Derailment

[Khivas]

The shuttle carried itself along the icy winds of the snowy white world below, icicles forming and breaking off as the craft zipped by with as low an energy emission possible, all for the sake of maintaining it's hidden identity under the radar as it snuck up on the Imperial supply convoy stopping at a resupply station. Khivas stood holding onto the overhead bars to maintain his balance, waiting for the light on the door to turn from red to green, signalling the "Go" time.

He was here as a joint operation between Jedi and Rebel Forces, and his two man team comprised of himself and a Rebel engineer, the two of them sent as an shock drop team to take out a convoy headed for a supply depot currently empty of enemy troopers and in desperate need of said supplies. He knew the engineer too, rescued him awhile back while on a quick job on Rishi. Looking across from him Khivas eyed Mephalas Istorm, remembering how he had convinced the independent contractor to join up with the Rebellion, and hopefully after today the Knight would be able to convince him to get more in touch with his connection to the Force and join the Jedi as well.

But alas, one thing at a time. "T - Minus thirty!" Said the voice of the pilot over the radio. "Remember, you're only going to have ten minutes top to get in and complete the objective." The objective being to be dropped off as Rebel bombings commenced on the supply depot, leaving the train station more open, in which Khivas and Mephalas would storm in and set charges along the tracks, leaving as quick as they came to let the train roll in, and poof, fireworks.

Thirty seconds later, the light above the door flashes green, and thus it was "go time", And the first one out would be Khivas, the knight acting as a bulwark to allow Mephalas to step out second with less fire being rained down upon him. As Khivas leaped from the shuttle-craft and landed along the station below him, the bombs started going off as Rebel fighters flew in and begun their attack, giving Khivas a slightly easier time as the guns went from focusing on him to the going-ons behind them.

Deflecting shot after shot, Khivas moved forward and with a massive push through the Force, sent the enemy stormtroopers trying to gun him down flying into the walls, taking them out of commission. "Let's go Meph, we got work to do!" He yelled out to his partner, waiting for him to catch up as the shuttle's side guns unloaded on the platform, all the more to give the two a better chance to move on.

 

[Mephisto]

First real mission. Mephalas tested the gauntlets he was wearing; it was some kind of armor, according his jedi compatriot and partner for this operation. Mephalas started going over the briefing in his mind again. He had remembered telling his supers that he wasn’t a fan of jedi, right? Yes he’d told them, and they’d told him that sometimes he’d have to work with jedi whether he liked it or not. That was simply a requirement of the job, and if this bothered him then he was free to take off at any time, they had work to do. And so he’d relented, agreeing to work with the jedi and remain a part of the Rebel Alliance.

The shuttle was flying in low and with as little energy expended as possible to avoid detection by radar or other methods. Visuals weren’t as much of a concern, however, and he could understand why; the wind outside was moving around so much snow that only radar would’ve been able to detect much at all, at least until they were right on top of their target.

Turning his attention back to his Jedi compatriot, Mephalas was thankful at who had been chosen. Khivas had saved Mephalas back on Rishi with another Jedi…Rakkir? Mephalas believed that had been the other Jedi’s name. Still, he was a Jedi and Mephalas couldn’t resist glancing over at him every few seconds out of habit.

The Jedi, however, seemed far more fixated on the light used to indicate the beginning of the operation, and rarely, if not at all, even paid Mephalas any attention. This was fine as far as he was concerned, of course, and he decided to spend the next few minutes going over the briefing they’d been given. There was a supply depot woefully ill-equipped and rather unmanned that was scheduled to receive a shipment of supplies and refitted.

As if reading his thoughts, the pilot told them that there were thirty seconds left, and that they had ten minutes to get in, complete the objective and get back to the rendezvous point. ‘Ten minutes should be more than enough time.’

The light turned green and Khivas leapt out of the door, landing with a thump on the station below, right as blaster fire resounded. Before he could jump, the bombs went off signaling their distraction. He shook his head as he jumped, landed and rolled when he hit the ground. He gripped the blaster they’d given him, he wasn’t sure if he’d need it, but it definitely couldn’t hurt. He moved quickly and began to move forward with his Jedi ally. “Meph? Hm, I like it… Let’s get this shit going then! I’ve brought enough explosives for everyone!” And so behind Khivas he ran.

 

[Khivas]

Khivas and Mephalas were now both on the ground and fighting their way through the fierce ground resistance the enemy Stormtroopers provided. They were hellbent on stopping the Jedi's assault, but Khivas wasn't going to let up, not when so much would be riding on this.

