Pietro hummed a tune carelessly as he made his way through the alien landscape. It took him roughly half an hour to emerge from the forest, and what appeared before him was a deep canyon with a small village nestled in its center. This time, there were actually people in the settlement, though they could only be described as humanoid creatures rather than humans.
Several of them spotted Pietro and stopped their daily activities to stare at him with obvious curiosity and wariness. Pietro froze in place, his mouth slightly open in surprise, and slowly raised his hands in what he hoped was a universal gesture of peace.
There followed a long, awkward, and increasingly tense silence as the rest of the village also noticed the strange intruder in their midst.
"Hey, what's the situation here?" came a commanding voice. "You people should all be packing your belongings immediately and preparing to move out. We need to evacuate everyone to safety as quickly as possible."
Then several figures emerged from behind the humanoid villagers. These newcomers were wearing pristine white armor and carrying large rifles that Pietro didn't recognize from any Earth military he'd encountered.
"What's going on?" asked one of the men in distinctive white and brown armor, apparently some kind of commanding officer.
A humanoid with distinctive orange skin and head-tails pointed directly toward Pietro without saying a word.
All eyes immediately returned to Pietro, who simply stood there with his mouth agape and his hands raised, completely motionless and uncertain how to proceed.
One of the armored soldiers noticed that Pietro had consciously raised his hands in surrender and commanded with military authority: "Drop to the ground immediately."
Pietro was obviously unwilling to prostrate himself on the ground. Raising his hands had been the absolute limit of his cooperative goodwill. He said as calmly as possible: "Look, I don't want to cause any trouble here. I'm just passing through."
"Just passing through?" Another armored soldier repeated with obvious disbelief. "You just happened to be casually passing through a war-torn planet? What are the odds of that kind of coincidence? That's pretty hard to believe."
"Wait, what did you just say?" Pietro asked in shock and growing alarm.
"Excuse me?"
"You said 'war-torn planet'—that's exactly what you just said, right?" Pietro demanded loudly.
The soldier in white armor seemed surprised by the intensity of the reaction, but he still responded patiently: "Yes, the planet Ryloth. It's been under assault by Separatist forces for several weeks now."
"Planet?" Pietro muttered in complete disbelief. "I'm on another goddamn planet?!"
"Hey, don't move!" the first soldier who had spoken to him said sharply, raising his weapon.
Pietro was so completely shocked by this revelation that he began running around frantically in tight circles. His incredible superhuman speed made everyone present stare with eyes wide in amazement, because none of them had ever witnessed anyone move so impossibly fast.
"Uh, hey there, Silver!" one of the soldiers called out, using Pietro's hair color as an impromptu nickname to get his attention. "Listen carefully—we're in the middle of an active war zone right now, and an army of battle droids is about to open fire on this village and every other settlement that hasn't already been bombed into rubble."
This information made Pietro stop his frantic pacing and ask with growing confusion, "Battle droids?"
The soldier explained hurriedly: "Yes, droids—the Separatist battle droid army. They're mechanical soldiers programmed to kill anything that moves."
Suddenly, the distinctive sound of heavy blaster fire erupted from multiple directions.
Everyone froze at the ominous sound, followed immediately by panicked screams from villagers and shouted tactical orders from the white-armored soldiers.
"Vulture droids incoming from the north!"
"AAT tanks advancing on the eastern approach!"
Then came deafening explosions that shook the ground beneath their feet, accompanied by the terrified cries of children calling desperately for their parents.
Pietro stood transfixed by the chaos unfolding around him, his heart rate accelerating rapidly and his breathing becoming shallow and quick. He could feel sweat beginning to gather on his forehead and his palms becoming clammy with nervous tension.
For a moment, he seemed to see his parents dying in the bombing of Sokovia again, and he felt as if Wanda was standing right beside him, sharing his terror and helplessness.
Pietro took a deep, steadying breath and forced himself back to the present moment. He observed a family of four huddled together, trembling in absolute fear as they watched a glowing plasma grenade arcing through the air toward their position. They closed their eyes in despair, certain they were about to die.
Suddenly they felt a strange sensation of movement, opened their eyes, and found themselves standing safely on the western outskirts of the village. Then, more villagers began appearing on the western side one after another, as if by magic. All anyone could perceive was a vague blur racing back and forth between different parts of the village, systematically extracting more and more civilians from the combat zone.
The sounds of blaster fire and explosive detonations could be heard everywhere throughout the settlement.
A clone sergeant barked tactical orders: "Everyone, use the alleyways and structural ruins for cover! CT-2176, get to that elevated position and provide suppressing fire!"
The white-armored clone troopers quickly took defensive positions and began returning fire against the advancing droid army, which responded with overwhelming volleys from their own weapons.
"Keep up the covering fire!" the sergeant commanded. "We need to buy time for the civilian evacuation behind us!"
"Uh, Sergeant," one of his men called out with obvious confusion, "the civilians at the rear of our formation have... well, the entire village appears to be evacuated already."
"What?!" the sergeant exclaimed in disbelief.
The sergeant took advantage of a brief lull in the firefight to glance behind his position, and discovered that all the Twi'lek inhabitants who had populated the village seemed to have completely vanished, except for a few stragglers who stood around looking equally confused.
Suddenly, without any warning, a silver-blue blur swept up one of the remaining Twi'leks, then another, and another, until every single civilian in the immediate vicinity had disappeared. This entire evacuation process had taken place in a matter of mere seconds.
