1,763Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a convivial Wednesday in December to all of you. I'm sorry for the extra long wait between chapters. I ran up against major writer's block for this arc and I had plenty of ideas for YJM, so I decided to take a break from this story and focus on my other one for a bit to give my brain a chance to unclog itself. Luckily, it worked. CJWO is back in business. This chapter is pretty short, because I wanted to get something out to you on Christmas, but more is coming. So, so much more.
The last time I put out one of these chapters, winter was on its way. Well, it's here now, so it's more important than ever to donate what you can to the people of Ukraine. Many are without power or gas for heat. Too many have been displaced and have nowhere to go. Let's all do what we can to help them.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
Chapter 59
Not for the first time, Naruto concluded that the one thing every mission had in common, whether he was guarding a convoy of food in Hi no Kuni or infiltrating an enemy flagship in space, was boredom. No matter how many blaster bolts he'd had to dodge already, no matter how many enemies were waiting for him around the next corner, nothing changed how boring it was to wait for something to happen. In this case, that waiting involved crouching invisibly on a mag-train as it moved all too slowly towards the engines. In truth, the train was actually moving at a blistering pace, but that was a scant comfort as he suppressed the urge to twitch for the third time in as many seconds. It wasn't easy. All there was to focus on was the endless fwum of the train's repulsorlifts and the flickering of the lights as they sped by.
Fwum. Fwum. Fwum. Fwum. Fwum. Fwum.
'I'd rather duel Dooku again than listen to any more of this,' he griped internally. The only response was a dark chuckle from his tenant.
The monotony wasn't even the worst part. No, the worst part was not knowing what was going on. He reached out with the Force, but it was no substitute for proper reports. He could tell the space battle was going well. Mace and Obi-Wan were both feeling the sort of grim satisfaction he associated with victory. But well was a relative term. There was too much death for him to tell friend from foe, but one thing was for sure. Victory or no, the battle was shaping up to be a costly one. Just the latest in a long line of them, and far from the last, either.
As for Hack and the rest of Hurricane Company, he could tell even less. Hack was still alive, as were at least some of his men, but he wasn't familiar enough with the clones yet to guess at their situation. Even so, he doubted it was good. Guilt tore at his guts. He'd sent them off on a mad assault against a numerically superior foe without backup, and all for a distraction. If any of them survived, it would be by pure chance and nothing more.
'Don't focus on that,' he told himself. 'Focus on the goal. If we can get control of the engines, we can shut down the entire ship. Trap Grievous on board, capture him, and end this whole kriffing mess. Just like I should have on Geonosis.'
'You were outmatched on Geonosis, idiot. There was no victory for you there. That you survived is enough.'
'Just surviving is never enough. I won't be okay with people dying, even when it's unavoidable. I just won't.' Then he paused and frowned as something occurred to him. Slowly, despite their grim situation and his grimmer thoughts, a smile spread across his face. 'Were you just trying to cheer me up?'
A snarl came from within his mind and heat pulsed in the seal. 'Of course not, you wretch! Your emotions do not interest me. I only care that you do not do something reckless and get us both killed.'
His instinct was to laugh and tease the fox for his obvious lie, but something stayed his mockery. He recalled the first time he'd ever met Anakin; when he'd dared let himself be vulnerable before a stranger and it had gained him a brother. Rather than indulge in his first impulse, he took a moment to master his lingering resentment and rise above it.
'… thank you,' he sent to the Kyuubi. That was all, yet just those two words felt like shifting mountains in his mind. Even after the deal they'd made on Lothal, even after the offer he'd extended just before Geonosis, thanking his tenant still stung. He supposed they both had work to do in making peace with each other. Still, the low huff he heard from the seal was an improvement over more growling and insults.
A plastoid-clad hand tapped him on the shoulder and pulled his focus back to the present. Ponds' helmet hid his face, but his concern was painted all over his Force sense. The commander gave him a meaningful look, which was impressive from behind a blank faceplate. He responded with an eye-smile.
"I'm fine. Just thinking."
