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Finn is exploring Republic City with Poe on a sunny afternoon when it happens: Kylo Ren and a fan of stormtroopers rappel down from a First Order ship and start wreaking havoc outside City Hall. Finn used to think it wonderful that Kylo Ren was such a skilled fighter he didn’t need to wear body armor, but watching his red energy sword cut a sizzling path through civilians disgusts him, and when Poe twists his bulky black watch and a flash of light renders him a black Force Ranger, Finn fears for him. Everything he’s been taught by the Order says Kylo Ren is invincible, a man whose ability with the Force is to be feared. And Poe just powered up to face him—alone.
“Finn, I need you to run,” Poe’s voice says from inside the Black Resistance Ranger’s helmet. “You can’t let them see you—if they do, they’ll do whatever it takes to get you back.”
“You can’t fight him alone, Poe, he’s—”
“I know who he is.”
“Then you know you need help! Let me help!”
Poe grabs Finn and pulls him around a building with the sea of screaming civilians. “Finn,” Poe says firmly, “the Order is looking for you—hard. If you go out there, they’ll see you, and if they see you, we’re all in trouble. You know enough about the Resistance and Rogue Rangers now that if Kylo Ren gets to you, he’ll have all of us. They can’t ever know you were here, understand? You have to run as far from this as you can.”
“Okay,” Finn chokes out, ”I’ll go.” His body feels cold and unbending as a stone in winter. His stomach roils at the thought of leaving Poe by himself to face Kylo Ren and a troop of tube-trained soldiers like himself.
But Poe’s shoulders relax at Finn’s words, and with a final squeeze of his arm, he lets Finn go. “Don’t worry!” he says, jogging backwards towards the fray, “Cassian isn’t far—I’ll have backup soon!”
Poe disappears around the corner. Finn stumbles backwards, then makes himself turn around and run.
He can’t think about Poe facing Kylo Ren alone. He can’t think about the rumors of Kylo Ren’s mastery of the Force, or how Master Luke, before he left, said Finn and Rey are getting good at sparring with their Force projections, but there’s far more to the Force than willing objects into temporary existence. He can’t think about how he routinely beats Poe when they spar together, or how he and Rey wiped the floor with all six Rogue Rangers when they fought together and were allowed to use Force projections to do it.
Because Poe is right: if the Order recognizes Finn, they’ll use him to get to Poe, to Rey, to the Rogue Rangers who’ve already lost so much, and Finn can’t be responsible for that.
Two blocks away, he turns a corner en route to the hidden Resistance entrance in the park near City Hall—and immediately ducks behind a gazebo to stay hidden from the First Order ship that’s parked there. The bay door is wide open, and just inside it sits a trooper with her helmet off, tinkering with the wiring below where the control panels are built in that particular model. A fully-armored stormtrooper plays lookout for her, blaster at the ready. Finn pulls out his comm and sends the General a message with his coordinates, then turns to leave.
“If Kylo Ren gets one—” he hears.
“When,” the other corrects.
“—we can’t have the Ranger jumping off the ship and escaping because the door won’t close.”
Finn’s heart clenches. He ducks back to look at the ship.
The stormtrooper guard soldiers on, the first voice he’d heard. “You have to make it close—”
“What do you think I’m trying to do,” the pilot growls.
“I just need you to understand the gravity of our situation—”
“Will you shut up so I can focus!” she finally snaps.
The trooper pauses. “He won’t kill you if he gets mad, he’ll kill me,” he finishes at last.
Finn has heard stories about Kylo Ren’s temper. They were never good stories for the tube troopers nearby. If this is Kylo Ren’s ship, there’s no way Finn can let it get back off the ground. The idea of Kylo Ren with any of the Rangers at his mercy (what if it’s Poe he captures? Finn left him to fight alone!) makes him feel ill. He knows Poe said to run, but Finn can still help him by keeping this ship on the ground. If Ren doesn’t have a ship, he can’t take Finn’s friends.
And if he stays hidden and uses a Force projection to do it, Finn realizes, then the Order won’t ever see his face. He can use the Force to help without endangering the Resistance.
Finn crouches low and peers around the white-painted, wooden gazebo walls. The surest way to keep the ship on the ground is to take out one of the engines, which jut out helpfully on either side of the ship’s body. If Finn is careful, he can slice through the mechanisms inside the engine enough that the ship won’t explode, and the pilot won’t know why the engine isn’t working. It’ll take ages to fix, long enough for the Resistance to come and capture the ship.
