//------------------------------//
// Buyer's Remorse 
// Story: Bounty Hunter Anon III 
// by Sunny Solaire 
//------------------------------//

You grip your blaster in anticipation as the console starts beeping in front of you.

Spike's voice comes on. "I'm picking up a ship, Sunset. It's a Naboo Starfighter."

Soarin'.

"Keep us locked down, Spike." You command.

Over the past two hours, he had detected a growing number of droids sitting in wait along the perimeter of the treeline. One of the droids had attempted to enter the ship, but thanks to your defenses, the small, automatic turret on the ship's underbelly kicked on and blasted the droid away. The rest of the droids were on standby with their weapons ready. There were eight of them in total so far, and they had you surrounded.

From above the treetops, Soarin's familiar blue Naboo Starfighter comes into view on your hologram display. It stops in the air and hovers for a moment before slowly descending toward the ground directly over you. Once it's about twenty meters over the ground, it stops its descent and remains stationary in the air. The canopy slides open and Soarin' himself stands up to look down at your ship. His spiky hair is waving in the slight breeze and he smirks confidently.

You growl as you watch him on the scanner. He's probably not going to leave his ship with his broken leg until he knows it's clear.

Fluttershy watches the scanner with you and gulps. "Okay, he's here... What do we do now, Sunset?"

You take a deep breath. "Give me a second..."

Before anything else, you need to deal with all those droids surrounding you. Once they're taken care of, then you can focus on taking down Soarin'. But how?

The console in front of you starts beeping and Spike appears on the hologram display. "It's Soarin'. He's hailing us."

Twilight steps toward the console. "Let me talk to him."

You step away from the console and Twilight presses a button on the display. Soarin' appears a second later. He cocks his head at Twilight.

"This is Twilight Sparkle. I'm a scientist with the Republic." She says.

Soarin' stares at her inquisitively. "I've heard of you, Miss Sparkle. Why are you here? Why are you helping these Mandalorians?"

"My business here is my own, Soarin'." She replies. "Why are you attacking us? Why assassin droids?"

"I am here for the Mandalorians, Twilight, nothing more. I have no beef with you." He says. "Hell, you should help me. Bring Sunset out here so I can give her what she deserves."

While he's talking, you get an idea. There is no way that he is going to back down from this unless he's forced to. While he has those droids at his disposal, he'll think he has the upper hand. However, you could use the ship's heavy turret to destroy them and get the jump on him. Big Mac could do that. Once they're taken care of, then you can focus on Soarin'. Your jetpack's missile should be enough to take his ship down. 

You silently make your way over to Big Mac while Twilight and Soarin' continue talking.

"Those Mandalorians are criminals!" He shouts. "They've taken the lives of countless people over the years. Good people! They can't be allowed to walk free anymore!"

Twilight sighs and looks at him sympathetically. "Soarin', I know how much Spitfire meant to you, and how you must feel about her being taken."

He tenses up a little at the mention of her name. Meanwhile, you whisper your plan to Big Mac and he nods before proceeding toward the gun turret. You look back at Soarin'.

Twilight continues. "But what happened to her wasn't their fault. Senator Melody is a good friend of mine. I've seen the records, I know what happened on Dantooine. Sunset and Anon did all they could to save her and Spitfire. You can't blame them for losing her. They tried their best."

He shakes his head slowly as she speaks. He looks like he's thinking about what she's saying. You want to say she's getting through to him, but you're not sure. That uneasy feeling in your gut is still there.

"Please, Soarin'." Twilight implores. "Call off the droids and let us go. Please. She hasn't done anything to you."

He stays still for a long time.

"No, Twilight..." He says, finally looking at her. "Someone has to pay for Spitfire's death. It has to be them. If it wasn't for them, then I wouldn't have lost Spitfire. She'd still be here... With me... I won't let anyone stand in my way..." He glares at her, any sign of cockiness or arrogance is gone and is slowly replaced with rage. "If you won't help me, then you are against me!"

The Naboo Starfighter leans forward in the air and fires a proton torpedo at your hull. The entire ship rocks as it explodes outside. Twilight and Fluttershy both scream and fall onto the floor to take cover. The feed from Soarin's ship is cut and he vanishes from view.

You hold onto a wall for support and growl as you activate your comms. "Big Mac! Now!"

Below you, the ship's underbelly turret whirrs to life and he starts blasting the droids hiding in the treeline. The droids all return fire. Their manufacturer's protocols are working exactly like they were designed to.

The ship's defense initiative is still up and the hull is holding strong, but it won't for much longer if Soarin' keeps blasting you with those proton torpedoes at point-blank range. You need to take him down immediately.

You stand up and look to the girls. "Both of you stay here!"

