Femtroopers
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{{#if:Jigsaw green.png|}} | Xanadu story universe |
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While not exactly a sequel to 501st, this does contain some of the same characters. What can I say? I like stormtroopers. Story is also not entirely finished - I have yet to complete the ending. Sorry!
“They are coming, I feel it! Call in a report to Base. And get the shield generators up!” SL-0075 barked at the rest of the group. Along with those others who’d elected to carry the things, James Brosseau, also known as TK-0480, hurried to obey. He knew that SL-0075, despite being a Vader, was not going to execute him or anyone else, but what would happen if they didn’t get the generators up was arguably far worse.
Portable shield generators like these were not evident in Star Wars, at all. They were a relic of the far more recent first person shooter Halo. But the 501st was not so inflexible as to reject such a critical resource because of some trivial anachronism.
It took only a moment to place and activate one. From the inside, the shields were transparent and could be fired through, but they made excellent cover because, from the outside, they were opaque, and took a number of hits before going down. In the relatively narrow confines of Xanadu’s halls, sometimes that made all the difference.
Seconds after the Vader’s warning, the quartet of shield generators were in place, set to cover the little group from both sides of the hall. Each tall ovoid shield could and did cover two people; there was space enough to pass between two shields or between shield and wall. All eight individuals, including SL-0075, braced behind them, ignoring the bewildered reactions of bystanders.
The patrol knew SL-0075; if the man had sensed any other threat one of the first priorities would have been to shoo away any bystanders who hadn’t fled the scene at the sight of a team of armored troopers headed by a Darth Vader. But a warning like that, followed by a command to erect the shields, really meant only one thing. And that thing focused exclusively on men and women who wore some form of all-concealing nonmedieval armor – they would shoot others, but only to suppress after being fired upon.
TK-0480 checked to make sure that it was on “stun”, then poked the muzzle of his E-11 through his shield, aware of others doing the same. His hands didn’t shake. They were as steady as ever, a happy side effect of being a stormtrooper. But, after he chinned a command to switch communications from ‘broadcast’ to ‘squad channel’, his mouth set into a thin line beneath his helmet. He knew what was coming.
In the days since he had been re-inducted into the Five-Oh-First, James had seen a lot of things that occasionally made him wish that he’d stayed normal. Creepy women with bloody mouths and gaping eyesockets emerging from mirrors, the living and malevolent 7-Up machine, the whole incident with SHODAN, the encounter with a very pushy reporter who’d somehow acquired superpowers, the trio of rampaging Xenomorphs, that mess with the psycho serum, the “never-ending orgy” that had somehow actually made the news… There was one thing, though, that really got fear-sweat soaking into the lining of his armor.
Femtroopers.
James knew the story. Pre-Xanadu, it had been a sort of a joke, like the Elvis Trooper but sexier. “Femtroopers” were attractive ladies who crafted and wore highly feminized versions of stormtrooper armor, usually exposing midriffs, always with womanly breastplates and “hot pants”, and over those, codpieces that looked more like thongs. Their boots usually had high heels, and the women themselves had a marked tendency to keep their helmets off, exposing their long, flowing hair – that, or the helmets were open in back so as to let hair flow freely.
Femtrooper armor did not meet the 501st’s standard for costuming, but a woman who had or could get such an outfit could usually show up with a more acceptable costume as well, so a number of them had been part of the 501st. Fems had usually been regarded by men and women alike with a mix of appreciation, exasperation, and dismay, depending.
Now, well… they weren’t. They were perhaps Xanadu’s gravest threat, at least to anyone who wore armor, and members of the 501st in particular. Even the narrowly-averted “gray goo” nanobot situation, which had almost been a total disaster, paled in comparison. After all, James knew he couldn’t have been the only one to consider approving the use of small nukes on the nannites if all else failed – but that wouldn’t work with this threat.
It would make it so much easier if we could just kill them outright, TK-0480 reflected unhappily. Blasters set to “kill” were just more effective, and a lightsaber handicapped by the need to inflict no lasting damage just wasn’t as good. But no. While that would make things easier in the short term, there was no guarantee for later on. They might hit bystanders, the Fems might turn out to be salvageable, it would draw attention… at any rate, a lethal shot would cause trouble in the near future.
The 501st had previously been the largest organization of Star Wars cosplayers – primarily the “bad guys”. Now, they still looked like the “bad guys” to most people, and never mind that they acted nothing like most of Xanadu’s other villains. Now they were regarded with suspicion by almost everyone, due to the high visibility factor. A number of people stuck them with anything that could conceivably be blamed on them. Anything.
Five days after Eric Winters got up on stage, fifteen people had been discovered by a bystander walking about at night. Four of them were dead on the scene, another had died before she could be treated, and all but one of them had been hacked up by what was unmistakably a lightsaber. The last one had clearly been shot in the neck by a blaster of some sort. The dazed accounts of the survivors varied, some seemed to indicate some kind of mass possession while others claimed a simple attack. It was said that a few of them remembered the attack, in a disjointed way – the commonalities between their stories summed up to be, “Suit. Sunglasses. Then - Red lasersword. White armor.”
