Chapter 23: 23. Chapter

- der! -mander! Commander! Do you hear me? 

Only after I finished stopping my life-threatening internal bleeding. Did I slowly slip back to the level of general consciousness, finally realizing that someone was shouting at me. 

I felt as a large hand grabbed me and freed me from the pile of wreckage that I was buried under. I was still extremely confused and couldn't stand up on my own. This is why you are supposed to wear damn armor. Without it, I would have been impaled by the hundreds of broken metal fragments. That didn't change the fact that my small body was easily swept away by the sheer force of the blast wave. But at least I am not dead, not yet anyway. I was shook by my shoulders forcefully to wake me from my confused pit of thoughts. 

I finally looked around with my suddenly drowsy eyes; too much force channelling again, I guess. Watcher was the one who tried to wake me up, constantly shaking my shoulders. His armor was blackened and parts of it were completely missing or in the middle of crumbling away. I must say, the clone commando suits are fucking overpowered. It must be because of the internal life support devices that are built into it. I forced myself to stand with the help of Watcher; my knees were buckling here and there, but I somehow managed to stand, mostly on my own. I looked around quickly. There were flames, dead and injured clones left and right... I forced out a few words, as my breathing only started to function again. 

- Cough, cough... report trooper... 

- Yes, Commander. The LAAT-was heavily damaged, and it landed in front of us to provide some measure of cover for the retreat. Brain, Stinger and Handy are mostly fine. They are forcing back the commando droids, who started a surprise attack after that damn droid with the bomb attached to itself blowed up our central lines of defence. 

- How is it that you guys weren't blown away like me? - I asked as the question was constantly reappearing in my currently still confused mind. 

- Our suite is designed with electromagnetic boots, if we activate it, we can even fight while standing on the roof and turned upside down. 

- That's, wow, that is just frickin cool. - I will get my hands on one if we survive this. I promised to myself, then continued with the questions. 

- Are we retreating now or what, and where is Ahsoka? Is she alright?

- Yes, she is leading the retreat sent me to look for you actually. Luckily, she was not present at the moment of the explosion. General Kenobi, sent his clone commander, Cody and a bunch of boys from the 212th Attack Battalion; she was meeting with them at the time. 

Well, thank the force for small mercies... If she were there in her current "armor"... Well, let's not think about that now. 

I looked at Watcher, seeing the level of damage on his armor, and asked, while constantly moving away from the closing droids. 

- What are our losses? 

- In the last few minutes, we verified the loss of seven troopers from the 501st, and nine from the 212th. Targetman suit was not functioning properly and he stood closest to the epicentre of the explosion; he burned to death. Bastard always wanted to go out with a big bang. We lost Ice too. He got blown away by the explosion and broke his neck and spine. Dozer is missing, we don't know if he is dead or just unconscious. Crusher saw him trying to reload his grenade launcher after he gave him some of his. He didn't react to your warning in time, and got blown away by the blast waves. 

I nodded to him, acknowledging what he had said. Yep, now the situation starts to resemble a real war. A sudden warning flared up in the force. I instinctively pushed Watcher away from me with a weak force push. There was a few red lasers hitting the place he stood half a second ago, I tried to run towards the other direction, only to stumble and fall flat on the ground as the nausea and weakness overwhelmed me. I shouldn't have used the force like that, not in my current state, but than, Watcher would be dead, and I would most likely follow him soon...

I always forgot that this body is not capable of constantly channelling such levels of force powers, especially with my high precision... 