Pressing forward to the target zone, the coordinates uploaded courtesy of the Rebellion and Khivas' HUD, he cut down trooper after trooper and when he came across a group behind shields or barricades, Khivas would dispatch them with a hefty Force Wave. "We're almost there, let's go." He said, moving forward.

After finally reaching the designated spot, Khivas turned to Mephalas and said "Alright, start lining up those tracks and the power nodes, can't promise you this'll be clear for much longer."

Just then, a chill went spiraling down Khivas spine, a cold, dark feeling spanning the entire room he occupied. The source of the chill made itself known when it appeared in the archway leading in from the north side; a humanoid Sith Lord, fully loaded with ancient Sith tattoos. "Meph, hurry the hell up."

 

[Mephisto]

The stormtroopers were opening fire, gun batteries roared to hit the overhead bombers and the bomb were going off everywhere shaking the ground around him. In many ways he would’ve thought it would’ve been hard going, but somehow Mephalas managed to maintain his cool, barely. He ducked behind a pillar for a second before blasting two of them quick as a flash, then watched his Jedi ally smash a group of them in with a powerful blast of force. Mephalas watched, admittedly with a great deal of amusement, as stormtroopers and barricades were launched off to another part of the planet.

But the wind was blowing even harder now and the blizzard was being whipped up into a greater frenzy, stormtroopers were suddenly obscured by the wind except for the occasional blaster shot. He opened fire whenever he heard the crunching of snow around them and, every now and then, Mephalas heard the shout of pain from a stormtrooper he’d hit. So far the operation was going fairly well, and only seemed to be going better

Khivas brought up his HUD in order to see the destination and came to a stop on the tracks. This was the place that Mephalas was going to have to set the charges on and so he put down his backpack, pulled out the charges, did a final system check on the charges, to make double certain that there would be no problems.

He was almost ready to start setting the charges when suddenly he felt cold, and not the normal blizzard cold that he’d been feeling. This cold shook him all the way down to his soul, and he knew the feeling immediately. He didn’t even NEED Khivas’s warning to start working faster. The moment he’d felt it he immediately started clamping setting the charges and clamping them onto the track. He’d have to hurry with this. Sith were nothing to screw with and he certainly wasn’t in the self-destructive habit…specially not after his brother.
“I just need a few seconds!” Mephalas said as he finished clamping down the third charge. “Hold him for that long and we can get the hell outta here!

 

[Khivas]

"Right, a few seconds." Khivas said when he eyed the now very angry Sith drawing their lightsaber....Lightsabers, they had two of them, oh joy. "A few seconds indeed." He said, raising his own lightsaber and preparing to fight the enemy Sith head on. In the back of Khivas' mind, a "few seconds" meant more like a few minutes, and a few minutes would feel more like a year or so, but nonetheless, Khivas was prepared to hold off the Sith in this battle.

Since the enemy had two sabers, being the first to attack via a melee strike would be unwise, so Khivas instead fought this cloaked Sith with caution and reserve. This meant he would toy with him like a rotten bastard to keep him off of Meph instead of outright charging in, with the first move being to deploy an ion charge, chucking it right at the Sith as they ran at Khivas, followed by a blast from his scatterblaster. The assault was effective too; the ion charge blew up right in the Sith's face, forcing them to slow down and stop their advanced, and the following blast of bolts ripped into the body of the enemy, lighting them on fire as they took a knee and fell to the ground. "Well that was easy. Ah damn it..." Khivas said, knowing all too well Sith just don't fall in battle like that, and sure as a sun gives light, this Sith got right back up and ripped the cloak away from itself, revealing the feminine figure underneath.

Granted, this was anything but attractive, as the body had to be have been more machine than it was man, the cybernetics embedded in this frame was something else entirely, and Khivas could see why the being took the blasts of energy from his gun like a champ, almost as if nothing had happened. Readying his stance for a fight he knew was going to be hard, Khivas yelled back over his shoulder for Meph to hurry the hell up, because their time limit just got cut short.

 

[Mephisto]

He was sooo close, so damn close to a Sith…and it did frighten him, but mostly it was pissing him off. These Sith were a poison on the galaxy. Sure the Jedi weren’t much better, as far as he and his family were concerned, but he felt a lot safer with one on his side than being on the Sith’s. After all it was certainly better to NOT be getting shot, slashed or blown up by something. Six charges were down now and there were still four to go.