Which could be anyone, or any set of people. But the reasoning went that although “suit and sunglasses” could be literally anyone, a Jedi would not have had a red lightsaber and would not have needed to maim and kill those people, and a Jedi would not be in the company of anyone wearing white armor. Never mind all the flaws in that reasoning – the 501st was composed of “bad guys” who walked proudly in broad daylight, embracing their roles instead of loudly and repeatedly insisting that they weren’t what they looked like, and so they were suspect.
TK-0480 realized that he was gritting his teeth and made a conscious effort to stop. It wasn’t like the police had any other leads, after all. The bystander had had healing abilities. In using them, she had completely blanked the scene, making it literally impossible to find the culprit or culprits by magical or high-technological means. Even scent tracking was out. And with all the people and rampant chaos at Xanadu, conventional detective work wasn’t much help either. It was only natural that they were frustrated; it really was a good thing that they knew better than to overtly accuse the 501st.
And all of which has absolutely no bearing on Femtroopers, James told himself as the first one came into view ahead of him, shouldering some furries aside in his side of the hall. As with all combat situations he’d encountered, the stormtrooper felt better once it was actually in progress and he could assess the situation. Nothing was quite as bad as the anticipation.
“This side! Counting off!” Sharing a shield with him – and a room, but that had no bearing on the current situation – was ID–4102, also known as Lieutenant Julia. As an officer, she did not wear full armor – a clip in her ear let her listen in on the helmet frequency enjoyed by the rest of the patrol, but of course she couldn’t speak into it. Not that it really mattered at this range. “I see seven, eight, nine of them.”
“Confirm nine,” James said, letting his eyes flick over each one in turn. The first shots, snapped off at long range, streaked past or struck and dissipated on his energy shield, sprays of bright pink. Behind him, the four members of the patrol whose shields were oriented towards the wrong side quickly rotated their cover. Bystanders, hearing and seeing the start of the firefight, finally began to flee the scene, which meant that he and his patrol could return fire. “TK, one TR, one TC, one Samus. No SL.”
He could almost feel the other seven members of the patrol sighing in relief. There had been a time when there were only a handful of Femtroopers, all of them TKs – stormtrooper-based. That time was over. Fortunately, Royal Guards and Sandtroopers weren’t too dissimilar to the basic model when it came to a firefight, and while the Samus’s arm cannon would probably be a pain, they could handle that.
Then SL-0075 interjected with, “Careful. I feel others, lying in wait.” His ominous, deep voice lightened marginally as he added, “More evidence of tactics. They might be getting smarter. I hate these things.”
“Who doesn’t?” Firing at range, TK-0480 sighted carefully and squeezed the trigger, clicking his tongue in frustration as the blue stun shot sizzled but failed to pierce his target’s armor. He’d aimed for the bare midsection, but somehow had hit the armored breastplate, as if the shot had changed direction. This was not the first time that had happened, but he was always slightly surprised.
A few shots more, not all of them his, got through, and the Femtrooper dropped, stunned. One of her fellows stopped to drag her off, letting James pick another target. Individually, the Fems weren’t much of a threat. And in the first few days of Xanadu, there had only been a few of them. Unfortunately, Fems had something in common with zombies. Both were infectious.
Fem blasters – or arm cannons, or any of the other weapons they used - sometimes looked normal, other times came with frivolous details like sequins or bright girly colors. It apparently depended on the Fem. What really made them different was the fact that the bolts they emitted were hot pink – and marginally faster and more powerful than the blue bolts produced by the standard blaster. When they penetrated armor, Femtrooper bolts caused pain, pins-and-needles numbness, and temporary paralysis, if a victim was particularly unlucky and was shot multiple times.
Paralysis lasted only an hour or so, during which the Fems swarmed. If you had friends or allies to guard you or drag you to safety, you recovered. If you had none, or they couldn’t keep you, the Femtroopers carried you away. They would then run, scattering and managing to lose pursuit, and if the victim wasn’t retrieved before then…
It was a contentious issue throughout the 501st, but all indications seemed to say that victims, not all of them from the 501st or even connected to Star Wars, were assimilated and, themselves, became Femtroopers. In recent encounters Fems in revealing armor styled like Samus Aran, the Master Chief, and various Womandalorians had appeared – and before the disappearances of men and women who had come to Xanadu in such armor, the Fems had been purely Trooper-derived.
They might have been killed or hidden away somewhere, but it seemed far more likely that they had been brainwashed and converted. At Xanadu, stranger theories had proven true. Shouting the right name or designation distracted the Fem, if only for a moment.
Proof, as far as James was concerned, came in the form of the fate that had recently befallen SL-2128, one of the Vaders. He had been walking alone to clear his head, something that Vaders did often, what with all their issues. Lone wanderers were the Fem’s favorite targets, but nobody had thought that a Vader would have too much trouble. Eyewitnesses hadn't actually seen it happen, but they did report a large number of Femtroopers running at about the right time in the right place. The end result, seen only a few days later, was not pretty.