Jiraiya, who'd heard of respecting privacy once but never grasped how it applied to him, broke in. "I'm glad you're fine, because we're just about at our stop."
Naruto looked at their surroundings and mentally overlaid them on the map he'd memorized. Sure enough, the mag-rail was coming up on the engine section. Unfortunately, it wouldn't quite take them all the way to the engines themselves, so they were in for another mad dash through droid infested corridors. Even more unfortunately, calling it a "stop" had been a euphemism. In reality, they didn't dare stop the mag-train lest it trip an alarm and draw Grievous and his forces down on their heads. Instead, as the section they wanted rushed closer, he and Jiraiya both took one of Ponds' arms and braced the clone between them.
"I really hate this," Ponds grumbled.
"Better than going splat," Naruto chided. He and Jiraiya reached out to each other through the Force and linked their senses and minds. Their breaths, their heartbeats, and even their blinking synched up. As one being, they tensed. Their knees bent, muscles coiled, and vision slowed. The Force showed them the exact moment to act, and when it came, they moved in perfect unison. It was a 50 meter jump from the mag-train to the platform, and Naruto could feel Ponds clench his jaw for every second of it. For some reason, most clones disliked being moved with the Force. Even though a jetpack would have been slower, louder, and more dangerous, he could sense Ponds desperately longing for such a device right then.
Their feet thudded on the deck as they landed and jogged a few steps to bleed off the excess momentum. Ponds visibly relaxed at the sensation of solid metal under his boots once more, and Naruto tried not to be miffed at the lack of confidence in his abilities. He thought back to the time Jiraiya had thrown him off a cliff to teach him summoning. Even with chakra to aid him, the sight of that void beneath him and the feel of wind rushing by his face as he plunged to his death had been terrifying. He could only imagine what it would be like without the Force on his side.
It still rankled. It wasn't like he'd ever dropped the clone commander. Okay, maybe once, but he'd caught him again before he'd hit the ground, so it wasn't like that counted. Right?
He looked around, once more calling up the map he'd memorized to orient himself. By his estimation, they were less than 500 meters from the entrance to the engine room. He wasn't sure about what deck they needed to be on, but it wouldn't matter. Lightsabers were so very useful for making doorways when people weren't considerate enough to provide them. Besides, the engines for a ship this massive would no doubt take up dozens of decks, and it wasn't as if he cared about slicing through something important. The whole point was to break the engines, after all.
"This way," he said and pointed down the corridor leading aft. "We're almost there."
"Drop the jutsu," Jiraiya ordered. "I sense a disturbance. Speed is more important than stealth right now."
Letting the Transparency jutsu go was like taking his armor off after a weeklong battle. The chakra drain hadn't been crippling, but it was like holding a small weight at arm's length for hours. It started out easy, but eventually even that minor effort grew into a burden. He released his hold on the knot of chakra and felt the cold prickles recede from his skin. Ponds shivered at the sensation like a tooka after a bath. Without the risk of chakra exhaustion to slow them, they set off at a dead run.
As they raced closer and closer to the engine room, Naruto felt the familiar anticipation rise in him. His target was close. The prey was almost in his jaws. It wasn't bloodlust, but rather the thrill of once again facing down impossible odds and coming out on top. He doubted the feeling would ever get old. Mace probably wouldn't approve of relishing a victory in such a way, but it was a part of him. He wouldn't give it up for anything.
One thing he would give up, and for free at that, was the sudden lurch in his gut as the Force sent him a warning of danger. There was no sense of direction or intent, nothing to indicate where the threat was coming from. Just a general warning that something had gone wrong in his world. Jiraiya must have felt the same thing, because they both slid to a stop at the same time. Ponds instantly snapped to cover the hallway behind them while he and his godfather scanned their surroundings for whatever the Force had warned them of. There were no droids, no auto-turrets, no ray shields descending from the ceiling to trap them. The corridor looked like… well, a ship's corridor. Naruto had seen a thousand of them. Generally, the ones where he'd almost died had looked just a little more exciting than this.
