The Chosen One: A Reylo Story

Chapter 9: The Fire

To the right again. She cuts off the hand of an attacker just in front of her, another to the side of her.

She leaps over the head of another oncoming attacker, positioning herself in the center of the men left standing. Her lightsaber spins all around her— below, overhead. She disarms swiftly and methodically. She Force-slams a cadre of attackers back. She casts another over the barricaded rails.

A couple more run away, racing along the circular curve of the deck. One left standing. He looks scared and desperate but points his blaster towards her anyway. Before he can pull the trigger, Rey holds out her arm, palm extended, and releases a flash of white light that bursts out all around her. The slaver screams and falls to his knees, covering his eyes, yelling in the local language, "I'm blind! I'm blind!"

A few slavers on the ground around her reach out for a weapon with their remaining limb. In one motion of her outstretched hand, she lifts all of the blasters on the deck a few feet off the ground, then clenches her fist and disables them. The slavers who can still see look up at her with wide eyes.

She turns around and brings her comm to her lips. "Jor, what's your status? Is the bomb disabled?"

No response. Several seconds pass.

"Rey..." Jor's voice comes in distorted at first. "Rey... affirmative. The bomb is disabled." She hears someone cheer in the background. She lets out a big exhale.

"Hey Rey," Jor continues on the other end of the comm.

"Yeah."

"I'm really glad that you're on our side."

Rey looks down and smiles. "That makes two of us." She looks down at the slavers on the ground around her. "What do you want me to do with the hostiles?"

"We've got reinforcements from the Free army coming in ten minutes," he answers. "I'm sending Hala and Rose up. When they get there, come down here and see me, ok?"

"Got it," Rey replies. She lets out another big exhale and stretches her shoulders down and back. It's been a crazy two weeks.

It's been an incredible two weeks. General Leia was right. The tides have turned in this war. Though not in the way many expected.

As it turns out, Rey had arrived in Cantonica just in time for the slave rebellion. At that point, it felt like an inevitable judgement upon the luxurious but cruel leisure industry on the planet. What did not feel inevitable... what no one expected... was how swiftly and how far the flames of rebellion would spread.

Slavery was illegal under the New Republic, though it persisted in some Outer Rim territories like Cantonica. When the First Order began to rise, the old Empire slave traders sensed a change... this new power wasn't interested in enforcing laws against slavery in the systems under its control. Oh how quickly and easily the slave trades on these planets reemerged...

Rey bets the First Order regrets its decision to turn a blind eye to the slave trade now.

Once news of the slave rebellion on Cantonica got out, the dominoes began to fall. Other rebellions cropped up like wildfire across slave trading planets in the Outer Rim. It quickly spread to more populated systems like Dressellian and Xan. Then the unthinkable... it reached the Core Worlds. Hosnian. Kuat. Coruscant. All of these systems have witnessed slave rebellions of some kind, some larger than others.

This whole mess has thrown a big wrench in the First Order's efforts to solidify its control of the galaxy. And as if the chaos of the slave rebellions wasn't enough to handle by itself, it turns out these former slaves have inspired another kind of rebellion as well...