Rage Against The Dark Ch 18 (Patreon)

Sorry for the late post. I was out of town and lost quite a bit of time driving.

I finished this earlier today, and just now did a couple of editing passes, I hope I caught most mistakes. If I didn't...sorry. I'll try to do better.

Here is chapter. Hope you guys like.

=][=

My communicator screeched like the souls of the damned were trying to claw their way out of it, but it was GAR officer equipment, and while that meant it was made by the lowest bid, it was the lowest bid that nonetheless met strict requirements. Like being able to maintain communications in adverse conditions and to an extent through jamming, being sturdy enough to beat most things to death with it, and most importantly in my current situation, hardening against an electromagnetic pulse. So while it was certainly not comfortable, my call to Rex didn’t drop, it just became very staticky.

The manifold sins of the military industrial complex were far too numerous to properly list, but at the absolute least I had to admit that while they compromised as much as they could get away with and cut every corner they could, more often than not resulting with the poor fucker at the front line having to make do, at the end of the day—

Focus!

Asami, my thinly formed Force bond with Asami throbbed with the pain of a raw wound, trying to get a sense of her general location pointed me in the direction of the devastation. Obi-Wan had headed out, they’d been caught up in the explosion.

On the outer edge of it, or she would have died.

I fought down the urge to vomit again.

“Rex!” I snapped into the communicator as I turned for the Jedi Temple’s vehicle depot. “Rex!”

It took several tries, but the link stabilized. [Commander!? Commander can you hear me!?]

“Rex! The-the, Asami! She, it’s…frak!” I took a deep breath, drinking deep of the agony radiating through the Force to cut through the cotton in my mind. “Scramble a LAAT-I! Send Doc down here! Prep for field surgery! Home in on my signal! I’ll be moving to where they need to get!”

[Yes sir! Should we deploy the Legion!?]

“Don’t bother, we’ll just end up adding to the mess.” I growled as I pushed past support personnel milling about looking confused and didn’t bother to explain myself as I mounted a speeder bike. “Get me those medics!”

I put the communicator away and set out, only nearly crashing three times before I successfully left the depot.

I pushed my feelings of readiness and urgency through my Bonds to the rest of my girls. Hoping they’d understand as I made my way to Sussurro’s apartment.

I scraped the sides of a few buildings and drifted onto oncoming traffic a couple of times, but it worked out and I arrived hale, whole, and without broken bones. That long line of scraped pavement and the crashed speeder bike were there when I arrived. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I picked myself up from the asphalt where I’d landed to take a short break and tried to remember how to get to Sussurro’s apartment, only to be tackled by something soft, curvy and blonde.

“Rylanor, are you okay!?” Aegis asked, I could feel her trembling as she hugged me, my mind could not help but concentrate on the way her huge tits compressed as she pressed her chest onto me.

I felt mini-me twitch but this was not the time to ask for a blowjob because…because…why did she smell so good?

The anxiety I felt coming from my Bond with Asami pulsed with a momentary spike of terror.

“Get the girls. And get me to the airspeeder we keep here.” I demanded, keeping an arm around her shoulders and following along in whichever direction Aegis walked. “Asami and Obi-Wan were caught up in that, and we need to go make sure they make it out.”

“Shouldn’t you stay here?” She asked as she led me into the building. “You look like you have one foot in the grave.”

“I’ll be fine.” I said as she had to course correct me three times to make sure we walked into the elevator. “I’ll rest after we get Asami and Obi-Wan.”

Once we reached the apartment, things became a little hazy until I was in a moving airspeeder. Sussurro fuzzed over me cursing under her breath in Italian, the only word out of the tirade I was able to catch was ‘sconsiderato’, as the surprisingly spicy fox-girl used her Arts and the Force to ward away the worst symptoms of my concussion, Charlotte flew the airspeeder with Aegis as copilot, and the only reason Charlotte was able to stay on-course was thanks to Iris using a combination of the Force and her magic to extract the information from the cloud of fog that was my brain and pass it along to her.

We flew through clouds of smoke and concrete dust, the Force pulsating with arterial spurts of agony and despair, every second on the second I could feel a life being snuffed out, joining the Force with a cry of rabid rage, a whimper of despair, or a sigh of relief as the pain finally stopped. The death toll must already be in the hundreds of thousands and would likely be in the billions when all was said and done. It would not be long before riots started.

