Out of the Frying Pan

[Jiang Winters]

"I'm not so sure that's wise. If it turns out that I'm... Not as nice as I'd like to think I am, then I'd like to find that out by myself, so that I can deal with that in my own way."

Del stepped into the elevator, waited for Christian to board the lift, then pressed the appropriate button for the corporate hangar. It'd take a good little bit for the lift to reach it - plenty of time to talk.

"I don't mean to sound like I'm disinterested. If it could help me remember, I'd love to do it, it's just... I had a vision when that machine hit me. Or, maybe it was more like a broken memory. A fragment, if you will. All I saw in it was pain. I'm really not sure if I actually want to remember if that's all there is in my past. Maybe I'm happier not knowing. I just don't know."

 

[Matt]

''I believe a fellow much cleverer and better looking then myself once said ''Knowing ones self is the only journey to true happiness'' so whatever you think is best then that is fine by me but do make sure you stay in contact, I have a horrible feeling that trouble may indeed follow you wherever you go''

The lift hummed loudly as it made it's way up to the hanger and Christian had a very moorbid thought that made him chuckle.

''Though this all could be for nothing and a hundred guards could be at the top of the lift waiting to shoot us all right between the eyes! That would be a terrible ending to our novel''

 

[Jiang Winters]

"Another fellow said, 'It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.'" Del noted. "I will stay in touch though, and I probably won't be gone long. I hope for the best, but... Hope's not exactly concrete enough to bet the lives of others on, is it?"

He was genuinely worried that he might snap and hurt someone; that he might lose control of his implants and then that'd be the end of it. He'd turn into a clawed beast and just tear into whatever poor soul was closest, and then the next fellow after that, and the next, and the next, and so on and so forth until it was over.

He laughed bitterly as Christian pointed out a potential downside to the use of the lift. "Y'know what, I think I saw that in a movie once. Some dingbat went charging down a hall after a bad guy, then ran into a room of a few hundred bad guys and ended up running the other way, screaming like a little girl."

The feline blinked in surprise. "Hey, I'm starting to remember movies now!" he said, his tail flicking back and forth rapidly as if wagging.

And then the doors opened, and Christian's fears were proven. Standing right outside the elevator doors were no less than a dozen guards, blaster pistols trained on the occupants. Six men knelt, the other six stood behind their comrades, forming a veritable wall of firepower. They held off, though, as their commanding officer stood to the side, slowly clapping and beginning a long and very boring-sounding monologue in some dialect that Delun didn't quite understand. He did, however, understand that it was a monologue, instantly making the officer a cliche'd villain who deserved instant, uncompromising death.

"Right then," Del whispered, "Any ideas on how to get out of this one?"

 

[Matt]

''Well would you listen to us eh Delun, we sound like the very highest aristocrats on Coruscant with all these quotes from very clever people!''

Christian smiled as Delun recalled his memory ever so slowly coming back and this was a most pleasing development. It would take a long time for his memories to come back and it would most certainly be hard but Delun clearly had a steel to him that would help him.

Christian continued to smile as the doors opened that quickly dropped as guards were everywhere and they looked capable, Christian would not resort to killing anyone unless they left him no choice so he put his hands up...And walked towards the guard who was gibbering away in some strange language,

''Sorry Delun, we will get out of this''

 

[Jiang Winters]

"No you vill not," the guard officer replied curtly, as he leveled his pistol on the advancing Christian. "Hold vight zere, I vill not permit you to take vun more step! Guardzmen - seize that Kushari! Take him alive - he iz invaluable."

"Yes, milord!" the guardsmen chorused. The standing men turned their attention to Christian and began to form a semi-circle with their officer at the center, a ring of rifles focused directly on Christian. The other six advanced on the elevator as one, marching with military precision. These men were no regular guards - they were professional mercenaries, or worse, dissidents.

Del backed up against the elevator wall as they advanced. There was no way out - the elevator walls didn't offer any cover, he couldn't get to the access hatch in the roof, the floor was too sturdy to kick out and even if he could he'd just fall to his death. He couldn't run pass them, he couldn't try to seal the elevator doors; it was it. He was doomed.

"Here kitty kitty!" the guardsman sergeant mock-purred, making a come hither motion with his left hand. "I promise I von't hurt you, ja? Just come out, like goot little kitty and maybe I von't beat you this time, hah!"

Del panicked. He spread his hands, palms flush against the wall behind him and arms bent, ready to shove himself off the wall. He curled his torso forward and bent his knees slightly, lips pulling back in a dangerous snarl.

