Santo: Yes yes, I know, I'm working on another story, that has a few people that probably want me to continue it. But with how the world is turning out, sometimes you just need something easy to destress, if you know what I mean.

So, a buddy of mine and I asked ourselves, what's the lowest possible effort we could put towards something that happens to be writing? And thus, this story was born.

And then we did as we wont to, and put way too much goddamn effort into it. And this is the result. Hopefully, at least a few of you, will enjoy it.

Chatting would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Hero: Co-author Hero here. Some of you may know me. For those that do, I apologize. For those that don't, well, I also apologize for this piece of flaming trash. Still, it's fun flaming trash.

I'll probably be answering questions and interacting with a bunch of you, so let's get along.

As for our other works... well, they'll get done when they get done


Chapter 1 - Star Wars: The Clones Wars 1

Santo P.O.V.


Nothing can quite match the smell of spent Tibanna gas, melted plastic, and burnt flesh. I settled my weight on the balls of my feet, managing to stop myself sprawling as I appeared above a white-clad corpse with a relatively quiet pop. The corpse groaned as my weight jostled it, pushing the air out of its lungs. My rifle went up as I instinctively put my back against Hero's, the two of us falling into defensive stances, the snap-hiss of an activating lightsaber sounding behind me.

I took an instant to take in the hundreds of corpses around me. "Lovely place this time of year," I muttered, the speakers on my helmet amplifying my comment into an audible complaint.

"Oh, what the fuck!?" came the familiar and spirited call behind me. The sheer vindictive indignity in his tone told me that he would need at least a few seconds to get his bearings before we moved on.

I would have loved to give him those few seconds, but the squad of khaki-painted battle droids that came around the corner, blasters aimed down at the ground as they scanned the field for survivors, seemed quite determined to rudely interrupt my friend's coping. Being the good buddy that I was, I immediately hosed them with a fusillade of blaster fire, knocking the heads off three of them and ventilating the chassis of another two. Thankfully these were not the Super Battledroid variant, capitals fully deserved depending on continuity. And a couple of semi-accurately aimed blaster bolts were enough to knock them down.

In the interest of keeping the both of us alive, I grabbed him by the shoulder and hustled to the nearest place that looked vaguely blaster resistant, this being the side of a clone trooper dropship whose model name I couldn't recall off the top of my head.

"Okay," I muttered, the helmet once again making it way too loud for my liking. Palpating the side stubbornly refused to inform me where the goddamn volume slider was. "We're in the middle of a battlefield, that looked to be an execution squad, so they'll be missed soon, the buildings aren't tall enough to be Coruscant, but I can recognize battle droids and clone troopers when I see them. Ergo, we're in Star Wars sometime during the Clone Wars."

I turned to my friend who was examining the hilt of his blue lightsaber as it hummed menacingly in his hand with subdued vaporizing fury. "The fuck are we doing here again?"

He turned off the blade and started to dig through his immaculate drab brown robes, and soon pulled out a datapad. "And of course it's a tablet!" he complained acerbically.

"Datapad," I corrected absently, changing out the power pack on my rifle and scanning the rooftops.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's see. Of course we're in the freaking Clone Wars."

"Meaning I can't get Luke's autograph." I muttered sullenly, having fortuitously found the volume slider.

"Let's see. Timeline Class: B. Deviation is blah blah blah, Ahsoka Tano disobeyed orders and pushed deep into enemy territory to destroy something that I guess was important. This left her alone in enemy territory as the Republic forces retreated. She is now trapped with three remaining clone troopers behind enemy lines while they leave the planet. She was supposed to be with them and the clones were supposed to die."

"Not killing the clones onetwothreenotit!" I cut in.

"We're not killing anyone. Objective: Find Ahsoka who has gone to ground, make contact, extract her, and deposit her in friendly territory. The Clone Trooper's survival is negligible to the flow of the timeline." He tossed the datapad to the side, causing it to discorporate into a whirl of golden sparkles.

"Did you check to see if it had any information of her overall location before you discorporated our intel?" I asked as I watched the little golden motes disappear into the aether.

