Ahsoka Tano (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
resnipstance) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
pencilcase2018-07-24 08:23 pm
resnipstance) wrote in pencilcase2018-07-24 08:23 pmvarious prompts for luna
i couldn't decide so i wrote a bunch, pick ur fave, or all, or none???
resnipstance) wrote in pencilcase2018-07-24 08:23 pm
THE ONE WHERE BOTH OF THEM ARE ORIGINAL FLAVOUR
Which is to say, if there are more planets out there in this direction, they're so far away that none of their instruments can read them. If anything does lie beyond, it's beyond their ability to find with their current level of technology. It is, quite literally, the great unknown. And you can't travel at hyperspeed in unmapped space. Unless you want to end up flying into a planet, anyway. There's just no guarantee how long it would take to get to the next sign of life from here-- if there even is one. Journeying further out this way, on her own, with a limited fuel and food supply... it's downright crazy. Not just desperate, but legitimately, asylum-admitting-material crazy. She shouldn't even be considering it. Who is she to think that she can accomplish what hundreds who have come before her couldn't?
But she's Ahsoka, so... of course, she decides to do it anyway. It'll be risky, she thinks... but nobody else who's tried this before had the Force to guide them. Probably. But she does. And the Force is telling her to take this gamble. She's at the edge of her rope-- what else do they have left to lose? They desperately need help. And if they can't get it in this galaxy, then she just has to go further afield. So she spends a few days on the nearest Outer Rim planet she can find preparing, stockpiling fuel and rations, and meditating. Asking the Force for guidance.
When she finally decides that she literally cannot prepare any more than she already has, she picks the direction she can feel the Force guiding her in, takes off towards it. And follows it. And follows it. Doggedly. For the most part, the journey is... boring. A week passes. Then another. She doesn't travel in real-time all the time-- she'd never reach anywhere before she died, traveling that way. Rather, she travels in each new empty sector she comes across for just long enough for her ship's computer to map out the area as far as the sensors will reach, then uses those calculations to do short hyperspace bunnyhop jump to the very edge of that space. Then the process begins all over again. It's slow and tedious, but necessary. Better to be careful than dead. No autopilot for this trip. She has enough close calls on a near-daily basis as it is. She snatches sleep in short naps, unwilling to let the ship do an eight hour jump unsupervised, but also equally unwilling to let eight hours go to waste and not traveling.
By the time two months of traveling like this has gone by, her food and fuel reserves are toeing the halfway line. That's... not good. She chews on her lip, worrying at it. If they dip lower than halfway, she won't have enough to get back. A four month round trip was the upper limit of what she had planned for (and what her small ship can carry). She's never been stuck in a spaceship for so long before, and it's starting to drive her a little stir-crazy. Her logic brain screams at her to turn around. Throw in the towel, take what she's learned and use it hyperjump back. Refuel and try again another day.
But... she can't. Maybe it's the Force, or maybe it's just wishful thinking-- she isn't sure anymore-- but something is telling her that she's close. She can feel it in her bones. Another galaxy out there somewhere, drenched in life force, very much alive. Calling to her. But... it's such a risk. If she's wrong, or she can't find it... she'll be stranded out here. No hope of rescue, no way of getting a message out. That'll be it. Finito.
Genuinely torn, she falls back on meditation. Every cell in her body screams at her not to do it, but... what if she piloted manually through hyperspace, guiding her ship with the Force?
It's a stupid idea. Risky doesn't even begin to cut it. Every piece of common wisdom and general knowledge about space and piloting screams at her not to do it. While you're in hyperspace, you're basically flying completely blind. There's no telling what you could crash into. That's why computers handle hyperspace navigation. Make one wrong move and you're dead. You'd have to be a total idiot to even consider it.
Ahsoka punches it. Because of course she does. That familiar blue glow illuminates the cockpit once more, but this time, her hands are firmly on the controls. She closes her eyes, because-- well, what's the point in keeping them open? She's not flying by sight, that's for damn sure. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest as she steers, well aware that every minute she spends like this is walking the line between victory and death. But that's always been when she's thrived the most. Anakin shouldn't have trained her so well, she thinks wryly.
And for a while, the jump proceeds just fine. Further and further she goes, until she finally passes the point where the computer has no more data about the surrounding space to go off of, where she'd normally drop out of hyperspace and stop to map the area again. But not this time. She goes further still. Pushing it.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Eventually she stops counting every minute that she's alive and goes into a sort of trance as she navigates. She hears warnings from the Force whenever she's in danger and course-corrects accordingly. It's the single most heart-stopping thing she's ever done, but the more time passes and she's still alive, the more confident she gets that she can actually do this. Which is why it takes her by such surprise when her ship gives a sudden but terrible jolt and drops out of hyperspace completely, spinning into a wormhole and out of control. Sensors on the ship all start blaring and beeping in alarm all at once, and Ahsoka hits her head on the back headrest as the ship is flung every which way, struggling to stay together under the pressure. She's been in crashes before, but this beats all of them.
Well. This is it, she thinks dazedly. I'm going to die.