Plan in mind, he centers himself and—
“They’ve got the Black Ranger,” the trooper on guard says just as the pilot crows with glee and the door/ramp begins to rise to seal the ship.
Finn’s calm shatters. There’s no time for finesse. He needs quick and effective—and thankfully, the Order and the Resistance have both trained him for that. When his mind immediately flashes to Slip’s arm, shorn off by Finn’s force projection of a shield, he narrows his eyes at the ship with renewed determination. That ship will not leave this park.
Distance and size don’t matter, Luke said.
Finn stretches out his arm, visualizes a wall like a guillotine slamming down between the ship and the engine, and slices down with his hand as he pushes with the part of himself that feels the grass under him and the troopers in front of him and the sky above him.
A shimmering blue wall slams down between the ship and the engine, then disappears. The other engine flares to life just as the connective tissue around Finn’s target starts sparking and begins tilting into the ship on its way to the ground.
Finn doesn’t stick around to watch the aftermath. “I took out its engine,” he comms to General Organa as he sprints back to City Hall and Poe. “Ren’s got Poe! Their goal was to capture a Ranger. I’m going back.”
To Finn’s surprise, General Organa says, “Alright, but stay out of sight. You’re just as valuable to them as Poe, and Luke’ll have my head if Snoke steals another one of his students.”
“Yes ma’am,” Finn says, shelving his question about ‘another’ of Luke’s students for a time when he and Poe are safely ensconced in the Resistance base.
“Reinforcements are four minutes out,” she tells Finn, “and Rey’s close. Try to hold ‘em off until we get there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Finn huffs, grateful she cuts the connection so he doesn’t have to break form.
The corner of the building Poe pulled him around earlier has been shattered across the sidewalk and street, and as Finn runs up to it he sees a worryingly familiar shade of orange crash into a tall chunk of brick and cement and fall to the ground on Finn’s side of the looming rubble.
He runs faster when the orange leg and boot twitch, then flicker into Resistance-issue brown trousers and black boots.
Finn finds Cassian Andor splayed on the pavement, bronze face scraped and bleeding into his black hair, a gash reddening his shirt, and looking far too beat up to stand, much less morph. Finn skids to a stop behind the stretch of broken wall and leans over him. “Where’s Poe?”
Injury hasn’t disposed the Orange Rogue Ranger to liking Finn any more than usual, because when Cassian sees Finn he glares up at him and tries to pull himself onto his elbows. “Don’t you dare go out there,” he pants before his elbows give out and he collapses with a groan.
“General says I can help if I stay out of sight. Report?”
When Cassian gives him a mutinous look, Finn comms in his location and sneaks a look around the chunk of wall they’re behind. The coast is clear, and he’ll have a better vantage point of the square in front of City Hall from inside the partially demolished building. He raises a force projection to help push off from, give him a faster start—
“Wait!” Cassian says. He shuffles and grunts with pain, then says, “If you’re going to go, put this on.”
Finn turns to find Cassian holding out his morpher, an orange kyber crystal pendant, in a shaking fist. Finn’s jaw drops; Rangers are fiercely territorial about their morphers. “I thought you didn’t trust me!” he says, then wants to shoot himself in the foot to match the figurative wound he’s just given himself.
“I trust you to protect Poe,” Cassian says. “Take it. Before I change my mind.”
Finn grabs it and slips it around his neck. Its power hums along his veins like it’s learning his body. It reminds him of how the Force feels, but if Finn’s used to tapping into a pond, the crystal feels like a reservoir. With this much power, he’s sure he can hold off Kylo Ren. But what were the activation words? Each Rogue Ranger has a different one, but they all start with…’Rogue’…something?
“It might not work,” Cassian’s warning him. “The crystals don’t respond to most people. But—”
Please work, he mentally begs the crystal. I need to save Poe.
To his surprise, he feels an answering pulse shock through him from the crystal, and an orange glow envelops him that he can only see in his mind’s eye. With it comes a more powerful awareness of the Force than what he feels than when he meditates with Master Luke.
His vision is crystal clear, but he can feel a helmet on his head.
He holds up his arms; they’re encased in orange armor and gloves.
