garbageship | That's no moon... Wait, no, it's a moon.

When a group is unexpectedly attacked, it's a wise idea to for its members to stick together and form some kind of plan or strategy.

Not everyone in this group is wise.

Ben hones in on the nearest of the creatures after Kitty's shouted warning and launches himself at them. His lightsaber is already out and he's more than ready to fight something; he isn't going to mess around with things like strategy when the opportunity to attack and let loose is right there.

He also isn't paying much attention to what anyone else is doing. That could be inconvenient for people who aren't him.

Kitty usually works fine without a plan because she usually works in teams she's trained with where people fall into a natural pattern of teamwork, keeping the main objectives in mind as they fight whomever they are fighting and keeping an eye on their teammate's backs.

That is not what's happening here. She sees Ben move in and she's less worried about the tigers who engage him (not to mention the ones still coming for her position) than she is about the ones who might veer off toward Han and Rey.

She tries to take advantage of her position, aiming the blaster she had with her at one that's getting close. She shoots once—dead on and nothing. Well, he looks angrier if that counts as something. Three more successive shots and clearly it's having an effect, but he isn't stopping. He just seems enraged and unstoppable. It doesn't help she had one of the wimpiest little blasters with her just to test it out. She drops it on the rock and drops down to the ground letting the tiger attack. He goes right through her of course. She turns and slices him open with her now extended claws. She turns back to the fray and other tigers are bearing down on her already.

"Ben, we need to keep them away from the others."

Teamwork? Maybe Kylo Ren's fundamental unwillingness to so much as consider the concept is what allowed them to bring him down on Starkiller Base. Ben, fortunately, is slightly more receptive to it.

He runs one of the creatures through with his lightsaber—an energy blade to the throat, it turns out, will take down most things—and a sweeping attack injures another, but doesn't incapacitate it so much as drive it into a frenzy. It gets a single decent swipe in before it finds itself without a head. The fight stirs something in him that's been dormant for too long and he wants nothing more than to slice through the rest.

But he does hear Kitty, and he reluctantly starts to backtrack to Han and Rey's position. A sharp gestures throws the closest of the tigers back, perhaps putting it in a position to be shot at. It buys a few more seconds, at least. The creatures are too quick for it to be useful in getting them all back on the Falcon.

She looks over and sees Han making a run for weapons and Ben doing well enough to hold the tigers he has off. It's also lucky that she can take moments like this away from fighting to just check in on the field since the tigers will just go through her in the meantime.

"Sorry about this." Her words aren't for Ben or one of the others, but for the two tigers she's facing. She phases and shoves one angry, confused tiger into the other. Han might remember her showing her power off in the bar with him and Chewie that first day they met. She fused two glasses together, creating a strange, ruined thing. She's created another strange, ruined thing now. Their backsides are melded in an unnatural way. One of them died instantly. The other roars out a pained cry before her claws go through his brain. It only takes a moment and maybe it's a foolish moment to take when the others could be in danger, but she couldn't leave him like that.

She charges back toward the rest.

Kitty is in his line of sight when she merges the two creatures together and, for just a moment, he's distracted from his own fight. The First Order and the Knights of Ren have great capacities for cruelty, but he's never seen anything that grotesque and viscerally disturbing. His awe is cut short by a pouncing tiger and this is why he doesn't work in teams. If he was comfortably consumed with rage and not paying attention to anything but making corpses, there would not be an angry predator with his lightsaber arm in its teeth. The weapon falls to the ground.

He lets out a roar that would make a moontiger proud and reaches out to crush the animal's jaw with the power of the force. It frees him; he drops, retrieves the saber with his good arm, and finishes the creature off with a single strong, artless swing. The air is thick with the smell of burnt hair and skin.

Anger and pain propel him forward. Any tigers that have the misfortune of being alive and in striking range are not going to remain alive for long.

There goes all semblance of teamwork.

She runs faster toward Ben when she sees the tiger catch his arm. She's relieved, but worried after he manages to dispatch it. She bends down and catches a rock in her hand to throw at one of the tigers approaching Ben so that it will turn toward her instead. "How bad is your arm?" She doesn't look at him, focusing on the predators instead.

He doesn't respond. She's white noise and there's nothing on his mind but focusing everything he has on destroying his opponents. He has slipped back into Kylo Ren at his most terrifying, lashing out at the creatures with broad, savage swings that send sparks flying from the blade of his lightsaber. There's little precision since he's fighting with his left hand, but there's enough speed and fury to make up for it.

She may need to wait until everything is dead before she'll get a coherent response.

"Ben!" She doesn't want to distract him from the task at hand, but this makes her nervous. "Don't lose yourself!" Remember? You don't want that and she doesn't want that. It's a whole lot of do not want! Fight them, but fight for yourself too.

She swings at the cat in front of her, but doesn't hit anything vital as her claws meet his.

His name registers and he's aware of her presence, but there can't be any distractions now. There are only so many things left to maim, though. If she doesn't finish her tiger off in a speedy fashion, he's going to have to cut it down for her.

She grabs for a rock and phases it into the tiger's snarling head, leaving it there to solidify as she pulls away. He falls over dead, body still twitching. She moves toward Ben now. "Snap out of it! Fight, but not like this."

Kitty is suddenly the only living thing in attacking range, and she isn't a thing that needs to be attacked. Clarity returns and it brings some confusion and dismay along with it. He's usually more cognizant during fights. Even when he does lose control, it's a loss of control that he allows and even enjoys, not one that sneaks up on him.

Now is not a time to think, though. They were going to go back to the others, weren't they?

Doing that is easier than saying anything. It's a repeat of their sparring incident on a larger scale.

Honestly? She half expected him to go after her next, so while his reaction doesn't flood her with any kind of relief it's not the worst thing she imagined. She sees the shift in his eyes as he brings himself back, so when he turns to go she has a little more faith in where his steps are taking him. Not to mention it lines up with her own plans to help the others.

"How bad is the arm?" Does he need a tourniquet now or can they keep going?

If he hadn't become so familiar with the signatures of her presence in the time they've spent together, he may not have stopped. She doesn't feel like an enemy.

"It's fine." Was she expecting another answer? There's blood and he's still holding his lightsaber in the other hand, but he's not in danger of bleeding out. It hasn't slowed him down, either.

He does spare her a glance to see if she's relatively intact. "Is any of that blood yours?"

She does the best visual examination she can while they're both hurrying forward and she decides his arm can wait.

"No. The blaster I had with me wasn't powerful enough for them. Had to get close." Really close. Really messy. She wishes she'd gotten to Ben sooner, but she's also glad she can't hear that dual tiger screaming out anymore.

"Stay in control." That wasn't the last of them. She wants him to stay him.

Really messy is an understatement. Her powers are more formidable than he had imagined, which is not something that he should comment on now since there's still peril in the form of moontigers.

A satisfied nod will do, then.

That order requires more of a response. "I will." He'd better. There are going to be too many living things that aren't enemies to make waving a lightsaber around with reckless and mindless abandon a feasible strategy.

That's no moon... Wait, no, it's a moon.

Moontiger Attack: Team Run-at-Them-Without-a-Plan

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