ಠ╭╮ಠ (the_scavenger) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-05-09 18:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, chloe price, jaina proudmoore, rey |
Get in the gun!
Who: Rey, Chloe and Jaina
What: Rey rescues Chloe
When: during the Orcs!
Where: some place
Rating: PG-13 for talk of stealing souls
status: complete
This hadn’t exactly been how Rey had imagined she’d get to test out her new lightsaber. In fact, this time of year was usually reserved for something… Star Warsy to happen. But nope. Green skinned humanoids of the very buff, very large and very angry variety.
And they were good warriors too. Rey had been relying on her staff for most of the day, a little nervous about igniting her new dual-bladed lightsaber.
It was hard to explain why, even to herself.
Now, Chloe had done her research on the Valarnet. She was aware that invasions could occur here. But it hadn’t been anything that she had seen happen yet. So it had been something she’d chosen to ignore. She had finally started dreaming, but she hadn’t talked much about them. After all, her former best friend that had forgotten about her existence in this life was in the dreams. Other than venting at the junkyard or screaming at trains, she hadn’t talked about it.
But she’d had a dream about her dad’s death just the previous day. The wounds that had only just barely scabbed over after her car accident had been ripped open once again. It clearly hadn’t been enough that her dad had died in this life, but he had to die in her dream life as well?
As such, despite getting some of the emotions out the previous day at the junkyard with Ilia, Chloe was still extremely raw. Anger and pain ran deep within her, and she couldn’t sit still very long, which was why she was out in the city, trying to walk it off and chain smoke. But as she turned a corner, she spotted a couple of those large green guys that looked like the Hulk.
“Holy fucking shit, what’s going on?” She asked. And then, of course, one of the things spotted her and started charging towards her. “Oh fuck no,” she commented as she turned and started to run away.
The orc beat the ground with a heavy mace, and roared. It was deep and guttural, a sound that reverbed in the chest. He shouted orders to the other orcs with him, and two peeled off to try to cut Chloe off. They weren’t dumb brutes, not like some of the workers that had come with them.
One emerged from a side street in front of Chloe and gave her a bloody grin. “This one is weak, but will make good fuel for the portal.”
Running wasn’t Chloe’s best idea ever. Her lung capacity somewhat sucked thanks to her smoking habit. When she saw the orc appear in front of her, she came to a stop, then turned around and glanced behind her, then tried to find another way out.
“Fuel?! Oh fuck no, I’m not fuel for anything!” Chloe protested, trying not to panic. While she had a death wish, she didn’t exactly want to die at the hands of these guys.
“She’s got a strong soul,” another Orc said. He was tall and wide, with white hair and one broken tusk. A wide scar crossed his face. “I don’t like this. Gathering souls. Where’s the honor in that?”
“Shut it.” The first Orc reached for Chloe, “If we want to bring the rest of the Horde through, we need souls.”
Instead of grabbing Chloe, though, there was a whooshing sound and the Orc’s severed hand landed on the pavement between them.
A young woman put herself between the orcs and Chloe, holding an honest to god lightsaber. She turned it horizontally, and a second blade ignited. “If you’re all about honors, why don’t you come for me instead.”
The scarred orc jerked a thumb at Rey, “Her, I like.”
Chloe looked around at the orcs surrounding her. This was not how she wanted to go out. And a strong soul? What the hell did that even mean? As the orc reached out for her, Chloe started to back away only to see the dude’s hand fall off.
And suddenly there was another woman there. And was that a lightsaber??? That really looked like a lightsaber.
“Sorry I can’t help you. I don’t think my fighting skills will do much here.” By fighting skills she meant street fighting and just throwing punches.
“That’s all right.” Rey dodged a swipe, then spun around, cutting the orc in half. The other orc just looked at her, before backing off.
“He didn’t tell us we’d be facing magic like that.” From the sound of his tone, Rey thought whoever that person was was going to be in deep.