Well… As he and his patrol fired into the enemy and were fired upon, James had to be honest with himself. He’d seen the result in person, and it was pretty. But it was also terrifying and intensely disturbing. And the most dangerous Fem alive, what with the Force and the instantly-paralyzing pink-bladed lightsaber. She’d struck and carried off Kenneth Matthews or “Sir Ken”, Makaze’s Squad Leader. That had never happened before – Sith and Squad Leaders had been inviolate – they had been threatened and they had taken damage, but never killed or taken. Now, not so much.
It was now standard policy to have one Force Sensitive member in every patrol, just in case. Mara Jades, who wore no armor and thus were not directly targeted, were favored, as were Vaders despite prickly temperaments. With very few exceptions, Mauls were fickle and hard to get along with, the single Dooku remaining in the 501st was as arrogant as hell, and as for the others… well, they varied. After Sir Ken’s abduction, TK-0480 usually stayed in whichever group SL-0075 was in. It was that, or refuse to patrol. And that would be a coward's decision.
Splashed repeatedly by bursts of enemy fire, the shield started to ripple visibly, a sure sign that it was about to collapse. James did not swear – he’d found that since rejoining the 501st cursing was no longer quite as automatic – but he and ID-4102 backed away hastily.
There were fewer Fems in sight now. The Samus, who’d taken a few hits but wasn’t quite down, charged her arm cannon and let loose a cometlike burst of quick pink energy. The burst streaked in an arc overhead, avoiding the failing shield.
From reports made by other patrols, James knew that these energy blasts didn’t act like blaster bolts. When they hit they “splashed” the impact vicinity – and being parried by a lightsaber counted as being hit. Fortunately, there was a Force user on the patrol.
SL-0075, whose job it was to parry whatever he could, volleyed it easily with the Force, and the lump streaked back over.
When it hit and splattered, the burst of bright light caused Julia to swear and James’s eyepieces to polarize, darkening to protect his eyes. He saw then that it had taken one of the Fems down and shook up the others, but it had also collapsed the shield. If TK-0480’s patrol could drive the Femtroopers off, they could retrieve the shield generator and reuse it, but for now it was out of commission.
A bolt hit him in the gut, with an impact that felt like a kick. His armor deflected most of it, but beneath it James felt the now-familiar pins-and-needles sensation. Julia shot a look at him, but seeing that he was fine turned back to the enemy. A couple of other troopers weren’t so lucky. A hit directly in the eyepiece or exposed body stocking could cripple – and his peripheral vision and the muffled gasps and pain-filled hisses over the com showed and told him that that had just happened. Fems weren't particularly good shots, but anyone could get lucky.
Had the Fems been more tactical, this might have been the start of a long and grueling firefight, as both sides were worn down by attrition. And indeed, in some previous encounters that had happened; eventually another patrol of 501st had arrived and routed the Femtroopers. This time it didn’t. Instead, the enemy saw one or another of the downed troopers and rushed forward en masse over the collapsed shield, leaving themselves completely open.
Mentally switching over from “sharpshooter” to “mass fire”, trading accuracy for volume, TK-0480 and the other troopers opened up. For several seconds, bursts of blue light completely obscured his view of the enemy, and the sound of stun bolts overwhelmed everything else.
Unfortunately, an only slightly altered E-11 blaster rifle like those issued to stormtroopers wasn’t suitable for sustained continuous fire. Neither was Lieutenant Julia’s model, or anything carried by the other members of the patrol. Rather than exhaust their Tibanna gas canisters, the patrol ceased firing almost simultaneously.
Vapor rose from the singed carpet and the Femtroopers crumpled upon it. There was no motion or return fire. James blinked, surprised when none of them got up. Too easy, was his first thought. Way too easy. Did the shields really make such a difference?
Unthinkingly he looked to Julia for orders; as a lieutenant to his ensign she outranked him. But she said nothing, and he could tell from her face that she didn’t have any more certainty than he did. Although he knew, intellectually, that she was a “real” Imperial lieutenant only as far as he was a “real” stormtrooper, it was still a blow to his confidence.
Just as automatically, TK-0480 looked next to SL-0075. The tall, masked Sith was as impossible to read as ever, barely moving except to let his gloved fingers shift and tighten over the hilt of his lightsaber. No orders from there, either. The only sound in James’s ears was that heavy, regular breathing.
This had never happened before, not quite like this. Usually the Fems ran, carrying away any casualties they could get at, or else the 501st ran, though that was rare. Now and again the exchange was interrupted by various and sundry third parties. And more than once an understrength patrol had disappeared after contacting base with news of an attack. But this was new.
About thirty seconds after ceasing fire – it felt like far longer – Lieutenant Julia shook her head and spoke up in her ‘command’ voice. “The unexpected happens. C’mon, lads, go on and see how many we’ve netted. I’ll comm back to base, tell them wh- grk-“
SL-0075’s arm had shot forwards, hand clamped and tightening over empty space. Meters away, ID-4102 had been lifted off of her feet. Her eyes were wide and terrified as she clawed at her throat, at the bruises forming there.
