3310 felt lightheaded as the Ithorian squeezed the breath out of her in his attempt to hang on. The panic probably wasn't helping her focus all that much, either. All of a sudden, the armor that normally made her feel like a whole person was too claustrophobic, too ungainly, too heavy. Her vision was starting to tunnel. Her chestplate pinched.

She was about to get blown to smithereens.

Everyone in the corps knew someone who had died. They were military personnel, after all, and though Coruscant was arguably one of the safer locations to be stationed at, they still carried blasters for good reason. She'd lost a few men herself, but without fail, within a few days, they'd be replaced with a fresh face. The squad moved on. You never really looked back.

But when you were about to die yourself, you were kind of forced to confront the idea. As she could feel the plastoid containers clinking against her armor, and she felt the Ithorian scramble for his detonator, she found herself thinking about her mother. Not as she was, but as she had been when 3310 was a child. "You mustn't give up, now, Lya," she would say, voice gentle, whenever 3310 got angry or frustrated (which had been often). "You're very special, you know." 

She wondered how her mother would feel when she got the news that her special daughter was blown up, working her menial job at a redundant checkpoint on floor 4000. 

She felt herself being pushed off of the Ithorian with great force. The back of her helmet smashed against the ground as someone (or something?) tore them apart, and for a moment she saw stars. Who the hell hadn't cleared when she'd yelled? Now they'd all just get blown up...

Her vision cleared just in time for her to see the Ithorian launch fifty feet in the air and explode with a deafening [i]crack[/i] and a puff of gray smoke. She was still so disoriented that she just lay there for a few seconds, watching what was left of him rain down on the checkpoint, thinking about how they'd probably be the ones who had to clean that up later.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she felt herself being hoisted up to a sitting position. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion. "Are you alright?" asked Jack, as she felt the blood rush to her head and she lost all vision for a moment.

"I'm not blown up," she responded dryly, trying to shake the ringing from her ears. "What happened?"

"We don't know--all of a sudden, that psychopath was the air. Everyone's panicking. I didn't see him, but some of your men reported that they saw someone... lifting him? They say he's a Jedi--I sent your squad to chase him down."

"[i]A Jedi?[/i]" She'd heard rumors that some of the Jedi had survived the purge thirteen years ago, but she'd never expected to meet one of them, let alone on Coruscant. "Help me up."

"I have two of my boys coming back with a stretcher, don't strain yourself--"

"I said I'm fine, didn't I? Help me up!" she ordered. "If my men are out searching for a Jedi, I need to be too. Those bucketheads can't tell their helmets from their asses if I'm not around. Help me up!"

Slowly, Jack helped her get back on two feet. He even retrieved her blaster for her. She took a few stumbling steps and leaned on a wall as she slowly remembered how to stand. She activated her comm. "MN-882, report!"

"33! You're alright!" came her corporal's staticky reply over the comm. "MN-882 here. There's a Jedi, sarge--I saw him."

"Split up and canvas the area. The only way you're going to catch him is if you corner him... and probably not even then. Set blasters to stun and shoot him on sight. Do. Not. Let. Him. Escape."

"Roger roger!" 882 replied, before the connection went silent. 

3310 was left to wonder how she could be at all useful to her squad in this condition. Her head was throbbing, and though she was jittery from the adrenaline, she still felt her armor weighing on her, her blaster heavy in her hand. She moved forward anyway, ducking into a little alley almost at random and following it to the end. 

She had always been told she had good instincts, and here she didn't even want to bother with rational thought, so she followed them. She jogged her way through the winding streets of level 4000, jumping over drunks in the gutters and pushing past anyone in her way, desparately searching for the Jedi. Capturing a Jedi would certainly mean promotion for her unit--and though it was certainly a longshot that whoever they were chasing was [i]actually[/i] a Jedi, and if he was a Jedi that they would even be able to catch him--she was willing to hope.

Finally, after becoming thoroughly lost, she ended up in a dead end alley. She swore as she came to a stop. She had only been running randomly, but she had felt as if she was getting closer. Her men had only checked in to say that they'd lost him. 

She couldn't shake the feeling that someone was there, though. She raised her blaster. "Come out!" she commanded. "Surrender yourself to the Empire or be killed!"