By My Side

Chapter 24 - Gunray

"I'd like to see you try," Anakin shoots back and lunges at him. Grievous splits his arms in half, reaching for his other two lightsabers as he fends off Anakin with the two hands he's currently using.

His blows are hard, and they'd be enough to send any normal person stumbling back. Anakin isn't normal, though. He's a Jedi – not really but – the Force is his ally, and it holds him firm.

He gives ground when he has to, but Anakin presses the attack as much as he can. If the clones weren't so busy fighting for their lives, he's certain they'd just be watching, awed, at the whirling blur of blue and green lightsabers.

Mostly, Anakin just circles around him, only using the distance when Grievous shoves him away to regain momentum. Staying constantly on the move always helps with that.

Except Grievous is all metal, and much taller than Anakin and twice his strength, and even if Anakin's right wrist can significantly withstand it, the rest of him can't.

The one benefit of having a mechanical arm is that his hand, at least, can never get sore. It can't get worn out the way human limbs so easily do.

He doesn't give ground, letting the Force flow through him and fuel him. Grievous must be stopped, and no matter what reasoning Palpatine and Dooku have for what they've been doing, even if they truly are doing this for the greater good, Grievous is not. He's blinded by vengeance and sheer insanity, and something so deeply dark screams of wrongness in the Force.

A wrongness that Anakin – even if he's not half-Force, he really doesn't know anymore – feels the instinctive urge to clean out and be rid of it.

He doesn't know much about Grievous. All he does know is from the Force, from what he can feel, and that says everything he needs to know. The cyborg has lost everything – his planet, his home, his family, his body, his mind. To kill him would be a mercy to him. Moreso, it would be a mercy to the innocents he's massacring, and it would be Justice to those lives he has already taken.

To the many dead bodies scattered at Anakin's feet even as he fights, all his boys. The ones he was entrusted to protect.

It takes a lot of jumping and dodging to avoid the flailing lightsabers. Anakin suspects Dooku not training Grievous in any particular form was intentional – it makes it deadlier and harder to locate his weaknesses if he's random.

But his weaknesses are quite apparent – the bits of organic matter left inside his mostly metal body.

Which means, yes, delimbing him first.

Ahsoka doesn't like that. She wouldn't want him to do that.

He doesn't want to do that, but they're mechanical anyway, so what could it hurt? He did it before. It's another need-to-do thing.

No questions.

The clones have dealt with the droids in the area, though, and of course, they're moving to help Anakin. As if he needs help.

He senses their weapons rising, and Rex is the first to fire. It gets his attention, and Grievous steps back, snarling again. It's not until now that he obviously realizes he's vastly outnumbered.

"Hold your fire," Anakin calls to them, anyway. If they attack, Grievous will use their shots to kill them.

The cyborg predictably uses the moment to take off anyway, after shoving Anakin back several feet. He's heading deeper inside the ship, closer to where Gunray is, likely intent on finding him.

Rex being Rex starts shooting again anyway. All his brothers are, actually.

He's not getting distracted to pay them attention, though, instead, running towards them.