Zeb grabbed on to the wing rod of the TIE fighter and spun around it like he was a juvenile Lasat on a tree branch. All the pilot’s blasts missed. The pilot stepped closer for a better shot. Zeb kicked, gaining speed as he revolved around the rod.
The pilot fired again. But Zeb no longer held the rod. He had launched himself into the air—and landed on the pilot’s shoulders.
The pilot yelped, yanked off the ground by Zeb’s toes, while Zeb reached out for a landing strut. He swung around the strut like a monkey-lizard, released his toe grip, and flung the pilot away. The man impacted the pad with a thud. This time he didn’t get up.
Zeb did another spin around the strut to vault himself atop the TIE fighter. A familiar voice buzzed him on his comlink. “Zeb, are you embarrassing the Imperials again?”
“Honestly, Kanan, it’s not hard to do,” Zeb said.
He looked down with a grin at the eight stormtroopers coming from the nearby alley. Two of the troopers had dents in their helmets. These must be the ones he’d bashed together after they harassed the Ugnaught fruit seller. Zeb’s grin widened.
The stormtrooper commander looked up at the TIE where Zeb stood. “Weapons to ‘stun.’ Bring him down,” he ordered.
The troopers switch-clicked their weapons and fired. Zeb catapulted off the TIE high into the air. Blaster bolts flew to the clouds while Zeb crashed down right in the middle of the squad. He kicked, grabbed, and punched, tossing stormtroopers around like they were snowflakes.
“Can’t get a clear shot!” said a trooper.
Zeb knew that in a close fight like this, blasters were hard to aim, because shots might hit comrades. So he kept smashing the troopers together, making them as close as could be.
“I mean, do they even bother training these bucket-heads?” Zeb said, wanting both the troopers and Kanan on his comlink to hear. “My old gran’s a better fighter, and she’s only two meters tall!”
The commander stepped away from the brawl. He lifted his sidearm and aimed carefully. Zeb didn’t see him shoot. But he sure felt it.
The shot had hit Zeb in the chest, sizzling fur. Electricity coursed through Zeb’s nerves. The other troopers held their positions, watching the giant Lasat sway.
Zeb gritted his teeth. He thought of his old gran. She’d lived for three hundred dust seasons on Lasan, through much worse troubles than this. He was going to do the same.
He was only hit by a stun bolt, after all.
Zeb slowly turned toward the commander, his expression of pain returning to a grin. “That…stung.” He pulled free his bo-staff from his back.
“Weapons on ‘kill’!” said the commander.
It became a race between Zeb’s shifting his staff into rifle mode and the commander’s changing the energy setting of his blaster. And it was a race the commander lost.
“Weapons on—” the commander repeated, cut off when the energy blast from Zeb’s rifle knocked him back.
Four of the troopers, however, got their weapon settings changed. At once, they fired at Zeb.
The Lasat dove under the TIE fighter and rolled under the pod-shaped fuselage that contained the cockpit. Blasts ricocheted off the metal. Zeb got up on one knee just as a bolt scorched a lower panel on the TIE. Liquid fuel began to drip out.
“Well, that’s not good,” Zeb said.
“What’s not good?” Kanan inquired over their link.
Zeb scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as his long legs would carry him. The troopers continued to fire. None hit the Lasat, yet many of their blasts ignited the liquid fuel.