I struggled to move, but my body was exhausted and shocked from internal and external injuries. I heard Watcher shout at me to run, but I couldn't. There were two commando droids right behind me. One was fighting with Watcher, while the other stood over me, aiming its gun towards my head. I gulped instinctively, am I really going to die in such a stupid and pathetic way? I was looking into the droids lifeless mechanic eyes, they didn't know pity or mercy, if not ordered to do so. I felt as a few drops of sweat were sliding down my face. It was kind of bad to admit this, but for all of my knowledge, at that moment, I felt like the real age of my body. I was simply genuinely and utterly scared of death. I know, that I will die, one time, somewhere in the future. I know of this, of course, but it was always somewhere in the future. Which means, not now I didn't even think about the possibility of dying a few weeks later after I left Hoth. My whole force's elongated lifespan was measured in hundreds of years... But, only if I am able to stay alive. I saw it in extreme slow motion as the droid began to pull the trigger on the blaster. Everything seemed to slow down, almost stopping entirely. I knew that this was my only chance. I stopped thinking and let the years of experiences, feelings and instincts speak for themselves. At that moment I felt all of my masters knowledge became for the first time truly mine; the gates that separated them from my personality disappeared, if only for a few seconds. My perception of the world hastened to its normal speed. I felt an incredibly cold rage seep into my body. I was subconsciously channelling the feelings of suffering, pain, and death, that were slowly engulfing the hangar around me. All of this was channelled into a dark-side empowered force scream aimed at the droid in front of me. 

The chilling soundwave that was resembling the death cry of a dying animal, immediately began to corrode the droid. Then it shattered it into hundreds of small pieces, and blew those pieces away like small highspeed projectiles hitting a few more droids also corroding and shattering them on the way. Effectively breaking them into small particles of red dust that fell on the floor in small piles. I continued to siphon up all the negative energies, creating an invisible whirlwind around me that was constantly feeding on emotions. It was a source of energy that could keep me going for a while, at least until I leave the battlefield, when there wont be this much suffering to feed on, the technique will have to be stopped, since it will use up more power than what it gained. I stood up shakily, but I was feeling better with every passing second, thanks to this technique. 

Watcher managed to destroy the other droid with the help of two other clones. I didn't know them; they were not commandos, and not from my squad. They had some orange colored signs on their otherwise white armor, like most of the clones they had on the ship. 

You are reading story Star Wars: The Way of the Grey at novel35.com

Watcher shouted to the other clones to escort me back to the inside of the ship, since I was clearly heavily injured. They nodded, one of them letting me lean on him while the other was following us close behind, ready for an enemy attack. Watcher most likely gone back to report and help the others in the retreating process.

We successfully left the hangar after a few minutes... I stopped my dark side siphon as there was not enough emotion or pain here to feed on anymore. As the constant supply of free energy stopped I felt my body turn heavier with every step. My body began to forcefully tremble as memories from old lectures began to seep into my current flow of thoughts. I didn't even know who I was in the memory anymore, but I heard the silky voice of an old woman, repeating a lecture directly into my mind.

- The dark side, is not capable of true healing... It is only a perversion, of it. When you stop feeding its endless hunger, you will find yourself emptier than ever before...

I was close to losing consciousness as even the normal adrenalin was leaving my blood streams; the immediate and visible danger was gone.

That was the moment I heard a familiar sound; a very familiar sound, yet so much different this time, it reminded me of a hissing snake instead of the usual comfort it provided, I only got goose bumps.

Yes, a lightsaber was ignited behind us. And a heavy body crumbled without a sound. Oh no... please no, no, not now... please... I plead in my mind as the clone trooper beside me turned around partially. Only to be raised from the ground by a force choke; realizing this, he had the presence to pull out a side arm and shot at the attacker, but the laser was deflected back into his face. From this short distance, the simple, much thinner normal clone armor was basically useless. His arms and legs fell limp; then his body was dropped to the ground beside me.

The moment the trooper was raised with a force choke, I lost my only support and fell on my ass with quite the force. I didn't really care about that, by the way, since there was a venomous looking female with two activated red lightsabres carelessly walking towards me in the empty corridor. 

I tried to feed on the dark side for one more time, but there were not enough lingering dark side energies on this corridor. The battle didn't reach this point yet except for the two dead soldiers, but they didn't really have time, to suffer and leave behind powerful emotions, or pain. It's not that I would like them to suffer, but the dark side simply works this way... Except, that it won't work right now. I couldn't use the light side anymore in my current state. So should I fight with my  lightsaber? One of my shoulders was partially dislocated, I can still move my arm even if it hurts like a bitch. I can't even stand on my own, so lightsaber combat is out of the question, but maybe she didn't know that?