In the end, it wasn't his eyes that spotted the threat, but his nose. He was no Inuzuka, but his sense of smell was still several times keener than human standard. Under the scents of sweat, blaster coolant, and machine oil, he picked up an unfamiliar chemical tang. It was sharp and oily, and with every breath, it got stronger. He looked up at the vents and let the Force sharpen his vision until he could make out every microfracture in the weld lines. Sure enough, there was a faint mist pouring out of the ventilation system. The Force's warning sharpened to a screech and dread curdled his stomach.
"Gas, gas, gas!" He pulsed a thread of chakra into the seal on his mask and the smell vanished instantly. In his periphery, he saw Jiraiya pull a similar mask up over his mouth and nose. Ponds was safe in his armor, but he still checked the seals around his helmet. So far, there had been no reports of the Separatists resorting to chemical weapons, but there was a first time for everything.
"Let's get back to-"
Before he could finish the sentence, a set of heavy blast doors slammed shut, cutting off the way they had come. A moment later, the gas began pouring out faster. He could hear the hiss, now, and see the shimmer from the vents without the Force. Fear tried to grip him, but he let Mace's lessons take over.
"I don't feel any symptoms," Jiraiya said. "It's not a blister agent. Did you recognize the smell?"
Naruto shook his head. He wasn't feeling anything himself, but that wasn't much help. Jiraiya was a tank, and with the Kyuubi in his gut, plenty of toxins wouldn't affect him for hours, if at all. There were also far too many chemical agents whose symptoms he wouldn't notice until it was too late. Hallucinogens, oxygen antagonists, cardiac agents, and even some sedatives could be subtle, but just as deadly as dioxis.
"Doesn't your helmet have a built-in air scanner?" He asked Ponds.
"Yes sir. It's running now. Stand by." Naruto could hear the commander's heart beating faster than normal, but his voice and emotions stayed level. He took a moment to ensure he stayed centered himself. It had been a long few days, but he refused to let himself fall apart so close to the finish line.
After a few seconds, each of which took a small epoch to tick by, he felt the shift in Ponds' emotional sense from smooth calm to the prickly texture of worry and annoyance. Naruto winced internally. After he'd stayed unruffled until now, anything that could unsettle Ponds couldn't be good.
"I've got it. It's baradium bisulfate, mixed with some sort of stabilizing agent. Not too toxic, but…" He deliberately switched his blaster to safe and popped out the power pack. Naruto hissed through clenched teeth and hooked his lightsaber back on his belt.
"Would one of you like to share with the class?" Jiraiya asked. "I take after Master Yoda when it comes to technical stuff."
"It's an explosive," Naruto explained. "The same sort as in thermal detonators. This whole section is a thermobaric bomb now. If we fire a blaster or ignite our lightsabers, the blast will take out five decks at least."
Jiraiya's eyes narrowed. He may not have been up to speed on modern explosive chemistry, but he was still a Jedi Master, and the last of the Sannin. He knew all about traps. "Grievous is toying with us. He wants to fight us up close. Eyes out. He can't be far."
Naruto reached for the kunai pouch on his leg. If Grievous thought he had disarmed them just because they couldn't use their lightsabers, he was in for a nasty shock. Before he could grab one, though, he felt a spike of bloodlust from above him. He looked up, but it was too late. The grating above them flew down as if shot from a cannon and a massive gray blur slammed into him like a freight speeder. What felt like a hydraulic clamp closed around his throat and a figure that would have dwarfed a Wookie picked him up and smashed him into the wall hard enough to crumple the durasteel paneling. He tried to scream as shards of broken metal dug into his back, but the metal claw around his neck cut off any noise. Another claw knocked his hand away from his kunai pouch, ripped it off his leg, and tossed it down the hall. A pair of pustulent yellow eyes glared at him from a nightmare mask and a wall of some of the most twisted emotions he'd ever felt slammed into his shields.