He gave me a look so flat it caused me physical pain. "When have they ever given us intel?"

I opened my mouth.

"Useful intel?"

I closed my mouth and went back to scanning the rooftops. "Alright, it said she'd gone to ground," I rummaged around on my person for the location where I usually kept my USB stick with a number of dubiously legal (depending on the world…and province) programs and pulled out a computer spike. "Chances are that, even though she's gone to ground, the Separatists know of her last known location. We need to find us one of their command droids, hub, tank, or APC, hack it, and then go looking for her."

He gave me an infuriatingly dopey grin. "You know what that sounds like? It sounds like you know what you're doing. So it looks like you're in charge of this mission!"

We were much too close for me to get off a stunbolt before he could interpose his lightsaber, and he damn well knew it. Carrying his insensate form around in the middle of a still-active warzone, surrounded by enemy combatants, would absolutely be worth the personal satisfaction if I could land the hit.

"Just don't swing that monomolecular plasma chainsword around willy nilly, and try to look unimportant in case of snipers." I then picked a direction and started moving, keeping my blaster rifle at a low-ready position.

"Whatever you say, boss," he said, gracefully strolling behind me.

My revenge will come.


Hero P.O.V.

Okay. Fact check. We're in Star Wars. Corporate decided that a good place to drop us was in the middle of an active battlefield. I have no idea what we're going to be doing.

On the other hand, I'm not in charge this time, so it's not my problem.

While this wasn't the worst insertion to a world I've experienced, I had to put being placed on an active warzone with enemy combatants around pretty high up on the list. And that was without the odd spikes of agony, grief, terror, and other emotions that littered the former battlefield.

Stupid ass Force Powers.

It was always an adjustment to see how our powers adapted to new worlds and their rules. I was not surprised at all that super martial arts equaled The Force. I just wished it didn't come with the whole, magical empathy thing as well.

"—nd remember that you're the Jedi, so you have to at least look like you're the one in charge. Still, gotta keep the story simple to pass muster, so we'll say we were cut off and couldn—" I started to zone out as Santo went on and on. I kept half an ear open for any important words, but really, it was hard to pay attention when the phantom pain of getting shot by a laser rifle passed through me followed by the final triumph of shooting the bastard back, basking in the fulfillment of my duty as the world went dark.

"Stupid ass Force Powers," I choked out as my senses sharply came back into focus.

"You didn't pay attention to a single thing I said, did you?" Santo's resigned voice was a welcome anchor into reality.

"I'm the Jedi Commander and I'm in charge. We're the rear guard and we got cut off from our ship and told them to go without us." At least I was half sure that was the story. I couldn't see Santo's face, but the way he stopped and turned his helmet towards me told me that I didn't get that all correct.

"Just…just let me do the talking, you have a Force Cold or something," he said with a sigh.

I kind of wanted to take offense to that. I was great at talking to people. Hell, I was probably better at socializing than Santo was most of the time. But then I realized we were on a battlefield and the people we were talking to were probably soldiers. Shit. Maybe I can pretend to be a mute Jedi?

"Are mute Jedi a thing?"

He stopped again, tilted his head, and hummed, "I legitimately have no idea."

"Well, it was worth a thought." I mourned the idea briefly. After a second thought, I doubt I could shut up long enough for us to sell the idea. Someone needs to call Santo out every now and then, lest he talks himself into a completely separate war than the one we're already in.

We managed to dodge a few patrols until we finally found one of the roaming command droids that Santo swore looked different from the other thousands of identical battle droids and went to work.

"Okay, so basically, we just need to stab that one droid with your screwdriver to hack it. How long, exactly, is that going to take?" I looked at the device that looked like the most futuristic and retro screwdriver I've ever seen.

He shrugged. "Probably a minute or two. The real problem will be holding off the other patrols we walked past if their call for reinforcements gets out. In short? Kill them quickly."

"Awesome. I love testing out new powers on the fly." I grit my teeth as the image of Jedi getting shot from all sides passed through my head. Thankfully, that was a memory of the movie and not an actual experience.

At least, I think it is… Shit.

Stupid ass Force Powers.

