Content Warning: Swearing, unreliable narrator

Word Count: 691

balac masterlist | prev <<< hunter | next >>>

Seven fucking Corellian hells. Ruuz stared, wide-eyed, at the creature above him. 

Strands of hair stuck out from beneath her turban, plastered to her sweaty forehead. Glowing eyes, blinding in his buy'ce's night vision, bored accusingly down at him. He nearly stopped breathing, electrified by the blaze behind them.

Her dark lips were pursed, pulling creases from the corners of her mouth. The plasma-end of the lightsaber hilt was pointed at his exposed throat, her thumb a hair's breadth from the switch. 

Mesh'la cyar'ika. 

Blood rushed to his cheeks and to other parts of his body. The timing was absolute kark. 

"You are tenacious, I'll give you that," the jetii said in a mild tone of voice, impossibly heavy above him. He should have been able to buck her off, she wasn’t wearing any armor, but it was as if she were weighed down by rocks. Her strong, muscular thighs straddled his hips and kept him on his back.

Ruuz experimentally flexed his legs, but it barely budged her. Damn.

Her gaze met his through the dark visor of his helmet. It was eerie.

It was also hot. 

"I remember you." A statement, not a question. She considered his buy’ce. “The Mandalorian warrior who fought Adversis.”

Ruuz nodded anyway, thinking of the dar’jetii to cool the fire in his blood. 

"Ruuz of Clan Wren,” he said with a voice like sandpaper. Little better than a croak. “House Wren. Jetii." He swallowed. “I have sought you through the stars.” 

She frowned. "I noticed.” 

Her free hand crept under his helmet, fingers hooking into the gap between his chin and the padded inner lining. Ruuz shuddered but said nothing as she found the manual clasp, deftly disengaging the lock. She lifted the helmet away and tossed it over her shoulder. 

He bristled at the disrespect shown to his armor. “Sha’buir, you-”  

She ignited her saber, tipping the livid blade with deceptive gentleness towards his neck. He cringed backward reflexively, grunting in warning.

Sweat poured out of his skin and soaked his blacks as the searing heat from the plasma sword drew closer, flirting with his chin. The live blade’s hum was not as loud as he expected it to be. Adversis’ own weapon constantly screamed with its master’s fury; the jetii’s sword only hummed. 

He swallowed. His gaze flicked very quickly to his buy’ce, fallen on the ground a couple of feet from his position, and then to his blaster, ripped from his hands by her magicks and haphazardly thrown further out.

She made a soft clicking sound with her teeth. “Do not attempt it, warrior,” she warned. The hairs at the back of Ruuz’s neck stood on end. She was picking up on his thoughts. He slammed his shields back up.

The jetii raised an eyebrow. Wordlessly, she leaned closer until they were nearly nose to nose, narrowing her eyes at him. Ruuz clenched his jaw.

“I have no enmity with you, Mandalorian,” she said severely. The light of her sword—a bright, searing blue—cast her face in an otherworldly glow. She looked like something fey. “Why do you hunt me? A bounty?” 

“No bounty," he groaned.

The other eyebrow rose and joined its mate. “What. Then.” 

Ruuz squeezed his eyes shut, hands clenching into fists at his sides. If he could buck her off of him… his gloves creaked as he gouged grooves into the ground, loosening the dirt.

“Open your eyes, Ruuz of Clan Wren,” her stern voice said from above.

Ruuz’s reinforced mental shields were supposed to give him stronger resistance against magical compulsions, but surely her magicks were greater. Why else would Ruuz’s eyes shoot open so quickly? 

Face drawn with mistrust, the jetii gazed into his eyes searchingly. Her proximity brought her features into sharp relief. Without his helmet, she was transformed from an amalgamation of heat signatures to a person, a woman, with warm red skin, a pert nose, green eyes wide open, and dark plump lips.

Stars. She was beautiful.

Now, before we get going, let me say something: I do not hate Juno Eclipse. I did, however, find the connection between her and Galen...a little unsettling. I am not saying it was unhealthy or toxic, nor am I saying that Juno should have never been in the same room as Galen. That said, it seemed, at least in the second game for sure, that Galen was over-relying on her and putting too much of his needs/hopes on her for his own good. And no, I'm not agreeing with what the narrative said about Vader having control over Galen so long as she lived. I think what I'm trying to say is that, she ended up being a Living Emotional Crutch for him, and that trope - whether applied to a man or woman, in real life or in fiction - deeply unsettles me. The idea that someone needs another person in order to operate as a human being, or to be kept from totally falling apart...it doesn't sit well with me, and, I suppose, scares me. I don't want that for either of them, hence a new love interest for Galen.

Now, whether or not Juno lived after that final cutscene in Force Unleashed II, I confess, for the purposes of this AU...Juno does die. In the main Star Wars universe that I envision, she does live, but for the purposes of my story, it only makes sense that she is killed by either Darth Vader or Boba Fett. Galen can only do so much to protect her, and moreover, the likelihood of either of those villains killing her is extremely high. PROXY will, quite possibly, be at least salvageable here as well; I don't yet know if he will be a series of pieces that Galen and Raya and their other two crew members will have to put back together, or have his parts integrated into a separate unit. Considering I gave Raya a revamped HK-77 assassin/protocol droid as her muscle pre-meeting Galen (HK-77s are from Legends, by the way; look them up), PROXY's role may be redundant, in which case, some of his salvageable components would be used for HK.

She will also have a small, cat-dragon hybrid known as a felico. Her name is Tapi, and I'm trying to picture her as a traditional Asiatic/Japanese dragon, but one that is small enough that she can easily climb onto someone's shoulder. I picture the same body style, but with shorter whiskers, dexterous talon-like paws, feathered wings of proper proportion, and some fur that helps her with sneaking some items off bad guys, or just all the way around enhance her cuddliness. Color wise, she might be all black or shades of gray with bright green eyes.

Raya I envision as one of the few survivors of the noble family from Zakuul, with perhaps a smidgeon of Force-sensitivity. Her family had guarded artifacts from the Old Republic Era (the time of Revan in SW:KOTOR to SW:TOR, for reference), and so she was trained in the use of both melee and ranged weapons. She was an energetic child, and a prodigy when it came to most topics, although she worked exceptionally hard to get good at working with starship systems and repairs. The Empire eventually came to Zakuul for those same artifacts, around the time Raya was twelve or fourteen. The planet attempted to fight, and was soon overpowered; however, many managed to take off with the artifacts, hiding them away from Imperial eyes. Raya was captured after one battle, and after some time, forced to watch her father's public execution. This sent her into a blind rage, and before she knew it, the squadron that had been detaining her lay at her feet in pools of blood and missing limbs. Shaken by her own actions, she managed to escape, and spent the next six or eight years bouncing across the galaxy as a freelance agent for hire. However, Raya never worked with the Empire, and even though she made apparently shady deals, it was all in the effort to locate those missing artifacts, which she managed to hide with the aid of the hidden in plain sight Jedi Haja Estree.

Following one lead on the edge of the Outer Rim/Wild Space from their efforts on Tanalorr, Raya comes across the remains of the Rogue Shadow on an unnamed planet, the owner of whom, Galen Marek, has resided in for almost a month. He's full of anger, but her stubbornness, humor, and clear disdain for the Empire manages to convince him that she is an ally and not an enemy. Working together, they leave the planet and attempt to return while being side-tracked by HK-77 picking up old, disconnected transmissions from something ancient - so ancient, in fact, that it could be a cache of artifacts from the time of Revan....