James froze completely, facing straight ahead. Like any good servant of the Empire, it wasn’t his to question why, although inwardly he was railing against the conditioning that held him motionless.
In the next instant, Julia was released to fall to her knees, coughing and gasping for breath.
“Do not think to instruct me, Lieutenant,” the Vader rumbled, somehow bigger and more intimidating than James had ever seen him before. All protests and accusations died before they could escape his mouth, and he knew from the rigid postures and the shocked silence around him that the rest of the patrol felt similarly. Obey. There’s a reason why he outranks you, the voice of experience whispered. And it’s not just because he could kill you without any exertion.
“My… humblest apologies… for the infraction, Lord Vader,” ID-4102 managed raspily between gasps, her eyes watering. “I … would never dream … of presuming…”
Something changed in the Vader’s demeanor. He took a step back, somehow expressing horror even with the helmet hiding his face.
Several inarticulate sounds emerged from his artificial voicebox before he managed to speak again, a little higher and immeasurably less assured.
“Julia… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean – I couldn’t stop myself, it was automatic… I need… I need to adjust my stimulant balance. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I won’t let it happen again.”
For a few moments more James heard nothing but breathing – his own in the confines of his helmet, Julia’s strained gulps of air, and the stentorian breaths of SL-0075. This is why the Empire is maligned. This is why the 501st is so mistrusted, he realized, hating the fact. This is why.
It wasn’t this Vader’s first outburst, nor was it the worst to crop up in the ranks. Every Vader in the 501st had a different degree of mental alteration, and there was a lot of fiction featuring the man they’d costumed as, with different characteristics in the movies versus comics or novels. Some were inclined to fly into a rage, others not so much. Until now, TK-0480 had usually put the man in the second category.
“No… no need, my lord,” Lieutenant Julia said at last, breaking the silence. Her officer’s cap had fallen off; in a quick motion the woman retrieved it and settled it over her short, dark hair before rising unsteadily, not looking at anyone.
“Don’t,” SL-0075 said, as quietly as his voice could manage. “Please. I am so sorry.”
“It happens.” The Lieutenant was sill pale, but had already recovered some of her aplomb. That, too, was part of being in the 501st. She blinked as if a thought had occurred to her. “In future, all of my orders are directed only at those under my command, even if I phrase them in such a way that they seem to be directed at others. I am your subordinate, and mean no disrespect, no matter what I say.”
“Yes… I understand, Lieutenant.” The Vader paused. “Someday I would like to meet Lucas and Travis and Stover and all those others and… I don’t know.” That was a common half-serious complaint among the 501st, that one member or another would hunt down the people who were crucial to the Star Wars franchise, as if Xanadu was their fault. But James had never heard SL-0075 express that sentiment before.
ID-4102 managed something like a smile and then, sharply, “Lads, what did I tell you? Gather up the enemy so we can head back before Murphy’s Law hits us again.”
Although he took half a step before he could stop himself, James didn’t immediately head off like the rest of the patrol. SL-0075 had once been a close personal friend, and ID-4102 had been his girlfriend. They had been friends with each other. That hadn’t disappeared; it was still there. It had just changed. He really didn't want it to change further.
Lieutenant Julia glanced over at him. Somehow, despite his helmet, she was able to read him instantly. At one point this would have bothered him, but an officer had to know her command. “James, go. We need to finish up here.”
“This is a personal issue,” SL-0075 added. “I will not harm the Lieutenant. You are under her command, but now she is under mine. She is competent and was not at fault. It will not happen again.”
Not entirely happy, but aware that he wasn’t going to get a better answer, TK-0480 nodded curtly. “Sir.” He obeyed. There was a reason why they outranked him, and never mind intellectually knowing that it had been nothing more than a preference in costumes. When it came down to it, they were on the same side. But his rank was low enough that he could simply be dismissed when it was convenient.
It actually didn’t have much to do with the fact that he was a stormtrooper ensign, James reflected as he rejoined the rest of the patrol. Rank was less a matter of following the Imperial Table of Organization, and more like the elected positions previously held. Back when it had just been an organization of Imperial cosplayers, he’d never done a lot of organizing or planning, hadn't made any effort to get voted into authority. He’d just made costumes and followed suggestions. It was interesting how that had carried over – rank in Xanadu’s 501st was a complicated thing, not always following appearances, because there were people who had never before shown an interest in leading and were now leaders. Troopers and minor officers who weren’t in charge followed orders, but everyone else who wasn’t helping to lead or administrate tended to stand aloof and didn’t always take orders well, as the patrol had just seen.
They were all troopers, of one strain or another. But that didn’t stop them from talking, even in potentially hostile territory. The 501st considered any part of Xanadu except Base – rudimentary though that was – to be dangerous. Going through it alone, unarmored, or without weapons was unthinkable, at least for most troopers. Talking when no other people were in sight? That was somewhat more acceptable, as long as work and wariness were maintained.