After a hushed argument over how we were going to do this, we settled on a plan. The battle droids were separated into four groups. Three groups of four droids patrolling a tight perimeter and the commander with his two guards standing at some sort of computer hub. My job was to take out one of the patrols with a sneak attack before quickly taking out the second as I drew attention from all the droids. Santo would take care of the rest.

You'd think that the battle droids would be smart enough to post guards in the buildings around them, but apparently not. So it was actually really simple to sneak into a building next to the group and find a vantage point above them.

A quick glance immediately found Santo crouched beside some rubble next to the path that would take him straight to the command hub, leaving him horribly exposed to enemy fire if I don't take out my squad and draw their attention.

No pressure.

He held up a hand, and began a countdown. 3, 2, 1.

Let's mosey.


Santo P.O.V.

I was moving the moment I closed my fingers into a fist, I rose from cover, bringing up the grenade launcher and firing off an EMP grenade at the farthest group of patrolling droids, I pressed the DC-17m to the magholster at my right thigh and pulled out the heavy Blaster Pistol at my waist.

My first two shots rang out at the same time as a snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber, the terrified screaming of cheap mass-manufactured combatants, and the snap-crackle of electricity all serving to announce the near simultaneous destruction of two whole patrol squads and one of the command droid's bodyguards. A fusillade of poorly aimed blaster bolts seared the air behind me as every battle droid in the rotunda concentrated fire on the alleged Jedi.

My next three shots cored the second droid bodyguard as the mechanical calls of "It's a Jedi! Kill it!" "Roger-roger!" sounded behind me, followed soon after by more mechanical screaming along with the sound of vaporizing metal.

The droid commander got one shot off that detonated on my left pauldron, nearly taking me off my feet and forcing me to slam into it shoulder first, taking us both to the ground, where I buried my computer spike into its neck. I waited out its seizures, then blink-clicked to bring up the information on my HUD.

I was still reading when Hero stepped up next to me. Distressingly, I also heard the signature hum of a lightsaber in motion. "Huh, this thing is really dangerous," he said behind me with an absolute lack of what I would call sufficient respect for the monomolecular plasma chainsword he was swinging about like a kid with a brand new toy sword.

"Yes," I said flatly, "yes it is. Okay, I think I've isolated the short-term memory. It shouldn't take too long to crack through the encryption; the Separatists were notorious for cutting corners with cyber security. And I don't think they had the time to get a call off, so I'm going to tentatively call this a success."

"Commander," the comm unit laying on the ground next to the droid dashed my carefully restrained optimism, "we heard BD-158972 mention Jedi! We're on our way! Roger roger?"

We both stared at the comm unit, then we turned to look at each other, before turning back to the comm unit. I snatched it up and brought it up to my helmet speaker, and spoke while forcing my voice into a pitch that actively hurt my throat. "Everything's under control! Situation normal! We had a slight weapon's malfunction…how are you?"

Hero mouthed the most disbelieving 'Han? Really?' at me, and I very much wished we were in a safer location, so I could take off my helmet and mouth something back.

There was a moment of silence on the commlink before it crackled to life once more. "Please supply the code for 'situation all clear.'"

Shit.

"Uhh…" I looked at Hero, who shrugged. Great help there buddy. "QWERTY1234?"

"Who is this!?"

I tossed the commlink. "Worth a try," I said as I took cover behind the control console and swapped the DC-17m grenade launcher for the DMR attachment.

"Goddammit, Santo," Hero complained as he ignited his lightsaber and kept an eye on the approaches.

"To be fair," I defended, watching the progress bar on the decryption program, "that probably would have worked if it hadn't been in the middle of a call." I grumbled as I switched out the DMR for the SAW attachment, and set up the bipod to have a firelane on the best approach.

"Can't we just take the droid and leave?" Hero asked.

"Can't," I said, "I'm hacking the network through the droid, but it's being relayed through that relay over there, and while it has a decent range, the droid doesn't. If we leave, the connection will deteriorate until it's nearly useless, and eventually we'll just lose the connection."

"Huh, guess that's why they never did it in the shows."

