arc-77

[arc-77]

"Was hoping you'd say that." A great deal of tension leaves the trooper's shoulders, and he turns back around to face the gunship once more. "You help us shoot down that air patrol, we'll stay out of your way — you have my word. I can authorize an IFF signature, it'll keep our starfighters off your tail for as long as you're in the star system."

He extends his hand in offering to shake one of those claw-tipped manipulators sprouting from beneath the gunship's chin. It is a curiously anthropomorphic design choice for a droid vessel. If it weren't already clear from the rather unique personality, whatever research program that developed this thing must placed a great deal of emphasis on the AI core. He had many questions. Strange new technologies had that effect on him.

"Captain Fordo."

But there was no time to dwell. His head turns slightly as a message comes across his internal comms, and he taps a control on the side of his helmet that engages the external speaker for his temporary ally to hear. "Say again, Eight-Two?"

<< Repeat, eight vulture droids on the horizon, ninety seconds and closing. Orders? >>

"Copy, prepare to hold at the entrance. On my way with backup." Fordo glances back the way he came, helmet spotlight illuminating a rocky slope, and then a series of scrape marks along the walls. His visor meets Mako's motion sensor, and he bows his head apologetically. "It'll take too long for me to climb back out. You're faster." Quickly, Fordo clambers onto one of the gunship's canards and holds on tight before the metal beast can try and brush him off. It was no Bes'uliik, but it would do.

Cold, unyielding metal digests the trooper's words with appropriate suspicion; MAKO doesn't have a lie detector incorporated into his design, but he considers himself a decent judge of character regardless. He's never known a trooper to be so cautious without good reason. He truly believes himself to be in danger, then. Good.

"You really need me to repeat myself? The CIS want me dead just as much as everyone else." The ground rumbles to the sound of the gunship's thrusters throttling, an animalistic growl, but he doesn't pull the trigger—not yet, at least. The reminder of the skulking Vulture droids brings a greater priority to mind.

"Wait. I have reassessed the situation." MAKO shunts forwards on his landing gear as the trooper begins to turn, his weapons systems powering down with a whine. In the following silence, something drips in the darkness. One of his stabilizers, now exposed by his movements, is scorched and dented; coolant wells from a ruptured line like blood from a wound.

"You and I. If you are telling the truth, I think we can work something out." He sounds as if he's chewing on rusted nails, admitting as such. Given the circumstances, it seems he's leaning towards his hatred of the Separatists over the Republic. "We have a greater chance of nailing those chipbrains if we work together. You can see the kind of firepower I am packing, and you claim your brothers are similarly equipped. The odds are in our favor."

[arc-77]

“Aw.” Fordo cradles it in both hands, gently, like a newborn babe. His thumb surreptitiously feels the activator switch to make sure it’s not live. “Thank you, Obi-wan. I think I’ll leave the bow on it.”

[arc-77]

"I'm confident in my ability to survive a lab explosion. Wouldn't still be standing in it otherwise. Are you?" The black-armored veteran plops into a rolling chair nonchalantly. In his red right hand, he holds the lever of a clacker shut, the remote trigger to some implied, unseen explosive. He gestures with it to another chair. "Deadman's switch. Shouldn't need to explain what it does. Let's talk."

@arc-77 replied. "That was napalm, by the way. Personal recipe."

"That wha—huh? What?" He's utterly flabbergasted. "You do understand I store unstable and highly combustible materials in here, yes?"

[arc-77]

"I would never aide in an investigation against you." Obi-Wan removes one hand and reassuringly pats where Fordo is still holding the other. "How long have you been waiting for me to ask you to ask you to level a building?"

"Since the day we met, sir. In earnest, I await that permission from every superior officer. I am just particularly pleased to hear it from you. Now what's our target."

[arc-77]

Captain, do you know how to make a bomb?

Fordo reaches out and takes both of Obi-wan's hands.

"General, I can and will blow up anything you ask me to."

[arc-77]

"That so? Thank you, Major, it's not a date I'd committed to memory. As for the confetti — we'd learned during the early academy days that it has a nasty habit of sticking to reflec coatings and reducing their effectiveness. Stuff's no better than chaff." But not nearly as bad as glitter. He shudders in remembrance of RC-1262's glitter bombs back at Arca Barracks, so long ago. "How time flies."

@arc-77 “I thought it fitting to commemorate, if only briefly, your nine years of command service. Congratulations, Sir! And please excuse the holo-fetti, I wasn't permitted to bring the real thing on board."

[arc-77]

Does Fordo still have a thing for Iden Versio???

