(SHATTERPOINT) GREGORY DARTHVEDER II

The shot tore through the space where Greg’s head had been a second earlier and punched a fresh dent into the wall of the boxcar, while Greg himself hit the floor in a clumsy roll that somehow ended with him back on his feet. He had no idea how he’d managed it, especially since he generally considered tripping over his own shoes an athletic achievement. His body had simply moved before panic could catch up.

Another warning flared through his mind. Whatever had spoken to him moments ago apparently wasn’t bothering with words anymore. 

His body reacted before his brain could catch up, shifting sideways just as another bullet sliced through the air, dropping beneath the floating orb while it corrected its aim, and springing out of the boxcar into the open trainyard without ever stopping to think.

The whole thing should have terrified him more than it did, yet a small, increasingly bewildered part of his brain couldn’t help thinking it was also unbelievably cool. Somehow he always knew when the orb was about to fire and where the shot would land, which made him feel less like Greg Veder and more like one of those impossibly agile ninjas from late-night action movies. That same certainty carried him up the side of a nearby boxcar, across its roof, and onto another without so much as a stumble, leaving him with just enough breathing room to search desperately for some way out of this mess.

His body should have betrayed him long before then. He was out of shape, heavier than he wanted to be, and gym class had spent years providing undeniable evidence that Greg Veder and physical exertion maintained a respectful distance from one another. None of that seemed to matter anymore. He vaulted gaps, scrambled over rusting freight cars, rolled beneath incoming fire whenever the warning arrived, and somehow kept moving as though someone else had borrowed his body and actually knew what they were doing, while every missed shot behind him showered rusted steel with sparks.

Even so, he understood the arrangement couldn’t last forever. Every leap stole another breath, every sprint left his legs feeling heavier than the last, and every frantic dodge chipped away at whatever momentum had been carrying him this far. The orb, meanwhile, showed no sign of slowing down. Metal didn’t get winded, machines didn’t need to catch their breath, and Greg knew with miserable certainty that the moment he stopped running would probably be the moment the chase ended.

He needed something to fight back with. A weapon. Anything.

His thoughts lurched back to the inside of the boxcar. The piles of cash had demanded most of his attention, which was only natural under the circumstances, but he’d also caught glimpses of stacked crates, scattered tools, machined components, and enough unfamiliar parts to fill a small workshop. There had to be something useful in there. He wasn’t asking for much. A pipe would do. A wrench. Even a particularly convincing piece of scrap metal felt preferable to facing a flying gun with his bare hands.

The decision made itself.

Greg doubled back through the maze of abandoned railcars, trusting the strange awareness guiding his movements to keep the orb a step behind. At some point he’d stopped questioning it. The thing had kept him alive this long, which was more than he could say for his own ideas.

It guided him through narrow gaps between rusting boxcars, over weathered couplings, and around forgotten obstacles without once letting him hesitate. Every turn bought him another precious second, every detour pulling the orb just a little farther off his heels, until Anakin’s boxcar finally came back into view.

Relief hit him so hard he paused outside the boxcar for a moment, breathing heavily with a wide smile. Then, wiping the sweat from his forehead, he practically threw himself through the open doorway. His boots skidded against the floor as he stumbled inside before dropping to his knees beside the nearest crate.

Somewhere outside, metal scraped against metal before the familiar mechanical whirr drifted through the trainyard again. Inside, his hands flew from shelf to shelf in a frantic search, brushing past tools whose purpose he couldn’t begin to guess before pausing over several firearms that looked expensive enough to belong in an action movie. 

Tempting as they were, Greg shoved them aside almost immediately. Owning a gun and knowing what to do with one were two very different things, and introducing an unfamiliar firearm into an already disastrous situation sounded like an excellent way to shoot himself instead of the homicidal floating orb. Besides, the strange presence in the back of his mind kept nudging him onward, urging him to keep looking as though it already knew exactly what he was supposed to find.

Eventually his fingers closed around a smooth metal cylinder that looked as though someone had abandoned it halfway through building… something. And the instant he touched it, the strange presence in the back of his mind stopped its urging.

It wasn’t particularly long, had no obvious trigger or handle, and lacked any feature Greg recognised beyond the fact that it was undeniably mechanical.

“…A thingamajig,” he breathed.

The term felt surprisingly apt.

He turned it over in his hands, frowning as he searched for anything that explained why the eldritch force had insisted on this particular object, only for another burst of alarm to slam into his thoughts so hard that his head snapped toward the entrance.

The orb was coming, and there wasn’t enough time to search for anything else.

His pulse hammered against his ribs as he scrambled to his feet, gripping the cylinder with both hands while a wave of exhaustion crashed over him without warning. The weird energy that had carried him across the trainyard seemed to vanish all at once, leaving behind aching muscles and burning lungs that reminded him exactly how out of shape he really was.

He was going to die.

Unless…

Greg squeezed his eyes shut, raised the cylinder the way someone might grip a baton, and swung with every ounce of strength he had left, shouting more out of panic than courage.

A sharp snap-hiss split the air, and the cylinder lurched in Greg’s hands hard enough that he nearly dropped it. Something metallic clattered onto the floor, and when his eyes flew open, a long, bright blade of golden-yellow light had extended from the cylinder in his hands.

He was holding an honest-to-god lightsaber.

“Okay… maybe not the worst idea.”