The other five troopers in the patrol had switched their coms back, speaking “out loud” - that was, broadcasting their voices at normal speaking levels through the external helmet speakers instead of over the private channel. They were, of course, discussing what had just happened.
James listened with half an ear as he gripped the Samus by her ankles and, with the help of another man, towed her to a point against the wall. What they were going to do with these unconscious Fems, he had no idea. A few had been captured or detained before, but they had subsequently been rescued before anyone could quite decide whether to turn them over or keep them at Base.
“It had better be just a slip up,” he said absently in response to a query of what he thought. “It might be smartest to try and ignore it. I don’t want him mad at me.”
The temporarily semicrippled trooper - one of the few nonofficer women who'd stayed women - stood watch as James and the others collected fallen Femtroopers. The patrol was too professional to kick at the Fems or otherwise take much frustration out on these fallen foes, but more than one was dragged by her hair, and each was dumped quite unceremoniously into the pile.
It looked almost disturbingly like a collection of limp Barbies that happened to be dressed in skimpy trooper-inspired outfits. James had seen weirder things.
“Looks like people are already starting to trickle back through here;” the watching trooper observed, her voice tight with discomfort but otherwise cool and collected. “Usually it takes them at least a few more minutes after the firing stops – oh, fusst.”
Looking up, TK-0480 saw them. This time he did swear, just prior to switching back to the helmet frequency. “They brought backup. My Lord” – he’d meant to rattle off SL-0075’s designation, but the title had slipped past instead – “we are going to need you now.” Blasters drawn and aimed, the troopers edged together back into the protection of the remaining shields. The Vader shouldered past to stand between the patrol and the Fems.
There were a lot of them. James hadn’t known that there were so many in all of Xanadu – evidently, they had been quite busy. Troopers of all strains, various Samus Arans and Master Chiefs, Womandalorians, and a number of odd ones that James was not familiar with, milling and shifting about in a disorganized way that made it difficult to estimate their numbers. There were enough that, had they so desired, they could have just started shooting as a horde and taken the entire patrol down in seconds. Even SL-0075 couldn’t block that many bolts.
But there was something yet more worrying in view. Heading the horde was the Fem’s Vader. The one who had, last time, removed the leader of Makaze Squad, the one who had been SL-2128. Well, James hoped it was that one. He really didn’t like the thought that they might have more than one. She stood out and alone, her posture indicating eagerness.
SL-0075 took a ready stance, lightsaber active, and waited.
Enough time passed, tense and still, for James to fret. Reinforcements, even if Julia was comming for them now, couldn’t possibly get there in time. He'd seen the maps and the patrol routes. The closest patrol couldn’t be less than twenty minutes away, and another eight wouldn’t make much difference here. Just because the Femtroopers hadn’t started shooting yet didn’t mean that they wouldn’t. The stormtrooper took one hand off of his blaster rifle to touch the small thermal detonator at his belt. I don’t really want to have to use this. But if I must, I will.
“You are all pathetic.” What? The voice was strange – it was indisputably female and melodic, but also deep, with the same slow intonation James had heard from every Vader in the 501st. It was also coming from the Fem Vader.
Fems never spoke. Ever. They’d cried out now and again, but James hadn’t even heard rumors that they still retained language at all. To hear one talk, in that strange warped version of James Earl Jones’s voice… it was creepy. It made TK-0480’s skin crawl.
“Truly, a pathetic show of resistance,” the Fem continued. By this point James was used to the way that the voices of Vaders were out of synch with their loud, assisted breathing, but that voice made it disturbing all over again. “You must see that you are finished. Give in. It will be much easier on you.”
Far more quickly than James, SL-0075 recovered his voice. “The right path is seldom the easiest one. I will not surrender, and neither will my men.”
Yeah, you tell her. James licked his lips behind his faceplate. The unexpected happens. Ours is not to question why, but to act anyway, he reminded himself, flicking the setting selector of his rifle over from “stun” to “kill”. From the flicker of motion on his peripheral monitors and the near-simultaneous clicking around him, he knew that the rest of the patrol had done the same. Femtrooper armor was really no more effective than that of normal stormtroopers – a shot at the correct angle would burn through it and wound or kill the armor’s occupant. We may regret this later. That's too bad.
The Fem laughed. “Of course you’d say that. I was Ess El Twentyone Twentyeight. I remember. But isn’t it a pain, to have to adjust stimulant balances and nutrient feeds every day to keep from starving? To be forever confined to a terrifying suit with a control panel on the front, reliant on life support, inspiring fear and loathing from the masses? To be forced to talk like this all the time?”
“What difference does that make?”
“I had the same problem. It isn’t much fun to be Darth Vader for more than a few hours. Once you’ve touched the Force, though, becoming someone or something that isn’t Force Sensitive is utterly unthinkable. But there is a way around that.”
Twentyone Twentyeight, still holding her lightsaber in one black-gloved had, reached up and removed her helmet. The sound of her amplified breathing faded away as she pulled the entire thing off; it was a single, solid item, not in pieces like the real thing.