Mephalas heard Khivas shouting at him to hurry the living hell up. The blaster was still strapped to his back and his slugthrower pistol to his belt, yet he felt no safer with the blaster. They were slow moving, compared to his little pistol and more importantly he couldn’t control the blaster bolts. That was why he’d insisted on keeping his other pistol. This armor wasn’t doing him any favors either.

“I swear to the Force,” he muttered clamping down the eighth charge, “if we make it out of this alive I’m going to look into making some SERIOUS modifications to this thing. I’m not used to the bulky feeling!” Then, running another few feet forwards, Mephalas clamped down the final charge.

He brought up the communication channel. “Transport we need an evac ASAP!”

There was a few seconds of silence and then, “You’re gonna need to give us a few seconds here, we’ve got-!”

“That is a big negative! Get down here and evac NOW!! We’ve got a nice Sith problem on our hands that we’d like to be away from immediately!!”

More radio silence and then, “Give us half a second and we’ll be right there!” Mephalas pulled out his slugthrower, and began reaching back for something on his belt.

“You’re not gonna like this Khivas!” he said over communications, “but we’ve still got a bit till our transport gets here. What do you think our chances are?”

 

[Khivas]

She was fast, and nimble, and if those cybernetic enhancements had anything to say about it, she was strong as well. Khivas actually had a hard time defending against this Sith Cyborg. Oh and yes, it was indeed a female, the closer inspection coming as the enemy rushed Khivas with her dual weapons, forcing him to go on the defensive as he deflected and parried her attacks, side stepping and weaving, even flipping to avoid her attacks, especially one that ended up crushing the very ground they stood on, leaving a broken crater of concrete and durasteel in it's wake.

"Hot damn..." Khivas said to himself, stressing his body as he evaded her attacks, waiting for Mephalas to hurry the hell up and finish the job. To buy them some time, Khivas reached for a couple of stun grenades and let them out, leaving them where his body once was as he dashed backwards and let his opponent rush headlong into the detonations, effectively slowing her down for the moment, and giving Khivas that crucial moment to take a breather.

It was then that Mephalas delivered the bad news about their transport being delayed, and how he would have to hold out a little while longer before the cavalry arrived to pull their asses from the fire they dropped them off in. "Shit, seriously?!" Khivas yelled out, very displeased to hear the news that he would be forced to continue entertaining his hostess for a few more minutes. Mind you, a few minutes in the middle of a hot ass warzone such as this one is never "just a few minutes" and could feel like an hour, a day, a week for each minute that passes as the mark for whatever you need gets closer, and this one would be no different. Originally their transport would have arrived in three more minutes, but thanks to their delay, it was closer to the five minute mark, for as we all know, in Pilot's Talk a "half a second" means whatever the hell they want as long as it's around two minutes.

"Oh the Rebels are so going to hear about this crock of shit." Khivas said to himself as he delivered a massive Force Push to his opponent when she tried to rush him again, the cyborg quickly recovering from the attack, and as she rose back up, placed both her lightsabers together at the hilt to form a saberstaff.

With a deep breath, Khivas focused on himself and called the Force to his aid, letting go of his own being and embracing instead the Force, feeling it fill his body with strength and power in abundance. This time when the Sith charged him, she would be met not with the same Knight as before who struggled to keep her at bay, but instead a new type of monster, one that could match her speed and power blow for blow, even surpassing her.

Khivas now fought with the very valor of the Force itself, enhancing his strength and speed, and as the Sith did the same, the only thing any onlooker could see was a blur of red, green, silver, and black clashing with itself as Khivas and the nameless Sith Cyborg did battle.

 

[Mephisto]

Khivas was locked deep in saber combat with the Sith cyborg…woman…thing. Mephalas knew he’d have to find some way to help Khvias but how? There was no way that he’d be able to take on a Sith, much less help in a saber duel! He looked around a few times, trying to find the best way to help Khivas, but the only thing that he could find were the magnetic railway controls in the railway controls post. But the moment he walked in there was an Imperium trooper standing right in front of him. Who pulled out a blaster and had a knife of some kind attached to his hip.
“Stop and surrender rebel scum!” the man shouted as he walked in and Mephalas raised his hands not even bothering to reach for a blaster. “Smart. Maybe if you’re lucky then-” But the man stopped as the moment that his blaster suddenly flew from his hands and into Mephalas’s hand.
“Sorry about this,” Mephalas said as he pulled the trigger and shot the officer in the head. “I don’t really want to do this, but it’s nothing personal. It’s just war.” He pulled the knife from the officer’s pocket. It was a foot long and had an odd oscillating appearance. “A vibroblade? Hmmm…” He raced back outside to see the jedi and sith still locked in deadly lightsaber combat.
Suddenly his chatset came alive with shouting from the pilot: “Ok! You want a pickup?! We’ve got ya covered and ready! I’m a minute away!”

