Chapter Text
It’s times like this when I realize exactly why some people might, potentially, dislike the Jedi for reasons other than the normal.
Anakin and Obi-Wan both traipse through the underpath of Felucia’s lands with eerie confidence, brushing aside the local flora and fauna to achieve their primary objective in service to the Republic. There’s casual disregard permeating the air as they walk, heading straight towards what they believe to be the local civilization. It’s alright, everyone thinks, it’s war. Therefore the little people don’t really matter anymore, because what really matters are the big guns and the heavily commentated battleship fights between the largest entities. Even Anakin falls prey to this mindset, how he’s the Chosen One, the general, the Good Guy who everyone ought to pay attention to, because obviously all these ignorant “others” don’t understand trauma like he does.
In his mind particularly, nothing is more important than his desires. It ought to sicken me, pollute my mind with treasonous ash, yet the more I mull over it, simmering and steaming like stew, the more I feel a draw towards him. How marvelous, I think, that a person can love so much that he becomes his own main character. How marvelous that a person can love me so much that he’d frighten, curse, steal, seduce, and harm.
We were meant to check in on a field hospital in the Thanium Sector, a highway stop for injured soldiers along the Perlemian trade route, when ambushed by droids, leading to our epic crash landing on Felucia. It was meant to be a simple stop-over mission, a simple check-in. It meant… well, there were a lot of well-intentioned things our team was supposed to do, but alas, here we are, stranded on the oddest planet I’ve ever had the displeasure of exploring.
I hate this planet.
The air’s too thick, too humid, clogging my pores, throat, and lungs. Every step I take feels too heavy and sluggish to be natural, despite my species being adapted for warm climates – just not this environment . There are no trees, no grasses, no plants other than the slow crawl of eternal fungi forests, which dig deep into the dirt, penetrating miles and miles of everything. I sense it, from the squishy pink-grey pillar fungi to the stubby white mushrooms popping up insidiously in every corner, that everything is connected. All these spores and suctions and capsules, reaching into the dirt and combining into one living, breathing creature. They never tell you the truth about fungus – it wraps around an entire field, stretching far, far into lands you can’t even see.
All fungus is the same. All parasites, squirming, eating, begging, gathering, and spreading . I hate the tentacles reaching up from the ground, as if a kraken attacking innocents, because I can feel the throws of life energy rustling in the core of the planet, growing and growing, wanting to encompass everything into the fungus.
I imagine eating one of the mushrooms here, letting the off-white bulb fall onto my tongue as I chew and melt it down. It’ll mix in my mouth, rubbing against my cheeks, tongue, teeth, gums, spreading seedlings and grabby arms into the miniscule pores of the skin and flesh walls, grabbing ahold of the surface in order to breed. It wants to plant spores, so spongy mushrooms will begin popping out of my cheeks like whiskers, cute at first, then devolving into grotesque Lovecraftian horrors. Then the chewed up fungus will travel down to my stomach, where it’ll enjoy attaching itself to the rest of my digestive organs, planting spuds wherever it pleases. Felucia’s so warm and hazy that I won’t even notice the pain of turning into the foul nature, as I lull myself into eternal sleep, humming alongside the continuous beat of all the interconnected fungal patterns.
“You’re a bit quiet, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan notes.
I glance at him, that zealous soldier, so proud and capable. The general of the army, disseminating whatever it takes to be selfless.
“Master rattled my brain with that landing,” I say immediately. “My poor head feels like it’s been decapitated.”
While Anakin splutters, Obi-Wan retorts, “Now, don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Dammit.
Ahsoka: 2, Obi-Wan: 1.
He must take pleasure in my sour frown, because he focuses away from me, back to the over-confident march to the entrance of the local farmers’ residence.
There’s no one here.
Distinctly, I do remember a plot point about bounty hunters versus pirates, mostly due to the “Seven Samurai” reference, but it must not have been a majorly important event because my single brain cell can’t muster up the energy to rub against my empty skull to connect any more dots. And it worries me – not the lack of memories – that this will be another horrific taste of an unwritten future that I have yet to experience. How much longer do I realistically have before it all goes to shit? Syndulla can’t pinpoint a date on his planned revolution until the outline is completed, but then after that, how long will I stick my head in the sand and pretend that I haven’t already changed things?
“Well, this is strange,” Anakin says once we reach the empty hamlet.
