Just a good ol rebel getting rid of the empire, one walker at a time.

Thank you again for a good piece! I wrote a fairly sizable story to go along with this piece on a whim! ... I'm sleep deprived.

Fran belongs to  kendrix

Art was drawn by  reddragon

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The Mission to Endor, 4 ABY.

Using a few ewoks and a couple other rebels as bait, a small group of rebels lured an AT-ST into a forest clearing after catching its attention with a handful of thermal detonators and rocks. As it turned and began to fire, they all ran off in different directions, heavy cannon fire searing their backs as they sprinted over fallen logs and branches. Fran hopped over a log, but yelped as she slid and fell on her ass. She got up quickly and scrambled underneath another fallen tree, narrowly avoiding getting blown up by a barrage of concussion grenades as they rained down on where she had fell. She winced as both the detonations rang through her ears like a damn bell, and the dozens of debris bits flying through the air and bouncing off her. She quickly split off from the little trail and ran around further into the woods and around, hoping to be able to climb a tree further down the path and wait for the walker to appear.

She spotted a tree riddled with holes and scorch marks as she cleared a small tree line, if you could call it that. As she climbed the truck of a partly damaged tree, the other half of the group split off from the path as well, leaving a pair of ewoks dodging laser fire and sprinting over burning foliage to get away. As the walker appeared along the bend and picked up its pace, Fran quickly readied her RPS-6 rocket launcher, hefting it onto her shoulder and taking aim. She strained her ears to listen to the launcher's "locked on" tone, though not so much as the scope on the launcher itself had a readout in it. Though, it felt like it took so long to get a lock through the smoke and everything, beads of sweat were further dampening her fur and dripping down her nose. The walker slowed down as it aimed, the way its viewports swiveling over her tree having sent chills down her spine, and readied its grenade launcher as well as its chin-mounted cannons. Before it could get a chance to loose hell on her and the ewoks it towered over, she pulled the trigger and fired off a rocket. The recoil briefly caught her off guard, leaving her to quickly wrap her legs around the branch steadily.

Fran sat deathly still on the branch as she held her breath in anticipation, though she quickly got poised to take off and scramble down the tree incase the walker got a shot off at her before the rocket hit... The rocket sailed through the air, trailing a dark exhaust as it turned and maneuvered around a handful of obstacles and a few fallen trees. Her eye had been centered on the left viewport, and as she watched the trail the rocket left in the air, she knew that her aim had been spot on. However, the walker's sensors must've seen where she had been when she fired, and her heart skipped many beats as she watched the cheek mounted cannons turn to her position. Before she had a chance to even react, the cannons fired, blowing off the end of the branch she was sitting on, and scorching it down until she was just barely off the edge. As she squirmed from hot splinters hitting her legs and lightly scorching her in places she didn't think possible, Fran realized she didn't have much time to climb down and live before it fired again. She turned and swung her legs over the side and fell down the side with a scream. All she could do was pray that she wouldn't get shot out of the air and be left as fertilizer for the forest floor, she put her hands out infront of her as she struck a short branch on the way down What was probably a 3 second fall felt like a 10 minute fall as she watched the branches and the tree trunk above her blow apart in a searing sea of red, showering her with heated tree sap, splinters, and bark as she hit another small branch right before she hit the ground. Her forearms caught it barely, and yet it still caused her to swing ever so slightly, putting her on her back as she landing in a pile of soggy bark and moss, leaving her to groan and wheeze in pain for the remainder of the minute she was down there..

The lightshow stopped with the sound of a muffled explosion two hundred meters away echoing through the forest, shortly followed by a distressing screeching metallic sound, and then a crash. She had hit dirt, sticks, and leaves before spinning to the ground in a big, orange heap. Her vision blanked and swam briefly as she tried to come to quickly, her movements slow and disorganized until she stopped and panted anxiously. Her head hurt tremendously when she finally caught hold onto something resembling bearing, finally coming to after being absolutely disoriented. She realized her helmet had saved her head, as she felt the back of her helmet and felt a deep, sharp groove in the metal and the crumbling remains of a rock jutting out from the hole. What with the way her teeth were feeling, she was surprised she didn't accidentally bite off her tongue. She slowly got up onto her feet and pulled her A180 blaster pistol from the ground next to her, the gun having fallen out of her holster in the fall it seemed. She coughed as a whiff of smoke filled her nose, and to her dismay, she could taste a slight tinge of blood in her mouth as she slowly and shakily lifted herself up and checked her gun. She looked around herself for her launcher, digging around and lightly sweeping debris away until she finally found it under a pile of debris. She crouched down behind the stump of whatever tree had been there previously and waited for any signs of movement.

She didn't hear the sounds of blaster cannons firing off, or the heavy footfalls standard of a walker, just the distant sounds of ewok horns and blaster fire. She slowly peeked over her stump, her heart pounding as she slowly stood up and squinted off down the path. She saw fire and billowing smoke coming from where the walker had been, but before she had the chance to ruminate on that, she had to make sure there wasn't any infantry support waiting to avenge their walker, she held her blaster pistol tight, trying to resist the urge to wipe the blood trickling from her nose onto her sleeve as she focused on the noises over the crackling flames of the wrecked walker...