Blue and red lights blinked on blindingly bright behind us as someone began unnecessarily shouting into an obnoxiously loud loudspeaker. [Air travel is restricted until further notice! Land the airspeeder this instant! Failure to comply will result in incarceration!]

I blinked uncomprehendingly. While I tried to muddle through the proper response to the cop doing his job, Sussurro fumbled with my belt.

[Land and power down the speeder, this is your final warning!]

With a final curse and a wrench, Sussurro got one of my lightsabers off my belt, pointed it straight up and pressed the activation stud, the bright blue blade screamed into being with a snap-hiss!

There were several moments where the only sounds were the whine of the repulsor lifts and the roaring of the wind, then the blue and red lights disappeared. [Ident-code confirmed. Please be on your way Master Jedi.]

As the cop airspeeder went on its separate way, Sussurro turned off my lightsaber and fumbled to reattach it to my belt while vindictively muttering. “Idiota.”

“You’re sexy when you’re angry.” I said.

“Shut up.” She said absently. “You should be in bed.”

“I’d gladly go to bed with you.”

“Again, shut up. I need to concentrate.” She said, the green glow of her Arts soothing the pounding in my head.

My eyes couldn’t help but drift to the fluffy pink tail that swished back and forth anxiously.

I grabbed the tail and squeezed lightly, feeling the small rope of warm muscle at its center.

Sussurro gasped and twitched, a shudder traveling from her tail up her spine. She then smacked me on the chest. “Don’t just grab my tail you brute!”

“But it’s so soft and fluffy.” I objected and got a second smack.

“We’re almost there.” Charlotte said. “Get ready.”

Ready, right, we were doing a thing.

Charlotte landed the airspeeder so softly that someone with their eyes closed would have thought she had simply set it to hover. The girls gasped and scrambled out of the airspeeder, and a moment later I saw why.

We’d landed on a damaged and scorched rooftop. There were craters and scoring caused by shrapnel where an airspeeder had crashed and all but disintegrated on impact. Lying on the roof was Obi-Wan, his broken body curled protectively around Asami. I staggered out of the airspeeder and fell face first on the floor.

Damn conehead, this was the most inconvenient time to give me a goddamn concussion.

By the time I managed to stagger over, the girls had separated the two, Iris was seeing to Asami with healing magic. Sussurro and the other girls had laid Obi-Wan on his back and Sussurro had already begun field surgery while Aegis and Charlotte handed her whatever tool she asked for, she’d brought her tank of biofoam with her and was using it quite liberally. As I watched she made an incision in Obi-Wan’s chest, stuck the nozzle into it, and pressed the activation stud.

Obi-Wan groaned, vomited out a lungful of blood, and took what looked to be his first unobstructed breath in a while. Clarity briefly returning to his eyes. “R-Rylanor?”

“Hey Grandboss.” I said, stumbling and turning that into kneeling next to him and Asami. “How’s it going?”

“Y-You’re supposed to be in the halls of healing.” Obi-Wan chastised.

“I got bored.” I said as Sussurro continued to make strategic incisions into Obi-Wan’s body before pumping him full of biofoam.

“A-Asami?” He asked tremulously.

I turned to Iris.

“She’s got a few fractures and took a nasty hit to the head. But she’ll be fine.” Iris said.

“She’s okay.” I reported needlessly.

“Good.” Obi-Wan said. “That’s good.”

“So, what were you doing out?” I asked, looking around and trying to ignore the pain around me shouting for my attention in the Force. “It was very inconvenient of you to be out and about today.”

“I was…out to meet, Dexter Jettster. H-He…” His eyes widened, his one good arm shooting out and taking a painful hold of my wrist. “Th-The Council!”

“Don’t move!” Sussurro hissed, but Obi-Wan ignored her.

“We have…we have intel! Grievous will attack Bathawui! W-We don’t know when, but it will be soon! We cannot lose the Bothans’ information network!” Obi-Wan said, choking the words out through teeth clenched against pain. “They…They’re unaware of the coming attack! If that monster attacks Bathawui, it’ll be an unfettered genocide!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell them.” I said. “Just calm down.”

“We cannot allow Grievous…to attack Bathawui!”

“I heard you the first time just—!”

I cut off as the distinctive sound of a LAAT-I cut through the background noise of far-off collapsing buildings and screams. The troop transport, scorched black by atmospheric reentry, came to a much rougher landing than Charlotte’s on the outermost edge of the building, a full squad of my boys diving out of it in short order and securing the rooftop, Doc and five of the 501st’s medics rushing toward Sussurro and taking over the task of assisting my fox girl from Charlotte and Aegis, one of the medics diverting to assist Iris as she worked on Asami.