With the orc gone, she shut down her saber and turned to Chloe. “Are you all right?”
This was not a situation Chloe had wanted to end up in. Orcs were scary, and they wanted to feed her soul to something? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. And okay, watching fights like what she’d just seen on TV and in movies was one thing. Seeing it real life? Quite another.
“Yeah, I think so. That was really fucking intense.” She said, tearing her gaze away from the dead orc and looking at the other woman. “Thanks for coming when you did.” She had a healthy dose of fear thanks to the orcs that now mixed in with the raw pain and anger she’d been feeling before.
The soul thing was disturbing, but Rey was oddly glad that was all they seemed to be interested in. She hooked the saber hilt to her belt and held out her hand. Chloe’s emotions buffeted her like a storm and she wanted to calm her down, “I’m Rey.”
“Chloe,” she introduced herself, shaking Rey’s hand. “I gotta say, this is completely whack. I mean, I know shit like this could happen from reading back on the network and all, but seeing it is something else entirely.”
“It’s kind of old hat at this point for me.” Rey rubbed the back of her neck. “These guys are new. I don’t know if they’re better or worse than Stormtroopers.”
“This is my first experience. I don’t know if it’s better or worse than some other experiences here.” Chloe scratched the back of her neck. “Though it’d probably be a bit better if I was a fighter like you.”
“I feel like I’ve spent my whole life preparing for a fight,” Rey said. It almost made her sad, but it also made her a survivor. She just hoped Finn was all right. She knew he could take care of himself, but still. “Do you have somewhere safe to be?”
“All I can claim is that I can street fight, but that’s about it.” That kind of fighting wouldn’t get her very far with these orcs. Chloe may have a death wish, but she wasn’t about to throw herself at orcs and have them kill her. That wasn’t how she wanted to die. “Yeah, I do.”
“Maybe with a lot of luck. Or a good weapon.” Rey closed her eyes, holding her hand out. “I think I can find us a safe passage, if you tell me which direction we should go in.”
“I’m not a lucky person so I’d probably just get fed to whatever they wanted to feed my soul to.” Chloe said with a little shrug. It was a fact. If anything, bad luck followed Chloe wherever she went. “Yeah, definitely.” She gave directions on how to get to Jaina’s from here.
“Stay close.”
The closest route was through a park that had been turned into an Orc encampment. By the time Rey realized it, there was no easy escape. A patrol of Orcs snuck up behind them and she was barely able to get her and Chloe under cover.
For once, Chloe did what she was told to do. After all, one didn’t exactly go against what a Jedi said when Chloe herself couldn’t really fight these orcs. She stuck close to Rey, and even managed to keep herself silent when Rey got them into cover. God this was crazy and kind of frightening. She just hoped that Ilia and Rachel were okay. And Jaina, of course, but Jaina at least had magic and was pretty badass with it that she could defend herself.
“There are thirty of them,” Rey whispered. Could she take that many? Did she really want to find out if she could? Not particularly. Plan B? Plan B. She pulled out a little comm device. “Rey to BB-8, bring the Falcon to my position!”
Thirty orcs was a very bad number. Chloe had no idea how they were going to get out of this situation. At least until Rey called for the Falcon to be brought here. Chloe looked at her. The Falcon. The Millennium Falcon?? Holy shit this was really a day that she’d never thought she’d have. She remained quiet, not wanting to give their position away and just waited to be told to run or something.
They heard the Falcon before they saw it. It came screaming in, arrows bouncing harmlessly off of the hull. Rey ignited her saber, “Get on board, hurry!”
She wasn’t going to move until Chloe was moving, and then? She was going to shove Chloe in one of the guns. Because of course she was.
This was completely surreal to her. However, when told to get on board, Chloe didn’t hesitate. She ran for the ship, running up the ramp and hoping to god that she didn’t get hit by any arrows as she went. “Shit shit shit fuck god this is crazy!” She exclaimed while running onto the ship.
