Attention! Although I am uploading this part after "Her Rightful Place", the plot chronologically takes place several years earlier.

You don't have to read the previous parts to understand this one, but it wouldn't hurt to do so either.
All you really need to know is that Ahsoka was captured and seduced to the dark side by Vader a few years after Order 66.
Enjoy!

Hunter and Prey

I

"We will leave hyperspace in an estimated three minutes. Intelligence reports that the rebels still don't expect any attack, so their defences will be weak. Will we continue with the original plan, Sir?"

Ahsoka threw a quick look at the man before returning her gaze towards the viewport where she caught a glimpse of her own smile in the transparisteel. "We will, Captain," she told him. "Prepare your men. I want them on the ground and ready within ten minutes of our arrival."

He straightened and gave a quick salute, accompanied by a "Yes, Sir!", before hurriedly walking away to do as he was told.

Her mission was simple: destroy the headquarter of a rebel cell on some planet in the Outer Rim whose name she hadn't bothered to remember and make sure that all their leaders were killed. Without them, the rest of their movement would fall apart soon enough, making them easy picking even for the incompetent Governor of that sector.

Honestly, she thought somewhat irritated. Even if this sector has comparable few troops available, failing at such a simple mission not only once but twice is just too much.

Alas, as it was so often the case in the Empire, it wasn't skill that made you rise in rank but connections and fanatic loyalty.

Governor Banet could seriously count himself lucky that her master hadn't had the chance to judge him for his failures in person yet. Showing incompetence of such a magnitude wouldn't be something he was likely to overlook. In fact, should she run into him, she might just kill him herself for making her clean up his mess.

Especially because she had been in the process of learning a rather intriguing technique when the order to move out had arrived.

No matter. She would be finished with this mission and get back to her studies soon enough. Besides, this mission would at least provide some entertainment. As much as she wanted to get stronger and study the secrets of the dark side, sitting idle all the time just wasn't in her nature.

She considered for a few moments to change into her armour before dismissing the idea. While she had come to appreciate its advantages, she still preferred to go into battle without much gear to slow her down. That had served her well during the Clone Wars, so why shouldn't it now?

Besides, there was no crowd of citizens to impress with a powerful image right now anyway, so why bother?

Rahn's day had started great. Better than great, actually.

The liberation of his homeworld was well on its way. For almost ten years, the Empire had occupied his planet and sucked it dry of whatever precious resources it had, enslaving half of its population in the process to feed the ever-growing demand for labour to keep the mining operations running. For almost ten years, he had been unable to help his people, reduced to little more than a helpless bystander. All he could do was keep his head down to prevent himself from being absorbed into the labour corps.

However, things had changed recently. A year ago, several other resistance groups on the planet had contacted him; they proposed an alliance to throw their suppressors off their planet, to work together to get their freedom back, and to prove to the galaxy that the Empire wasn't as unbeatable as everyone thought. He and his little band of troublemakers had so far limited themselves to small-scale sabotage, like destroying roads to slow down the Imperials or breaking into the offices of petty bureaucrats to tamper with their documents, but they saw an opportunity to become a real force to be reckoned with by joining this alliance, and so they did.

As it turned out, they had been correct. By bringing together so many people with different experiences and talents, they were able to do more and more damage to the occupants while working on an ever-increasing scale. More success meant more resources they could loot, which in turn led to more success in the next mission, which then led to even more resources; this, combined with the aid they received from off-world supporters, meant that they actually stood a chance!

He himself proved to be somewhat of a protégé in logistic management. Although his group joined the alliance rather late and was tiny and unimportant compared to the many others, he quickly raised to one of the top positions. It was his work that enabled the many groups to use their respective resources coherently and efficiently, it was his work that maximised their gains, and it was his efforts that were instrumental in making them a real entity and not just a bunch of different groups that called themselves an alliance.

It wasn't an understatement to say that it was because of him that they had been able to get where they were today as fast as they did.

Furthermore, he had also been part of the group that came up with their plan to deal with the imperial troops the fat Governor Banet in charge of their planet had sent after them, sending them on a merry chase through the nearby woods where they bloodied them without receiving a single casualty themselves not only once, but twice!