“Tell…The Council!” Obi-Wan gasped before one of the medics put an oxygen mask on his face.

“Man, I was just about to ask him about the droid attack on the Wookies.” I muttered, then blinked as I saw the men standing at attention, seemingly awaiting my orders.

The moment I opened my mouth Sussurro must have felt a disturbance in the Force as she looked up from what she was doing and shouted. “Whatever he says, don’t listen to him! He has a concussion! Sit on him and make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid!”

“Ma’am!” Said the traitors who until that moment had been waiting for my orders.

“I’m still in charge here.” I huffed from the ground. I’d get up, but that seemed like too much effort.

“Right you are, sir.” Said Niner.

“I mean it Niner. I’m the one calling the shots.”

“Of course, sir.”

An airspeeder landed roughly and far too close, causing a wide blast of dust that made Sussurro curse, she, Charlotte and Aegis all put up their hands and cast a Force Push to keep the dust from reaching Obi-Wan.

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin said, jumping off the airspeeder, and drew himself up short as Sussurro began shouting at him angrily in Italian (or, I guess considering her home reality, Siracusan, which...tomato tomato) her hands never pausing as she treated Obi-Wan. The tiny angry fox girl being enough to confuse Anakin out of his panic, and make him stop and realize that Obi-Wan was being treated by a not insignificant chunk of the 501st medics.

“Wait…what?” He asked.

“Master Skywalker.” Aegis said, walking up to Anakin and giving him a slight bow. She then gave him a rundown of my involvement and what we were doing there. It wasn’t long before he was simply sitting next to me and staring in worry at Obi-Wan as a surgery tent came into being around the one patient, my boys working quickly and efficiently to turn the rooftop into an impromptu field hospital.

“I came here as fast as I could.” Anakin said hollowly. “How did…?”

“I was on comms with Rex when it started.” I answered. “The girls’ apartment isn’t very far from the Temple, and Charlotte is a better pilot than me, so we made pretty good time.”

Anakin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m supposed to be the Master here, yet I came straight here without a plan, you brought a surgery team.”

“Meh, different reactions to similar stimuli.” I said with a shrug. “It’s just an extended function of the four human reactions to danger playing merry hell with each other and causing short circuits in your neural cortex. Not to mention you grew up alongside Obi-Wan, makes sense you’d panic when you felt him get hurt.”

Anakin sighed but said nothing.

I remained quiet, offering him what support I could, then blurted out. “He said Grievous is going to attack Bathawui.”

“WHAT!?”

=][=

I absently gnawed on Anakin’s mechanical fingers as he used them to keep my mouth shut.

“Can we even trust that the boy heard him correctly?” Windu asked, several of the Jedi Council muttering their agreement.

“Master he may be concussed but my Padawan is cognizant enough to properly communicate.” Anakin said, doing a remarkable job of maintaining outward Jedi serenity as I chewed on the leather of his glove. “Not to mention, Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Asami Fukuhara, said the same thing the moment she woke up. Obi-Wan risked his life to get us this intel.”

“Doubt that Obi-Wan believed the intel, we do not.” Yoda said, and by the looks of various members of the council, that feeling was not exactly unanimous. “But Dexter Jettster erroneous information, he could have been given.”

“Not to mention, these are the Bothans we are talking about.” Conehead said with a scoff. “Their intelligence network is the best in the galaxy, if there was to be an attack on their homeworld, they would have heard of it.”

As I explored the joints of Anakin’s metal digits with my teeth, I found what felt like a latch, so I pressed it, causing one of his fingers to pop off at the second knuckle with a gentle release.

“Rylanor.” Anakin said with a sigh.

I made a questioning noise as I popped a second finger off its housing.

“Stop that.”

I made an agreeing noise, paused, then did a third.

Anakin very visibly held in a sigh as he removed his hand so he could reattach his fingers.

“Assuming that an accomplished intelligence network is omniscient just because those that run it have a history of efficacy is fallacy of the highest order.” I said reasonably. “There is little to nothing they could do to learn of this if Grievous simply made a decision and set out to attack the planet while keeping adequate information compartmentalization. Assuming they have managed to compromise someone high enough to have access to that information purely because of their reputation is an amateur mistake that could cost many lives.”

The Jedi High Council all quietly stared at me, their stares ranging from disbelieving, to amused, to thinly veiled hostility from Ki-Adi-Mundi.

