Even the days on Dagobah were dark, and it didn’t help that the place was choked by a miasma of the Dark Side. Remy could feel the source of that filth, thousands of times more slimy and cold than the mud that covered this swamp world, far to the north, possibly on the other side of the planet. That made it worse, she wouldn’t be able to sense the most powerful Sith she had ever met from this distance, and there were very accomplished members of that damnable cult thriving in the Brotherhood like Rotworms in a festering wound.
What she couldn’t sense, however, was Brujah. The Combat Center had patched her up despite her declaration of war on the wasteful savage, which they promptly regretted when she ended up beating the location out of the Combat Master out of his cronies. Thankfully, quick infiltration missions were to her forte, and she was already in the heart of the ACC facilities. She didn’t relish fighting whatever forces Arx decided to send as punishment, but it would certainly be easier than fighting the entire military on their homeworld.
Remy stood on a low branch of one of the infinite trees that clogged Dagobah. It had to be low, most of the trees here bred for flexibility over stoutness, so she couldn’t see any farther, but it kept her out of the mud and the reach of about half of the nearly infinite parasites and biting scavengers that flooded the waters. She looked about the waters idly, but her true focus was on straining through the Force to expand her Sense as possible. There were mostly just small critters wiggling through the mud and the occasional oversized monster in the deeper waters, but nothing the size of her quarry. Until there was.
Turning, Remy first felt, then heard, a single humanoid approaching from the sky. No ship, no speeder, but the roar of smaller personnel jetpack engines. She didn’t move, waiting patiently for the newcomer to announce themself. If they were trying to be stealthy with a literal descent from the sky, they would likely be no threat anyway. After a few minutes, a rather strange looking creature lowered from above the treeline, poking the long haft of an axe into the mud to be sure it wasn’t a pit before landing and leaning it against their shoulder.
He had the general build of a man and was covered in the telltale shape of Mandalorian armor painted black, scrapes with no depth showing the telltale sheen of silvery Beskar. The most strange part of him was that his armor was pulled over a hefty paunch on a small frame. Not ill-fitting, of course, Beskar was too expensive not to be fitted to the individual, but Mandalorians were usually at least athletic and trim. Perhaps a species that had a natural belly? The only Remy could think of was Gamorreans, and she looked at what looked like decorative horns on the helmet again, with a more critical eye. He left the axe leaning on his shoulder and folded his hands over the blaster hanging off a thick cable around his torso, almost looking casual. No… blaster was not right. That looked to be that strange grenade launcher-cum-blaster that bigshot Bossk used.
“I doubt there is anything you want on this-”
He interrupted her with a voice that would fit better on a bouncer, “I came to kill you, but I will accept a surrender. You have sixty seconds.”
Remy narrowed her eyes slightly. Of course. Brujah wasn’t on Dagobah, he never was. In all likelihood, he had prepared for someone doing exactly what she had at the Combat Center and led her right to the next venue. The fact that her opponent had come right to her meant that he was watching now, somehow.
“Perhaps you can answer a question for me. What, exactly, makes one a Mandolorian?”
She had killed some before, and those actually worth something were dangerous opponents, even with no abilities in the Force. Trickery, gadgets, and skills honed at the expense of everything else made up the gap. Sometimes, at least, most of them ended up being pretenders.
“I have heard they have a code, a religion to follow. But then I see them removing their helmets and forgetting their language. I have heard they are supposed to be warriors above all else, but I see plenty spending their days in parties and luxury, running businesses instead of campaigns.”
The others' only response was to pipe up with “Thirty seconds.” Remy was not very versed in the art of taunting, but many pretenders would fly into a rage at the insinuation they were not true Mandolorian, and most of the rest would launch into some speech or other about how flexible and open to interpretation the laws of their own supposed culture were. Rather like the horde of false Jedi in Odan-Urr, she mused.
