The Light Burns Brightest In The Darkside

The first of a lifetime of Loss and Tradgedy

Chapter 3
It wasn't long before Zykes and his brothers warmed to Major Isar and his small squad, at least that's how he referred to the two Stormtroopers that accompanied him. He seemed very fond the two troopers, Captain Aris Nemal, who he called Ari and Private Zoba Endessa, who he referred to as Zoo. It was Zoo who first spoke when they arrived, he had a very young sounding voice that people warmed to very quickly. The Major and Captain both had fairly soft voices anyway, since they rarely needed to raise them, but softest of all was Zoo's voice, he was almost a new recruit fresh out of the academy, but as with both the men in Isa's 'small squad', there was a story.
It was the last battle Rusty had fought in, a battle on Hoth, he was in charge of a squad of Snowtroopers, one of which was Zoo. He was a Private and quite unknown to Rusty, or anyone else for that matter. What made him stand out in the end though was his bravery in battle. During a nightop, the Major had gone ahead to scout the area out the area ready for a mission in the morning. Unfortunately, the rebels were waiting for such a recon mission and had set up snipers to keep them out. As the first sniper shot rang out, it hit Rusty right in the kneecap leaving him immobilised and stuck in a hail of bullets. Most of the new recruits were frozen and unsure how to help the Major. Zoo ran straight to him though, followed very closely only by Captain Aris. They both ran into the hail of fire that was being rained down on the Major. They jumped into the shell hole he was trapped in and dragged him out to safety. Obviously, having been seriously injured in his knee, the Major was out of action from battle and was assigned ambassador duties on the count of his good reputation and likeable attitude. Since he felt he owed at least some of the fact that he was still alive to the two men who rescued him; Capt. Ari and PVT. Zoo, he kept them around as his personal detail or 'small squadron' as he called them, in case any problems were to arise.

Zykes and his brothers had now spent 3 days and 2 nights with Major Rusti and his men and whilst his brothers had seen this as more of an inconvenience than anything else, Zykes enjoyed every minute of it. He probably knew by now, subconsciously, that he wasn't going to see his parents again, but chose to give it little thought. His brothers seemed preoccupied by the thought of their parents and it showed, they were in a bad way, particularly Zarkx who had spent the whole time acting out in his own way, not so much against the Major and his squad, but just general acting out, he was furious with the Republic and quite willing to show it, despite Rusty's requests to 'Calm down' he was constantly trying to get away to exact his 'One man' (or at least 'One boy') revenge. Just how he was going to do this was unclear to him or anyone else. Luckily Keller was as on top of this matter, as much as Zarkx was trying to exact his 'One boy' revenge, Keller was as determined to stop him for his own good and to try and stop him being a distraction to the Major and his men. Though in truth, they would never admit it to the boys but Zarkx was already a big distraction and was starting to preoccupy them quite a bit. Unfortunately, perhaps a little too much so.
The sad fact was, Rusty and his men were paying too little attention to anything other than the children that had been placed in their care. There were many other imperial troops in the local vicinity, particularly the Storm Troopers in black armour, the 'Shadow Troopers', which Rusty had frequently told the boys to ignore and that they were just here to keep away some dangerous enemy troops who might try to harm Rusty and his men. It was a shame that Rusty had placed too much trust in their ability. As darkness fell on the third night, there was another group of people who were actively interested in Rusty and his team, but for very different reasons.
During their routine ops. A group of four Republic Infiltrators had happened upon the Xander household and had taken great interest in the three Troopers inside. These infiltrators were the Republics best trained men and highly skilled deadly Assassins. As far as they were concerned the three troopers inside had kidnapped these children against their will (an assumption that would later get them killed). It was at first confusing to them that the children seemed to be actively engaged with the Imperials and almost enjoying their company. They again fatally assumed that the children were just very resilient and trying to play along until rescue arrived. Though in hindsight, these assumptions seemed particularly foolish, giving a great deal of credit to a child in terms of what they were capable of planning, the alternative that they had in fact become fond of their captors and would be greatly distressed if harm were to come to their new 'Hero's', much to their detriment, had never occurred to them. They fully assumed that the children would be relieved to be 'rescued' and would welcome the demise of their Imperial captors. So confident were they of this, that they had not factored the reaction of the children into their brutal plan to 'remove' the three Troopers that they assumed were 'guarding' the children and preventing their escape. The Xander kids certainly didn't view things this way, as they were about to find out.

They watched the house for at least 4 hours, watching the movements of the Imperials inside, until they had a plan to remove all the Troopers without so much as a yelp from the Troopers, the children would turn out to be their downfall however, since they had greatly underestimated how fond the children had become of their Trooper guardians and just how much their plan was about to unleash some kind of horror show onto them, one they would never forget.
The plan was a fairly simple one. They had noticed that the troopers usually felt safe and comfortable in the Xander home, as a result they often broke protocol and grouped themselves together all 3 sitting on the same sofa. So, they crept into the house just after they had done their sweep of the house and were all sitting once again on the sofa, away from all the children with the exception of Zykes, who was like a shadow to the Major, following him everywhere. However, with all 3 sat on the sofa, Zykes was forced to sit opposite them, on the floor chatting to them, which was ideal for them as he couldn't see them creep in behind the sofa and wouldn't see them until they had killed the 3 men. So in they crept to the living room, using the sofa for cover, they crept up behind the three men, grabbed them by the throat so that they couldn't scream and rammed their huge VibroBlade knives straight through their back, causing them to make a terrible muffled scream sound that none of the children would ever forget. Worse still, after seeing that, they ripped the knives out of the three Troopers and slowly cut their throats with them whilst they flailed and struggled, but still unable to scream. It was the most horrific thing any of the children had ever seen and obviously they did not react well to their new friends being executed in such a terrible and painful way.