Her eyes spot something odd in the distance, but her brain can't make sense of it before she completely blacks out. ]
THE ONE WHERE LANCE IS IN STAR WARS
And for all that she'd be remarkable on her homeworld of Shili, Shili is also unfortunately part of the Core. Too close to Coruscant, too strongly aligned with the Empire. There's nothing she can do there-- not yet. The Rebellion is still in it's infancy. But given time, she thinks... even Shili could be freed. Time and resources. That's what they need.
So she can't move about as she likes anymore as a free agent-- she'd already tried that, on Thabeska and on Raada, with disastrous results. Ahsoka Tano is still Officially Dead according to Empire Records, but she was almost found twice, and she has no intentions of getting that close again. She's no good to the Rebellion if she's dead, after all.
So as much as it chafes, she hangs up her field work hat, and takes over Bail Organa's intelligence networks. It's a deal that suits both of them-- Bail, she discovers quickly, is in reality kept far too busy by his actual day job as the senator for Alderaan to really keep on top of the intelligence he gets. Not only that, but the more plausible deniability he has as a public figure, the better. Ahsoka, on the other hand, needs a way to be involved in the Rebellion on the ground level before she drives herself crazy with feelings of uselessness, without risking running directly into someone who might know her from her days fighting in the Clone Wars. She runs into Bail when he helps her out with a rescue mission, and when she sees how disorganised his fledgling rebellion is, she knows immediately what she has to do.
She never became a Jedi, but she still has three years of experience commanding and leading others in a war. She knows what needs to be done, who needs to be contacted, what supplies and missions need to be organised. Though she hates missing out on the action, she's pleased for the most part at how naturally it seems to come to her. Sometimes, she thinks, you can take the girl out of the war, but you can't take the war out of the girl.
The Rebellion doesn't have much in the way of teeth yet, and it'll probably be years before they have any major victories. It bothers her, but at this stage she knows that setting up the foundations for success in the future is much more important than organising a fast but badly planned uprising that is quickly and thoroughly crushed. It's only been two years since Palpatine took over, and already the Empire's grip is like a vice. So for now she prioritizes making connections and delivering aid over anything that would draw attention to them.
She uses her smuggling connections with the Fardis to co-ordinate food drops to planets that need it. (The Empire is already so talented at controlling any unruly populaces through hunger, whether by engineered drought, bombing of crops, or simply skyrocketing prices.) She networks as much as possible to find those with anti-Empire sentiments. If they have a level head on their shoulders and a useful skillset, she does her best to bring them in. She scouts useful planets for possible bases, and makes lists of what they need to set up there and how to smuggle it all in slowly, piece by piece, so as not to draw any unwanted attention. She organises refugee relocation, for those from planets like Raada, people displaced by the Empire.
Most importantly, she has her ear to the ground for word of strange children or strange lone adults or any stories of unexpected kindness. Jedi, in other words. Or children, who would have become Jedi, if the Jedi still existed. She knows the Empire is looking for them too. These, she can't take in-- too many Force users in one place would create an easy-to-find beacon. But she can warn them or their families in the case of young ones, or help relocate them, or invite them to join the Rebellion and help out in other ways.
Those missions, she takes on her own. Even though it's dangerous, a world without Force users in it is even more dangerous. So it's a risk she's willing to take. The Force already feels so dark and unbalanced, compared to how it used to. Sure, it felt chaotic and unbalanced during the Clone Wars, but that was nothing compared to now. These days, it felt like every star in the night sky had gone out. She has to save as many surviving Jedi, padawans, and Force-sensitive children as possible, no matter the cost. And that's a mission she can't entrust to anyone else.
That's how she finds herself back on Onderon, even after swearing she'd never come back here. Onderon is simply too raw for her-- the battles she fought here in the Clone Wars still linger on in her heart, more than any of the others. But aside from that, Onderon is an Inner Rim world in Utter Revolt. Oppressed by the Separatists during the Clone Wars until the public revolted in civil war and overthrew them, the people of Onderon were simply too recently militarized to take the Empire's new rule quietly. The planet has been embroiled in bitter civil war once again for the last two years. Poor Onderon, she thinks. It can never get a break. If there is a Force-sensitive here, it can't be one from the Temple. No Jedi in their right mind would ever choose Onderon to hide out on. So that's one possibility ruled out. The others remain-- young child, untrained adult that was missed as a child, or the rumours are only rumours.
It's more than just dangerous for her to be here, though-- it's outright suicidal. Ahsoka Tano herself led many of the people of this world through their previous rebellion. Her face is known. So she can't hitch a ride though any legal channels to get past the Imperial Blockade up in the sky, which means she needs to get onto the planet without drawing attention a different way. Eventually she decides to stowaway on a trade ship. Even after the ship docks, she waits until the cover of nightfall to disembark. Then she glides over the rooftops of the familiar capital city on her her whisper-silent feet, searching for that familiar feeling in the Force, jumping from building to building like a trapeze artist. Nobody sees her. Nobody ever thinks to look up. ]
THE ONE WHERE BOTH OF THEM ARE ORIGINAL FLAVOUR BUT IN A JAMJAR SETTING
i will think of it. tomorrow.