I reached towards my lightsabre's hilt, as I expected, the woman used the force to pull my blade towards herself, and also she deactivated one of her blades to be able to catch mine. Without hesitation, I continued my movement with my right arm, and picked up the blaster pistol that the clone trooper used to attack her and shot precisely at her smirking face.

I sensed her surprise, but it was short-lived, as she elegantly sidestepped right inside my reach and forced the gun out of my weakened grasp. She grabbed my left lekku at its root with a force that no lekku should ever be grasped, and began to raise me up from the ground. My eyes bulged from the overwhelmingly painful sensation as I yelped from the pain, I needed to stand up, to lessen it the pain somewhat. I tried to push her away simultaneously, to escape from her grasp; it was futile. I could see it, that she was drinking up my pain and suffering, as if it was the sweetest nectar to be found in the entire universe. As I realized this, I forced myself to stop my useless struggle. I didn't want to accept this, but in this state I couldn't run away, or fight with this witch.

She frowned as she realized that I suddenly composed myself, well, as much as you possibly can when you are in the hands of a clearly sadistic, child-abusing, serial killer.

I was also feeling the pressure growing on my lekku, as my body was still partially hanged on it. She looked at me, taking in my form, with the uncanny elegance of a loth cat playing with its newly captured pray; then she grabbed my heavily damaged helmet and with one powerful move, she ripped it off my face. It broke into a few different parts. I winced from the pain as tears began to appear in my eyes. Ripping off the helmet that was encircling my leks was painful, and it also cut into them in the process. I could feel it as the blood was flowing down on both of them... This, fucking bitch was obviously deliberately torturing me this way, and she was enjoying it. A twi'leks pride was in his or her leks, and it was extremely humiliating to injure them purposefully. 

When I didn't yelp, instead, I just bit into my lips to swallow back my cry of pain. She seemed clearly disappointed. On the other hand, this pain, and humiliation was very useful right now. I let myself drown in my own pain. I forced myself to relive the memory again and again and again. Then I channelled it into a powerful vivid flow of hate as I suddenly reached out my injured left arm deliberately causing even more pain to myself, I hit this bitch's stomach, since that was the closest important bodypart I could reach, and released a lightning touch into her letting out all of my hatred and pain into her very guts. It was not as powerful, as I would like to think, but it still made her scream like an exorcised banshee for sure. I also added a weak life siphon that was concealed by the lightning strike, she shouldn't realize this not for a while and I would heal from her life energies until then. I smiled for a fraction of a second. Then, I joined her in the screaming; oh yes, I forgot that she was holding me by my lekku... After a few seconds of screaming, I was uncharacteristically dropped on my back, hitting my head on the floor as streams of smoke were emerging from both of our bodies. My muscles were constantly convulsing still under the effect of the lightning.  The woman also fell, if only on her knees. She was breathing heavily and sending an "I will gut you!" glace in my direction.

She suddenly jumped on me, pinning down my arms with her knees; she sat on my chest, pushing the air out of my lungs. She grabbed my face and forced my eyes wide open with her fingers. 

She looked into my eyes, with the grin of a madwoman... Now I was able to see her face under that black hood too... She was a Dathomirian. She leaned even closer as my consciousness was about to leave me from the pain, exhaustion, tiredness, accumulated injuries, but the main reason was still this woman sitting on my chest... My body was about half the size of her body, come on, let me breathe! 

Instead she licked my face, then hissed into my left ear protrusion...

- I like your eyes... they have a nice yellow color. My master is interested in those eyes of yours, so go ahead and sleep now, rest assured, I will keep you very... safe. 

The last thing I saw, was the sadistic smirk on this unknown woman's face while my growing tunnel vision from the lack of air, finally consumed me. 

You can find story with these keywords: Star Wars: The Way of the Grey, Read Star Wars: The Way of the Grey, Star Wars: The Way of the Grey novel, Star Wars: The Way of the Grey book, Star Wars: The Way of the Grey story, Star Wars: The Way of the Grey full, Star Wars: The Way of the Grey Latest Chapter