“Please forgive my Padawan.” Anakin said with overbearing smugness. “Due to a…far too enthusiastic lesson he is currently prone to blurting out whatever is on his mind.”

“Indeed.” Plo Koon said with clear amusement in his voice.

“The best part about being Master Plo Koon must be not having to breathe the same air as everyone else.” I said.

The room became almost physically colder with the High Council’s outrage. Except for Anakin, Yoda and Plo-Koon, they radiated their amusement into the Force.

“I will admit I consider that one of the perks. Though personally I find that the inconveniences of my physiology at times outweigh the positives.” Plo-Koon said with a chuckle. “Be that as it may, we must decide what to do about the possible attack on Bathawui.”

“You cannot be contemplating leaving Bathawui unguarded.” Anakin snapped.

“The Council will discuss this, Knight Skywalker.” Mace Windu said. “We thank you for delivering this message.”

“Isn’t it hypocritical to stop the learning of Juyo?” I asked, making Windu twitch. “Seeing as to it’s the main form that is used by enemy Force Users, the fact that one must wait until they are considered a Master before having the option of learning it is leaving the Jedi Order as a whole vulnerable against Dooku’s dark acolytes.”

“Come along now.” Anakin said, grabbing me by the neck of my robes and dragging me out.

“The Jedi were not always peacekeepers. We shouldn’t be at the beck and call of the Senate because it’s rotten to the core. There should be greater emphasis on learning combat. Why don’t we teach initiates to use a blaster? Jedi Masters who only practice Niman should not be considered Masters. Jedi with high casualty numbers should be investigated for incompetence.”

The doors to the High Council Chamber closed.

I continued to blabber all the way to the Halls of Healing, where Anakin tossed me into a room and locked the door.

Rude.

I used telekinesis to unlock the door and wandered out into the temple but got lost and ended up in the room where they’d left Asami. She was currently in a healing trance, her limbs wrapped in bacta bandages and encased in casts, her head likewise wrapped in bacta bandages.

Not wanting to disturb her, I sat on the chair next to her bed and simply kept her company while she healed, for the first time since the explosion allowing myself to truly relax.

I was asleep moments later.

=][=

“I must know where this substance came from!” Master Vokara Che demanded, shaking Anakin with a grip that was surprisingly strong for the elderly Twi’lek. “It’s solid enough to seal a wound, porous enough to allow air to pass through it and inflate the lung, sterile enough not to cause an infection, why it’s active in the Force meaning it’s alive! And by all I can sense, it is literally becoming part of his body without the slightest possibility of rejection!”

“Then you’d probably do better to ask the Clone Medics where they got it.” Anakin said, allowing himself to be shook back and forth, he’d resist, but he’d spent enough time in the Halls of Healing while he was a Padawan to know it was best to let Master Che get it out of her system.

“I did!” Master Che snarled shaking him harder. “But they all get cagey and said that it’s not their place to tell me! I made it a direct order but they politely informed me that I am not in their chain of command!”

“I see.” Anakin said. “Well if you’d excuse me I’d like to see Obi—”

“Have you any idea what this substance could mean!?” Master Che screamed. “Whoever created it must be brought before the Council of First Knowledge! I believed its existence mere myth!”

“Myth? Master Che?” Anakin asked, his interest peaked.

“Descriptions of it were found among surviving transcripts of the ancient Je’daii!” Master Che said. “Debates have raged about the existence of the Healing Poultice for millennia!” She took Anakin by the shoulders and dragged him down until he was eye to eye with her. “Do you not understand Skywalker!? Whoever made this is an Alchemist!”

“But I thought alchemy was outlawed?” Anakin asked.

“Yes! Because it was a Sith practice!” Master Che yelled. “But the Healing Poultice! If it can be proven to be a result of Alchemy, then we may prove that the practice is not, in fact, a tool of the Dark Side! The Poultice that was used to save Obi-Wan’s life holds the key to explore an entirely new branch of medicine!” Her grip tightened to the point that Anakin felt his shoulder pop. “And the clones under your command refuse to explain! Order them to divulge the identity of their medic this instant!”

“But Master Che, I’m not the one that handles—”

“THIS INSTANT SKYWALKER!”

Anakin was not certain how, but he knew that this somehow was Rylanor’s fault.

The Force, drowning as it was in the pain, rage, and despair only partially blocked out by the walls of the Jedi Temple, took a moment to be bemused at his distress.

That, if anything, only made him more certain.