"Now this, is exciting." Glaize sounded like he may have been kicked back somewhere with a cup of caf watching them like a good holo.

"Are you okay?"Ahsoka asked, her concern and attention turned towards Fahili. The blazing white of her lightsaber held the red blade at bay, but she hardly seemed to notice.

The Nautolan nodded in silent shock. The Inquisitor seemed to take offense to Ahsoka's apathy towards him and reached out with a hand sending a violent force wave meant to hurl her back. Fahili could feel the reverberation of the Force pass over her despite not being in its direct path.

Ahsoka didn't budge. Like most well trained Force users in combat, she maintained a basic Force shield to guard against such attacks. "Perhaps if you had remained true to yourself, Jedi..." She put her free hand up. "The force would have grown strong with you." His eyes went wide before he was sent sprawling several feet away by her own Force push. Apparently he'd forgotten his basics when he let rage guide his actions.

Evaan gasped and looked at Ahsoka."You are our reinforcements?"

Ahsoka smiled "Am I not enough?"

"More than... When Fulcrum said he'd send help..."

"I am Fulcrum."

That stunned the room into silence. She turned her blade in her hand so that it was in reverse-grip. "But more on that later. Where is Adara?"

"I'm here!" The Mirilian said as she sprinted out from a corridor. Blaster fire chased after her.

"More troopers are coming!" Assata said as she hefted her weapon. "I'll provide suppressive fire. Head back towards the ship!" She powered up her weapon, the rising hum that would precede a deadly storm of blaster bolts sounding as it came to life.

"Assata!!" Assata turned to see the spinning, flying scarlet saber ripping through the air directly towards her. It would have been her death if not for Evaan shouting her name in the nick of time. In more of a stagger then a step, she managed to angle out of its direct path. Her heavy canon wasn't so fortunate. The lightsaber cut clean through the barrel of her weapon, rendering it useless.

In a howl of rage, Assata spun and let the half of the weapon she was holding fly in Adara's direction, catching one of her pursuing Stormtroopers in the head, dropping him to the ground. She then pulled the blaster pistol from her hip, proceeding to follow up with precision shots in a two-handed grip. "That did not go as planned!"

The saber returned to its owner, who had already been running in Adara's direction. "I'll kill you all!" he bellowed.

Adara yelped as she was suddenly yanked in a different direction from that which she was running, by way of Ahsoka's pull on the Force. At the same moment the Ex-Jedi, propelled herself forward, intercepting the Inquisitor. Her blade met his in a vibrant crackle of energy. "No one dies today..." Ahsoka said as she looked him in his cold yellow eyes. "Unless they ask for it."

The hate exploded through him and manifested in raw Dark Side power as he forced her off and moved in with a furious assault. His spinning blades flashed end over end. Ahsoka fell into step with him and instead of trying to parry each individual strike from the fast-moving weapon, she simply allowed her blade to trace its direction, using a two-handed defensive grip as practiced in the defensive fundamentals of Soresu, saber form III.

Her stance allowed her to fend off each blow without expending extra energy or attempting the impossible task of trying to parry each individual blade rotation. At the same time, it granted her momentum. Still, believing that she would eventually break under his brute force assault, he continued. But Ahsoka was a master of saber combat. Soon her defense had slipped naturally into offense.

She to a one-handed grip once more, her saber twirling effortlessly in her hand, aided in motion by the curved hilt of her blade and propensity for the unorthodox underhanded style. The white of her saber slashed so fast that the only thing keeping him in the fight was his saber's spinning feature. But even that would only gain him a few seconds more of combat.

Ahsoka saw her opening. A strike at his thigh. He faltered. An expert flick of her wrist and she'd cut through the arch of his hilt's circular handle, sending half of his broken blade flying. In the same motion, faster than the thought of an eye blink, shed flicked her saber again fashioning a wound that stretched from shoulder to hip. He collapsed on the ground.

Ahsoka retracted her blade with a sound like energy sucking into a vacuum as she pointed toward the docking bay. "Let's go!"

All five women sprinted towards the exit, Assata and Evaan firing behind them even as they ran. Once in the docking bay, Ahsoka turned in the direction of her ship and nodded towards it to signal the others. "I'll transmit my hyperspace coordinates. Be ready to jump on my mark." Without waiting for an answer, she took a bounding, Force fueled leap to her cockpit.

"Get to the ship. Let's go!" Evaan shouted as she encouraged her team on. She fired a shot that hit a Stormtrooper right between the eyes, and then another flurry that barreled into the chests of another couple behind him.

Then there was the explosion. The ship that detonated- their ship- was just a few yards away when it happened and as a result, Evaan went deaf. Her feet left the ground as the shockwave swept over her. The impact of her back on the supply crate knocked the breath from her lungs, and her vision went dark.

Moments later, Evaan was vaguely aware of someone tugging at her arm. Her chest burned as her lungs struggled to expand. The pounding pressure her head was maddening. She opened her eyes to see Fahili lifting her to her feet. She was saying something, but Evaan still couldn't hear. She would've tried to make out the words if it wasn't for her being distracted by the burning remains of the maintenance freighter.