The cyborg's mind was a patchwork mess. Skeins of anger and hatred stretched over his every thought, but they were strangely fragmented. Large swaths of his mind were unreadable. Emotions sprang from seemingly nowhere and ended just as abruptly. It was like watching a holo with half the emitters burned out. Just being near him was enough to start a headache brewing behind Naruto's eyes. He'd been around augments and cyborgs before, but nothing like this. Whoever had installed Grievous' cerebral implants had either been incompetent or a sadist. He knew which option his money was on. Dooku didn't hire incompetents.
"Greetings, Padawan," Grievous snarled. "It would seem I won our little game."
The raw, weeping skin Naruto could see around the monster's eyes crinkled, and he swore he felt something like amusement's mutated cousin poking through the shattered ruin of Grievous' psyche. He tensed, but Grievous was fast. The claws tightened around his neck until his trachea collapsed. A moment later, his spine snapped like a dry twig and everything went dark.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
Jiraiya had only met two beings in this new future outside the Jedi Order who could rival his speed, and those had been Ventress and Durge. Ventress was a Sith Assassin, and he'd thought the Gen'Dai mercenary had been one of a kind, but it seemed Grievous deserved a spot on that list, too. The cyborg had sprung his trap faster than he'd have thought possible. By the time he'd turned around, Naruto was already dangling two meters off the ground. His hand went to his lightsaber out of instinct, and he had to force himself to wrench it away. Somehow, blowing the lot of them to atoms didn't strike him as an optimal solution to their current problems.
Naturally, that was when their problems got worse. Six gray-cloaked figures dropped from the same hole Grievous had come from and landed with metallic clunks. He'd never seen one in person before, but he recognized the design from threat briefings. MagnaGuards. These didn't have their iconic electrostaffs, though. Instead, each one carried a pair of vibroswords. It seemed Grievous didn't want to blow them up, either. Just to even the playing field. It made sense. He wouldn't want to cross blades with his godson, either, especially with himself thrown in for a bonus. But if Grievous thought either of them, or Ponds for that matter, were less dangerous without their primary weapons, he was about to learn a painful lesson. He channeled chakra and got ready to turn Grievous and his pet robots into so much scrap.
Then Grievous snapped Naruto's neck.
Jiraiya's heart stopped. He watched with chakra enhanced eyes as his godson's face went slack. His pupils blew wide and his arms flopped limp to his sides. For a split-second, Jiraiya saw every nightmare he'd had for the past 16 years come true. Then the moment passed, logic reasserted itself, and "Naruto's" corpse burst into enough smoke to fill the hallway.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. No matter how many times Naruto pulled that little trick (and the cocky little shit pulled it every chance he got) it never got any easier to watch. He was still a Jedi Master though, and a Sannin besides, so his shock lasted only a moment. Then he set out to show the leader of the Separatists army just how badly he'd misjudged them. Grievous may have been one of the very few beings who could keep up with him, but his MagnaGuards were not. Their humming blades missed him by almost a meter as he charged at the cyborg general. A rasengan had already formed in his hand by the time he was in grappling range, and he slammed it forward at Grievous' face. It was the only part of him they knew still had organic components, and he wasn't about to waste the chance to cut the head off their enemy.
Grievous had the reflexes of a droid and the skills of a warrior, however. He bent backward in a way no being with an organic spine could have. Jiraiya's rasengan sailed over his head and plowed into the wall. The metal, already damaged from Grievous slamming Naruto into it, gave way like wet flimsi. On the other side, there was nothing but the enormous tunnel the mag-rails used. Jiraiya could feel his momentum carrying him forward, too far, too fast. There was nothing for him to push off to change his direction. Still, Grievous wasn't the only one who could react in a split-second. Even as he tumbled into the void, he reached out with a hand and slapped the cyborg's chest plate. He was moving too fast to get a proper grip, but a light coating of chakra was enough to stick his hand mynock-tight to Grievous. Bent double as he was, the general was helpless to resist as Jiraiya dragged him into the tunnel with him.
'That's right, you bastard,' he thought. 'You won't escape me that easily. I've lost too many good men to your cruelty already.'
