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Sometimes Cal Kestis likes to stand his ground. Stormtroopers are easy to defend against; they stand delightfully still as Cal reflects their blaster bolts back at them with his lightsaber. Flametroopers, though—those he doesn’t mind running away from, at least until he can find high ground and slam their power cells to the ground with the Force. Which he does, with not a little glee at the whump of the explosion.
Turgle runs with him, the remains of some High Republic gadgetry clutched in his webbed fingers. The frog had nearly bowled him over with a panicked yelp as Cal stepped out of the ruin’s elevator, leaving him face to face with this Imperial unit. What was he supposed to do, leave Turgle to his fate?
Of course not.
“You know they’ll kill you if they catch you, one of these days?” Cal says, tossing the words over his shoulder as Turgle hides behind him. The words don’t stop him from easily deflecting another bolt. “You’re going to pick the wrong purge trooper to try to swindle, and no more Turgle.”
The frog laughs. “Yeah, but first they have to catch you!” he says, and drops the doodad, taking off at a dead run. Cal can’t check because the last trooper in the unit has decided they’ll be brave and take on the Jedi alone, swinging an electro-baton at Cal’s head—but he thinks the metal falls into a pile of nekko droppings.
Cal dodges under the wild swing and uses his blaster to trip the stormtrooper, then drives his saber into the too-white duraplast armor. The trooper’s helmet bounces off the metal piece and yes, right into the pile of droppings, and Cal has to laugh. Nobody’s catching Turgle today.