Cassian looks resigned when Finn looks down at him in wonder. “Don’t say anything—they can still recognize your voice. Now go out there. Save our friend.”
Finn closes his mouth on his affirmative and nods instead.
Cassian grins and jerks his chin at him: go.
Finn launches over the chunk of wall and around the corner with two force projections and far more height and velocity than he’s normally capable of. He takes in the lawn of City Hall from the air—the grass is littered with still, white armor, and a black-robed figure in a metal-plated helmet looms over Poe’s de-morphed body, his infamous red lightsaber—fashioned like a knight’s sword—hovering far too close to Poe’s chest.
Kylo Ren’s stance speaks of waiting and impatience; he’s not poised to strike.
Where’s Cassian’s gun? Finn asks the crystal as he vaults from a third force projection to ram Kylo Ren away from Poe.
Finn feels a tingle at his hip, and a weight hangs from it that wasn’t there before. Thanks, he thinks. He pulls the gun and tries to fire a volley at Ren.
The trigger pulls once, then locks.
Finn sees why when a thick orange beam shoots from the gun at Ren, and then splits into five curving trajectories.
Ren doesn’t even turn his head—just shoots a hand toward Finn. Immediately, the center beam shivers and freezes in the air, like Ren’s holding it in place.
Finn sees the moment Ren realizes he can’t keep the sword on Poe and stop the other four beams streaking towards him from different directions. As Finn vaults himself around the frozen orange beam, he sees Ren drop his hand and twist behind the beams converging upon him, using his lightsaber to deflect the two formerly behind him into the two that were in front.
Released, the center beam arcs around Finn to come at Ren from Poe’s direction. Finn projects a riot shield and makes a final foothold.
Ren deflects the beam shooting at his chest—and Finn hits him like a missile from the side.
The lightsaber flares out. Ren stumbles and skids deep gouges in the grass—but doesn’t fall.
Finn shoves away from him when the nightmarish red sword flares back to life, and plants himself firmly between Kylo Ren and Poe. I don’t have to beat him, Finn reminds himself—I just need to hold him off ’til Rey gets here.
The morpher hums warm and comforting against Finn’s chest as if it knows what he’s thinking, and an orange frisson of light crackles around his arm and into the shield, lining it with orange and making it feel powerful.
For a moment, the impromptu battlefield is as still as an indrawn breath.
Kylo Ren’s helmet tilts as if he’s studying Finn. “I’m surprised you’re able to stand,” he says at last. His deep, metallic voice sends a shiver of fear through Finn’s spine. Ren’s helmet straightens abruptly. “No matter,” he says. “You’ll regret that decision soon enough.”
The next ten seconds of Finn’s life are spent scrambling back under the force of Kylo Ren battering his sword against Finn’s shield. Finn has to drop the gun to brace the shield, and his projection shivers under the onslaught. Thankfully, Rogue Orange’s power shores it up, and the blade never touches Finn. Still, he’s losing ground, and Ren is getting closer to Poe with every electric crash of lightsaber on shield.
Finn needs a better strategy.
Finn needs to get a weapon.
Just as he thinks it, he feels a warm tingle and weight at his hip. Please be good, he thinks, and pulls the new weapon from his hip. His hand recognizes the grip of it instantly. He sends a rush of power through it, and an orange lightsaber flares to life in his hand.
The lightsaber gives Ren momentary pause. “Huh,” he says. “You’re full of surprises today. And you feel…”
Finn feels Ren’s mind poking at the orange field of power he’s felt protecting his mind and body since he powered up; something in him quails.
Kylo Ren cannot find out who he is.
He sweeps his lightsaber at Ren’s feet and pushes forward when Ren falls back. The mental probe breaks off with Ren’s concentration, to Finn’s relief. He just needs to keep Kylo Ren busy, then. He can do that. He can do this. He can protect Poe. He just needs to stay calm.
So Finn does.
He blocks and swings and dodges and parries and pushes, and the crystal warms his chest and bolsters him and protects him as best a passenger can for the man behind the wheel. Through it all, Finn remains staunchly between Kylo Ren and Poe’s prone form. And he takes hits—hard hits, hits where the lightsaber glances off his armor but the heat sizzles through and burns into his skin. But Finn doesn’t have to win. He just has to hold the line, stay standing until—
An angry shout and flash of gold in his peripheral vision are all the warning Finn gets before Rey whirls into the fight like a divine hurricane.