“Get in the gun!” Rey closed the door behind them, pointing at the ladder to the ventral gun. “Just follow the instructions on the screen, you’ll do fine.”
She continued to another ladder and climbed up it as the ship jerked around to give them a full firing circle. The guns swun into place, and Rey opened fire on the Orc encampment. A catapult exploded in a fiery display, the orcs scattering every direction. A few tried to hit them with arrows, and the Falcon shuddered violently when a ballista managed to scratch the hull.
“Holy shit, what the hell,” she muttered as Chloe ran over to the ladder that Rey had indicated and climbed into the gun. “Consider yourself lucky I actually know how to shoot a gun! Hopefully that aim translates to this.”
Because shooting one of the guns on the Millennium Falcon was extremely different from shooting a handgun. So she was a little nervous, but she settled into the chair and took hold of the controls for the gun, following the instructions on the screen. Once in place, Chloe did her best to aim and fired, managing to actually hit something in the process. It might’ve been an orc, but it might’ve just been something that kind of blew apart and hit the surrounding orcs with shrapnel of a sort.
Whatever she hit, it worked. The Falcon angled away from the street square and shot into the sky. Rey slid climbed back up into the main hallway of the ship. The droid would keep them out of range of any Orcish weapons until she could get Chloe somewhere safer. “Nice shooting! With a little practice, you’d make a good rebel.”
“Ahaha fuck yeah! Did you see that?!” Chloe crowed, pleased with herself over actually hitting something and doing good with it. So once they were out of harm’s way and the guns weren’t needed anymore, Chloe climbed out of the gun and grinned at Rey. “Thanks! I think that would be an honor.”
“Maybe once the current chaos is a thing of the past,” Rey promised. She led Chloe up to the cockpit, patting BB-8’s head as she passed him. “Take a seat. I’ll get you to safety then I need to find my boyfriend.”
“Yeah this isn’t exactly the ideal time for recruiting a new person.” Chloe would also just rather lay low and ensure that Ilia and Rachel were okay in all of this. And hey, in the chaos of everything, she’d forgotten about her anger and pain over having to relive her dad’s death all over again. So that was a plus? “Thanks again for the help.” Chloe sat down in one of the seats, still amazed that she was on the Millennium Falcon.
“Anytime.” Rey beamed at her, taking the Falcon across the city and then realizing she wasn’t sure exactly where they were going. “...what are the cross streets? Everything always looks different up here.”
This was certainly an experience to talk about later. Of course, she wasn’t exactly certain that Rachel or Ilia would be nearly as excited about this as she was, but that was alright. “Oh yeah, that might be helpful.” Chloe said, then gave Rey the cross streets for Jaina’s apartment building.
That wasn’t too far away, even by foot. Rey had actually taken them several miles out of the way, so she circled back around. As they got close, she saw a woman standing on top of a building, bolts of ice flying from her fingers into a battalion of Orcs below. The woman snapped her fingers, and they were all encased in ice.
Chloe also spotted the woman throwing bolts of ice at some orcs. “Ah, that’s Jaina. My roommate,” she stated, having assumed that Rey saw the woman as well and wasn’t looking at something else.
Rey thought they could have used someone like that against the First Order. “I’ll bring you down behind her, somehow I don’t think she’ll believe we’re with the brutes.”
Orcs didn’t have space ships, and their air support came in the form of dragons, so Jaina wasn’t worried. She turned towards the ship as it landed on the roof and the gangplank came down.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m green enough or big enough to be considered one of those guys either.” Chloe chuckled a little before she got up and exited the ship, raising her hands. “I come in peace! Don’t shoot me, please,” Chloe teased a little as she came down the gangplank. At least for the current moment she felt okay enough to tease. Which was quite the change from earlier. Though she hadn’t spent much time at Jaina’s since waking up from dreaming about her father’s death on the 2nd.
That was a relief, at least. Jaina watched as the ship lifted off and took off, a little amazed, “It’s amazing what exists in this city, isn’t it?”