Her face, although pale and tinged with a sort of sickly grayish color, was… surprisingly normal, as attractive as the body hinted at beneath the feminized version of Vader’s suit. With a scar over one eye and long, wavy dirty blonde hair, she somewhat resembled pre-Mustafar Anakin. And yet, without the helmet, she looked almost normal.
“Not even any burn scars.” The Fem’s voice was higher now, and slightly husky. Compelling. It made James want to lean forwards and listen. “I can slip out of this, wear a jumpsuit with gloves or something that covers my prosthetics, and enjoy a cup of coffee without getting so much as a second glance. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Her response was only local silence, broken only by lightsaber drone, SL-0075’s harsh breathing, and the click of armor against armor as the patrol and the Fems shifted subtly. Out of sight, the noisy insanity of the rest of Xanadu continued unabated, but here it was quiet.
"There's more." Twentyone Twentyeight smiled broadly, actually dimpling. "I can sneak out, walk around outside of Xanadu. And you know what? Nobody runs. Nobody calls the police. Everyone stares, it's true. Out there, I get a lot of attention. Not many women are almost seven feet tall. But all in all, it's the good kind." Her smile shrank, became more sympathetic, as did her voice.
"Have you even called your parents? Do they even know what's happened to you? They love you and care for you, sure, but you know how hard it would be for them to accept this, don't you? Give in. It feels unpleasant, sure, but no more than living. You lose something, sure." The Fem shrugged. Her face and voice were extremely nonchalant - her body language, on the other hand, was tense and intent, leaning forwards and braced.
"And you can't stay with the old costuming group. They're too caught up in the delusion of Empire to care. You also have to give up a thing or two up here, sure." Twentyone Twentyeight prodded her forehead with one finger, in a gesture that was probably supposed to look casual. "And two or three other things - if you're anything like I was, they're not in great shape anyway. But really, does it matter? Individuality is overrated anyway - you're already going by a number instead of a name. It's not much of a trade. You get people back, regular people. You keep power. The Force doesn't care."
And then the Fem was silent again, waiting.
It was a fairly long wait. Twentyone Twentyeight looked confident that SL-0075 would take this chance. James wished he was that sure that his friend would refuse. But the Sith was silent and motionless.
TK-0480 later admitted to himself that he wasn't sure what his choice would have been, had he been in the Sith's place. All the points Twentyone Twentyeight had made were perfectly valid. Out of everyone in the 501st, Vaders bore the most mistrust and hostility from outsiders. The thought of being able to slip out from under that must have been unbearably tempting. But...
Fortunately, Lieutenant Julia finally asked the questions that TK-0480 hadn't been able to phrase.
"And what happens in return?" she asked boldly. "Nothing comes without a price. What happened to Sir Ken? What happened to TK-7095, to TX-1332, and BH-3842, and TI-9711, and all those others? Why have they been ambushing us, if they only wanted to help? Why is this the first time we've ever heard from anyone who they took away, part of the 501st or not? They've been abducting us, and abducting supersoldiers and bounty hunters, and there has to be a reason for that. And it isn't that they've been offering this all along. There's really nothing any of the others could have gained from this."
The distance was surely too far for James to see the color of Twentyone Twentyeight's eyes. But for a moment while Julia spoke, as the Fem's face briefly twisted with rage, he thought he saw. They were bright, smoldering yellow.
"Don't listen to her!" The Fem's voice no longer sounded as compelling as it had before. She didn't seem to be aware of that; obviously, she hadn't expected anyone to interrupt. "She hasn't been there, she doesn't know what it's like! The schutta doesn't even wear armor-"
"I would hear the Lieutenant speak," SL-0075 rumbled. The vocoder made it hard to be sure, but James thought he heard a touch of irritation.
"I don't know, and that is truth." Julia's face bore little expression - James knew her well enough to see that she was nowhere near as certain as she sounded, but he doubted many others could see that. Her voice was still a bit strained but otherwise clear and reasonable, and although there was authority in it, it was far from a command. "Impulsive behavior rarely works out well. We simply don't have the whole story. And I hate to dismiss your problems, but what would happen to us if y- urk- ah... hugh-" This time, as ID-4102 lifted off the floor and started to choke, her neck began to bruise, bands of angry red blooming across her throat like stains.
"Shut up..." Twentyone Twentyeight was hissing, gloved hand clenched in that familiar gesture.
[insert rapid lead-in here]
SL-0075, rather than debate this, gathered himself and in an instant had crossed the distance, lightsaber swinging in a two-handed grasp. The Fem was too distracted to react in time and dodge or mitigate the attack. She could have been cut in half then and there - but instead, SL-0075 struck her with his fists, still locked together around the hilt of his weapon. Twentyone Twentyeight recovered almost instantly, activating her own lightsaber. The scene took about two and a half seconds.
If TK-0480 hadn't been living and working in proximity to Vaders and other Force-Sensitives, he would have thought that kind of speed was impossible - and had he been a civilian instead of a stormtrooper, he might have gaped in surprise. As it was, while it happened he was changing the angle of his E-11 blaster rifle, aware that the rest of the patrol was thinking along the same lines and doing the same. The moment he was certain, he opened fire.