The cold lightning of the corridor gave way to the dim orange illumination of the tunnel. Mag-rails screamed by with a noise so loud it rattled his vision. All it would take was for one of those charging metal behemoths to hit them, and that would be it. Even if the impact didn't kill him, it would separate him and Grievous. No doubt the coward would take the chance to run. His fleet was doomed, his secret weapon compromised, and his last ditch trap had just failed. There was nothing left for him here but the chance to add two more Jedi to his tally of murders, and he'd blown whatever chance he had at that when he targeted Naruto instead of him. He wouldn't let the Separatist general escape justice. The Force was with him, though. They passed within centimeters of the trains, but never struck one. As the floor drew closer, he turned so Grievous was beneath him. The cyborg snarled and tried to punch him, but he was too late. They hit the floor hard enough to send them both bouncing and tumbling end over end. Jiraiya felt something pop in his shoulder, and his left arm went numb down to the elbow. The taste of copper filled his mouth. He thought he felt a tooth break. Overall, he'd had better landings, but he'd also had worse. Nothing major was broken, and he rolled to his feet, ready to fight.
Grievous didn't have the Force to cushion him, but his body was more than tough enough to handle a 100 meter fall onto solid metal. He rose with unnatural flexibility. A tortured-sounding cough wracked his body, but his eyes stayed locked on Jiraiya. The slitted yellow orbs reminded him of Orochimaru, but even his old teammate's eyes had never burned with such hate.
"General Jiraiya," he growled. "Your reputation precedes you. Count Dooku will reward me when I tell him of your death."
Jiraiya rolled his eyes. He'd heard that line, or others just like it, too many times to count. "What sort of reward does Dooku give a rabid animal? More bones to chew on? A pat on the head? It's not like you have ears he can scratch."
"You Jedi are filth." Grievous plucked a pair of lightsabers from his waist. "I have yet to kill a Jedi Master. And a Council member at that. I will mount your skull to my armor when I put your precious Temple to the torch. You can watch from the grave as I slaughter your fellows like the scum they are."
"You poor creature," Jiraiya sighed. For weeks, now, he'd read report after report of all the clones and Jedi this monster before him had murdered. Now that he saw him in person, though, all that he felt was a deep sadness. "There is nothing left inside you but pain and hate, is there?"
The hatred he felt from Grievous doubled at his words. The cyborg activated his stolen lightsabers, and they blazed to life; one blue and one green. With a painful lurch in his stomach, Jiraiya realized he recognized the blue one. The hilt had distinctive double striations wrought in doonium running halfway down from the emitter. It had belonged to Knight Ech'la, one of the Jedi he'd tutored in chakra use years ago. They'd shared tea a few times and discussed their views on the Code. Last he'd heard, the Twi'lek man had gone missing during the battle of Geonosis. Now he knew what had happened to him. He sighed and wished the man's spirit rest in the netherworld of the Force.
Grievous must have seen the recognition in his eyes, because he raised the blue blade and chucked. "My collection has grown in the last few weeks. Your lightsaber will make a fine addition."
"You don't deserve to hold those weapons," he said. "I will be taking them back."
He pressed the activation stud disguised beneath a knot in the gnarled branch that made up his lightsaber hilt. The carved metal toad at the end opened its mouth and a blade of emerald plasma extended outward. Grievous eyed it hungrily and charged.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
Of all the insane osik that surrounded Jetii like a foul odor, what Ponds still found the most jarring was how fast things happened around them. While their unnatural speed was one of their greatest advantages in a scrap, it also meant they attracted enemies who could match them in that department. One moment everything would be fine, with only a few hundred armed battle droids to worry about. Maybe a few tanks. Nothing any clone commander worth his rations couldn't handle. Then, before any decent being could react, ships were exploding, gravity had gone off in a snit, and the lightsaber swinging maniacs were spewing fire and hucking lightning around like bolo-balls. He could handle world-ending absurdity, but it was only common courtesy to give a man a second or two to adjust.
Grievous apparently hadn't heard of common courtesy. There he'd been, holding security in a ship hallway, just as he had hundreds of times.
