#anyway i demand an official inquiry into the a-77 incident

[vespertine-legacy]

I rewatched my videos of Cershaa’s trip through A-77 to remind myself of Elara’s extreme disappointment in her decisions there to try to convince myself not to let Zeke have a fling with Jaxo, but, oops. I just really wanted to see it for myself, so we’re just gonna pretend it didn’t happen because Zeke is gonna feel bad enough about that dumb mission as it is.

But! I love how forward Jaxo is, how much she doesn’t give a shit that Jorgan and the Senator are standing right there while she’s flirting with the Lieutenant at Port Raga, how she’s the one to initiate the fade-to-black. She has told you from the beginning that she’s impulsive, bored, and Horny On Main, and you’re able to just tell her “cool, have your way with me,” and her response is “I’m gonna go ahead and take that as an order.” There is a lot to unpack with Jaxo, and the way she plays with the power dynamic is hot as hell. She’s totally wrong for Zeke, and I wish Cershaa could have had the fling with her instead (there is so much lesbian subtext in the Coruscant side mission that a female Trooper gets with Jaxo).

Anyway, pretend that Zeke and Jaxo have a playful sibling-like relationship where they rib each other but there’s not any sexual tension and they never boinked, and the A-77 mission is still gonna suck, but he’s gonna do the right thing.

(SPOILERS FOR A-77 MISSION FOR TROOPERS: If you haven’t finished the Trooper storyline and don’t know yet what I’m talking about, STOP READING and don’t finish this post. I think I decided afterward that Cershaa wouldn’t have actually gone through with the “dark” decision on A-77, that she couldn’t have lived with doing that, and here’s how it actually went down: Jaxo’s “there’s always a choice,” pleading not to die there alone killed Cershaa, but she told the technician to do the right thing and walked away from him and Elara so she could keep a private open comm channel with Jaxo through the end, just apologizing over and over, forcing herself to listen to Jaxo die, to the consequence of her choice. She begged Elara to let her go find Jaxo’s body; she didn’t even know if Jaxo had family to return a body to, but could they really just leave her there?--but with droids swarming that level of the facility and an Imperial fleet actively firing on them, they couldn’t risk it, they needed to get everyone off of the prison level and get back to their own ship, or risk having the entire mission be a waste. Having Major Fel suggest that Jaxo be put forth for a posthumous medal for her service broke Cershaa’s heart, but she asked Garza about it; and when Garza asked for details about what happened to Jaxo--if she had been recaptured or if she fought with them to free the rest of the prisoners--telling her that Jaxo sacrificed herself tasted bitter and rotten in Cershaa’s mouth because she had sacrificed Jaxo. But who would she have been if she had let three hundred prisoners die to save one person she cared about, one fellow soldier who knew the risks when she signed up to serve? But none of that rationalization would fix the fact that she killed someone, a friend and almost lover, for the greater good, and had to immediately go back to work.)