The memories came back, just as vivid as before. The same cutting, the same tearing. The machines driving into his flesh, the drugs pumping into his system. He could hear the whirr of drills and the shrill cry of saws and the song of scalpels slicing through muscle. And then the pain; the biting, agonizing pain. The doctors and droids working over him blurred, becoming the same guards facing him down. The fur on the back of his neck and arms raised and he began to growl. Adrenaline flooded his system, his artificial eyes dilated in response, a fierce blue glow wholly replacing what had once been an otherwise normal-looking eye.

The guard took a step back. "Uh... Commandant? Iz this..."

It was the commandant's turn to panic. "His combat programming iz taking over! Kill him; quickly, you fools!" he cried. It was, simply put, too late.

Less than twenty seconds after Christian had departed the elevator, Delun came flying out to join him. Instinctively using the Force to augment his already unnatural speed, the feline became a blur to the untrained eye; he merely rushed through the first pair of guards, clotheslining both with his forearms. He was not so kind to the third man. The fellow raised his rifle; Delun saw and began moving to evade before the trigger was even pulled. The bolt sizzled past Del's shoulder, leaving the tiger, unfazed, to end the latest threat. An uppercut to the jaw lifted the poor man a good half-meter into the air and shattered his jawbone, while a follow-up haymaker to his chest send him flying backwards into one of his partners, bowling him over.

It was game on; though Christian had wanted to do things differently, Delun was frightened, acting purely on instinct and long-forgotten training. To him, it was kill or be killed; it was only by pure miracle that he had not yet caused fatal damage to a guard, though that could well change at the drop of a hat.

 

[Matt]

''Oh well!''

The guardsman looked away for only a second before he was on him using the force to augment his abilities, the distance was gone in a flash as a quick one two combination to the guardsman head ended his consciousness but before he was down he moved on to the next guardsman using a force push to throw the man against the wall, his head bounced off the wall knocking him out.

''Delun, calm down!''

Christian activated his lightsaber hoping the presence of it would calm the situation down before Delun lost control completely.

 

[Jiang Winters]

The lightsaber was beyond Delun's notice; Christian's voice fell on deaf ears. The feline's focus was on the remaining two guards near him. Big men, sturdily built, well armed and well equipped; professional soldiers with years of training.

They never stood a chance.

Without an infuriated roar or shout, without so much as a growl, Delun rushed the next man. The soldier shouted an order to retreat and began backpedaling, firing off one aimed shot after another at Delun. It wasn't enough; the feline was too fast, and firing while backpedaling too inaccurate. The feline fell upon him just as he had done the others. He seized the barrel of his rifle in one hand and the carry handle by the other and efficiently yanked it out of the soldier's grasp, then rammed the butt into his face, all in under a second. The soldier toppled over, out like a light. The feline reversed the rifle and tucked the stock into his shoulder; the rifle was small in his arms, but it'd suffice.

The second soldier had broke and was running; Del shot him square in the back. Two lances of blue-white energy struck the man. Energy rippled out from the impacts, dropping him instantly.

The feline spun around. There had been six guardsmen near Christian and one Officer; Del only counted four and the Officer. Easy pickings.

He shouldered his rifle and fired. Again and again; lance after lance of energy ripped into men, knocking them off their feet as they tried in vain to return fire. They dropped where they stood; some crumpled into heaps, some were flung head over heels, most simply collapsed. In any case, they were all on the ground in a matter of seconds. If there was any doubt that Delun had been a soldier in a past life, that doubt was now gone for good.

Del looked down at his rifle, chest still heaving as he was still riding an adrenaline rush. He'd just shot gods knew how many men. He remembered firing twelve shots; two in the first man, two in the officer, and then two in four more guards. Six guards. Twelve shots. Double-tap to the chest; quick and clean.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and forced his stance to relax, though his eyes were still wide, still searching for targets. The feline before Christian wasn't the gentle giant he'd known for hours; it was a shadow of a different man, that soldier he'd been untold years ago. He threw away the rifle after a moment and brushed his hands off on his pants - the rifle had been set to stun. The men weren't dead, merely unconscious.

The cat looked back to Christian and finally saw the glow of his lightsaber. He blinked once in surprise, then, finally, snapped out of it. He stumbled for a moment and very nearly fell to his hands and knees, but he caught himself. "So... What just happened?" he asked, seemingly oblivious to what he'd just done. "The last thing I remember was... Just blanking out. Now there's... Oh gods, are these guys dead? They don't look dead... Christian, what the hell happened!?"

 

[Matt]

''You happened! You completely lost control Delun and it was not a pretty sight. These men did not deserve to die Delun!''