At least for the moment she wasn’t having to worry about Orcs and perhaps worse things. And Chloe seemed to be unharmed and in a good mood, which was a plus. “You’re definitely a lot cuter.”
Chloe gave a little wave as the Falcon took off. “Fuck yeah. I never dreamed I’d be saved by a Jedi and got to fly on the Millennium-fucking-Falcon.” That was going to be quite the memory to have. She looked back at Jaina. “Ah, thanks,” she said with a little smile. “Might’ve been being able to shoot one of the guns on the Millennium Falcon.”
There wasn’t anything about this county that made sense or obeyed the laws of physics, and despite Chloe’s excitement, Jaina wondered when it would all catch up to them. What if one day they just all ceased to exist? As though they were pawns of some unseen entity pulling the strings of their lives, until they got bored of them?
It wasn’t the first time Jaina had had that thought and it wouldn’t be the last. Not since the sun disappearing had happened. “There isn’t a word you just said that is at all believable but I just threw ice lances at green men.”
Right now, Chloe wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of this place the way Jaina was. Sure, big green people attacking the place was weird and not what Chloe had expected today. Still, there was a potential existential crisis to be had eventually. But right now, Chloe was content to simply be distracted from the anger and pain of reliving her dad’s death.
“Yeah, throwing ice lances at them definitely has to make it a bit believable.” Chloe looked at Jaina a little closer. “This place is totally fucking with your belief in physics and logic, isn’t it?”
Jaina lifted her hand to her forehead, rubbing it. “That’s an understatement. At least in this case, I can find some logic to it. The Dark Portal, like all portals, is basically math and physics. Orcs are, in essence, aliens from another planet. Even my magic is math. But…”
Ice lances. Orcs. Portals. She could only make it about math so much before she just lost it.
Chloe just looked at Jaina and got a little smirk on her face. “You’re totally going to get drunk after this is over, aren’t you?” It was more of a statement than a question. God knew Chloe was barely handling the situation herself. She was just preferring to focus on the Millennium Falcon and saved by a Jedi thing than anything else right then.
“I can pretend you’re of age if you want to join me,”Jaina suggested. It was… well illegal but she didn’t particularly care right now. Nor did she want to drink alone. Her dreams the past few nights had been all sorts of horrible.
“I’d love to.” Frankly, Jaina wasn’t the only one who could use being drunk out of their mind when this was all over. Chloe had a lot on her mind and heart, and she could use just letting it all go for a little while.
“For the time being, just lay low. I’ve got a supply of muffins and water for you,” Jaina promised. “And I’ll try to bring you something for variety.”
“Thanks, though at this point I’m starting to wonder if you’re just trying to fatten me up to eat me or something.” Chloe was teasing, of course. She knew Jaina was trying to fatten her up, she was skinny, but she liked having her fun where she could.
“I’m not that kind of witch. I’ve been working on strudel, if you want a change of pace,” Jaina joked, but she felt like for the first time since the Orcs had appeared that she could actually find a reason to laugh. Even if she hadn’t slept with Chloe since those first few nights, she still liked her, and she preferred the direction their relationship had gone in.
“Good because I probably taste terrible. Cigarettes and weed, you know.” Chloe tapped her chest a bit. “But I’m not going to turn down strudel. I’ll be a taste-tester, so long as I don’t die from the first bite, obviously.” But hey, at least it would be a tasty way to die?
“Those brownies you made were pretty good,” Jaina pointed out.”So that’s going to be your new job then. Official magic treat taste tester.”
“Thanks,” she responded. “I like that title. Makes it sound official and everything.” Chloe said with a smile.
“Let me ward the apartment, and we can get started.” Jaina needed a break anyway, and a few hours wouldn’t make much difference. Too many heroes to matter and she needed to regenerate her mana.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” It was a lot better than having those guys say they’d feed her to the portal or whatever. Apparently she had a strong soul? Chloe wasn’t even entirely sure she had a soul at the moment.