endure || obikin

one

Blasts rang out all around me, the horrible screaming sounds they made piercing into my head and rattling around in my skull. Dirt sprayed up, dark brown coating my vision and swallowing me, pulling me down like a monster swallowing its prey. Blood seemed to make its way across my hands, and I couldn't even tell if it was my own.

The battle raged on, and I did my best to save who I could. My saber whirled and whizzed through the air, deflecting as many blasts as possible, cutting through debris. The force roiled around me; I could smell and feel the death all around me, the death of both allies, enemies, and innocents. That feeling of death sunk its teeth into me and shook me around, rattling me and tearing me to pieces.

Battle droids and commando droids alike swarmed around me and the small smattering that remained of my men. Cody had long since gone missing, as had Waxer and two other men; no matter how hard I tried to discern these men's voices, I couldn't even remember quite who I had with me, but I knew they mattered to me. Every clone did.

We were outrageously outnumbered and had been fighting all day. Our stamina had begun to drain, and we were crouching at the lowest point on the battlefield. In short, things were looking bleak as the ash drifted ominously from the sky. A hole in my heart tore open wide as I watched three men fall beside me. A strange sob exiting my mouth; I turned to my left and down went another two. Shouting angrily at the Separatists, I pushed desperately with the force to move a tree trunk in front of us, shielding us only momentarily from the hellfire which surged overhead.

Sunset began, and the skies smeared red, the smoke mixing with the color to create the overall feeling of drowning in dirt and blood; the deadly scent of fire slithered into my nose, smoke constricted my lungs, trying to squeeze the life out of me. Several clones crouched beside me on the ground, all of us thoroughly shaken, and none of us seemed to be able to form a wholly coherent thought. Gasping, I waved vaguely in some direction, and we stumbled that way, hoping somehow we would find either an advantage or some sort of reprieve.

Ashes and blaster fire swirled about, and we stumbled over logs, pieces of metal, rubble, and limbs or bodies of fallen droids and clones alike. Desperately, I swore a prayer to the force to find us that reprieve. Eventually, it came in the form of an overturned gunship. Heads down, we scampered inside, stepping over the mangled, charred bodies of the clones who had been killed by the opposition, died upon impact, suffocated, or got trampled.

The battle was chaos. Not that any battle wasn't, but this one was especially so: I had no idea where I was, where my men were- if any of them were alive- or where my allies were. The sounds of battle roared around us as I desperately screamed into my comm for reinforcements, ignoring my raw throat as I did so. No response came, and I felt the hope draining from my heart, replaced instead by a stabbing dread. We huddled together in the burned shell of the ship, hoping we wouldn't be found by anyone we didn't want to see.

I turned to my left and shouted at the clone beside me. He seemed to be wounded, and I was trying to ask what had happened, but before he could answer, a hatch in the top of the ship opened, and blasts poured down over us. I deflected as much as possible, but the clones around me dropped, one by one.

I couldn't save them.

I swung furiously at the droids, screaming again, but my injuries, fatigue, and horror caused my fighting to lag. I was cornered, and a blast struck my lower arm. I yelped and dropped to the ground, deflecting their blasts desperately from where I kneeled. The droids closed in, and I momentarily wondered if I would die here.

Suddenly, when it seemed that would be the case, a shining pillar of arctic blue illuminated behind them and struck them all down. The blasts ceased, and I heard my name echo through the gunship.