There’s no one in sight, but everything points to a lively little settlement, several generations of families all living within the confines of the gates. The unusual metal gates scattered around the houses serve as an incentive for the local monstrous fauna to stay away, since nobody likes foreign, potentially dangerous, things within their vicinity.
I feel all of them, their twinkling little souls, covered up and afraid, from a rich gold to a pale white-yellow, subconsciously suppressing their very presence in fright. They’re scattered around in their homes, in awkward angles and absolute agony. I don’t know what species they are, but they’re undoubtedly intelligent if I can recognise them as alive.
Obi-Wan signals split up in the Republic’s newly made sign language, and I creep around the edge of the hamlet, ducking down underneath farm equipment and reluctantly bowing my head into the nearby fungus bushes. It looks like a bundle of red kelp, still bouncy and glistening from the moisture of the air. All the fungus is connected here, an entire city of breathing nerves and connections, so I stick a montral into the fungal base and listen for the bounty hunters.
They’re… here.
I can hear the tiny pitter-patter of footsteps, hiding under other farm machines, but none of the bounty hunters’ assumedly metal-toed footsteps.
They’re in the buildings.
Whhhheesh.
I hear a lightsaber activate and fear trickles into my throat.
“Stop, stop!” A local cries, running right past my hiding spot and towards the main building.
They clamor for peace and all is well. As I’m about to head towards the party for introductions, my comms beeps a bright blue light, then red.
Stay hidden.
Obi-Wan’s message is confusing, but it’s not overridden by Anakin’s report to quit, so I remain crouched under the equipment by the borders of the settlement, shrouded in waving red-blue-green dotted mushrooms, swaying the way seaweed would at the bottom of the ocean.
The air itches. I want to sneeze, but nothing comes out because I’m drowning.
I hate this planet.
Red. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Stay hidden, they know, Obi-Wan signals again, meaning that the bounty hunters and farmers know that I exist.
Or, at least, know there’s another Jedi slinking around in the background somewhere, and they won’t aim to kill if they see a figure with a lightsaber.
Hopefully.
I alert them back with an affirmative, and race into the fungal forests, hiding among the fleshy stalks and creeping, porous branches. Right. They’re meeting with the village elders and bounty hunters now, coming to an agreement. My job is to scout out the area and act as back-up if a third party comes to interfere.
Which, pirates.
I don’t want to climb these false trees, but there’s no other way to expertly hide in this forsaken area, with no rocks or vines or anything except fungus, so I bound up to the tops of the spongy mushroom-trees and fly between the tips of the stalks, observing from the heights.
Pirate. Pirate. Pirate.
I heard stories of the great Hondo Ohnaka, but I’d never encountered him before. Bright, boisterous, bluffing, decked in rich robes and stolen weapons. I don’t see him yet, but towards the edge of the forest, near the empty paths towards the hamlet, I see dozens of his men, Weequay men, readying scooters and cannons.
Yellow. Yellow, I send, for pirates.
The initial troops are off first, so I leap down behind the remaining men, drunken off the fumes of the heat.
I could use them.
The thing about Jedi robes is that everyone thinks they know what they look like. They must be shiny and rich, the nobles assume, richer than theirs, because the religious quacks must be all high and mysterious as the other priests they pay off. They must be armored and stiff, the commoners assume, since they only see us now as war heroes and soldiers. They must be everything except for what they really are – the most common fashion across the galaxy, simple robes and pants. Mine are a mix of blues and blacks instead of the typical musty brown tones, but it’s still passably normal fashion in nearly every planet of the galaxy.
I shed my armor, sticking it in the hollow cubicles underneath the mushroom bushes, and hide my lightsaber in a place most people wouldn’t bother to check. Of course, pirates have no morals, but from what I hear of Ohnaka’s crew, they only let themselves indulge in their treasures once they have permission to.
From what I’ve also heard about Ohnaka’s crew is that they’re all a bunch of useless morons, so I waltz straight into their camp and boldly announce, “Hello pirates.”
There’s some head-scratching.
No, a lot of head-scratching.
A Weequay immediately aims a blaster at my head. “Who’re you?!”
There’s only five of them here – more than what I’m used to, but this is the best way to practice.
“A lost princess,” I say, weaving the command of the Force in my voice. “Bring me to your ship. I am to be ransomed.”
I’m sorely tempted to whisper “money, money, money” in their ears like Mr. Crabs, but I somehow resist the temptation to mess up the entire self-inflicted mission. Instead, I turn my nose up and spew the wildest shit ever, squishing down the surprise that it’s so easy to use the force to take a hold of their minds and say whatever I want.