“Most of the time, those who claim the title of ‘Mandolorian’ end up the same thing; rich children in the bodies of adults, spending fortunes on fancy weapons and metals that are supposed to be rare, all just to claim descendancy from a famous tribe that was, in truth, all but exterminated decades ago.”
“Ten seconds.”
He hadn’t so much as twitched. Either he truly didn’t care or he at least had the self-possession he should. Either way, it meant this was probably going to be bloodier than she preferred. Remy leaned back, feigning falling back into thought. In truth, she was listening. And counting.
True to his words, right on the count to ten, the sound of a blaster shot rang out, Remy's knees giving way as she dropped nearly twenty feet to the mud below. Spreading her arms, she reduced her weight just before landing, ensuring she didn’t sink up to her knees, and straightened just in time to sway past another pair of plasma bolts. From this range she could dodge them without the need of the Force to predict their trajectory or speed her reactions. It seemed he had already clocked that, his jetpack roaring to life again and sucking his legs out of the mud as he fired a grenade and another volley one handed, so as to not drop his axe.
Stepping past the unaimed blasts and reaching out with the Force, Remy grabbed the grenade mid-flight and deflected it off to the side, where it blew with a loud crack that nearly went straight through the wood. Micro-grenades or not, those things were packed with enough explosives to cause a problem on even a near miss. Pulling the tree down in front of her assailant, Remy jumped free of the mud and let her own jetpack pull her away over the waters. When he simply swung his axe halfway through the trunk and bodily smashed through the rest, she raised her eyebrows. It seemed he was a basher after all, but she still had no intention of letting him get in close until she had a distinct advantage, or at least knew what tools he had brought in.
Dodging trees with her Senses and such a high tech jetpack was practically as easy as doing it with her own two feet… which was convenient, as her pursuer was nearly as fast as she was, though he used grenades and his own weight to crash through whatever obstacles were in his way. Remy tried to find ways to harass him, tripling the weight of trees as he ran into them or restraining his body, but he seemed tough and strong enough that nothing led to more than a momentary stun or struggle. That armor combined with a Gamorreans natural pigheadedness was a potent combo for dealing with brute force, it seemed, and it was obvious she needed something more precise.
After another few seconds, she found what she needed; a tree. Not just any tree, but one of the much larger trees that could be hollowed out to comfortably perform as a house for any masochist that decided to live on this mudball. Just before impact, Remy flipped backwards and shoved the Force into her legs to keep them from shattering on impact, the wood cracking and groaning under the impact. Jumping off, she rocketed directly towards her opponent while drawing and igniting Beckon. The Gamorrean had locked his axe to his back to better aim, and with the quick turnabout he resorted to simply holding out a fist for her to brain herself on.
Reducing her weight as much as she could bear, Ramy slapped down on that fist and pivoted over his back in a small arc, Beckon flashing down in a green arc and spearing one of the engines through. She would have tried to cut the whole thing, but the beskar axe laying across it would have likely made that ineffectual, and regardless it seemed there was more armor on it than she expected, so it was for the best anyway. He wouldn’t be able to fly with it again anyway.
Flipping down and landing on what seemed the only solid ground on the planet, Remy watched her hunter spiral out of control and ram into a tree hard enough to topple it, though he quickly stood up and shook his head to clear it.
“You are tough, that is true at least. But unfortunately for you, you can no longer fly back to wherever your ship is, and it doesn’t look like you brought rations or shelter with you.”
She deactivated Beckon and stowed it back in its holster, straightening up again.
“The Mandalorian thing to do would be to kill me and die of exposure on this death world, but the smart thing to do…”
She trailed off, noting first that the otherwise dogged pursuit of the hunter had stopped. He didn’t even have his weapon raised anymore. Second, she realised that she was rather higher up than she was previously. Looking down, she noted that she probably shouldn’t have decided to ignore those huge life signs, and in less than a second the oversized dragonsnake flipped its head back and lunged, swallowing Remy whole. A predicament, to be sure.