"I don't think it was meant to be." The Commodore stands wistful at a transparisteel viewport, hands held behind his back. Massive nebulous fields of red, purple, and green interstellar gasses extend in every direction outside the window, the remnants of a long-ago supernova. "We see each other once in a blue moon at best, too few and far between. Military service does that to prospective relationships."

[arc-77]

// As of today, this blog is 9 years old. Wow! It's almost ready to fight in the Clone Wars! 🤪

[arc-77]

"Only matters if you start shooting at me."

The ARC Captain slowly raises both arms in surrender as the gunship brings its weapons to bear. There's little else he himself can do in this instance; his WESTAR-M5 might be able to pierce that windscreen at point-blank range, but it's slung across his back — he'd be dead before his finger even touched the trigger. If he wanted to survive, his only option was to try and reason with the ship.

"I'll lay my cards on the table: the rest of my squad isn't far behind. They're packing enough firepower to wipe out a vanguard. You gun me down, you're never making it out of here alive. If we don't kill you, the Vulture droids outside will pick apart whatever's left. But that doesn't have to happen—"

And he truly prayed it didn't. He could practically feel the knife's edge he was standing on digging into his sole. Cornered animals, the both of them. If one lashes out, this cave will be their shared tomb.

"—because if you're not with the CIS, then I have no quarrel with you. And as far as I'm concerned, what my masters don't know won't hurt them."

Slowly, slowly, he lowers his arms and begins to turn around.

"So don't shoot me in the back, please."

@arc-77 / from

MAKO flashes his own searchlight on in return, the beam blinding before he tones down the intensity. As far as his radar is concerned, there's just the one; but he knows that where there's one clonetrooper, there's always more lurking nearby, ready to leap in and swarm their target. He inwardly scoffs at the notion. Bunch of pack-rats.

"Neither. I am a solo act. But that does not matter to you droid killers, does it?" An edge of bitterness creeps into the gunship's voice. "I came here to escape a Seppie patrol. The chipbrains want to scoop me out and replace me with one of their inferior models. Your masters will do the same."

There's an unspoken, simmering hatred there; he'd rather die than submit. MAKO flexes his wings, articulated joints unfolding outwards in absent restlessness before tucking back against his fuselage. The glow of his motion sensor continues to sweep side-to-side in endless monotony, lending him the guise of patience he sorely lacks.

"The way I see it, there are two outcomes to this meeting." The hum of the gunship's weapons systems coming online is unmistakable. "You move on and pretend you never saw me. Or you call your brothers and I turn the whole lot of you into paste."

[arc-77]

[arc-77]

What little time you have. There's an almost imperceptible wince, a slight squeeze of his eyes. He's not certain which sense she means, in terms of his busy mission schedule, or in terms of his shortened lifespan. The latter hung over his head like a sword, so ever-present in his thoughts and mindset that choosing to utilize his time inefficiently was as much a deliberate choice as the rest of his actions. Thusly, paying Tohno this social visit is slightly unusual for him, brought about not by forward planning, but by a compulsion he decided to heed — and not one of the usual compulsions.

"Don't mention it. I don't usually follow-up on every Jedi who boards my CASEVAC, but, I suppose yours was a special case."

Indeed; from his perspective, Tohno often possessed a peculiar air to her, a manner of speaking and holding herself that he could not adequately describe or attribute. Wise and mystic, yet youthful. Otherworldly. In a way, no doubt exacerbated by the hospital room's bright white environment and the lingering effects of her pain medication, she reminded him of an angel. Perhaps one day she would come to his rescue in kind, and he'd earn a shiny new hand of his own.

Seeing her now, he isn't sure if he likes that thought.

"Well, whoever was responsible, it seems they made an excellent choice." He scoots his chair a little closer, holding out his hands for her to rest the arm on for him to examine. "May I?"

" surely i cannot argue with such sentiment, captain. " something like amusement picks up in syllables, though she certainly does not mean it in any way other than she firmly believes him. all of the clones served the republic in such broad and endless fashions, she could not so openly take such away from them. they were the first to sacrifice themselves for the grand scheme of things, and without them, the order would be tentatively out-gunned. " in which case, perhaps i should sooner be thanking you without qualms for choosing to spend what little time you have here. " camaraderie is not an odd concept, she is not foreign to friendship ... but the clones experienced life, and ties, differently. she would not have expected another knight to pass through that doorway, not so soon at least. it was the nature of what was going on.

organic hand reaches out tentatively, but pauses mid air, and she instead chooses to retrieve bag with cybernetic. it's an awkward kind of movement at first - her mind struggles to cease over-compensation for a weight that wasn't there, and it still feels odd to see fingers that were not her own respond as if they had been placed on her hand at birth. bag is retrieved, settled in her lap, and subsequently left untouched.

it is an exceptionally thoughtful gesture, one prickles a heat into the back of her eyes and against the corners of her mouth.

odd.