Everything had been fine. Okay, sure, the hallway was on the biggest Seppie ship he'd ever seen, and yes, the air would explode if he even looked at his blaster wrong, but nothing was actually wrong. The next thing he'd known, there was a massive kriffing hole in the ceiling, six MagnaGuards with vibroswords were advancing on his position, and General Grievous himself had his commander dangling by his neck. Then he blinked, and the commander exploded into smoke, Grievous and the general smashed another hole in the wall and vanished through it, the MagnaGuards were a lot closer, and those swords were going to be a problem in the next few seconds.
He couldn't use his blaster or any of his thermal detonators with the baradium gas in the air. Even his droid poppers were too big a risk, not that they would do much to a MagnaGuard. That just left the vibroknife his combat instructor had given him the first time he'd beaten her in a spar. He slipped it from the sheath on his leg. The blade was a good 20 cm long, and edged with phrik, but next to the meter long vibroswords the MagnaGuards had, it felt distinctly inadequate.
The first droid that reached him tried to decapitate him with a backhand swipe. He caught it with his knife and the two vibrating blades grated against each other with a hypersonic squeal. The force of the blow drove him back to his knees, and he had to brace his wrist with his free hand just to keep hold of his knife. He grunted from the strain, but no amount of human effort was going to overcome the mechanical power of a high grade droid. If he stayed like this, either the MagnaGuard would drive the blades back into his neck or one of its fellows would flank him and cut off his head.
'So you'd better not stay like this,' he told himself.
He gave it another half-second and then simultaneously shoved as hard as he could and rolled towards the droid's back. The vibrosword left a shallow groove along the side of his helmet, but when he wound up crouched behind the droid, he was still alive and he still had his trusty knife. A knife he promptly drove into the MagnaGuard's hip servo. It wasn't a killing blow, but it was the best he could do before the droid reacted. The vibrating blade cut through wires and hydraulic lines like so much butter. The droid toppled to one side as its leg collapsed and he wrenched his knife free just in time to roll backwards away from another vibrosword that almost split him from crown to kidney. He was halfway to his feet when a metal foot hit him in the chest harder than anything had ever hit him before. Something in his breastplate went crunch, as did several somethings in his chest. Red and black spots swam in front of his eyes and both his lungs felt like they had turned inside out. He skidded on his back for what felt like a kilometer before his helmet crashed against something solid. When he opened his eyes, he saw it was the blast doors. The MagnaGuard had knocked him a dozen meters down the hall with one kick. No wonder they had such a fearsome reputation.
He tried to force air into his lungs, but he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Fire and sand and everything except air filled his lungs. Somehow he'd kept a hold of his knife, but it wasn't going to do him any good while he flopped around like a beached fish.
A shadow fell over him. Through his hazy vision and cracked visor, he could see the glowing red photoreceptors of a MagnaGuard. He didn't know if it was the one that had kicked him, but it was certainly the one that would kill him. It raised a vibrosword. Everything was hazy except the buzzing point of the blade poised to open his throat. That was as clear as a good scope. He tried desperately to bring his knife up to block, but it weighed a thousand kilograms and his arm was a tube of nutrimush. That razor point descended, vibrating metal ready to rend open his flesh at the slightest touch. He glared at it, as if by sheer force of will he could turn its path.
He couldn't. But something else could. Or rather, someone else. Just as the blade cleared the last millimeter towards his throat, an invisible hand yanked the droid away faster than his eyes could track. Over the sound of his own strained breathing, he heard a grinding, crunching sound, and then a dull thump. When he raised his head, he could just make out the crumpled heap of scrap metal that only seconds before had been one of the deadliest combat droids in the galaxy. As he watched, those red photoreceptors flickered once and then dimmed forever.
"Rule number one, you skull faced rattle-traps," a familiar voice shouted. "If you think you killed me, no, you didn't."