Not on either side's Vader. That was practically tantamount to suicide. Instead, while the Lieutenant dropped to the ground, he fired at about knee-height, strafing the massed Femtroopers with rapid red bolts before they could react. One E-11 couldn't have taken down many before they wised up. Six, even coming from one point, was a different story. They fell like seed-heavy grain before an advanced harvester droid.
Click. The selector levels on all six rifles switched from "Kill" to "Stun" almost as one, as if the squad had rehearsed this strategy beforehand. Just because most of the enemy was down and thoroughly disorganized didn't mean they were harmless. You didn't need use of your legs to shoot.
It was really something of an anticlimax. Maybe Femtroopers had some kind of a hive mind, maybe it was due to the Law of Conservation of Ninjitsu, which James had seen in action on several occasions - one ninja, monster, or cyborg was tough, but mass a bunch together and they were target practice - or maybe it was because they were too focused on their Vader, but in short order there were only a handful of moving Femtroopers in sight. There'd been some scattered and poorly-aimed return fire, and James had been winged by a glancing hit to the upper arm that stiffened his fingers, but the majority of them had been shot down with almost laughable ease.
The remainder, finally showing signs of awareness, were now taking cover and firing more carefully, but this was at a far enough range that TK-0480 felt he could check on ID-4102.
The Lieutenant was alive, and conscious - not that he'd really expected otherwise, but it was still a relief. She looked terrible, but was mobile enough that she'd opened up her medkit and wrapped a white salve-bearing band around her throat. Julia looked into his eyepieces and jerked her chin, a clear if nonverbal order. James complied. To linger where he was not needed and neglect to be where he was of use would take a far less professional trooper than him.
Unfortunately, at the moment there wasn't much he could do in terms of combat, either. The remaining Fems were a good distance away, far enough that the stun bolts - sometimes accurately, if derisively, called "blue rings" - weren't all that effective. The stun bolts produced by an E-11 moved relatively slowly, and by the time one reached a target she had had ample time to duck out of the way. Fem's bolts were faster, but the patrol too was able to dodge at this range.
At some point another of the portable shield generators had gone down. James helped another trooper bring the remaining pair up in front of the patrol while the others kept them from being shot. But the remaining Femtroopers weren't aiming particularly well - they seemed to be shooting more to provide cover while they went after their fallen brethren, carrying them away one by one.
The fallen Fems - and there were more than a few of them, James estimated around three dozen or so - didn't look like they would be getting up any time soon. Even if they hadn't been stunned immediately after, the brief spate of full-power strafing had clearly burned through the thigh-high armored boots of many of them. He could see that from those who were closest, and although his helmet filtered out most of it, he could still smell it, a little like roast pig with the acrid overtones of burned armor. Someone sitting on the moral high ground would probably chew the squad out for that, but healers here at Xanadu, even ones with miraculous abilities, were a credit a truckload.
Carefully, the stormtrooper kept himself from directly looking at the fight between either side's Sith. TK-0480 hadn't been there at the very beginning when the 501st had first discovered that odd property that a lightsaber duel had, but he'd heard the story and had seen it for himself. Essentially, anyone watching who wasn't guarding themselves became entranced, fascinated. The fascination was strongest when a Dark Jedi or a Sith was involved, but even a raw Acolyte facing one of the Special Operations Detachment's Force-Sensitive stormtroopers could draw a slack-jawed crowd of bystanders. Duel entrancement didn't work on everyone, but the 501st had staged bouts on several occasions to distract the opposition.
Even so, lining up on the moving Femtroopers and firing when he could, James watched with his peripheral vision. Bystanders often surmised that, with relatively small eyepieces, a stormtrooper had no peripheral vision. To be fair, in the old 501st this had been true, and anyone just carelessly plunking a helmet onto their heads became confused and disoriented by what they saw. Still, bystanders failed to take the technology of those white helmets into account. On the monitors in his helmet TK-0480 and the majority of other troopers had three hundred and sixty degrees' worth of peripheral vision, and he was putting it to good use.
The two Vaders looked to be evenly matched, judging more by the fact that neither had triumphed yet than by any ability James had to judge skill. They were both of roughly equal height, but although SL-0075 looked somewhat broader-shouldered and seemed to be stronger his counterpart was visibly more agile.
Their fighting styles were markedly different - SL-0075 appeared to be using a variant of Form Five, the perseverant Djem So, empathizing his strength and power, with elements of resilient Soresu and aggressive Ataru, in an attempt to overcome his physical limitations. Now that he wasn't the one charging, he fought with one arm at his side, favoring vertical strokes and calculated bursts of energy.
