Hello, Jedi and Sith alike! Here's an add-in chapter that I felt needed to go in. Don't worry, I'll add in a few more as time goes on!
Hope you like it, and please tell me what you think!
Elizabeth was meditating in the cold outside of the compound on Hoth when Luke found her again, just when she was beginning to freeze. He dragged her inside to keep her warm, and she protested greatly.
"Seriously, Luke? Is this really the time to interrupt meditation?" she asked with great annoyance.
"You were starting to freeze over, and I didn't want you to go into a coma-like state again," Luke answered as he grunted, pulling her through the hallways to her room to warm her up. "As your friend, I cannot allow you to end up killing yourself by freezing over."
"Well, you could have at least told me about my freezing over!"
"You wouldn't have listened; believe me, I tried that once. Leia and Han tried, too."
"All right, I give in."
Just then, Leia came into the room and said, "Elizabeth, the Council wishes to speak to you. It's on military matters that they think you might be able to help."
"As long as I can get warm, I'm in," Elizabeth replied, now feeling the chill in her vines.
Leia laughed as she got a warm coat to cover Elizabeth's vines and led her to the comm station. Holographic figures of the leaders of the Alliance were around a holotable, waiting for Elizabeth to arrive. Over the holotable was a diagram of a part of the Rebel fleet over Lothal, led by Commander Saato and an old rebel cell that existed before the Alliance was formally made.
"Elizabeth, welcome," Mon Mothma greeted the young strategist kindly. Mon Mothma was always motherly to Elizabeth and was the closest to her actual mother out of everyone in the galaxy. "We were waiting for you to come before telling of our troubles on Lothal."
Admiral Ackbar, a Calamarian, explained, "Our rebels on Lothal have been ambushed by Imperial forces and require assistance to escape alive. We wished to have some insight as to how we are to accomplish this."
"Of what type and how many Imperial ships are we talking about?" Elizabeth asked, looking at the diagram from as many angles as possible.
"Two Star Destroyers and half a battalion of TIE fighters against Phoenix Squadron," an old clone named Rex replied, "not to mention the Imperials have an ion cannon on one of the Star Destroyers."
"Well, the primary concern would be to destroy that Star Destroyer, but Phoenix Squadron would have to go through the TIEs to get that Star Destoyer within range," Elizabeth mused. "If we got a single skilled squadron there to destroy the Star Destroyer with the ion cannon, they would have to clear a path through the TIEs to get Phoenix Squadron out of there. Of course, you haven't told me their mission, which would be good to know."
"Evacuation, ma'am," Rex replied. "There were refugees on Lothal that the Squadron was evacuating from Lothal to Hoth, where you are. Unfortunately, the Imperials seem to have a better military strategist than is usually seen in our scanners, but given what history Lothal has, it is not unnatural. Commander Syndulla's holding up as best as she can, but even the help of two Jedi -"
"Jedi?" Elizabeth interrupted. "You never told me that there were Jedi on Lothal."
"A Jedi from the Old Republic named Kanan Jarrus and his padawan, Ezra Bridger," Rex informed her while pulling up their pictures beside the diagram.
"All right, but if even two Jedi are having problems, then they definitely need help, especially if we are to get those refugees to safety. I personally recommend Rogue Squadron, but you can choose between any of them. They are all skilled, although this mission would require more than skill. It requires pinpoint accuracy in firing, conservation of energy, and, most of all, on-the-battlefield strategy for this mission. Rogue Squadron has all of those, and I don't mind going up there myself as a battlefield strategist."
"Are you sure you're ready for such a task?" Leia asked, remembering the incident at the Battle of Yavin.
"I'm sure. I've been here on Hoth while studying up on this kind of strategy, and I am sure that I'm ready for this task," Elizabeth replied, trying to get the point across to Leia that she would not lose it again.
The Council discussed this for a while, then agreed with the plan. Elizabeth even showed with gestures what her specific plan was, then listened as they discussed the pros and cons of the plan. They all agreed that Rogue Squadron would go on the mission and that Elizabeth would go. She would stay in Luke's X-wing while he piloted while she wore the standard pilot's helmet to keep contact with both squadrons. Luke was a capable enough pilot to keep Elizabeth safe while in battle.
The Rogue Squadron was called, and after they were briefed, Luke helped Elizabeth into her pilot's gear and got his fighter ready. Artoo was put in the droid slot, and both went into the fighter before leading the squadron out of the hangar bay and into hyperspace. Elizabeth was still new to hyperspace and watched in awe as the stars melded together into a tube.
Luke looked back and saw her awe and said, "Keep alert. We're coming out of hyperspace soon, and we're going into battle."
Elizabeth prepared her mind, nodded, and said, "Let's kick some Imperial butt."
