CRUCIFY ME . ー k. ren, p. dameron; tlj [HIATUS]

ii: CRAIT.

CRAIT.

"I want 500,000 Stormtroopers with me when I storm that goddamn pilot camp." Troia said to Captain Phasma, putting on her armor and hitching her lightsaber to her belt.

"Right away, General Ren. Will you be taking the TIE fighter?"

Troia considered it. "No. Ready the AT-AT for transport to Crait. We'll use that as central defense. As for offense, gather our most elite pilots. I'll work things out from the ground."

"Of course."

"Have everything ready in ten minutes. We need to catch them by surprise." With her orders laid out, Troia made her way to the hangar to make sure troops were loaded on to the ships. She was going to do everything in her power to make sure Snoke was not disappointed- if the opposite was the case, she'd likely be dead within seconds of delivering news of a failed mission. Maybe less, if she started the sentence with, "I have bad news." If she didn't say that, she'd have to be careful not to betray it through her facial expression. But failure was not an option. Failure would never be an option. Troia was going to kill every last one of those pilots, even if she had to do it herself—with or without central defense.

Crucify me. Those words came again in her mind, like a low hiss, unidentifiable in gender. Troia tried her best to ignore it, but the voice persisted. It was incessant, whiny, like a child. She hated it with all of her being. She wanted to scream. Loudly. She'd do most anything to drown out those pleas for death.

"Everything is ready, General Ren," Captain Phasma said as she approached Troia, who responded by nodding and following Phasma to the ships. While still wary, Troia had a good feeling about the mission.

⬗

"We're detecting signals of a First Order cruiser and several others in our orbit." This statement came from a pale, raven-haired young man who was essentially trembling with a mixture of nerves and fear, and was directed towards another man of similar hair color but with darker skin. The other man appeared far calmer.

"How many others?"

The first man looked back down at the screen of the ship's radar, his brow furrowing. "Aside from one big cruiser, there are four transport ships and a lot of TIEs."

"How much is a lot, Fox?"

"Uh," the man, Fox, grimaced. "Three hundred thousand of them."

"Damn it," the man hissed, "this is an outpost, not a stronghold. This is the second time they've attacked us—a whole six of us, mind you—and there's thousands of them! Again! And it's that same woman, too. There's nothing more I'd love to do than just...cut her down to size. Too much of an ego, that one."

Ignoring the last part of the man's spiel, the jittery man replied, "Nothing we can do but fight them with what we've got, right, Poe?"

Poe nodded, finding strength in his comrade's resolve. "Absolutely. Tell the others, quickly. And while you're at it, send out a distress signal. We'll need backup. Lots of it."

"You got it, Dameron."

Poe Dameron was the best (trigger-happy) flyboy in the Resistance, and had penchant for blowing up anything that belonged to the First Order. Single, for anyone who was wondering.

Fox, known as Orion (or Rio among his friends) was a decent pilot, but nowhere near as reputed as Poe. Orion was young—of no fresher blood than that of a twenty year-old. Handsome, too, but a prolific worrier. He worried about anything and everything, especially what the First Order was up to. And what they were up to now, he knew, was no good and did not bode well for their tiny, understaffed, and under-armed outpost on Crait. Nevertheless, Orion did as he was told and warned the other four pilots of what was coming, as well as sent a hurried distress signal to the Resistance cruiser some one hundred light years away from them. After that was said and done, he and the others made their way to the hangar where the X-Wings were, and set to putting on their flight suits and getting everything ready for the First Order's attack.

"Any word from main base?" Poe asked Orion as the passed one another on the way to their X-Wings. Orion shook his head.

"Not yet. We're gonna have to tank this one on our own until they do."

"Sounds like a plan, Rio. Those First Order troops won't even know what hit 'em."

Loud noises outside the hangar walls alerted the six pilots to the arrival of the First Order. All of them grew tense and paused for a moment, frozen by an overwhelming feeling of fear and dread before clambering into their X-Wings and turning the ignition key. Here we go again, Poe thought as he guided his X-Wing out of the hangar and began his attack on the swarm of First Order TIE fighters, this is the part where I send that pretty First Order General scurrying away with her tail between her legs.

⬗

"There it is," Troia said to Phasma, who was standing beside her, "there goes the first one. Commence fire."

With that, Troia exited the ground defense unit and made her way towards the hangar. She hardly flinched as the X-Wings started firing at her, seeing as most of those shots missed her entirely. Besides, she was a small target and the least of the Resistance pilots' worries; it wouldn't be hard for her to get to the hangar safely—or at least that was what she'd thought.

"It doesn't do you any good that you look like Kylo Ren from literally every angle other than head-on."

Troia turned around partly because she'd never heard that before (nor had she ever considered the similarities in their attire) and partly because it wasn't wise to have one's back to a potential attacker. Especially if that attacker had a weapon. What met her cold grey eyes was amusing.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she remarked, drawing out the person's name and spitting it out like venom, "Rey."