The best thing about this entire situation was that they had intel on the man that indicated that he hadn't even reported his failures to his superiors. He was apparently so embarrassed -or scared- about the consequences that he didn't dare to. Personally, Rahn thought that he probably wanted to root them out himself before reporting his previous failures to save face. He didn't mind it, of course. That man was as incompetent as they came and Rahn was confident that they could continue to run cycles around him until they were ready to liberate their planet for good.

At least that had been the plan. Problems arose, however, when Star Destroyer dropped unannounced out of hyperspace when they knew for a fact that Banet was still licking his wounds from his latest failure a few systems away.

His initial panic ebbed away soon enough, though, for whoever was in charge of this mission wasn't much more successful than their predecessor. Sure, their troops were quicker to arrive, seemed somewhat more disciplined, and took fewer casualties while Rahn and his people attacked them in ambushes all over the forest, but in the end, they weren't able to do much either. After barely an hour of playing hide and seek, they retreated back to their ships.

That was more than enough reason to celebrate, of course. Three victories against the Empire in barely two months wasn't something most of them had even dreamed of less than a year ago, and yet they had done it. After all these horror stories they had heard, after all the warnings they had received from allies from off-world, they had proven that the Empire wasn't invincible.

However…

We won, he thought with a shake of his head. But for some reason, I feel like something horrible is about to happen.

He would have been more than happy to be wrong just this once.

One moment there was music and dancing and laughter, and then the ground was suddenly shaking and there was the booming sound of explosions in the distance. Alarm bells started ringing a few seconds later.

"What is going on?"

"Is it the Imperials?"

"Impossible! We just sent them running!"

"Who else could it be?"

"What are we gonna do?"

Hundreds of voices screamed over each other while the more level-headed ones began to grimly prepare themselves for the fight that was inevitable to come. Others like him, however, began to move towards the exits to run.

Call him craven, but he saw no point in dying a senseless death. He would have tried to convince others to join him, but he doubted many would listen. They would surely insist to fight, thinking that they actually stood a chance.

Rahn was smarter than that. The reason they fought them with hit-and-run tactics in a forest where their numerical advantage was easier to circumvent, rather than head-on, was that they couldn't take them on in a straight fight yet. Even that stupid, useless governor could beat them at that.

Thus, he ran away.

His plan was simple: run as fast as he could to the west wing of their underground base and escape through one of the maintenance shafts. There were no real entrances on that side of the complex, meaning there shouldn't be any stormtroopers yet. He could escape before anyone even realized he was gone!

That dream evaporated into thin air when he heard a combination of blaster shots and screams from in front of him. It was only thanks to his quick reflexes that he was able to jump behind some boxes with ammunition that kept him out of sight of the soldiers that ran along the corridor a few seconds later.

How the hell are they already this far into the base?!

Deciding that his initial goal was still his best bet but the path he was currently on not safe, he made a quick turn to take a longer but safer route.

While he ran, he encountered stormtroopers everywhere and it was more thanks to luck than skill that he managed to keep out of their sight. They had somehow infested the entire base already, running along in small unites of six that made short work of whatever resistance they met. Considering that they seemed to still outnumber most groups they encountered, their moment of surprise and obvious competence meant that his caught off-guard comrades rarely ever got to draw their weapons before they were killed.

Rahn assumed that part of this was that most people willing to fight probably went to the main entrance, logically assuming that it's there that the breach had happened. However, he himself was more and more convinced that they must have broken in from several places at the same time. If he were to take a guess, he would say that the explosion he had heard earlier had been them blowing their way in.

I need to get out of here as fast as possible, he thought desperately. If I wait much longer, there will be no gap to slip through left!

For the next few minutes, everything actually seemed to go in his favour. The number of enemies he encountered grew smaller and smaller until he could run several minutes at a time without needing to hide while he got closer and closer to his goal, filling him with the hope that he would actually escape this with his life.

Then he passed the hangar where all their vehicles were stored.

The blast doors and part of the wall were blown away, giving him a clear sight of what was going on inside.

