Madness : Chapter 15: A Peaceful Walk

"I was under the impression your plan involved sulphuric acid and a hacksaw."

The last time I had been in the city proper, I had been under the impression that a certain Jedi had had a plan to either get me killed or discredited. She had managed to get me alone, unprepared, and subsequently dumped into a crowd that could have hidden who knows how many Republic agents. The irony that I was charging right back into that same city in search of safety was not lost on me.

Of course, it was less a charge and more of a mostly unconcerned stroll.

"Hold on, who's that walking with the Sith?" a stray voice reached my ears over the general hubbub of the crowd. The Little Jedi and I had opted to stick together for the sake of our mutual alibi, ambling down one of the busy avenues of the city. It was lined with colorful stalls where locals sold a motley assortment of wares. "Isn't that a Jedi?"

I temporarily shifted mental gears, into a language the Little Jedi would understand. It was a lot of effort just to tell her that the plan was working in a way that other people would not be able to pick up, true, but it meant that any sudden deviation from this plan would be highly suspicious. Worst case scenario, if the Little Jedi opted to get her kill count for this planet up to five Sith, I bought myself a few seconds.

By the time I had shifted back, the impression of a camera and a news broadcast pushed into my mind. Oh right, I had tabloid coverage of this afternoon to look forward to. How foolish of me. My chagrined feelings must have transcended the language barrier because the Little Jedi began to grin a bit.

"Something not to your liking?" her quiet voice still held unmistakable traces of smugness.

"Oh, it's nothing," I said evenly, "I'm just remembering what was said about us the last time we were caught."

"It wouldn't cause such a scene if you wouldn't phrase things like that," she muttered, but we kept walking side by side.

"Fear my vengeance," I said lightheartedly. "For it will make us both miserable."

A few more utterances of disbelief about how Jedi and Sith could apparently coexist peacefully continued to drift through the crowd. One which raised the probability of an imposter I found particularly amusing, reaching my ear as we neared a cluster of food stalls whose foods filled the air with so much sugar you could taste it just by walking past. Like all the rest, I paid it no mind as I took in the atmosphere around me.

Above my head, the scream of failing repulsorlifts rose in pitch and volume as something drew near. A dark blur raced across the sky, just barely above the rooftops. I caught a gleam of metal but that was it before it disappeared beyond the rooftops.

No more than five seconds later, the sound of an explosion rocked the street, followed swiftly by screaming.

Neither the Little Jedi nor I wasted any words. There was no clever commentary or pithy one-liner to accompany this event. Something bad had happened in a civilian area, there was no time to waste trying to sound clever.

She was faster than me, as any fool might have predicted, but we still reached the site of the accident together, or close enough to make no appreciable difference.

It must have been an airspeeder that came crashing down. The wreck was too small to be anything else. Vaguely rectangular it was and burning merrily. The building that had stopped it was in a similar state, but with a bit less fire. All around it laid the victims of the explosion, sprawled all around the square, barely moving.

There was no hesitation in my actions.

Moving towards the nearest of the casualties, I established two facts very quickly: first, she was breathing. Second, she wasn't responding to my words. All in all, that simplified my job considerably.

Step one, check for breathing. I tilted her head back as she lay on the flagstone ground. She wasn't bleeding too badly, and after a few seconds, I saw her chest moving slightly with the telltale signs of moving air. Shortly afterward, I heard it, too.

Good.

One arm at an angle, I moved the victim's other hand on her shoulder. Grabbing beneath her knee, I pulled her onto her side. Moving her head back to open the airway, I was satisfied with my work. She would live, unless the internal injuries were absolutely ruinous.

No, this was not the time to think about that.

External injuries… minimal. Nothing I needed to do. Good.

I moved on to the next victim. Head back, wait for signs of breathing… and yes, they were breathing. Good.

This time, I did not waste the time to do it myself; Flexing my metaphysical muscles, I used the Force to move this victim into the recovery position. And I rose back to my feet, fires blazing in patches all around me, I came to a realization: I could sense this one at my feet.

In fact, I could sense all of them, every single victim of this attack.

And I could move them.

So I did.

Find the injured person. Not difficult, they were littering the streets. Check if they're breathing. Again, elementary for someone with functioning ears. Or eyes. Or a sense of touch, in an emergency. Establish that they are breathing and move them into the recovery position with the Force.

Move on.

There were plenty of injured people.

Best to mitigate the damage where possible.

And when I ran into someone bleeding… I did the same. Except that I also told one of the bystanders to press something against the wound. For the first, it was my coat. Fresh and clean, I had only just been able to use it to replace the torn and blood-soaked coat from the attack.

Now, this one was blood-stained as well. Except my old coat was on its way to an incinerator, and this coat was pushed against someone's abdominal wound. If I ever had a chance to recover it, it would be best served getting tossed into the trash, but that was a future problem.

Other bleeders got a bystander's coat. Or shirt. Or jacket. Or whatever was on hand, really, as long as it could staunch the bleeding when combined with a bit of strategic pressure.

"They're stable," the almost familiar tones of the Little Jedi tore me from my thoughts. "Not much more we can do here until the first responders show up."

"Good," I said. Looking around. I must have barely gotten to half of the victims, but the rest had already been moved into the recovery position. The Little Jedi's doing, no doubt. How convenient that she knew how to do things beyond murder. "Hopefully it won't be-"

Apparently, even saying that much taunted Murphy to an unexpected degree.

Because the crashed airspeeder detonated. Again, I suppose. Or perhaps it was merely a secondary explosion. To me, positioned only a few dozen meters from the wreckage, the difference was entirely academic. An explosion was an explosion, as far as I could tell.

Especially when it flattened me.

Pain blossomed across my chest and shoulder. Focused on my right side, blessedly. Still dangerous, but marginally less dangerous than it could have been. Despite the protest in my limbs, despite the ringing in my ears, and despite my swimming vision, I fought my way back to my feet to find the Little Jedi little worse for wear. Her green robes seemed a bit more singed than before, but she seemed mostly unhurt.

"You're bleeding," she commented. Looking down, I could see the truth in her words. The front of my shirt was turning a significantly darker shade of red, with my skin showing through in a select few places. All around me, I could hear the clatter of metal fragments landing on flagstone, interspersed with the occasional wet meaty splat of something organic hitting the ground.

"That's hardly new," I groaned. "Got any bandages on you?"

"Those won't do much for a chest wound," She pointed out.

"Kind of you to think of me first, but I was referring to the people," I said. The people I had put into the recovery position were mostly alright, thankfully. Or at least not hurt more than before. Unfortunately, the people I had conscripted into stopping the bleeding of the earliest victims had not been so lucky.

Which deprived the initial wounded from having their bleeding staunched.

Damn it.

Using the Force, I pulled the unused roll of bandages from where they contributed the pressure to the pressure bandage. Thankfully, it had already done its part; My arm felt as dry as ever, the bleeding having stopped some time ago. Of course, I knew that any kind of excessive movement would only open the fragile scabs that had formed.

One roll of bandages would not be enough to help all these people.

But it would be a start.

...

Hey guys I would really appreciate it if you could throw some power stones to help elevate the ranking.

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