Christian stood there and deactivated his lightsaber putting it back onto his belt, he shook his head as he looked around at the carnage round him, he so did loath unnecessary bloodshed and this was entirely unneeded.

''What are we going to do with you Delun?''

He said this almost angrily because the situation had changed, he could not in god conscious and as a jedi let a man as powerful as Delun out on the galaxy if he had so little control.

 

[Jiang Winters]

"I did this?" Del repeated, tail curled e'er so slightly at the tip. He gingerly stepped around one of the fallen guards and knelt beside him, checking his pulse. "Whatever I did must not have killed them."

The feline stood again and turned back to Christian. He softly bit his lower lip, mused for a moment, then gave up in his search for soothing words and hitched his shoulders helplessly. "I don't know what you think is appropriate for me, but I know I can't stay here. Somebody here turned me into a monster, and they want me back so they can cut on me again. I spent I don't know how long in captivity, locked away in a freezer - I'm not going to go back. Not when I have a chance to escape."

He backpedaled as he spoke, putting a little more comfortable distance between himself and Christian and bringing him closer to the main hangar, where his ticket out waited on a landing pad. He shed his gun belt, throwing it away along with all the weapons he'd collected. "I'm gonna leave now, Christian. Don't know where I'll head. Don't even know if I'll make it there alive. But the sooner I put myself in space, where I can think about what happened, about what's going on in here," he paused to tap the side of his noggin, "the better. I've put a lot of trust in you Christian, when everyone else has tried to backstab me, shoot me, or jab me with mechanical collar needle things - now I need you to do the same for me. Can you do that for me?"

 

[Matt]

Christian edged towards Delun but knew there was nothing he could do short of killing Delun and that was not something he wanted to do. In life there were times when he would simply have to trust his feline friend not to turn into a homicidal nutter.

Christian continued to edge forward until he suddenly tripped over, he fell down very theatrically holding his head.

''My eyes! My eyes! Damn you cruel world for I was about to vanquish this horrible rouge but now what shall I do! I cannot see the man who could leave! Damn you force!''

 

[Jiang Winters]

Delun smiled and slowly shook his head. He knew what Christian was doing, albeit with highly unnecessary [but undeniably amusing] theatrics. The feline turned and raced for the ship; a massive, ugly thing with six tremendous arms on its belly and an array of torches and cutters, it was very obviously a salvage ship that had been converted into a research vessel. He climbed in through the stern hatch and buttoned it down, then made his way for the cockpit.

The ship's AI sprang to life the moment he settled into the seat, which was far too small for him. "Hello sir, my name is Dex. I am the artificial intelligence unit of this research vessel. I see you are attempting to take off."

"That's the plan," Del replied nonchalantly. He powered up the ship's twin reactors and brought its engines online; the repulsorlifts that had been keeping the ship aloft picked up extra power and it hovered higher in the Hangar, then nosed forward towards the doors.

"You do realize, sir, that the doors must be opened from inside the hangar and have no remote control circuitry."

Del nodded. "Yup. Might want to hold on to your server. We don't exactly have the time to open 'em up the nice way."

"Oh dear."

The ship eased closer to the doors, then Delun took the ship's VR controls - a pair of heavy motion-capture gauntlets with force feedback - and used them to control the forward pair of shipbreaker arms. He seized the doors and pried them open without terrible difficulty. They were designed to do little more than keep out the rain and wind; actually stopping a ship wasn't in their design parameters.

With the doors jammed out of his way, Del released the VR controls and took the stick again. He eased the vessel out of the Hangar, and then he was off; hurtling towards the stars. He'd have to pick up a registry later. For now, he was getting off Metellos and putting himself in deep space. But first, there was something he wanted to do.

He dug out the comms Christian had given him and activated it. "I don't know if you can still hear me, Christian, but... Thank you. For everything."

He shut off the comms and tossed it into the co-pilot's seat perched behind and above his. He was free at last - he still had questions to be answered, yes, but for the moment he was safe and that was all that mattered.

 

[Matt]

Christian dusted himself off as he got back to his feet, he truly believed that the Coruscant actors guild had lost one of there brightest stars the day he left, the sheer drama he conveyed in his little piece!

Christian looked up at the ship and smiled to himself as it began to get further and further from the hospital. He hoped that Delun would find a measure of peace and sanity in this galaxy and it warmed his heart to hear the thanks from Delun over the communicator.

''Was no problem whatsoever my dear friend, do stay in contact and let me know if any horrible rouges come after you''

Christian continued to stare up into the sky as the ship became a tiny dot and finally...It was gone form his sight.

''Hang on a moment, how the bloody hell am I supposed to get out of this hospital!?'