“You want to take me to your ship.”
“I’m important. Don’t touch me.”
“What are your immediate plans?”
Murder yourse–.
It’s so easy, I can’t believe it. Their mental fortitudes must be in the same compressive strength range as wet noodles. I can so easily slip into their minds and command them all to my heart’s desire, roaming around, reading, listening, obeying.
Surely this must be terrifying, I would’ve imagined. But no, I relish in this control, in this simplicity, as the Force obeys what I ask of it, oh so helpful in the demise of others.
Surely it is terrifying.
And yet–.
The round, disc-shaped ships are hidden in a grove of large, bulbous pink petals oozing a mixture of digestive sap and acid.
“Prisoner,” Hart’luk, the main scout, says to the Weequays by the ship, as my entourage of kidnappers take me to the main ship.
How do I know his name?
And I escape from them, flitting away into the pipes, squeezing myself through the cold metal and rough plastic frames, away from the warm, velvety flesh of the fungi planet. My skin runs with lightning in this new environment, where I finally feel safe yet alert enough to be aware of myself.
You know what, I think. Maybe I shouldn’t mess with the Force like that anymore.
How do I know his name?
Hart’luk, Amest, Nuevo, Ano, and Ono.
What?
It was just a glimpse, I didn’t–.
Anyway… pirates.
They have many uses, now that I’m in this situation. I hadn’t factored them into my plans, but I just couldn’t resist this golden opportunity to scout them out while they’re grounded.
The scum of the galaxy – thieving, burning, ravaging, stealing, hunting, kidnapping, raping, enslaving. They’ve destroyed a number of Republic and Separatist ships in the war so far, taking valuables and hostages to extort money from the governments. The Separatists don’t even bother with the pirates, and instead cut their losses or send droids to clean up the mess entirely by bombing the ransom points. The Republic attempts to keep up their kinder image by treating with the scum, which brings about a foul taste in my mouth, ashes down my throat and cotton in my ears. I see red, I feel pain, and I want to snap something’s neck. I want to crush some pretty little organism until its life fades from its body, as I feel blood rivulet down my slender, child-fingers, in big droplets, letting it drip-drip-drip to the floor. It’ll be a symphony of horrors.
Music to my ears.
However charismatic Ohnaka may be, I cannot stand to let this treachery lay unpunished.
Pirates threaten the peace that I envision. With the revolution coming about, the Republic and the Separatist parties will be at the front and center. The neutral parties will remain neutral. The neutral parties that wish to fight both sides and wreck the peace, such as the pirates and scavengers and looters, only wish to bring chaos amidst the war, to threaten battles to be longer just so they have more time to do whatever pirates do – kill economies.
How dare they.
It’s not even a cultural issue here, romanticized or spit upon. These aren’t pirates against the radical governments (which would be understandable), there are pirates against the people. Pirates here are throwing the livelihood of the innocent commonfolk into the flames, instead of standing against the tyranny of whatever freedom they had initially started off fighting against.
Ohnaka must be charming, I muse, to let Obi-Wan not see this level of outrage. The Republic wouldn’t dare attack a third-party, but if Obi-Wan had just told them to, they’d be razed in an instant.
I hate mushrooms and I hate pirates.
Ugh.
What a day.
Now, where do I keep all my bombs? That’s a secret I’ll take to the grave.
I pry open the vents under the reactor of the ship, placing the bomb with steady hands just under the lava-hot hyperdrive. Only a very small mechanic will be able to spot it, so I burn my fingertips my pushing the bomb under the plates of the vents above. It’s an army-grade bomb, made with metal mined from the heart of Naboo, so it’ll withstand the insane temperatures in the reactor chamber, unspotted and hidden until I press the proverbial shiny red button in my room.
My comms blares.
“Ahsoka!” Anakin demands. “Where are you? You haven’t responded to the mission updates!”
In hindsight, turning off my communication channels so I wouldn’t be distracted while dancing around a pirate ship was such a great idea.
“I was kidnapped,” I say.
The comms vibrates with activity . How fun.
“What?”
“I found pirates, pirates found me. But I escaped, see you in twenty.”
It’s later than I thought. The main pirate force that threatens the farming settlement must’ve had another camp on the other side, because I return to a cesspit of terror. Pirates attacking farmers, in true Kafka absurdity. And the farmers fighting back with hoes and scythes, backed up with two Jedi and four bounty hunters.