A great number of his people had apparently had the idea to come here, though whether it was to acquire weapons to fight off the imperials or to use the vehicles to flee was anyone's guess. However, their enemy seemed to have foreseen this, for there was the single largest concentration of stormtroopers he had seen so far stopping them from doing so.

Were it just them, Rahn might actually have believed that they could be beaten. After all, for all that there were many of them, they were still outnumbered. Kriff, he might have joined in to get one of the speeders himself!

What made him doubt a victorious outcome was the woman leading the soldiers.

Rahn recognized the Togruta instantly. It was hard not to, considering how much the Empire used her face for their propaganda. They really loved showing off their prime example of how far anyone could supposedly rise in rank regardless of sex or species. He knew that it was sithspit, of course, but frustratingly many seemed to buy into it.

These propaganda clips loved to tell its audience how she had crushed another rebel cell this week, outed another spy last week, and saved some "loyal citizens of the Empire" from savage criminals the week before that. If the official reports were to be believed, she was always on the move, always fighting with a ferocity second only to Darth Vader.

Until now, he hadn't believed it. While the stories about Vader were ludicrous at best and outright stupid at worst, he at least looked like the kind of being capable of such nightmarish actions. She, on the other hand? No, not really.

However, watching her jump through the air, reaching heights and crossing distances that were supposedly all but impossible, he couldn't help but change his mind.

There was no urgency to her movements, no visible tension or effort. She leapt from one place to another with graceful ease, moving with the pose of a predator toying with its prey, and slaughtered his comrades with a nonchalance that was so out of place on a battlefield but seemed only natural with her.

Blaster bolts were reflected by blood-red lightsabers -freaking lightsabers!- that she twirled around herself almost playfully, almost fooling him into believing that one of them might actually hit her before he took a closer look and realized that although she stood in the centre of the battlefield, no attack connected while she didn't even look winded. Instead, she either reflected the blaster bolts back to their source or dodged them with only the smallest of movements.

It would almost be beautiful to watch were it not for the screams of wounded men and women in the background.

He wanted to take these thoughts back a second later when she suddenly took off in a sprint, rushing towards where a group of his comrades were taking cover behind some metal crates.

She arrived between them in little more than a second, much faster than a humanoid being had any right to be, and a heartbeat later, their arms were separated from their bodies by smooth arcs of her lightsabers.

He had never seen someone injured by such a weapon and never really thought about it either, but now that it had happened in front of him, he couldn't help but think that it was weird; there was no blood, no tearing of flesh like when you cut someone with metal, and it looked as easy as slicing bread. It was unnatural, and something inside of him found it hard to wrap his head around it.

The people that just lost their arms seemed to think the same, for they stared at where their limbs had been until mere moments ago for several seconds with wide eyes and open mouths before they started screaming.

As if she had just waited for the realization and consequential horror to set in, the woman- no, the Monster chose that moment to cut off their heads as well.

Rahn had never seen something more terrifying in his life.

Then, as if to taunt him for that thought, the Monster deactivated one of her weapons and slipped it on her belt before rising her now empty hand to shoot lightning at another nearby group that had watched the entire spectacle with terrified expressions, too stunned to even fire their weapons in aid of their comrades.

It was as if the whole world held its breath as the hangar was bathed in blue light, and although he absently knew that the fighting hadn't stopped, all he could hear was the crackling of energy and the agonising screams of its poor victims.

Defying all logic and despite being many metres away, his nose somehow picked up the smell of burnt flesh, almost making him threw up on the spot.

Then it was suddenly all over and the world returned to its normal state.

Although he hadn't done anything but watching the fighting from the sidelines, his breath was laboured and sweat ran down his back while his heart pounded painfully in his chest. This scene, he knew, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

If he survived this day at all, that was.

Then he realized that the Monster was looking right at him.

Her yellow eyes seemed to glow in the semi-lit hangar, emitting malice and cruelty the likes he had never seen before. However, even more than that, they seemed to sparkle with amusement! It was this that made him understand that for her, this was a game. Just a way to kill some time. The slaughtering of men, the mounds of corpses, the crushing of hopes; to her, these things were of no concern. If anything, they served her as a form of entertainment.

