PROLOGUE. 

THE FIRESTORM

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The attack had come out of nowhere.

The night air tasted of bile and blood as the firefight broke out along the streets of Mos Eisley. Burning crimson and ivory white painted across the night sky, drowning out the swirling nebulae and clouded speckles of far away planets. In the dead of night, where no creatures should have been stirring, the world erupted into chaos.

Across the town holograms of one single, bright image displayed salvation and destruction. The Death Star II, a half-finished monstrosity that had brought so much suffering to the lives around it, was gone. Exploding in an array of molten metal and blazing fire, the rebels of the Galaxy had successfully done what they'd pledged.

They had defeated the Empire.

The celebrations could be heard even in the deepest, darkest corners of space. The Empire was gone. They were no more than another political faction vying for power now, and no one was about to let them rise again.

Deep in the outer regions on a small desert planet, the people celebrated. They clapped each other on the back and poured heaping amounts of Spotchka into their glasses. Camaraderie and fellowship emerged from the ashes of the Empire, and there was not one single creature in the town that did not have a smile on their face.

But that was before. Before the ship arrived in the bay. Before the white clad warriors filed out in a single line, their black, glistening blasters held dutifully by their side. Before the man dressed all in black called the order to begin the raid.

Now the buildings were a cluster of broken glass and piled rubble. Blackened marks littered the walls like scars, digging deep into the clay and sand like a beast delving it's talons into soft flesh. Rings and blasts of red and blue lit up the sky like fireworks.

Dead bodies littered the ground like dead flies, blood seeping from wounds that cut deep. There were no more smiles, no more screams of joy, only shrieks of terror. Men and women and children ran through the streets, tripping over the dead, hurrying to where they hoped they would somehow live.

They did not.

The Empire killed them with no mercy and not one ounce of regret. The townspeople were objects in the way of what they needed. And what did every Empire require to stay afloat?

Money. Money and power.

Tatooine was controlled by the Hutts, but had been in a state of disarray ever since Jabba the Hutt had been killed on one of his pleasure barges out in the sands. Bounty hunters and political idealists alike all vied for the power over Tatooine and it's subjects. If they had control of the planet, they had control of the Outer Rim and the crime underworld. It was an opportunity no one with a shred of ambition would pass up.

They were also dead. What remained of the Empire had made sure to be swift and lethal barging into the cantinas and inns, shooting the ones that mattered (and some that didn't). It had become a day of reckoning. A firestorm. A siege on innocent people, all for an ounce of the power they'd once held.

A blast rocked the earth, sending ligaments of hardened sand flying in all directions. The carnage was devastating, destroying everything it touched. Amidst the fire and ruin, holding himself with the highest regard, a man watched the killing with a satisfied smirk upon his lips.

His bronze skin was illuminated by the flames that surrounded him like coiling snakes, and the ebony suit of armor he wore bore no scratches from the fight taking place before him.

After a moment, a shot from a blaster flew past his head. The man ducked slightly, looking out to where the shot had come from. Hidden behind several crates that once held valuable fruit, a dozen men and women pulled out blasters, aiming for the legion of troopers. Rebels, the man thought. Another shot was fired, but it missed the man once again.

He turned to his stormtroopers and raised a hand high above his head. "FOR THE EMPIRE!" he yelled. His men raised their own hands and chanted the same words, then turned to the group of resistance and began to shoot. The rebels went down easily. Their aim was sloppy, while the man had trained his soldiers personally in combat. These were his own, and they were not to be reckoned with.

On the other side of the fight, hidden behind the stormtroopers, plastered to the wall, a man and woman held a child in their arms. Blasters were slung around their shoulders, and their faces were slick with sweat. Grenades hung around their thrown-on belts. The man and the woman looked at one another, then knelt to become eye level with their daughter.

She was a small little thing with a head of messy brunette ringlets and a hardened expression on her young face. No more than ten years old, Tess Oprin tried to hold back tears as her parents looked at her through their own tear-stained eyes.

She knew what was about to happen, but she did not want to believe it. For three years her parents had been preparing her for the day they were to leave. A couple of determined fighters, Tess' parents had fought since the beginning of the Empire to rid their planet of it's foulness. Intercepting transports, bombing blockades, and organizing coups against their rule, Tess' parents knew that one day, they would have to go and fight with Tess beside them.

