Ichara proves her loyalty to Hux, Kylo gets put on the spot about Rey, and Hux just generally enjoys giving people a bad time.
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A collective sigh of relief was heard across the Resistance bridge when Hux & Ichara reappeared into view.
Rey's eyes locked back onto the black robed figure beside the General. "I can feel her!" everyone was silent, their attention fixed on Rey. "She's worried."
Leia tapped the comm, "If you're in position, do it now, we don't have time to wait."
-
Hux frowned, his hand moving to hover over his blaster. "What do you mean?"
"The guards at the doors, they're gone... and something... I don't know I just feel it. Stay with me, I'm going to skim the room." She closed her eyes, their thoughts the same typical greed and manipulation. Suddenly, something different emerged at the edge of her consciousness-she could see herself and the General through someone else's eyes. Someone above them, adjusting the sight on a rifle.
Ichara shrugged her heavy robe off and grabbed her saber in one fluid motion, spinning to the right to deflect a blaster bolt. Guests screamed and fell to the floor, their own personal security details rushing to cover them. She clawed out her hand and ripped a plainclothes fighter from the balcony, landing in a heap on the floor. More popped up on the other two balconies, one of them skimming Hux's shoulder with a bolt, burning him through his coat. She snarled like an animal as she yanked the man from the balcony, forcibly smashing him onto the tile below. More came to the railings, and she deflected the bolts back the best she could, using her left hand to force others to the side.
-
"She's amazing" Rey whispered, mesmerized by the fire fight. It was in poor taste, but Rey was excited to see another force user- after all, she hadn't met many. She was lowered into her fighting stance, saber a crimson blur as it returned fire. She couldn't make out the woman's face before the camera feed was cut by one of Hux's shots taking the soldier out. The feed worked long enough to show him tumbling over the edge, the sickening sound of bones crunching upon landing.
Poe wrapped his arm around Leia's shoulders as she put a hand to her mouth, staring down at the now blank projector screen.
"Hey, they're still going. We don't know that it's over yet."
The sounds of blaster fire mingled with screams still played over the speakers.
-
Hux pulled his blaster and was firing over her left shoulder, picking them off with expert precision despite his injury. The Baroness was shouting over a comm link and her own guards finally rushed into the room, unleashing a barrage up at the rebel fighters. As quickly as it started, it was done. She spun around and grabbed Hux, examining the burn on his shoulder.
"Stars, are you alright? Hold on." she held her hand over his wound to force heal it, but focus was difficult. She was trembling from the adrenaline rushing through her. Protecting Hux was different than the work she was accustomed to- she never had a personal affinity for any of her clients, and found herself slightly shaken.
He pulled back, irritated. "I'm fine. What in the hell was that?!"
"Ru had something to do with this. I'm going to kill her." The pair stalked over to the Baroness who was already rushing over to them as the remaining guests ran for the door.
"I'm so glad you're alright! I'm so-hck!" She choked her cousin and dragged her over to them with the force.
"You set this up. You knew this was going to happen!"
"I- I can explain! I thought- I thought they would bring the Jakku girl! It was a trap, f-for her! For Kylo Ren! I thought, if I brought her to him, he would help me!" She released her and Ruxinn fell to her knees, gasping. "It wasn't supposed to go like this, they weren't supposed to do anything if he wasn't here!"
Ichara crouched down in front of her kneeling cousin, "You are more of a self-absorbed idiot than I thought. That's not how Kylo Ren works. I toldyou I was handling it. I told you to wait."
In the commotion, one of the Resistance fighters had grabbed ahold of one of the long drapes and slid down, hiding behind the heavy swathes of fabric. He stepped out from behind the curtain and aimed his blaster at the General.
"We will not be intimidated by you!"
Ichara's eyes snapped up and she reflexively leapt upwards to cover him. There was a crackle as she fell to her knees and froze in place. Hux killed the fighter a flourish and looked down, horrified at the sight before him. Her hands were clawed around a glowing blaster bolt, the crackling beam embedded half way into her torso. With a guttural cry she forced it out of her and sent it flying off into a column before collapsing to the ground.
Refusing to trust the Baroness any further, Hux had her carried back to the ship, barking commands to have medical staff ready for their return. She was in a trance, hands clutching the oozing wound as she did her best to heal what she could. The Finalizer shot into orbit in a matter of seconds, looming ominously above in the night sky. Using what little effort she had left she fought against being put in the bacta tanks, so Hux had her placed in a private room at the back of the medical bay. Med droids scampered across her, removing singed flesh and placing carbon bandages like they were spinning a web across the hole in her stomach.