The Rogue Squadron came out of hyperspace, checked in (with Elizabeth checking in as Rogue Secret), and headed into battle. Elizabeth kept an eye on things and instructed the squadron on where to fire to save energy. The Star Destroyer with the ion cannon was taken down relatively easy due to the element of surprise. Unfortunately, that alerted the TIEs to their presence.
"Phoenix Squadron, do you read me? Commander Syndulla, do you copy? This is Rogue Secret," Elizabeth asked through the comm channel.
"I copy you, Rogue Secret, this is Commander Syndulla," a voice came over the comm unit. "Thanks for coming in and helping us. Now all we need to worry about are those TIEs."
"Let Rogue Squadron take care of those, you get the refugees to Hoth!" Elizabeth ordered. "Rogues One and Two, focus all fire on the right flank! Three and Four, the left! The rest of you, make a path for the refugee ships!"
So the battle went on, and she sensed a presence in the Force. It wasn't dark, like Darth Vader, but it was familiar nonetheless. As two fighters from Phoenix Squadron flew by with the first refugee ship, she looked and saw two men that practically emanated the Force, and she realized that they were the Jedi that Rex spoke of earlier.
Cheers came through the comm units when the ship went into hyperspace, and Elizabeth and Commander Syndulla both reminded them simultaneously, "Don't get cocky, guys, we still have a few more ships to get out of here."
Elizabeth smiled at the coincidental happening, then focused once again on the battle at hand. The amount of TIEs was dwindling, but there was still quite a few to deal with, and they lost Phoenixes Three and Six and Rogues Five and Nine. Overall, it was a successful mission, and after the last refugee ship left the Lothal system, Elizabeth comm'd to Commander Syndulla, "Let's go to Hoth, then! That's the last ship, right?"
"Yep, that is, Rogue Secret," Commander Syndulla replied, "but we've still got substantial damage."
"Lock on to some of the fighters if you can't get into hyperdrive; we'll get some repairs done on Hoth. I know a great ship mechanic," Elizabeth said with a smile.
She noticed a small freighter latch on to two of the X-wings before hearing Commander Syndulla give the order to go to hyperspace. The stars melded again as they left Lothal, and Elizabeth was happy for the ride back.
The Imperials on the surviving Star Destroyer were fuming about their loss to the Rebels. The admiral in charge of the fleet on Lothal was contacted by Darth Vader, and he answered it in a private comm room.
"Yes, my lord?" he asked in frightened anticipation.
"You have failed to bring down the Rebels on Lothal, and now they have escaped," Vader said knowingly, as if he was there the whole time (although he was currently on the other side of the galaxy). "Now you must be punished."
The admiral felt a choke hold around his throat, and he tried in vain to remove hands that were not there so as to gain oxygen. He blacked out and collapsed out of asphyxiation, and the life drained out of him as Vader made sure that he died.
"And now to find Skywalker," Vader mused to himself as he cut communications.
On Hoth, when everyone was safe inside the compound and the doors shut for the night, Commander Syndulla actively searched for the person who identified herself as Rogue Secret. She found a girl leaning on an old Corellian freighter, talking to a smuggler that Commander Syndulla had run into a few times over the past five years.
"Hey, can you help me? I'm looking for someone," the commander asked the two talkers.
"Who ya lookin' for?" the smuggler asked.
"Someone who had helped in the Battle of Lothal earlier who called herself Rogue Secret," Commander Syndulla replied.
"You've found her," the girl said, holding out her hand to the commander. "I'm Elizabeth Langford. You must be Commander Syndulla. It is an honor to meet you at last."
"I've heard of you too, Elizabeth," the Twi-lek replied, accepting the handshake, "and it's an honor to meet you as well. You can just call me Hera when we're not talking business. So you were Rogue Secret?"
"Yeah, I insisted on going to help out and hone my on-the-battlefield experience," Elizabeth said, blushing a little. "I only have experience in planning battles, and I've only been in one real battle."
"I can safely assume you've never been a pilot?"
"Yeah. I've only been in this galaxy for five years."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I'm from a different galaxy, one which we from Earth call the Milky Way. Earth is the planet I'm from, and I came to this galaxy by accident. I was teaching myself how to teleport, and I somehow met Obi-Wan Kenobi."
"Obi-Wan Kenobi?" a different voice asked as a man with a metal covering on his right arm and a brown short ponytail walked up to the talkers. Han had already walked away to do some repairs to the Falcon (again). "I knew Obi-Wan. He was a Jedi Master in the Old Republic. He's still alive?"
"Sadly, no," Elizabeth replied. "He died on the Death Star, killed by Darth Vader." Her vines began pulsing again with anger as she thought of the man who killed her teacher.
Hera and the other man did not notice this, but Han happened to be looking by and did notice. He walked over to Elizabeth and said, "Kid, you might want to watch your anger there."