" i believe so. " though she cannot remember the conversation too well, all things considered. it had been hazy, tongue thick in her mouth when she'd been asked by medical droids, eyes barely able to peel open under the weight of medications. apparently they find it useful to subdue someone before submerging them into bacta ... a rather interesting discovery to make. " i do not remember the conversation so well, but it does seem like something i would choose. " a staunch pause, she punctuates the thought with a laugh that is almost too easy going. (the reality is still too far off, or maybe she just lacks the space for processing.) " if it was not me, than i dare say ... someone knows me quite well. "

[arc-77]

What did that guy do to you?

"He was insufferable in my presence."

[arc-77]

"Shoot that guy."

[arc-77]

"I got shot." It was a stun bolt. And friendly fire. "I hope you're happy."

"Now why should I be happy about that? Wasn't me who shot you."

He removes a pistol from his hip and, held out for Obi-wan to see, performatively twists the selector lever that switches the blaster to stun.

"But thank you for coming into range."

[arc-77]

"Look at you now, droid killer." The gloom betrays nothing but the steady, pulsing glow of a motion sensor. "You keep a tally, tough guy? Notches on the barrel?"

"Negative. Would've run out of space."

The ARC Captain slowly reaches up to tap a control on the side of his helmet, igniting his cheek-mounted spotlight. It's not enough to fully illuminate the—gunship? starfighter?—but it reveals some more details of the machine's 'face'.

His head turns, studying whatever the cone of light reflects off of. Variable geometry, red photoreceptors. Something about the design says insectoid to him. About the same size as an HMP droid gunship—he's not sure which he'd rather be staring down at the moment. Odd livery, though. Never seen any Separatist war materiel painted white.

Fordo swallows.

"You from Haor Chall? Or the Colicoids?"

If he's about to be smitten by a railcannon, he can only hope that his helmet's recorder gives SO BDE some decent intelligence.

[arc-77]

@barrackbvnny sent in:

“So, when are you gonna teach me how to use a flamethrower?” — brioola 💚

Fordo hums in response, bringing a steaming mug to his lips. "Still have that holdout blaster I got for you?" Setting the mug down, he wraps an arm around her waist and hoists her onto his knee. "Tell you what: my squad's got some range-time scheduled for next Taungsday. You do good on your self-defense drills, I'll have Stec bring out the flame projectors. Deal?"

[arc-77]

"With everything I do for the Republic, think I've more than earned a few minutes to visit." The Captain steps further into the room, having now been acknowledged. In one hand he carries a small bag marked with the logo of a local gift shop, which he sets on her bedside table before taking a seat against the wall. Under the other arm is his helmet, which he sets on the seat next to his.

"It was the cyberneticist's suggestion," he admits, gesturing to the gift bag. Inside is a tin of moldable silicone putty, with included hand exercise sheet, and a selection of 'fidget' toys covered in buttons, dials, and rollers. "Few things that'll help you get used to using your new hand."

Much like Tohno, he cannot help that his eyes are drawn to the shining metallic prosthesis, the interplay of functional pistons and sleekly designed exterior panels. It suits you, he almost wants to say, but it sounds presumptive. She looked better, but losing a limb in such a fashion was no doubt traumatic, and only the force knew in what ways the experience would rear its ugly head further down the line.

"It's beautiful. Pick it out yourself?"

how are you holding up ? @arc-77's voice does not startle her, presence a fleeting whisper long before he'd entered shared space - but still, there is a subtle desire to flinch back, to conceal the still gleaming prosthetic that takes the place of left arm. subjectively, she is lucky ... to lose so little in the collapse of separatist base, to walk away from a hefty explosion (perhaps not quite literally). attention pulled from the visible shift and pull of mechanics, at the very least, the arm entices her attention tenfold. the way it works, moves -

" i am beginning to feel as good as new. " her tone is idle, light and airy ; now that the nausea from bacta has worn off, and she finally doesn't smell it in her hair, how could she possibly complain ? the residual damage is minor, skin puckered and uneven in places where robes had caught and burnt clear through layers. but how could she possibly complain ? the force, in all of its graciousness, had extended her the faintest hint of mercy in what should have been final moments. " your kindness is appreciated, captain. though ... i do hope you did not take time away from necessities. "