“Took ya long enough!” Mephalas shouted back. We’re all ready on our end but Khivas is fighting a Sith right now.”

“What?! What is a Sith doing deployed on such a small outpost?!” the pilot shouted frantically. The reputation of the Sith Imperium was well understood and their agents quite feared.

Mephalas shrugged. “How in the hell would I know? All we need is you down here to pick us up about ten minutes ago!!”

There was a nervous, “Right!” sounding yelp that came from the pilot and after another second heard the engines roaring overhead.
Getting back onto his headset he said, “I really hate to interrupt your date, Mr. Jedi, as you two seem VERY into each other, but our ride is here so if you’d like to hurry up so we can get out of here!!”

 

[Khivas]

Like flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, Khivas traded blow for wretched blow with his enemy, the Sith Assassin proving very capable of unleashing a vivid onslaught of death, and Khivas being just as capable at repelling it and returning in kind. Back and forth they went, fighting for what felt like hours, days, but had only been mere moments, and if there were onlookers watching, ones that knew of Khivas' abilities with the art of war and combat, they would be wondering what kind of monster the Sith was, as most that knew Khivas knew him as a monster in his own right, a beast not to be trifled with, yet here she was still alive and on her feet.

Was she truly that able-bodied against the Knight, or was it something else.

"And done."

It was the something else.

Khivas had prolonged the battle, knowing full well that while reinforcements would arrive shortly, they would still be held back by the fact that a Sith was fighting, and Stormtroopers had a bad habit of not interfering with their battles. More so, he still had to wait for his ride, so ending the fight so soon would only mean he'd get overrun by the battalion of troopers closing in, thus he prolonged it, remaining the defensive the whole time, laying traps in his wake. For every flip, somersault, and cartwheel Khivas did, a single bomb of minuscule size was left where his hand had pressed, and for every time a bomb had run out, his mind wandered just enough to freeze the surface where he had traversed, to slowly encrust his opponent's armor in frost and ice.

And as anybody who knows armor would know, encroaching frost on one's armor would compromise it if it wasn't properly treated for it, and even then it would not promise safety, and as the Rebel shuttle arrived to extract Khivas and Mephalas, it was now time for Khivas to find out if his ploy against the Sith would work, if this would be the clutch play.

"Sorry sweetie, but it's time to end the game." The Knight said, activating the detonators on the charges he had planted, each one laid about in a ring around his enemy, his trap perfectly laid. As the explosions went off around her, the sudden heat and force rammed into the Assassin, taking her by surprise as he did all she could to fall back and defend herself, but found it was to no avail. The armor she wore cracked and broke, failing to protect her anymore as the shrapnel tore into her body, ripping apart her cybernetic packages and leaving her immobile. "Alright Meph, get on the shuttle, I'm right behind you!" Khivas called out, ushering the Rebel Engineer to hightail it the hell out of here.

As Khivas motioned to follow behind him, the Sith finally called out to him, her voice thick and strained, full of disdain for the victor of her duel. "Wait, take me with you. Jedi save people right? Isn't that your big weakness, Jedi?"

Looking back at her, Khivas paused only for a second, and lifted his helmet up and back, letting the cold air touch his skin once again. With a dead serious face, Khivas had his eyes meet with hi enemy's, and in a cold, calm voice, simply said to her "As a Jedi I do save people. But as a living being, I still have a choice, and I do not have to save you.", And proceeded to board the shuttle to leave.

The words shook the Sith to her very core, and in a rush of anger, rush of hate, rage, she managed to surge her body with such Darkside energy that she stood up, and in one final spree lunged for Khivas, her clawlike hands reaching for his throat, but she would find herself falling short of her goal. Khivas was no weakling, and he knew his words would provoke her, and with a wave of his arm, a mighty wave of the Force came crashing out of him and rammed her right onto the tracks where the bombs lay, and as Khivas gave the go ahead to Mephalas to detonate the charges, he knew that now was the flashpoint of events.

All around the galaxy, operations big and small, ones just like this one here were taking place. The explosions rocked the supply depot just as the train was coming in, and together created a massive chain reaction, causing the buildings of the area to falter and crumble like dominoes.

Just like how each domino fell for the Sith now.

This was it, now the tables had begun to finally turn against the Darkness.

And Khivas would be there for every moment of it, up until the very end.


/thread. @Mephisto