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Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to Lucasfilm, which belongs to Disney these days. I think. Metroid belongs to Nintendo. Personally, I be long overdue for a vacation. This short is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for fantasy violence and fantasy language. I’m not sure what the hell the bunnies have been smoking, but this got dropped on me and I had to write it.
Anakin had thought she was a droid, at first. Give him a break, she was completely clad in the kind of armor that Mandalorians would be dumbfounded by and she entered battle by dropping a good fifty feet down from a low-flying ship. Also he and Obi-Wan were up to their ears in Separatist battle droids, so an assault by a fancy new model seemed a lot more likely than sudden backup.
And besides, it only took him a second to realize his mistake. Mainly because droids didn’t have that kind of glow in the Force. Actually, he’d never met anyone or anything that did. She wasn’t unusually bright or anything– Obi-Wan far outshone her– but she was different.
In a moment of shock, he realized she felt like a lightsaber. One that belonged to a front-line Jedi, like Mace Windu, or Kit Fisto. Not like the Jedi themselves, but like the kyber crystals within the blades. Singing in the Light, but with the anticipation of a weapon. Something that didn’t enjoy violence, but was prepared to deal it out in the name of protecting others. He hadn’t known people could feel like that.
And she certainly was good at dealing out that violence, he noted, taking advantage of the sudden lack of pressure to move and cover Obi-Wan’s back. That strange cannon on her arm alternately spitting green energy in a wide spread, or some sort of explosive, or cryogenic missiles– he really, really wanted a look at that thing after the battle. Maybe if he asked very nicely… or if he let Obi-Wan ask very nicely, that might be better.
The squad of clone troopers were a lot more normal, except that their armor really wasn’t. The pauldrons were striped with the red, white, and bright orange-gold of the newcomer’s color scheme, and they’d definitely replaced the vambraces and boots with new pieces, pieces that glistened with an almost iridescent luster. Rex would probably be interested in those, when it was over.
There were three of them, coming down with jet packs behind their– general? Anakin was just going to call her that, until things got cleared up, it was good enough. Up close, Anakin could see they had strange triangular glyphs on their helmets. Again, no writing he’d ever seen. Who were these guys?
Well, whoever they were, they were damn good. They’d headed right to the parts of the battlefield where the three of them could make the most difference– whoops, no, there were four, Anakin realized, as some of the droids started exploding under sniper fire from a completely new direction.
And then the entire droid army just… shut down, leaving the battlefield silent– Well, except from the guy wearing the purple stripes on his vambraces, who was already berating the one with the red stripes.
“Quotes, if you do not stop aggravating that arm, I am going to borrow the Chief’s supply of duct tape and attach you to the nearest bulkhead!”
“Ease off, Quiet, I’m fine. Go check on Hamish, he’s the shiny.”
…Hamish? What kind of a name was Hamish? Anakin shot a look at Obi-Wan, who had stowed his lightsaber and was making his way towards the armored woman.
“Thank you very much for the assistance,” Obi-wan was saying. “I think we might have carried the day without you, but the losses might well have been much greater. Although… what exactly did you do to the droid army?”
The woman’s voice was light and amused, fitting the tilt of her helmeted head. “Dropped my tech support behind their lines and let him hack into the main control network. You’d think people would learn, but I suppose it’s cheaper to let a single computer run the entire platoon of them than give them each onboard AI.”
Well, that sounded familiar. Anakin had to roll his eyes– the Separatists hadn’t learned anything in the fifteen-plus years since the Siege of Naboo? Really?
Obi-wan gave the woman one of those smiles that kept making people throw themselves at him. “I would assume. Pardon me, I’ve completely forgotten my manners– my name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. And you are?”
“Pleasure to finally meet you, General Kenobi, I’ve heard a few stories. My name is Samus Aran.”
Samus, as she’d asked them to call her, was rather a conundrum, Obi-Wan mused. She’d accepted his invitation and flown her small purple scoutship up to dock with The Negotiator, parking it in one of the currently empty bays. Once onboard, she’d removed her suit, but her armor didn’t come off like a normal person’s– instead, it disappeared in a flash, leaving a blonde human in her mid-to-late twenties, (probably,) clad in a form-fitting blue bodysuit that showed no exposed skin except on her head.
The five clone troopers who had followed her removed their helmets in a far more normal fashion. It was just himself and Anakin now– they’d managed to get Cody and Rex focused on taking care of the aftermath of the battle, rather than hovering around their generals in case these strangers turned out to suddenly be hostile.
“I’ve never seen armor like yours before,” Anakin said, with surprising restraint for him. “Where did it go?”
Samus winced a bit. “It’s a custom piece, made directly for me by a race called the Chozo. They’d basically managed to perfect dimensional warping technology, so it’s… in a pocket? I don’t know how it works, the whole thing warps space in the most ridiculous ways, and I’ve never managed to find a Chozo armorer I could shake any answers out of.”
One of the troopers, who’d been introduced to him as Scout, their slicer, snorted. “You think that’s weird, the damn thing makes its own ammo! I would soooo like to get under the plates on that baby…”
“I’m not that kind of girl, Scout,” Samus replied dryly, causing the young trooper to flush and his compatriots to laugh at him. Anakin was smirking as well, and Obi-wan himself had to stifle a cough.
“Seriously, though, I know enough to keep it in tune, but there’s a lot I don’t know about how the systems do what they do,” continued Samus, shrugging.
Obi-Wan couldn’t argue with that. He knew how to build a lightsaber, but it wasn’t as though he knew how the energy pushed through the kyber crystal became a coherent blade, not as scientific principles. He was a Jedi, not a physicist.
“At any rate, we definitely both are exceedingly grateful for your intervention today,” he continued, as Anakin nodded. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“A lift back to– what was it called, Coruscant? Wouldn’t go amiss,” Samus commented, with a swift glance at the troopers to verify what she was saying. “My ship could get us there, but it was designed for one person, not six. I’m tired of tripping over troopers, and we’re starting to run low on food supplies.”
“And Rock snores!” commented Hamish. The young demolitions expert was already equipped with a cybernetic eye, as well as possessing noticeably darker skin than his teammates for some reason. Rock, the team’s sniper, said nothing, just rolled his eyes at the young man.
“We need to report to the Council, anyway,” Quotes, the squad leader, replied. “We owe our general that much, at least.”
Ahh. That explained at least some of what happened, but Obi-Wan knew better than to poke what was almost certainly an unhealed wound.
“Well, I’m fairly certain we can find space for all of you, and we were needing to return to Coruscant ourselves,” Obi-wan agreed. “If you don’t mind bunking with your squad, Samus?”
“I’ve made it this far without smothering them, I can put up with it longer,” she replied, deadpan.
Quiet, the medic, chuckled. “You know you love us, Chief. Or you’d have let that plant thing eat us.”
“I couldn’t let the poor thing get indigestion, Quiet.” More laughter from the squad.
“Better quit while you’re behind, Quiet,” Quotes advised. “As a great Jedi Master once said, the wise warrior avoids getting his shebs handed to him by the rancor he thought was a nexu.”
At which point all five clones seemed to remember that there was, in fact, a Jedi Master present and froze, staring at Obi-wan with barely concealed panic. Anakin was no help, he was currently paralyzed with silent laughter, leaning on the nearest bulkhead as though it was the only thing holding him up.
Obi-wan sighed. Then he pulled a data tablet out of a pocket in his robe. “I’m sorry, Quotes, would you mind repeating that? I’m stealing it for the next time I have a meeting with the Council.”
They were still staring at him, but in complete shock rather than fear, which Obi-wan considered a much better reaction.
End?