They don’t need more ground support. They need bombs.
While they’re still unaware, I come in from behind, under the artillery and scooters of the pirates, peppering remote-controlled explosives among the Weequays.
And it goes click.
The scene plays like this: my hands, undisturbed, pressing a button to doom the fates of many. Farmers, Jedi, bounty hunters, their faces bathed in violent white light, metal shrapnel blasting from the periphery.
I stand at the forefront, amidst the flame, holding a bubble of power, pushing the destruction away from the lands of the Felucian natives. It’s beautiful. It’s majestic. It’s glorious.
They burn.
And when the fire dies down, pretty much all of the pirates are left standing, as the thick, leathery skin of their species is highly resistant to damage. It’s lucky that the farmers had already gathered their crop of nysilin before this battle, else everything would be blackened soot.
I stare down at the leader blankly.
Let him see how much I don’t care about his life. Let him see how much I’ll revel in his misery. Let him see the bombs I’ve sowed in his wake.
Let him see.
Ohnaka stands before me, smiling. “And I see,” he declares, disrupting the silence, “this venture has no longer become profitable! Men, let us return!”
What a man.
Anakin doesn’t even see the destruction. He storms over to me, stabbing a finger into my sternum (without the chest plate, since the fungus-smell hadn’t left the armor and I had sadly abandoned the stained metals back in the forest), eyebrows furrowed comically. “Ahsoka! You were kidnapped?!”
My master’s fatal flaw is his possessive love. He’s blind to the tragedy of this power I’ve let free, only seeing me, here, before him.
“And I beat them up,” I say with a toothy grin.
It’s all fine now, is what I say without saying. I took my revenge. I came back to him.
Anakin’s nostrils flare, but he closes his eyes and calms down. “We’ll talk about it at base,” he promises, then looks up.
I see it too, the glint of light from the sniper’s glass.
The Dathomirian bounty hunter sees it too, but her weapon was ruined during the fight, ridden with blaster holes. With energy rushing through my veins in the drunkest high I’ve ever experienced, the Force beckoning me towards a pool of untold wonders of innate potential, I take my lightsaber out in a flash and lean into a bastardized form of Soresu to block the shot.
A farmer faints, I think.
The Dathomirian steps back, reaction-speed a minute too late.
Anakin and Obi-Wan have the sabers out too, checking for other snipers in the vicinity.
“Thanks,” she says. “You saved my life.”
I should bow, like the silly kid-emotions blooming in my chest are telling me to do.
After the fanfare, the bounty hunters offer a ride in their ship to the nearest base, now trusting us enough that we won’t immediately turn them in for the ridiculously high prices on their heads. Obi-Wan stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking during the journey in the dinky old freighter, staring at the back of my head.
He must see the undeveloped montrals and lekku of a child, then see the vicious monster underneath.
It was so easy to just… burn everything. Take control of their minds. Ravage, like a beast.
The hair by Obi-Wan’s ears are greying, bleeding silver into the handsome auburn color. Now that he’s got two deadly apprentices on his hands, his stress levels must be up the roof. So I sneak behind him in an incredibly obvious manner, much to Anakin’s combined confusion and humor, to attack him with a hug.
“Sorry for worrying you, Grandmaster!” I tease. “I promise not to stress you out like your own padawan anymore.”
“Hey!”
Obi-Wan sags into the embrace. “I have to admit that I’m worried about the disastrous Skywalker influence over you–.”
“Hey, I’m right here.”
“–But I suppose it’s not all that bad, if you’re able to escape a kidnapping quicker than anyone I know.”
“I really feel like that was directed at someone, wait–.”
I shift around awkwardly, moving the hug from his back to his front, glancing up with big blue eyes and a snarky half-smile. I beam up at him, watching his heart melt, and I prance away, away from the memories of savagery and bloodshed.
I hadn’t killed anyone, but I’d just doomed an entire platoon of people to their future deaths.
What kind of monster am I?
For the greater good. They’ll get in the way of the war. My war. Syndulla’s war. The revolution.
Sugi, the Dathomirian, winks at me when we depart.
“Thanks, White Blade,” she says, as the other bounty hunters bow their heads in respect.
‘White Blade’ sounds like a title.
They’d seen horror. They’d seen so much more beyond my years of a child soldier. They didn’t even blink at the bomb-fare. What is the old bounty hunter code, again? An eye for an eye? A life for a life?
We’ll meet again.