an orange coloured circular object. Still, the face didn’t remorph. That gave Shadow an idea. And the time Shadow took to think that up gave her another strike to the back of her head. She stumbled forward into the first droid, which struck her across the face with the flat end of one of the blades. As she was batted between the two, trying to find the chance to actually retaliate, she called out to Akan in the only way she could in this body. [The heads! Try that!!]    “Shadow says go after the head!” Akan relayed to Titus, who was next to him. They both had a few good scratches across their bodies, and Jen was standing behind them feeling helpless.     As they both ducked a horizontal strike for their heads and stepped back to avoid the second attack, Titus lashed out withe a vertical strike to at least keep the droid back, yelling to Akan, “We already did that!”    “I know!” Akan growled back, swinging his lightsaber upwards to prevent losing his limbs. He was already beat up enough as it was, and there simply wasn’t the time for him to divide his focus between defending and remorphing.  Together, the two of them swung their lightsaber at another attack, both blades taking off a separate piece of the same arm, when Akan thought of something, “Well, we only got the neck. Try the actual head?”    “Worth a shot,” Titus said with a nod. But that would meant getting just a little closer. Unconsciously, they waited for one of them to move first. Surprisingly, it was Akan who stepped close to the droid, raising his lightsaber to block the strike of one metal arm. The Force alerted him to the inevitable second strike, which he managed to turn into a punch to his torso instead of being skewed, but at least two ribs were broken from the force of the blow, and he went stumbling face first into the nearby wall. But this was the distraction that was needed. Titus took the opening provided to stab forward with the tip of his orange lightsaber, sending it straight through the skull of the droid. There was a crackle, then a contained explosion just before he pulled the blade out. And finally, the droid dropped to the ground amongst the many other pieces of it that littered the corridor.     But Shadow didn’t see this. In fact, she couldn’t see much at the moment beyond silver torsos and fists. Her metal body was dented, cracked, and broken in countless places as the two droids beat her senseless, leaving her no opening whatsoever. But finally, upon hearing the loud thud behind her and feeling Akan’s face hit the wall(somehow that just added to the pain in her metal face...the fact that it was ‘pain’ was odd enough), she forced an opening. Taking another hit to her spine, this one from a blade that she could feel hacked off a good portion of her side, Shadow reached up to the damage droid in front of her with a strong right hook. The strike hit, colliding with the broken skull-plates and suddenly impacting with that circular orange thing...which felt odd in the second before it shattered and exploded against her hand.     She felt her metal hand melt slightly from the heat of it, but didn’t care when she watched the body collapse without remorphing or even moving at all. Of course, there was still one droid left and it didn’t seem to care that two of its companions had fallen. It did care, however, about beating Shadow even more, and she received this through a punch to the back of her skull that send her sprawling onto the ‘dead’ droid now on the floor in front of her. Spinning around to look up, she had a quick moment to see the droid was diving down towards her. Shadow lifted her feet up and kicked the droid in the chest, sending it back slightly. Slightly was enough, and both Titus and Shadow were surprised at the distinct sound of blaster fire. Two shots streaked out from behind Titus. The first hit the back of the droid’s skull just as the thing stumbled back, shattering the plating and giving the two Voorts a view of the inside of the skull. The second shot hit exactly the same place, but this time impacted the orange object within the skull, detonating it in a tiny flash and sending the droid to the ground.    Shadow leaned up and her emotionless metal face looked straight past Titus to see Jen, holding her blaster in both hands and breathing heavily like she’d been fighting as hard as the rest of them. She had, but in a different way. Morphing her body back to the normal Alraxian form, she groaned and got to her feet. She still ached. And her skull still hurt...a lot...she looked over to see Akan in a very painful position against the wall, face first torso bent back at the ground. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t unconscious either. The groan that faded into a painful whimper gave that away.    Titus deactivated his lightsaber and stepped over to the young man, helping him back to his feet as Akan managed to remorph his pained body. Yet he still looked exhausted. They all did. After Akan said a quiet thanks to him, Titus looked over to Jen and smiled, “Nice shot.”    She shrugged and holstered the blaster, “Its better than just standing there watching you all get torn apart.”    Shadow nodded, reaching to her waist and then tossing a small object to Jen. The woman caught it and went slightly wide eyed. But Shadow nodded again, saying, “Use it. You know how to by now.”    The woman nodded, looking carefully over Shadow’s ancient lightsaber. She honestly didn’t know what to say...and so went silent and held the weapon close. Still breathing heavily and after running a hand through his hair, Akan asked what they were all thinking, “And how many more times do we have to do this?”    Giving him a slow look as his hair fell messily in front of his face again, Shadow shrugged, “More than we’d like, I expect. Come on...lets keep moving before more appear.”    And so they started on again, pressed forward by Shadows need to reach Ket. It wasn’t completely rational and they could have all done with at least a few more minutes of rest...but she wouldn’t let it happen. They all knew she’d go on without them if she had to, and so they pressed on with her. That is, until they reached the next level and a problem.    As usual, it was Akan’s sarcasm that broke the silence of their decision making, “Now I know I got hit on the head a few times...but Shadow, I could swear to you I’m seeing two stairwells that both go up.”    “You’re not seeing double,” Titus said, patting Akan on the shoulder, “Though I wish you were.”    “I have a bad feeling that they go to different levels,” Jen said through a long sigh.    Seeing Shadow nod didn’t help, “We split up then. Jen, you come with me and we’ll go up the left. You two go right.”    Akan was about to ask about changing those group arrangements, but Shadow had picked up on these thoughts and answered his question privately. [You know as well as I do that the two of them won’t be able to handle those droids. We need one of us to a group. I know they’re tough, Akan, but you’ve got to learn to use all your strengths as an Alraxian. Trust me.]    And so they split up as Shadow had suggested, heading up separate stairwells to who knew what, with an entire building to climb, still. Sitting up in his top office, Ket Halpak smiled. Much, much better than he had expected. Though it would make things less interesting if they died...but it didn’t matter in the end, simply took away some of the fun of returning to the Empire. At least it was an interesting thing to view...though it would be a bit difficult to pay attention to both of the holoprojections now on his desk.</blockquote>

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