This Monster didn't play by the same rules as the rest of the galaxy.

He and everyone else in the base were absolutely helpless against her.

All he could do was run and do his best to ignore the feeling of her eyes on his back.

"Sir," the soldier in charge of her unit said. "The hangar is clear. I also got notice from Captain Nagast that most of the base is under our control as well with only minimal resistance at some more isolated places. However, a small number of rebels apparently escaped into the woods during the initial chaos."

Ahsoka snorted as she clipped her second lightsaber on her belt. "Of course they would try to escape into the woods. Up until now, that approach has proven to be highly successful to them. They probably didn't even think about it and just ran towards the first place that felt safe."

Just like they hadn't thought twice about how easy they had "repulsed" her attack. All it took were two successful instances of using the forest to their advantage to make them careless, to not even question it when her troops had retreated after barely an hour of a lacklustre chase. They hadn't even noticed the few troops that had stayed back and followed them to their base, leading them right to their doorsteps.

In the end, it had been their own carelessness and arrogance that had brought about their demise.

"Shall we send troops to chase after them, Sir?"

Ahsoka tilted her head. They could do as the soldier said, of course, but where would be the fun in that?

"No," she said, her lips tucking upwards while anticipation blossomed in her chest. "Contact the fleet. Tell the Admiral to arrange transport for my pets to location C-Delta. I will take care of these escapees myself."

She grinned. Maybe it was because of her Togruta nature, but she could never resist a good hunt.

Rahn quickly realized that he wasn't the only one who had managed to escape the slaughterhouse that their base had become. Here and there, he could hear the cries of fellow rebels as they tried to motivate each other to run faster, and from time to time did he even see the silhouette of people in the distance.

He hadn't seen any stormtroopers so far, but he wasn't so stupid as to believe that nobody would be after them. Besides, there hadn't been any signs of their presence in the base until it was too late either.

However, here they had a much better chance of escaping them in the forest than they had there. Not only was the forest much bigger than their headquarter, but there were also no easy paths to follow and no dead ends to run into. With the additional advantage of knowing the area like the back of their hand and having a considerable head-start, he and his comrades could actually get away!

Unfortunately, there were variables he wasn't aware of.

The first sign that something was wrong was a loud, animalistic roar in the distance. That confused him for a moment as none of the native animals could produce something like that, but then the realization set in:

The Empire had cut loose wild beasts to hunt them!

From the moment he understood what was going on, the forest with all its shady hiding spots and thick vegetation that had seemed to be his salvation just moments ago became his worst nightmare. How could he possibly say how close whatever was after them was? How could he know that the rustle he heard wasn't just from the wind but the paws of an unknown predator? How could he know how close he was to being killed?

The initially supportive cries in the distance became horror-stricken screams before falling silent forever, the air was filled with victorious howls that made him sob in dismay, and every shadow around him came alive in the form of a vicious beast.

This was a nightmare and all he wanted was to just wake up!

All his thoughts came to an abrupt stop when he suddenly found himself face to face with a gigantic, reptilian looking creature that had a mouth with countless razor-sharp teeth and easily towered over him on its six terrifying, claw-like legs. [1]

For a moment, neither of them moved, but then the beast let out a loud, shrill howl before pouncing towards him. Rahn knew he wouldn't be able to fight that thing off, nor could he ever hope to get away if he ran. In the end, all he could do was wait for his death.

"Halt."

The beast's claws stopped mere centimetres in front of his face. Rahn didn't even dare to breathe as the beast almost hesitantly retreated his leg before slowly moving backwards.

"It seems the Force made our paths cross once again, Rebel."

He didn't want to turn around, didn't want to acknowledge her presence, but his body moved on its own.

There, sitting on the back of an armoured, beetle-looking creature the size of a bantha, was the Monster he had watched slaughtering his comrades less than an hour ago, letting herself carried around by the six powerful legs of the brown beast below her. [2]

She was flanked by two big beasts with the vague appearance of a Barghest, though it was smaller and had a slimmer build. Its triple rows of teeth, six-inch claws, and three horns more than made up for it, though. [3]

However, even in face of such ferocious beasts, Rahn was still convinced it was the woman in their midst that was the true Monster.