But Tess was not a fighter. Having possessed a tender gift for machinery since she was a small child, Tess hated conflict above all else. When she saw a young Rodian getting beat up in the alley, she had turned the other way, knowing full well she had no chance of surviving a fight against the assailants. Prime in her age, Tess did not understand why her mother and father would go out of their way to be caught in the middle of blaster fire. She could not fathom why they were telling her how to survive if they never came home.

Stay, she would say each night, stay with me. To that her mother would plant a tender kiss on her forehead, and her father would bring her into his arms. One day you will know what it means to fight for what is right, Tess, they said. One day you will become a great warrior, like your parents.

"No." Tess said out loud, holding onto her father's hand like it was a lifeline. "No, papa." Her father planted a kiss on Tess' forehead, moving her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.

"I have to, my Dawn." he said. Dawn, the words her papa used to help her fall asleep. When the dawn comes, it is another day to fight, he would say, rolling the soft wool blanket over her trembling form. When the dawn comes, it is another day to stand.

"No, papa!" She practically screamed, wrapping her little arms around her father. "No!"

Strong hands pried her away from her father, and they twisted her around. Her mother, a woman of sharp edges with a tongue like a wicked blade. She frowned and cupped Tess' cheeks in her palms. Another blast brought dirt flying into their faces. Tess coughed, and tears stung her eyes. She held them back. This was not the time to cry.

"Be strong." her mother's rough words pierced Tess' heart, freezing her blood in her veins. "Be brave." But Tess was not brave. She couldn't be brave, not when her parents were leaving her.

With her mother's final words, Tess' father tugged her by the waist and pushed her in the opposite direction of the fight. Blaster fire stung her ears as she clumsily fell to the ground. The streets were laden with rubble and blood, staining the young girl's hands with mud and rust. She tripped over a large pipe, falling hard on her back.

She scrambled onto her knees, crying out as she seemed to watch the figures ahead of her in slow motion. Her mother went first, spinning her dual pistols with her nimble fingers. She turned to her husband and pushed her face forward. Their lips connected, and in that moment, both their eyes, tearing and strained, said the exact same words.

Goodbye.

Tess screamed, her lungs burning with agony as he mother dashed around the corner, her movements calculated and practiced. She raised her blasters to eye level, and began to expertly shoot down any trooper that came in her way. A few seconds later, Tess' father followed, wielding a heavy machine gun that barreled through the stormtroopers, cutting them down with a dozen blasts to the body. Their armor shattered like glass, and as her parents rounded the corner, they left a trail of dead bodies in their wake.

The moment Tess lost sight of them she came to her senses, spurred with the realization that they were gone. Out of sight. Perhaps even dead. The young girl picked herself up, not listening to the screaming pain in her knees as she ran towards the clearing.

She ran through the pain. She ran through the possibility of her parents' demise. She ran towards hope, wishing against all odds that she would round the corner and see the Empire gone, her parents well and alive in the center.

But fate had other plans.

When young Tess Oprin turned the corner of the firestorm, she saw only death. Rays of laser bolts flew across the courtyard, sometimes hitting their targets, sometimes not. It didn't matter anymore who was killing who, it was only about power, it was only about the thrill of the fight.

Lying several feet away from her, surrounded by at least a dozen decaying troopers, her parents rested on the ground. They could have been sleeping, Tess thought. Their skin was still warm with life, their eyes still open. Her mother had the same sly smirk and her father the same softened frown. The thing that gave them away --showing Tess they were not sleeping-- was that her parents were not holding hands. They lay apart from each other, their bodies strewn in different angles.

At that moment, Tess knew they were dead, because her mother and father never fell asleep without holding hands.

The world seemed to slow. Tess did not see the blasts nearly hitting her face. She did not move when she saw the leader of the raid standing only meters away from her parents bodies. On the inside, Tess did process this information. She knew she should run. Her parents had died fighting, that was their problem, and Tess should not do the same. She knew she would perish if she stayed any longer. She knew she might die anyway.

But on the outside, Tess was all stunned expressions and uncontrollable limbs. A piercing scream erupted from her body as she ran into the firefight. It was a scream that shook the rooftops of Mos Eisley. It caused the stars to tremble and the night air to freeze. It was a scream of pure, glowing pain.

The scream caused the man to turn. He watched with mild interest as the girl ran towards the bodies on the ground.

Thinking back on it, Tess wondered if she had been paying closer attention to where she was running, it might not have happened. She wondered that if she'd turned around instead of going to her parent's, the bolts would never have hit her leg.