After having his own wounds treated he had a clean uniform brought to the medical bay rather than leaving. He remained by her side, feelings of guilt swirled amongst the anger and frustration. Given her history of sedative abuse she was devastatingly resistant to the effect of painkillers, as evidenced by the staccato of gasps throughout the procedure. In her semi-lucid state she held her hand out weakly, searching for his. He stood beside her stoically as she dug her nails into the palm of his glove, rubbing her thumb against his knuckles as if she needed constant reassurance he was there.
The hour was late, and Hux accidentally fell asleep in the chair by her bed, fallen asleep on folded arms beside her.
"Leave us."
Hux jumped awake to see Kylo's frame darkening the doorway. He waited outside the room, rubbing the crick in his neck, wishing it was Kylo in that bed with a hole burned in him instead. He pondered how easy it would be to override a droid to administer a lethal dose of sedative. Fate seemed to always pluck his archenemy just out of harm's way- this would have been the closest he'd have been to death since the incident on Starkiller.
Well, and my foolish hesitation in the throne room.
Kylo held his hand over the middle of her, attempting to try and force heal but doing poorly. She arched her back with a ragged gasp, as if a hook had grabbed her sternum and yanked her towards the ceiling, before falling back onto the bed, awake. She stared up wild eyed, panting from the pain.
"Good. You're awake." He reached up to run gloved finger tips down her jaw line, slowly moving her face to look at him. "I am so disappointed in you."
"Th-that's not fair" the words were barely a whisper "They... both of us... I lived..."
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
"If life was fair, where would we be? I expected more from you than this. We will discuss it later." He left without saying anything more. Hux hadn't gone, and Kylo stopped when he saw him, running his eyes along the bandage peeking over the collar of his uniform. "The vulnerability you bothdisplayed embarrassed the First Order today."
Hux ground his teeth, and though he knew the argument was not one he would win, he couldn't help himself.
"The only embarrassment we suffered was that you were too afraid to make an appearance, leaving Ichara and I to fend for an assassination attempt meant for the both of you. You should be grateful the two of us are even here!" he shouted, deciding it was worth being thrown across the room to make his point.
Kylo stared at him for a moment, but rather than lashing out he turned and left in silence, leaving Hux to be angry by himself.
He returned to the room to see her awake, shifting uncomfortably while staring up at the ceiling and muttering.
"Ichara, you're going to be fine. You did wonderfully last night."
"Armitage..." her hand moved up to grab his forearm as if she were making a smuggler's deal. "I am going to kill him. I told you I would, and I'm going to, I promise."
He laughed softly, "I appreciate the sentiment, I too-" His sentence was interrupted as she rolled to her side and cried out in pain, propping herself up to manage bursts of words between panting.
"This is... going to sound... strange... I need... Bring me a prisoner." she stared into the palm of her hand as she slowly clenched it into a fist "I need to try something. Please. Trust me."
He wasn't too sure how much he could trust her in her current state, but he had a captured resistance fighter brought to the bay. When he returned to the room there was fresh blood on the blankets. She'd taken the carbon bandages and yanked them out, laying in bloody ribbons on the floor.
Before he could say anything she snaked out her hand and the prisoner shot towards her, right hand dug into his neck. He went rigid, and Hux could have sworn the air rippled around her like a heatwave. The prisoner twitched before he fell to the floor- dead.
She collapsed back onto the bed with a sigh. Her injury looked more like a deep laceration than a blaster wound, surrounded by scar tissue that would have taken weeks to form. "I-I can't do anymore. The force... I'm drained..." He stepped over the body to run his hand down her stomach.
"I've never seen the force do anything like this before."
"Well I'm not like anything you've seen before" she smiled as she drifted into sleep.
He summoned a trooper to discreetly dispose of the body, wanting to keep this from Kylo Ren. Though she was asleep, he still whispered to her before he left. "I'll take care of everything. We're in this together; you promised, beast."
Hux stalked down the halls, thrilled about the suffering he was about to bring down around him. The bloodlust writhed in his chest like a nest of adders; he almost felt high. Not even the Supreme Leader would be safe from his wrath.
-
After checking on her guests and sending out groveling apologies, the Baroness had retreated to the back office in her place of business; moreso to hide after the catastrophe of the evening than work. She tapped her nails on the desk, digging the depths of her mind for a way to right this. She was fairly sure she could talk Ichara down, but seeing as Hux apparently took the news of her family well, he was likely off the table. It was common knowledge what a vicious man he was- something she had witnessed first hand- and she was more afraid of him at the moment than anything else.