Fahili pulled again, harder this time. "C'mon! We can't stay here!" The cacophony returned to Evaan all at once. The shouting, blaster fire and the whir of the bay's power generators assaulted her ears at the same time. She turned to get a better look at her surroundings. The docking bay was full of transport ships, freighters, and Imperial TIE's in the process of getting their last maintenance checks. Behind them were three AT-RT walkers standing at about three and half meters, on mechanical bird-like legs. The drivers could be seen on the top, re-aligning the weapons to point towards them.

Assata sprinted towards the walkers. "Cover her!" Evaan shouted, even as she spun to fire at the still approaching Stormtroopers.

Assata tossed a cylinder towards the walkers. The middle walker driver pointed and shouted, "Ion Grenade!" The grenade hit and exploded into a cloud of arcing electricity, its bright, crackling fingers appearing and disappearing all over the walkers, easily conducting through the protective armor. "Somebody take her down, our walkers are standing statues!"

Assata didn't halt. Using the nearby stacked supply crates as stairs, she took two rising steps and vaulted into a leaping kick that caught the middle driver right in his bucket. He flew off his walker. Using her pistol, she took out one of the others with three shots in the chest.

"Assata behind you!" Adara shouted. Heeding her advice, without looking back, Assata took a step up on the top of the walker and kicked off with a twisting back flip. She could see the blaster bolts flying by her in mid-air, praying that none of them would hit her. They didn't. She landed on the final walker, knocking the driver's E-11 blaster rifle from his hand from his hand with a kick. It clattered to the ground several meters below.

Assata elbowed him in the head to make him stagger and followed up with a short uppercut to his bucket, with the express purpose of knocking it off. She succeeded and saw the fear in the younger boy's eyes. Years ago she that would have made her hesitate. The old scar on her abdomen reminded her why she never would again. She decked him in the nose, but before he could stagger off the walker, she grabbed his collar and punched his face once... twice... three times before-

"Assata! That's Enough! Let's go!" Evaan said, a hint of warning in her voice.

Assata looked at the troopers bloodied face as she heaved heavy breaths. He was done. He couldn't hurt them anymore. She huffed and slammed him against his driver controls where he slumped, instead of letting him fall to what would have likely been a worse fate. She leaped below and landed on both feet in a three-point squat. "Coming."

Glaize chimed in on their channel again. "Ladies, I'm not exactly sure what your plan is, but with your ship out of commission, I don't see know how you're going to-... oh... oh I see. Now that's what I call sexy."

Evaan slid down into the seat of the TIE Interceptor, flipping the required switches to fire it up, forgoing the lengthy diagnostic checks, as she strapped in. Its twin engines purred to life as it lifted to a low hover. The brand new sub-light ion power cores thrummed with an eagerness to propel the small maneuverable craft into the vast stretches of space. With but a touch of the yoke she felt the sensitive ship twitch in excitement, and she grinned like a child with a new toy.

"Vixen 2 how is that transponder override coming?" Evaan asked.

"Already done, Vixen Leader." Adara called back. As she did the communication panel on Evaan's console turned from white to green. "These babies are locked and secured with our communication channel, Imperial SID's wiped from their system. There's no tracking us or recovering these ships after we leave here. They belong to us now."

The TIE Interceptors, like TIE fighters, were small light ships with spherical cockpit housings meant for a single driver flanked by large solar panels on either side. Attached to the panels were four more sharp pointed panels that gave each side a menacing forward facing arrow type look. The tips of these were outfitted with laser canons. They were one of the elite starfighters of the Imperial fleet. And now four of them belonged to Vixen Squadron.

Evaan eased forward and the craft exploded from the bay like a race blaster shot had been fired. Open space enveloped her and her new ship in a fraction of a second. A moment later she'd pulled up next to Ahsoka in her Republic Jedi Interceptor. "Nice of you to join me, Vixen Leader." Ahsoka's voice sounded over for the ship radio that their channel had now been patched into.

"My pleasure, Fulcrum." Evaan said. "Vixen squadron this is Vixen Leader, report in."

Another two TIE interceptors pulled up port-side. "Vixen 2 reporting in," Adara said giddily.

"Vixen 3, reporting in," Fahili said.

Then another, on Ahsoka's starboard. "Vixen 4, reporting in," Assata said.

"Slick work, stealing those interceptors, ladies." Glaive's voice came in.

"Um, who's that?" Ahsoka asked.

"Long story..." Evaan grumbled. "How is he on our new channel, Adara?"

"I didn't really have time to create new encrypted security associations while we were getting shot at!" Adara complained.

"Plus I would've just cracked that in a few moments, anyways." Glaize continued. "As I was saying, good choice of ship. These are faster and have more power than the standard fighters, which- ah... speak of the devil."

Evaan's warning sensors were picking up about a dozen or so TIE fighters closing in on their position, apparently launched from the security bay. "He's right," Ahsoka concurred. "And they are moving in fast."

Evaan flexed her fingers around the TIE's yoke. "Alright Vixen squad, we've got incoming. How about we show these imps how to fly their own ships."

"I'm game," Assata said.

"Awaiting your orders, commander," Fahili agreed.

"Yes, let's kick their authoritarian asses from here to the outer rim!" Adara said.

"Taking my orders from you," Ahsoka responded.

"Very well, Fulcrum, just follow my lead. Alright Vixen Squadron. Ready the Crimson Nest formation."