Protector
The flood lights searing his retinas piercing through the roaring repulsor lift engines was the last vision he bared witness to in his mortal consciousness before he finally let go, letting it all fade away to restful blackness. The cousin of death, but not the final embrace.
His gaze fluttered to life once more, the helmet of Vizsla looking over him with that ever indomitable, cold, featureless expression guarded by the armor. Voices chattered in a faint, cloudy muffling that distorted to the point where he couldn't discern word for word, only the emotion and inflection they portrayed.
Awakening again, he heard the clatter of medical instruments, metal and plastics, instinctively he peered down, a droid severing the connections of his beaten and bloody breastplate from his chest, what was left of his right arm fixed to a medical apparatus, fusing metal to his wounded flesh in the form of cybernetic. The medical droid taking charge of the operation fastened a mask to his face, the soothing anasthetic drew into his lungs and he was unconscious again.
The haunting words from her voice jolted him awake in a cold sweat, his eyes struggling to drink in the cold fluorescence of his quarters aboard the vessel. He heaves heavy breathes, slowly sitting himself up only to find his right, metallic hand moving limp. Only the pins and needles of any sensation coming to him. He managed to lean into the pillow behind him, peering down to his bare chest to spot the recent marks of tibanna blasts and jagged lacerations concealed beneath bloodied gauze wrapped around him.
His gaze then drew to his right hand. Or at the very least, the vessel which occupied its role peered back to him. He attempted to will the commands of the muscles through the hand. It was less of a delay and more of sporadic response as his body slowly adapted to the cybernetic. He began to exercise the movement of the hand, managing to curl the fingers into his palm, forming a fist before splaying his fingers out again, reclaiming his control of the hand.
He slowly came to his feet, offering up a low groan of pain before he heard the faint roll of a BB unit after it'd powered to life.
::Hey- you feeling alright?:: The Droid inquired in a series of somber binary beeps.
"No..." Half of the events before were muddied in his head. They felt more akin to illusion, dreamscape. The void of her presence in the bed next to him when he'd awaken, one of the few reliable pillars he could rely on in life. Gone. Nothing but the shadow of her presence ever being here in strewn belongings that made her impression in these quarters.
::Loske is-::
"I know..." He said, slowly making way to the refresher, tapping the sink to life before he dunked his hands into the flow of water, peering down to see one organic and one cybernetic. He pressed them against his face, a malign effort to jolt himself fully awake before he looked in his own reflection. He looked over his wounded and marred features once more in the projection of the mirror. His mind faded back to that burning memory, just prior to New Adasta. Him...and her in a tense bliss prior to what would be their undoing.
His cybernetic fist jolted up and slammed into the reflective surface, the illusion of the projection shattering on impact. A guttural cry expelled the rage. Tears welled up in his eyes, his teeth visibly ground against one another in anger. He tempered the iron only to pull himself into the greenish brown jumpsuit, a thin but competent shield of the wounds that dug into his flesh.
::We're currently on a course for-::
"I don't give a damn, go get The Renegade ready to fire up, 'soon as we're in real space, we're off this boat." Maynard cut off the droid in a voice of harsh and urgent command.
::Right on it.:: Was all Buddy could muster in reply.
He emerged into the corridor of the Redeemer. If the time table was so soon after the campaign into Ziost, surely that snake was still here. He etched the location of his quarters into memory as soon as him and his detachment were taken aboard the Alliance vessel.
Soon enough he was before the quarters designated for Djorn Bline. Being the secretive COMPNOR agent he was, it took a spike to bypass the lock, regardless, the door hissed open before him and Maynard surged into the room, the door automatically sliding shut behind him. Where ever the snake was, he was quick to get his hands on the Agent, moving to throw him against the nearest wall and keep him there as he spoke with an uncharacteristic vitriol in his voice. At the very least, uncharacteristic of any Jedi.
"What the fuck did you do to her, huh? You working for the Sith? I'd better fucking cut you down where you stand." Maynard said, a stark escalation from their last encounter. What was once an innate tension exploded into violence.
Before he got an answer, he moved to slam his fist into the abdomen of the man. To show just exactly what stakes he'd sat himself down to play for with the Jedi.