Annoyed, she decided to take her anger out on those who had 'failed' her, flipping a vocoder switch to disguise her voice before angrily punching their code in.
"General Organa, we have a comm coming through from Canto Bight, it's our contact."
"Put them through, there may be some good news for us yet." It had been radio silence since the soldier had fallen from the balcony. No news had come planetside for them, and everyone hovered in the bridge, worried. The First Order would take time to craft a story before releasing any news, and whatever they did say about the goings on would be more propaganda than truth. It had been hours since the ambush and their still silence gave the Resistance hope that they suffered a heavy blow.
"Words cannot accurately express how completely mortified I am at the embarrassing display you put on tonight. If you had any idea who I was, andany idea what repercussions I could face for this, you would be sobbing for me right now."
Leia put a hand to her temple, closing her eyes as she sighed. "Well you promised us Kylo Ren- without him we may not even have entered this agreement, so don't consider yourself the only one let down. What happened this evening? We lost contact."
"It's a good thing he wasn't there! It would have been wholesale slaughter!" She paced around her office, gesticulating dramatically to the empty room. "His apprentice is half dead from a bolt to the stomach, General Hux took a hit to the shoulder and they still managed to kill them all. You have that force user girl, why didn't you send her? What chance did those men have? Were you trying to get me killed?" She had hesitated before calling her guards in to the ballroom, waiting for Rey to show... and was absolutely seething when it was clear she wasn't going to make an appearance.
"If she attended they would have known it was the Resistance. We're going to claim it was a vigilante force. You and I both know that getting banned from Cantonica would be a blow to our cause, and neither of us want that."
"You and your cause are not my problem right now! Not only could I likely be killed for this, but my informant aboard the ship is now in danger as well. You promised to kill them, but all you did was make them angry. I believe this relationship must come to an end." she huffed indignantly, holding out that they may yet offer her something useful in return.
"I would make it up to you personally if I could, but I don't know what to do. Your access to intelligence aboard the Finalizer could be helpful in the future, and I do hope that our allyship doesn't have to end here."
"I just want you to know, General Organa, that if I die, my blood is on your hands, not theirs." she slapped the button to cut off communications and screeched like a banshee as she threw her holopad across the room. It had been so long since one of her elaborate stratagems had failed that she'd forgotten what failure even felt like. Her cousin was incredibly guarded when it came to her handling of Kylo Ren, and Ruxinn wondered if her impatience with Ichara might be what cost her the senate seat. Little did she know it would cost her much more than that.
-
Kylo was simply furious. Furious that they'd been attacked, furious they'd been injured, and furious for looking weak. As far as he was concerned, the evening was a victory for the Rebels. It wasn't just the fury; there was a bit of sadness, too. Despite the years of separation and the death of his father, it still hurt that his mother actively plotted to kill him, though he had no reason to expect anything different. The sadness embittered itself into a rage that demanded to be satiated the only way he knew how- destruction.
He found himself in a control room on one of the lower decks, maiming everything in sight. When he was sufficiently exhausted he returned to his quarters, staring into the melted helmet of Darth Vader. Something didn't sit right with him- it was strange that Hux had stayed by her side. The two couldn't stand to be near each other, so his presence could only be explained by something of benefit to the General. He highly doubted the hateful man was suddenly touched by compassion. Perhaps something happened planetside he didn't want Kylo to know about, something he had to speak with Ichara about.
His brooding was interrupted by the buzz of his holopad- Hux requested his presence in his office. With no patience for games, he stormed through the corridors, flinging aside troopers who didn't move out of his way fast enough. He paused for a moment upon entering, taken aback by the amount of security inside the office. Hux had Phasma to his right, with a pair of elite guards on each side. The smugness radiating from the General was almost suffocating.
"I'll cut right to it. I need to ask you an important question, Supreme Leader. What is your relationship with the scavenger girl from Jakku?"
"Excuse me, General?" Kylo did the best to keep his face a mask. His heart dropped into his stomach at the question, but he was also enraged that Hux thought he could dare question him like this. His arm twitched as he held it back- choking him right now would not bode well for his case.
"Intelligence has informed me that the Resistance was alerted to our presence and granted access to the venue in order to trap her for you. Apparently as a "gift" Why would they think this? What interests do you have in her?"
"Sh-she killed Snoke, and she's strong with the force- taking that advantage from the rebels would be a crushing blow. What are you insinuating, General?"
His gaze was sharp, like a fox that had followed the blood of a wounded rabbit and finally cornered its prey. "I'm not insinuating anything, Ren, but for whatever reason people are convinced of your infatuation with the girl. This is unacceptable and, how did you say it in the medbay, ah, an 'embarrassment to the First Order'."