You run to the airlock and climb up the ladder. As you're climbing, you feel another violent jolt as Soarin' blasts you with another torpedo. It makes you lose your grip on the ladder and you fall down to the floor again. Your HUD starts alerting you that the hull's integrity is starting to deteriorate.

Spike contacts you. "Sunset, now's your chance! He needs to reload!"

You pant hard as you open the airlock and get outside. His starfighter is hovering in the air right above the ship and his cannons are pointed directly at you. He makes eye contact with you and grits his teeth in fury.

You quickly target his ship and fire your jetpack's missile. It goes screaming toward him and his engines whir loudly as he maneuvers his ship out of the way and flies off. Your missile follows him, but it won't reach him. You know that it won't. Naboo Starfighters are fast enough already, so you can only imagine how much faster this one is with its Wonderbolt upgrades.

His ship flies out of sight above the treetops and you step onto the roof, watching him.

You activate your comms. "Spike! Track him! He'll come back around!"

You look around at the jungle floor. Big Mac is still firing at the HK droids. They seem too focused on him to worry about you right now, which is good. You can't afford to be distracted.

You check your scanner and look around for Soarin'. He's already started to circle back around for another pass. You've used your only missile, so nothing else you have will be able to destroy his ship from the ground. You'll need to fight him from the air. Your ship is grounded, but luckily, you aren't.

You take a deep breath and activate your jetpack. You rise into the air and reach the treetops, just to where you can get a visual on him. He's getting closer, but it doesn't look like he can see you quite yet. You're too small and too far away right now. You need to wait before making your move. He's going low; hugging the treetops.

It will be about ten seconds before he's directly over you. You'll need to grab onto his ship when he passes. You check your belt one last time. You're out of explosives, but your blaster and lightsaber are both still there. They'll have to do.

You breathe hard as he gets closer. "Four... Three... Two..."

Just before he reaches you, you activate your jetpack, full throttle, and shoot into the air directly in front of his starfighter. Soarin', now right under you, looks up in surprise as you twist in the air and careen toward his ship.

You hit the left side of his ship hard and slide backwards as you try to grab onto something to stay in place. Nothing works though, and you slide off his ship a second later. Thinking quickly, you activate your whipcord and grapple onto his ship, just to the left of his astromech droid that's docked behind the cockpit.

You shout as he drags you along in the air. He starts twisting and turning as he tries to shake you, but you don't let go. The jungle goes whizzing past you below as he pulls up and takes you on a ride.

With a grunt, you retract your anchored whipcord and pull yourself closer to the hull. His droid beeps wildly as it looks at you. The wind is blowing violently up here, unsurprisingly. It's hard to hear anything else. 

A panel on the astromech droid's head opens and an electroshock prod comes out, pointing at you. You grunt as you try to claw your way onto a steady footing on the ship's hull. The prod fires a bolt of electricity onto your hand in an attempt to get you off.

"Ow!" You shout and punch the droid in its ocular with your free hand, making it yowl in distress.

You punch it a few more times, cracking the glass and destroying parts of its inner workings. The droid powers down as you destroy it and you grab onto the ship again, slowly clawing your way toward the ship's nose.

As you reach the canopy, you look down at Soarin' as he pilots the ship. He's gripping the controls tightly and gritting his teeth. You grunt and strain to take out your blaster and he glares up at you.

As you take your blaster out and point it at him, he turns the controls to the right, making the ship do a corkscrew in the air. You yell and grab onto the ship again as your legs flail about behind you uncontrollably. Luckily, you're still tethered to the ship via your whipcord, so you're not going anywhere. As you hold onto the ship, your blaster slips out of your hand and it flies down to the jungle floor below. All you've got left is your lightsaber.

After a few seconds of spinning around in the air, he finally levels out again and you look back at him. You're breathing hard and trying not to get sick. This is insane. You've got to stop this crazy ride now.

Taking a risk, you grab onto the destroyed astromech droid and retract your whipcord. All that's keeping you on this ship now are your hands. Oh, what you wouldn't give for a mechanical arm right now.

You look at his ship's left engine and aim your gauntlet at it. You have one shot at this. Soarin' stays still for half a second as he flies and you fire your whipcord again. Lucky you, the whipcord embeds itself in the ship's hull right over the left engine.

With your teeth gritted, you release the ship and flail around like a ragdoll behind the engine again as Soarin' continues to try and shake you off. You retract the whipcord again and pull yourself onto the left wing. As you grab the ship, you take out your lightsaber and activate it. Behind you, Soarin's eyes widen in horror as he realizes what you're about to do.

"NO!" He shouts.

Before he can react, you plunge the blade into the engine and pull backwards as hard as you can, slicing a good chunk of the wing off in the process. Within a second, the engine explodes, knocking you off the ship and into the air once again.