With a faint buzz and a flicker of movement, the commander appeared next to him and hauled him to his feet. It was probably agonizing, but lucky for him, he blacked out for a second as soon as his broken ribs shifted. When his senses returned, he was upright and leaning against Uzumaki. At the same time, two copies of Uzumaki appeared in front of each remaining MagnaGuard, hands raised and ready for a fight. It looked a little ridiculous, half a dozen humans preparing to fight some of the Separatists' most advanced droids with nothing but their fists, but Ponds had sparred with the commander before. He knew how hard he could punch. Even with kage bunshin, that fight wasn't going to be completely one-sided.
"Rule two. There is never just one of me in a room."
For an instant, nothing moved. Even the dust seemed to hang motionless in the air. Then the shadow clones attacked with a mixture of quiet precision and reckless shouting abandon. Some fought almost like droids themselves; silent, efficient, and relentless. Others screamed obscenities and flailed around like half-trained cadets after their first caff binge. Ponds gaped at the chaos. He'd seen how some of Commander Uzumaki's kage bunshin could come out erratic, but this was extreme even by his very fucked up standards.
"Rule three. I always win. That's just a fact, so get used to it." All the clones, even the quiet ones, cheered at the declaration. He watched as the MagnaGuard he'd crippled fell to two clones that were downright feral. They laughed and shouted insults as they ripped off both its arms and then its head. Its one functioning leg continued to jerk uselessly, but without arms or a primary processing unit, it was more farcical than dangerous.
"Took you long enough, sir," he wheezed. His chest was still on fire. A glance at his breastplate told him it was a complete write-off. Supply would be pissed. This was the fourth set of armor he'd gone through since the war started. Last time, they'd treated to take a hit out on him if he didn't make this one last at least a month. That had only been two weeks ago. He's tried explaining that it wasn't his fault his commander was an unhinged menace to the galaxy and everyone in it, but the 187th's quartermasters made the kaminiise look sympathetic.
The commander winced and scratched at the back of his head. "Sorry. I had to substitute out pretty quick, and I wound up halfway down the hall and up in the ceiling. Stupid kage bunshin wandered off. Are you okay?"
"I'll live. Probably." It was the most positive spin he could put on things at the moment. Pain had blunted his normally sunny disposition and excellent sense of humor. He nodded towards the clone vs. droid brawl. "Can your bunshin win?"
The commander shook his head. "No. Not with the gas in the air. They're too fragile, and the droids are too good." Indeed, as he spoke, two of the clones dispelled as vibroswords grazed them. Even a brush from such a weapon could cut a human to the bone. It was more than enough to kill the shadow clones. "Can you fight?"
He grimaced. His chest plate was shattered. There were spiderweb cracks across his visor, and presumably the rest of his helmet. He didn't know if some ribs were broken or his sternum, but it was definitely one. Maybe both. Each breath came with a struggle, and the pain made his vision blurry. His left hand didn't want to close all the way for some reason. All he had to fight with was a single vibroknife. If any of the men under his command had been in this condition, he'd have ordered them medevaced to a hospital ship, or at least to sit tight and avoid moving.
Then he looked at his commander. Those blue eyes held no expectation or demand. Uzumaki wasn't ordering him to fight, nor was he ordering him to stand down. The choice was his, with no consequences aside from those that arose because of what he did. The commander was, in some small, probably unimportant way, giving him freedom. It was terrifying, but at the same time he loved him for it. Ten seconds ago, if Uzumaki had ordered him to take on a platoon of droideka in his skivvies, he'd have done it. Now he knew he would volunteer. Beat up or not, he was still breathing. That meant there was only one choice.
"I can fight."
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
And cut to "To be continued." Because I'm an asshole.
I know this is mostly setup, but as I said before, I wanted to get something to you all on Christmas. What's more, this last story beat in this arc is just a bit too long for one chapter, so I split it up. Next chapter should wrap this up and lead us smoothly into the next arc, which will have much more Naruto/Ahsoka interaction. It's tough to fit that in here when they're serving in different theatres of the war, but I'm trying to find every opportunity for it.
All that and more to come in the New Year. For now, enjoy the holidays and leave a review if you want. Thank you.