He lunged towards him but stopped abruptly as the guards shifted, Phasma blatantly moving both hands to her blaster. He slowly stepped to the edge of the desk to loom over him. Hux stared up, doing the best he could to control the smile on his face, hands clasped in front of him.
"How different this is from our last encounter here- isn't it, Ren." he drawled, voice just low enough for the two to hear it. Hux stood slowly, almost eye level with the seething creature before him.
"Different? No, you're doing what you have always done, Hux. Shifting the blame for your mistakes. You should be grateful that I consider the wound to your shoulder punishment enough for letting my apprentice fall in harm's way. Capturing the scavenger would cripple the Resistance- perhaps it is you who should shift your priorities. Have we forgotten who our enemies are?"
Hux straightened his back, arctic eyes sparkling with contempt. "No, Supreme Leader, I don't believe I have." he let his words hang in the air
Before continuing. "We have located the spy, and I personally will be retrieving them from Canto Bight."
"Good. If that is all, I have other matters to tend to."
Unable to resist one last jab, Hux called out to him as he left "Oh, and Ren- your apprentice jumped in front of me, saving my life- you can't fault me for that. I am incredibly grateful, though." Kylo clenched his fists, doing everything he could not to lash out as he left.
Phasma sighed in exasperation as soon as the doors closed. "Alright, everyone out. I need a moment with the General." the guards filed out to return to their post in the hallway. Once the doors closed Phasma removed her mask, thunking it on his desk.
"You know, I half way thought you got shot on purpose just to prove a point to me- I wouldn't put it past you. You're welcome for me rushing back as soon as I heard, by the way."
"Phasma, you know I'm grateful for you. All things considered though, everything has worked out quite favorably. Ichara and I have come to an... understanding"
"You finally apologized? About damn time. I told you that's all you had to do."
"It wasn't just that- she has promised to assist me with our military endeavors."
"Is that what you're calling it now?"
Hux blushed as he crossed his arms. "That response wasn't necessary. She has an axe to grind against General Organa, and may be the key to ridding ourselves of Kylo Ren."
"You know I hate him too, Armitage, but that is a dangerous game to play. He's not like the officers we've picked off."
"I am well aware, and it's the only reason I've suffered him this long. I must say she might be the only person on this ship that loathes him more than I do. Now go gather up your favorites- we have to go retrieve a treacherous whore from Canto Bight."
-
The guards had alerted her to his presence, and she was already waiting for him in the sitting room where she entertained her guests, guards at her side.
"Ah, Baroness Ruxinn Orgida. What are we plotting on this fine evening?" She usually enjoyed the way rolled his r's at the beginning of her name, but not tonight.
"General Hux, I assume this isn't the business of pleasure as usual?"
He curled his lip at her obvious insinuations. "Make your guards stand down, we need to have a chat."
She glared back at him, unmoving.
He held up his hand, two fingers raised. "I told you to stand down, gentlemen."
The guards stood firm, weapons drawn.
Hux sighed dramatically and lowered his two fingers into his fist. Phasma stepped from behind him and killed all four in a fraction of a second. She was the only one he knew of quicker with a blaster than himself.
The Baroness leapt from her chair. "You-you can't do this! This is outrageous! When they hear of you breaking the neutrality laws, and they will, the First Order will be banned from Cantonica!"
Hux laughed. "What are you talking about, Ru ?" He emphasized his use of Ichara's nickname for her. "I'm not here on First Order business, this is personal. Did you really think you could cross me without repercussions?"
"This is ridiculous, you are being ridiculous. Think with your head, not your heart, General. It's unbecoming of a man of your stature and may be something you regret later."
At this, he stalked over and put his blaster underneath her chin. Her other guards shuffled nervously but didn't do anything to stop him.
"Are you threatening me?! I would have no qualms about pulling this trigger and sending your teeth flying through the back of your skull. The onlyreason I am not is because you are Ichara's cousin. You should be more appreciative of your relatives in high places, Baroness."
She narrowed her eyes, unphased. "This is not a game you want to play with me, General."
He smiled with a cold, soulless grin."Oh you're quite right- this is a game you'll play with Kylo Ren. You wanted to meet him so badly, and now you'll get your chance. A word of warning, though, he's rather cross with you."
At this her eyes widened in horror "Wait, General, I, I can fix this, I-"
He holstered his blaster and grabbed her shoulder, shoving her to the ground.
"Cuff this bitch and bring her aboard, we're done here"