You retract the whipcord as you try to recover from the explosion. You're in freefall.  It takes a few seconds, but you activate your jetpack again and finally manage to level out in the air.  A thick plume of smoke follows Soarin's ship as it spins uncontrollably and plummets to the jungle floor.

You pant hard and fast as you hit the throttle on your jetpack and follow him as he goes down. After spinning around in the air for a bit, he crashes into some trees and a loud boom echoes through the air. As you get closer, you see that he crashed upside-down into the side of a large olbio tree. The engine you sliced is on fire.

You land beside his ship and quickly move beneath the wreckage. The glass canopy has been shattered and he's hanging upside-down with his arms dangling over his head. He's still alive and bleeding profusely from his nose and from a few cuts on his face.

You are absolutely livid right now.

With your fists clenched, you stomp over to him and reach up to grab his hands to pull him out of the wreckage. He falls onto the jungle floor with a hard thud on his broken leg. He screams in pain for a moment before you drag him away from the wreckage. He grunts and squeezes your wrist as you do.

Once you're a few meters away, you stop and look back at him. You stay there for a few seconds, silently glaring at his broken, bleeding body.

Without thinking, you reach down and punch him as hard as you can on his broken leg, making him scream again in sheer pain. He leans forward to reach for his leg, but you reel back and punch him in the face. He shouts and flops over onto his side, but you grab him by the hair and pull him back to face you again. You step on his broken leg to keep him still and punch him in the face again and again and again, making his cries grow louder and higher in intensity.

You reel back to punch him one more time, but you stop. He's reaching to his leg with one hand and trying to cover his face with the other. He's blubbering in agony. Tears have involuntarily begun to fall from his eyes and they've mixed with the blood on his face and he looks back at you in terror.

You pause for a moment. Every single muscle in your body, every ounce of your will, every fiber of your being wants to torture him right here and now. Make. Him. Suffer.

But you recall what Twilight said: don't kill him. Instead, you reach down and grab his collar, forcing him to look into your visor again.

"Call off the droids!" You command.

He whimpers and cries as he grabs your wrists and looks at you.

You tighten your grip on his collar. "Now!"

He pants hard and grits his teeth. His terrified expression shifts to one of defiant anger one more time before he violently spits at you, splattering your visor with a mixture of his tears and blood.

Oh, this is so not good for your anger...

You growl and throw him onto the ground again before grabbing his hand, taking hold of his pinky finger and pressing it backwards, breaking it.

He cries out in pain again and squirms around on the ground, but you step on his broken leg a few times to keep him in one place. You can feel his bone shift in his leg beneath your boot.

"Call off the droids, or else I'll break them all!" You roar.

He squirms and screams in agony as you grab his ring finger and break it as well. He throws his head back and shouts again.

He needs to hurry up...

You grab his middle finger and start applying pressure but he stammers and holds up his other hand. "O-O-Okay! Okay! I'll do it! I'll call them off! Please! Don't! Please!"

He starts sobbing as he begs you to stop. He's on the verge of hyperventilating.

"NOW!" You scream.

He shakily reaches to his ear and starts speaking as best as he can. "H-H-HK-53! S-Stand d-down! All droids! S-Stand down! Now! L-Leave the M-Mandalorian ship alone!"

He whimpers and looks up at you in terror as you keep applying pressure to his middle finger. Oh, how badly do you want to break it. This feeling, this knowledge of complete power over someone else, it feels incredible. Just watching him writhe on the ground like this, completely at your mercy...

But... You shouldn't.

You take a good look at him. His face is cut, bruised, and bleeding in places, his leg is shattered, and his fingers are disfigured now, among many other things. He's a broken, decimated mess of a man. You did this to him.

This isn't you, Sunset. You're better than this.

Gilda would do something like this. Not you.

He's beaten. He knows it, and you know it.

Panting hard through gritted teeth of your own, you growl loudly in frustration and practically throw his hand at him as you release it. He holds his hand close to him and you step backwards off his broken leg, standing up straight. He's taking shaky breaths and has been reduced to a blubbering mess on the ground.

You take a few steps backwards and watch him, panting hard and trying to catch your own breath. You take another look at his destroyed starfighter in the tree and exhale before activating your comms.

Twilight answers a second later. "Sunset! The droids are retreating! Was that you?! Is it over?!"

You take another deep breath and exhale. "It's over..."

"What about Soarin'?" She asks.

You look down at him again. He's panting hard and holding his broken finger in agony. "He's...alive... Just barely, but he's alive."

You take another look around the jungle and breathe again. Your ship is about two kilometers away. You'll have to carry him there.

"We'll be back soon, Twilight..." You breathe. "Just hang tight."