Twentyone Twentyeight, conversely, was also working with Djem So, but her variant was tempered by a combination of Juyo and Ataru that displayed flexibility and ability to leap. As well as being female, she seemed to be both younger and somewhat less experienced. She was taller and more solidly built than most practitioners of the latter two forms, and it was possible that she had added those elements to this duel in order to show off-
A bolt skimmed TK-0480's helmet, momentarily shorting out his peripheral displays. They winked on again as James ducked and shook his head ruefully. Apparently he couldn't resist duel entrancement by watching via display. That was a little annoying - he would like to know if one or the other had the upper hand, even if knowing wouldn't help the patrol if Twentyone Twentyeight won - but not as much so as the rush of knowledge about lightsaber combat that had flitted through his thoughts. Knowing how to manage his helmet displays was one thing, and he had picked it up upon rejoining the 501st, but dueling styles? How in the worlds could that have anything to do with, well, anything, and why did watching impart that?
Femtroopers, James. Worry about random acquired knowledge when they're no longer shooting at you.
The stormtrooper turned up his external audio pickups, and rather more quickly turned them back down. The faint possibility that the enemy was discussing plans "out loud" amongst themselves was outweighed quite quickly by the fact that he had no desire to hear Twentyone Twentyeight taunting her counterpart about nasty little personal details that no trooper could possibly want to know. And SL-0075's responses were just as bad, if less heated. James supposed that they both might be using the Dun Möch technique, essentially attempting to distract and make the other doubt. Vaders tended to do that a lot.
At any rate, he was better off not knowing - and if they were using a verbal combat form, by listening he was in danger of falling into duel entrancement. Again. Which, now that he was forewarned, was the same as deliberately failing his squad. And that, he would not do.
Peripheral displays showed some motion far behind him - Xanadu was packed enough that few sections remained untrafficked in daylight for long. A relatively stationary duel like this wasn't quite as panic-inducing as an all-or-nothing firefight, but James had no fears that bystanders would get much closer. At this range, only the sharpest-sighted of people were remotely likely to fall prey to duel entrancement, but most would see the troopers and the dark figures and stay far back.
ID-4102 was back up, the lines of her face set with pain. Her weapon was not an E-11 blaster rifle, but the smaller, slower-firing, and more accurate DL-44 heavy blaster pistol, the same model Han Solo used. Back before Xanadu, Julia had always preferred more conventional sidearms. Things changed.
A burst of blue rings sizzled and caught one of the distant Femtroopers in the throat as she was dragging an unconscious comrade; her body's reaction was to contract every muscle, throwing herself backwards violently before going limp. James grimaced in in the privacy of his helmet. It was a good shot, but the patrol wasn't making enough of them.
"Blue rings" were just too slow. But to switch to more accurate and powerful bolts was to risk killing the opponents - yes, everyone on the patrol rated at least "Sharpshooter" if not "Master" with his or her chosen weapon, but really, there were only a few places a blaster bolt could hit without killing its target. Maiming was bad enough; killing, even in the most extreme cases, was going to cause a lot more trouble.
"They'll be here soon," ID-4102 croaked. Her voice was all but unintelligible, a painful rasp, but the fact that she could speak at all was encouraging.
James snapped off a series of blue stun bolts, adjusting his aim up and down, and watched as his target, a Femtrooper in red and gold armor, performed a series of wild contortions, somehow only being hit on the most armored regions of her body. After a few seconds of that, just as he thought the blue rings were starting to get at her nervous system, he had to duck a burst of return fire. Naturally, by the time he could aim his E-ll the Femtrooper in question was behind cover. This was frustrating.
"Who will be here soon, Lieutenant?" he asked, belatedly remembering that she'd said something. It would normally have been rude of him, but even low-intensity combat was combat, after all.
"Reinforcements."
This quickly? TK-0480 had seen the maps of today's routes. He knew, roughly, where the closest patrol should be. But Julia was ranking officer. She had to have resources that he didn't.
Unless that last Force Choke... To cover the unease that thought gave him, James reapplied himself to the enemy.
It was frustrating. The patrol's Force-Sensitive was effectively out of the firefight, fully occupied in what James took to be a fairly equal duel. Ever since Twentyone Twentyeight's ... defection ... and the capture of Makaze's Squad Leader, SL-0075 had accompanied the patrol, and firefights had shortened because the big Sith's presence tipped the scales and made stalemates like these much less common. He'd forgotten what it was like.
I've gotten spoiled. This isn't much of a fight - yes, we're being worn down by attrition just like the other side, but in this case it's not lethal; they're far enough away, too, that I don't think anyone will get dragged off. All we have to do is hold out for reinforcements - even if Julia's people don't come, another patrol will get here sooner or later. Then their Force-Sensitive can drive off or ... incapacitate ... Twentyone Twentyeight, and we can likewise deal with the other Femtroopers. We have definitely been in worse situations.
The stormtrooper's eyes flicked to the helmet display that showed him what was directly behind him. The display was fairly low-resolution, but he did see a number of humanoids coming closer
[More lead-in. Sheesh. I need to quit skipping over writer's block sections. When did this story get so damn complicated, anyway?]
[Finish the story, Joysweeper. Come on. Duel, outcome win/lose. Use Dun Möch technique? Tempting, overly complicated... RL appears. Conflict, physical/verbal/mental. Wrap up. Ending. Contemplative? Amusing? Finish the story.]