Elizabeth looked at the vines, which at this point only covered parts of her chest and neck, and used a Jedi meditation technique to calm herself. The vines whined in protest, and stopped moving.
Hera and the other man looked in awe and fear at Elizabeth.
"Yeah, I'm a Seedling, who wants to know?" Elizabeth asked as if she had been looked at that way before (which she had - multiple times).
"How were you friends with Obi-Wan?" the man asked before being elbowed by the Twi-lek, who gave him a pointed look. He sighed and said, "Forgive my rudeness. I'm Kanan Jarrus. I was a padawan in the Old Republic before the Jedi Purge."
"Nice to meet a fellow Jedi-in-training," Elizabeth said.
"Actually, I'm a Jedi Knight now, so not a Jedi-in-training anymore," Kanan told her. "I even have my own padawan now: Ezra Bridger. Remind me to have you two meet sometime."
"How about now?" a blue-haired boy about Luke's age jumped down from his hiding spot on top of the Falcon. He had been helping Han with repairs (without Han's knowing it, of course).
"Ezra, why were you hiding on the ship?" Kanan asked his padawan suspiciously.
Han noticed the jump and said, "So YOU'RE the kid messing with my ship!"
Ezra ran from Han for a while, but Han eventually relented when Chewie growled from the top of the ship, explaining that Ezra was simply trying to help repair the Falcon.
Kanan facepalmed and said, "Well, that's Ezra for you. Anyway, how's Obi-Wan? Is he still living on Tatooine? Is he still watching over what he thinks is the galaxy's only hope?"
"No. He's dead. He was killed on the Death Star. Luke's in the Rogue Squadron now, and he and I are training to be Jedi together." Elizabeth's explanation was brief, but to the point. At her last sentence, Kanan raised his eyebrows.
"Training to be Jedi? That's unlikely."
"It's true." Elizabeth then proceeded to demonstrate some of her powers to prove it. When her point was proven, she continued, "I've been training for five years, and Luke for about two months. He started his training a day or so before Obi-Wan's death. I started when I first came to this galaxy."
"She's from a planet called Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy," Hera briefly explained to the two Jedi.
"Are all people from Earth Seedlings?" Ezra asked Elizabeth, noticing the vines on her chest and part of her neck that had grown in the Battle of Yavin.
"No, most are simply humans native to Earth. I'm from a human family, but somehow I'm a Seedling. No one knows why."
"How are you training to be a Jedi? No Jedi ever before has been a Seedling. Seedlings are bound with the Dark Side," Kanan asked.
"I don't want to be a Child of Night like most of the Seedlings on my home planet. I want to fight for the light, for good! That's why I'm training to be a Jedi."
"Kanan, I think she's telling the truth," Ezra said, nudging Kanan.
"Well, if that's the case, how come you don't have a lightsaber?" Kanan asked again.
"I chose not to search for my kyber crystal yet. I'm not ready," Elizabeth explained. "If you saw what I almost did at the Battle of Yavin..." She stopped herself right there, not wanting to reveal her weakness, but Kanan placed a hand on her shoulder and said, "Hey, don't be ashamed. You're a Seedling; the Dark Side is a part of the Seedlings, whether they are from Seedling families or not. I'm actually really impressed! No Seedling I know is this strong against the Dark Side."
"No, you don't understand!" Elizabeth fled the scene, and Ezra decided to play comforter and ran after her, leaving Kanan and Hera looking on in worry.
Elizabeth got to the doors to the outside and remembered that it was nighttime, and she banged her head against it in vain.
Ezra finally caught up with her and put a hand on her shoulder, where a vine was beginning to grow again. "Hey, what was that back there?"
Elizabeth realized what was going on and ran away again, this time to find Luke. She found him and ran again in shame (she had second thoughts about trusting Luke with this sort of thing), back to her room. Luke and Ezra both followed her and entered her room just before she shut the door.
"You're not going to make me go away because you want to run from your problems," Ezra told her. "If I ran away from my problems, I wouldn't be training to be a Jedi. I wouldn't have survived as long as I have, on Lothal or in the Rebellion."
Luke took one look at her vines and ran up to her, crushing her in a hug in an attempt to stop the vines from growing. He understood what it was about, and simply hugged her, running his hands up and down her back and through her long, red hair. Ezra noticed the bond that the two shared in the Force and simply looked on in awe.
Elizabeth was comforted, but after a few moments, just when she was ready to speak, she suddenly screamed out in pain. Her body collapsed to the floor, and she began convulsing and continued to scream in pain. Her vines grew again, and Luke immediately called Leia to the scene while Ezra called Kanan. Both arrived at the same time while Ezra tried to establish a connection through the Force to Elizabeth while Luke simply held her hand, saying over and over again, "El, it's all right, it's going to be all right, El..."