"How do you like my pets," she asked conversationally as she glid down from her ride. "Even for someone in my position, some of them were rather hard to come by, you know."

Instead of replying, he swallowed and took a step back.

"Now, I wouldn't do that if I were you. If you run, I will be forced to send one of my friends here after you and we wouldn't want that, right?" She tilted her head. "Though I guess Barriss" -she pointed at the reptilian creature behind him- "wouldn't mind a meal, I guess. She listens to me most of the time, but no matter how often and how hard I punish her, she never ceases to be rebellious. She even attacked me once! That's where she got her name from." She chuckled as if that was a great joke while the creature in question, as if to support that claim, gave a low growl. "My other pets are much more well-behaved, but then again, it had been bred into them for thousands of years. His kind" -she pointed at the creature she had used as a mount- "were artificially created by Sith Lords of old to fight in their wars while they" -she pointed at the two hounds to her side- "guarded their master's tombs for millennials. Obedience is all they know."

Rahn considered his options; he could run and reap the consequences, or he could stay and see what the Monster would come up with.

The decision was honestly an easy one to make.

"Sutta Chwituskak." [4]

He had barely turned around before a burning sensation in his leg made him fall to the ground with a pained cry; it was as if his leg was simultaneously freezing and set ablaze, the pain so intense that it took his breath and brought tears to his eyes. However, when he looked down to find out what had hit him, all he could see were some dark, smoky tendrils that were already in the process of fading away.

He saw from the corner of his eyes how the Monster began to walk towards him with a confident, almost cocky gait. "Now, that wasn't very nice. Didn't your parents teach you not to turn your back on the person you're talking to?" She shook her head. "I'm afraid that the offer to run away had been a purely rhetorical one. There is still much you need to tell me, so I can't just let you get away. I'm sure you understand."

"I-I don't-"

"Uh-oh," she mockingly chided him, going even so far as to wiggle her finger disapprovingly. "Your parents must have done a terrible job raising you. Did no one ever tell you that lying isn't good?"

"But I d-don't know anything!"

She looked deep into his eyes, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't avoid her gaze. A strange pressure built up behind his eyes and his head began to feel as if someone was trying to split it open. Then, when he was just about to black out, she sighed exaggeratedly and the pain stopped, leaving behind only a dull ache. "Well, I guess we will need to do it the hard way, then."

His eyes widened. "N-no! I-"

"My men are searching your base as we speak, and I'm sure they will find most of the information we're looking for. However, past experiences have demonstrated that cells such as yours regularly avoid keeping important information in written form to avoid letting them fall into our hands." A grin spread over her lips, revealing a set of sharp canines. "Thankfully, I know just the right technique to solve our little dilemma! I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but it suits this situation perfectly."

Even knowing that it was useless, he tried to crawl away. If he could just get some distance between them, maybe he-

"Qâzoi Kyantuska." [5]

Everything began to fade away until Rahn's body was nothing but an empty shell, his person -everything that made him special and unique as an individual- reduced to a prisoner of his own mind that could do nothing but scream in terror while her thoughts became his. In the end, the darkness swallowed his personality whole, leaving him to a fate of suffering for the rest of his life.

Barely a minute after the process had started, his body was just an extension of its new master's will.

"Now, my friend, we will discuss what information you have to offer."

[1] - An Acklay

[2] - A Silooth

[3] - A Tuk'ata

[4] - Sith Incantation: "Bolt of Hatred"

[5] - Sith Incantation: "Suppress Thought"

If you want to know how I imagine Ahsoka looks in this, check me out on Archive of Our Own! The story is called the same as here, obviously, and my name is RedBlood_Moon. Ao3 has the advantage that you can add images to the chapter, so I put in some art by the amazing Evelyn Kilic; you should definitively check out her Instagram (dazzlingjediif) you're interested in Star Wars related fanart!