But then she wondered if the bolts hadn't hit her leg, the future would not have played out as it did.

Tess never reached her parent's bodies.

A searing pain numbed the back of her leg, heat and fire digging into her flesh. Tess cried out in pain and fell to the ground. She lay there a moment, a silent scream on her lips as the laser bolt dug it's way through her muscle and bone. When she looked down, two burning gashes were seared into her skin. Slowly, as if water was spreading over her leg, Tess began to lose feeling in her calf.

Tears pricked her cheeks like gemstones, and when she reached down to touch the angry red blemish on her leg, she felt nothing. Tess gasped, all senses of the world around her vanishing into oblivion.

She couldn't feel her calf. She couldn't feel anything from her kneecap down to her toes. There was nothing but a calming numb that engulfed the inner workings of her body.

She couldn't feel her leg.

Tess whimpered, the pain in her other knee and the shock of losing her leg kept her lying on the ground. She didn't move when the man came over to her. She didn't say anything when he hoisted her by the waist to stand upright. She didn't move when the man led her to the center of the courtyard.

"Why do you cry child?" the man asked. Tess looked up at him. He had an oval face with greying hairs and dark bronze skin. The armor he wore reminded Tess of the terrifying images of Darth Vader, the Emperors right hand cyborg. Darth Vader was dead now, but this man held the same sense of superiority and strength.

Tess did not answer the man's question. Instead, she started becoming aware of her surroundings. The battle continued to play out, the tempered stormtroopers took down the rebel's easily, and from the open doors to the houses and markets, they pulled innocents out into the street. There were so many blaster bolts firing in the air that anyone could have brought Tess' leg to it's undoing. She didn't know if it had been the rebels or the troopers, but it was all the same. She'd lost her leg in a fight.

When the dawn comes, it is a new day to stand. No, Tess thought. When the dawn comes, it's a new day to survive. The man shook her shoulders, kneeling down to become eye level with the girl.

"Why do you cry?" he asked again. Tess shook her head. She tripped over her numb leg. The man held her steady, but she tried to push away. "Why do you cry for your traitorous parents?" Tess shook her head again, moving her hand to pry her from his grip. Her movements were labored and fatigued, her head lolled to the side, and her eyes were red and puffy.

The man grew bored, and called one of his commanding officers to him. The officer ran over, blasting a sprinting woman as he did, and came up to the man. Tess still screamed and tried to get away. This was a bad man, he had ordered these men to fight, he'd been a part of the raid. This was a bad man.

Said man threw Tess towards the officer and pointed towards the street over. "Dispose of her." Tess screamed, holding onto the officer with one hand and extending out to her parents with the other. She needed to get back, she needed to say goodbye to her parents.

She needed to escape, she needed to get out of this man's grip. Her ears rang and her leg seethed. Her outstretched palm reached for her parent's dead bodies, a scream erupting from her small lips. The officer struggled to keep hold of the young, breaking girl.

The bad man watched, his eyes widening as the dead bodies around the girl began to move. Slithering like serpents, they weaved their way closer to her, moving over each other. For a moment the man wondered if his eyes were deceiving him, as the next time he blinked, the bodies were still.

But he had not been dreaming. The girl screamed again, her palms outstretched at her side, and the officer that held her flew backwards, hitting the stone wall behind him. She had become a girl of more than just machines. Though her leg was no more, Tess Oprin stood tall. Something within her snapped, and from that point on, it slowly began to overtake her nimble body.

Tess fell to the ground, her hands twitching. When she looked up, the man was walking towards her, a stricken expression on his face. Tess frowned. She needed to move. Tess swerved onto her belly and began to crawl away. Away from the rubble and bodies, away from the battle that had purged so many lives. Away from the black-clad man and his outstretched hands.

Later, Moff Gideon would regret not holding onto the girl. He would never forgive himself for being so careless. He needed someone like her.

The Moff lost a powerful weapon that day, for when the fighting ceased and the dust cleared, the girl was nowhere to be found. 

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AUTHOR'S NOTE. 

Here we go! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter (well, it's actually the prologue) of Short Circuit! Yeah, it might be a little cliched with the main characters parents being killed by the empire, but it needed to be done in order to set up how Tess turns out later on. 

I'm super happy with how this chapter ended up, so please don't be afraid to comment your opinions and feedback, it is always a highlight of my day to read and respond. 

Hope you enjoyed! 

Love, Mal