"What in the galaxy was that?!" a nearby clone trooper asked in amazement.
The phenomenon the soldier was referring to proceeded to completely demolish several rows of battle droids in front of their position like a high-speed battering ram. The white-armored clone had no comprehension of how such destruction was possible—he could only hear the distinctive sounds of metal being struck and torn apart at incredible velocity.
Pietro came to a stop directly in front of the clone formation and casually tossed the severed arm of a super battle droid onto the ground at their feet.
Looking at the armored soldiers with newfound respect, Pietro asked with a slight grin, "So, do you still think you need to keep fighting defensively?"
Without waiting for an answer, he launched himself back into combat, colliding with the nearest battle droid at supersonic speed. The momentum and kinetic energy of his impact caused the B1 battle droid to shatter completely and crash into several more droids behind it.
He didn't pause there and continued systematically destroying every battle droid that appeared within his field of vision, moving too quickly for most optical sensors to track.
All the clone troopers stared at this absolutely astonishing display with their eyes wide open in disbelief. Some even removed their helmets and rubbed their eyes to ensure they weren't experiencing some kind of combat-induced hallucination.
None of them could keep up with this mysterious individual who seemed to be ignoring their presence and appeared to know nothing about galactic warfare. All they could observe was his figure slowing down slightly as he attacked each group of droids, then accelerating away to the next target.
The sergeant shook his head to clear his thoughts, forced himself to regain tactical focus, raised his DC-15A blaster rifle again, and shouted to his men: "Come on, brothers! This crazy guy has created a tactical opportunity for us. Now concentrate all firepower and advance!"
His troops heard the command and began laying down heavy suppressing fire against the battle droids that were still attempting to assault their position.
The enemy forces were now in complete disarray as their tactical algorithms struggled to process what was happening to their formations.
But this chaos did nothing to slow Pietro's relentless assault on the mechanical army.
Pietro paused briefly to catch his breath, but his aggressive tactics had successfully attracted the attention of the AAT tanks, which began rotating their main cannons to target him specifically.
Pietro smiled with contempt at the lumbering war machines and resumed running at supersonic velocity, continuing his systematic destruction of every battle droid he encountered.
"He's drawn the tank fire away from us," the sergeant observed with tactical satisfaction. "Concentrate all anti-armor weapons on the nearest AAT!"
Following their sergeant's tactical guidance, clone troopers without rocket launchers retrieved thermal detonators and magnetic charges, hurling them at the closest tanks with deadly precision. Their coordinated assault destroyed a significant number of the armored vehicles.
The clone squad then divided into two tactical groups—half remained at their current position to continue engaging the droid forces, while the other half went to locate the evacuated Twi'lek villagers and escort them to the designated rally point.
"CT-2176," the sergeant requested through his helmet's communication system, "what's the status on civilian locations?"
"Sir, they're all gathered on the western perimeter of the village," the designated spotter replied. "Every single civilian is accounted for and secure."
The sergeant looked up just in time to see Pietro charging toward a massive destroyer droid at maximum velocity, raising his knee and delivering a devastating impact to the droid's sensor dome. The speed and kinetic force of the strike instantly obliterated the heavily armored unit's head before its defensive systems could even activate.
The sergeant smiled with a mixture of awe and professional appreciation beneath his helmet, then called out to attract Pietro's attention.
Pietro was in the middle of dismantling another squad of battle droids when he heard someone shouting his direction. Turning around, he spotted the armored figure waving at him to approach.
Pietro considered the request briefly and appeared in front of the sergeant in the blink of an eye.
"Incredible! This is absolutely incredible," the sergeant exclaimed with genuine amazement.
"What do you need?" Pietro asked with characteristic impatience.
"Well, listen carefully—there might have been a slight misunderstanding between us when we first met," the sergeant began diplomatically. "You have to understand, we're in an active combat zone, so our initial caution was... well, you can understand our position, right? And you just saved the lives of every single villager in this settlement."
Pietro visibly relaxed his defensive posture, shrugged casually, and replied, "That's just part of my job description. Civilian safety always comes first."
The sergeant nodded with obvious approval and continued, "I realize what I'm about to propose might seem a bit sudden, but you just saved countless lives here. My brothers and I, along with these villagers, could really use your assistance. We need to get these people to safety and link up with the Grand Army of the Republic. Come with us—we genuinely need your help. Besides, there won't be anything left of this place after we withdraw, so there's no point in you staying here alone."
Pietro studied the clone sergeant for a long moment, glancing back at the devastated remains of the village, then at the scattered wreckage of the battle droids that had caused such destruction.
To be completely honest, everything he had just accomplished had been pure instinct and training, but he now understood with absolute clarity that he was no longer on Earth but on an alien world called Ryloth.
The scale of the military assault he had just witnessed, combined with the droid patrol he had observed earlier in the first abandoned village, seemed to confirm the sergeant's earlier statement that this entire planet was engulfed in warfare.
At this moment, Pietro recalled the tactical philosophy and ethical guidelines that Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers had taught him about how to properly assess military conflicts and adapt to combat situations while maintaining moral principles.
He sighed quietly to himself, looked directly at the sergeant, and said with resolution, "Alright, I'm with you. But I have a lot of questions that need answers, so I'm going to need you to be completely honest with me."
The sergeant nodded with solemn understanding and respect.
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