When she slams into Kylo Ren, he doesn’t just skid—he falls.
The Gold Resistance Ranger tilts her head in greeting, but doesn’t shift her focus from Ren. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Black Squadron’s right behind me with medics for you and Poe, but…since you’re up, let’s keep him busy.”
Rey launches herself at Ren without waiting for Finn’s response.
Since she goes high, he goes low.
The Rogue Rangers are no match for Finn and Rey when they work together.
Neither, Finn learns, is Kylo Ren.
As they beat him back, launching and swinging each other and keeping the heat on Ren so he can’t so much as pause to take a breath, Finn knows Rey has recognized who’s inside the Rogue Orange suit. They work together with one mind, like magic, like the flow of the Force—and their blows begin to land. Finn scores a hit on Ren’s side that makes him scream with rage on his next lunge, and Ren cries out when Rey’s lightsaber streaks across his helmet and sinks a gash through the metal.
The certainty shivers through Finn between one lunge and the next: they’re going to win.
They’ve got Kylo Ren backed against a wall.
Finn knocks his lightsaber out of his hand.
Rey’s lightsaber hums to a stop at Ren’s throat.
They’ve won.
Then a large engine thrums above them, and lightning shoots from the sky and knocks them to the ground.
Rey and Finn are down, but the lightning keeps coming. It shoots electric, burning pain through Finn’s armor and into his screaming nerves. He feels the armor around him shiver.
They can’t know it’s me, he tells the crystal desperately, willing the armor not to waver.
The crystal pulses against his chest as if it hears him.
The armor holds.
Finn does his part by swallowing his screams.
Through the rictus of pain jackknifing his body, he trails the lightning to the outstretched hands of a pale figure in dark robes standing just inside the lowered ramp of a crimson ship.
It’s the flagship of Supreme Leader Snoke, the head of the First Order.
Finn took down Kylo Ren’s ship, so Lord Snoke came for Ren himself.
Even together, Finn knows, he and Rey would be no match for Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke. To win they would need Master Luke, and he’s off on some secret mission—no one knows when he’ll be back.
A cable pulls Kylo Ren through the air to Lord Snoke, and Finn would be angry except when Ren steps onto the ramp, the lightning finally stops. The ramp closes as the flagship speeds off into the Republic City skyline.
Finn sags into the pavement and twitches with Rey until the power of Rogue Orange recovers. Shakily, he stands.
Rey takes his hand. “That was lucky,” she says, voice reedy but colored with amusement. Finn knows she's wearing the nervous grin she gets when she’s managed to squeak out of a tight spot by the skin of her teeth. He squeezes her hand and nods in agreement, and they hurry to the medical transport hovering over the field near Poe.
When they arrive, Finn has to bring the medics to Cassian; with Rogue Orange fighting, they hadn’t known to look for him.
Rey powers down and boards the ship with a Cheshire grin as she looks at Finn. “You make a good Ranger,” she says as the doors close behind them.
The ship is cramped, between Cassian and Poe on stretchers against the wall, and the medics patching them up. Finn and Rey end up huddled against the door and continually shuffling out of the medics’ way. “Who’s in your suit?” Poe asks across the aisle.
“You can give it back now,” Cassian tells Finn, holding out his hand and slapping the medic away who tries to tuck it back onto the stretcher.
Finn asks the crystal to power down.
In a flash of orange light, he feels the shimmer of Rogue Orange energy around him dissipate.
“Oh, kriff me,” Poe says, hushed and reverent.
Finn flushes, but places the kyber crystal pendant in Cassian’s hand with careful fingers. “Thank you,” he tells him—tells both of them.
Only then does he dare look at Poe. “Surprise?” he says nervously.
Poe’s looking at him with a raw mix of wonder and hunger. It makes Finn feel naked, like Poe can see every part of him, and he feels embarrassed and proud in equal measure as Poe’s eyes lick across his skin and leave coiled heat in their wake. “I wondered,” Poe admits. Then his arms buckle and two medics force him to lie back down.
Rey nudges Finn. When he looks at her, she waggles her eyebrows at him and looks significantly between him and Poe.
Finn snorts and shakes his head, but casts Poe a hopeful look anyway. When Rey grabs his hand and squeezes, Finn grips back.
He watches Poe’s unquenchable smile all the way back to base.