"Well, technically, the Doylist reason would be th—" I was cut off by the sound of a blaster rifle firing, the dread hum of a lightsaber, and the electronic twang of the bolt being deflected.

"Look on the bright side," I said as I pressed the stock of my DC-17m to my shoulder and aimed down the sight, "we didn't move past that many droids."


Hero P.O.V.

There were a lot of droids.

"God, why is swinging a blade made of light so tiring?" I rubbed my right bicep to ease the soreness in it. I'm sure there was some awesome Force ability to ignore the pain or heal it or something, but of course it wasn't a part of my in-world knowledge set.

I would like to say that the battle was a great chance to test my limits and see what I could do with The Force and a lightsaber, but there really wasn't a lot I could learn from sitting in place and blocking blaster bolts to protect Santo as he took potshots at droids. A good stress test in reflexes and concentration, but not much else.

Once the download was finished, we quickly made tracks away from the battlezone, only pausing when another mind spike passed through my head as I stepped over the corpse of a young Jedi. He had not died quickly or quietly.

"Stupid ass Force Powers," I repeated my mantra to center myself as Santo led us into a building for cover.

"Bitch, at least you have Force Powers! Some of us are stuck with Guns in the Galaxy of Space Wizards!" Santo said as he forcefully pulled on something on his gun, it emitted a loud crack! And the thing that looked to be a tiny minigun started rotating again.

"That… is probably a good point," I acknowledged. It wasn't rare that our powers were pretty different, but this was probably one of the first times that one of us had been blatantly empowered while the other was, admittedly, only loaded up on way too many weapons. "Okay, I'll stop bitching for a moment. Just please tell me we got some useful information from this."

Santo led us into a nearby abandoned, bombed out building, then dropped a metal widget on the ground. A low-definition blue hologram popped into being a moment later, "We're here," he said, pointing to a blinking red dot, he then moved his hand to a red area, "this is Ahsoka's last known location, the Droids are using a standard search pattern."

He waved his hands through the hologram, expanding a different section. "There are seven routes she could have used to run. We can make the assumption that she knows Separatist droid search patterns; that invalidates four of them." He pointed down a side street. "This one is too exposed, especially once the droids have uncontested air control, so we can ignore that one. Which leaves us with two possible choices, she either made her way through buildings… or went down into the sewers. My best guess? Sewers, it's the best way to go, even if her men are wounded. And it's what often happened in the show, if there was a multiple episode city battle, you can bet they'd end up in the sewers."

"Awesome, I love that we're basing our logic on god knows how old memories of a TV show,." I said a bit hypocritically. God only knows how many times we've moved on old memories I've had on whatever world we've landed in. I started to circle the hologram and frowned at the different colored routes that Santo had helpfully mapped out.

I tried to envision the event. Ahsoka had tried to capture the AA gun that ultimately doomed her. It would have completely changed the tide of her section of the battle. More gunships could have pressed forward, evacuating more troops or even starting a counter attack if they could really press the advantage.

So she pushed forward, a few squads of clone troopers led by a Jedi Commander cutting through the droids guarding the AA guns. However, in her haste she had disobeyed her orders to pull back. She had thought it had been a matter of her skill and competence. That as a Padawan Commander, they couldn't trust her to take the objective.

That wasn't it. The battlefield was bigger than just her and her platoon. The Republic had been taking heavy losses and were being pushed back on multiple fronts, including her own. While she had pressed forward, the rest of the army had been pushed back.

Ahsoka found herself surrounded, cut off from the rest of the army and her comms jammed. What she thought would be a valiant charge into enemy territory to take a key objective had quickly turned into a deadly and desperate game of hide and seek.

I could see Ahsoka, desperately trying to correct her mistake. She led her men, building to building, trying and failing to avoid droid patrols. I could see her second guessing every decision all while her men fell one by one.

It wasn't until they got a lucky break and managed to duck into the sewers without any droids seeing them that she had time to grieve her decisions.

I could almost feel the weight of the world pressing down on her shoulders, and I felt like I needed to help relieve some of that weight. I stepped forward, to comfort her, to listen to her, to offer her advice, just—something. I put my hand on her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. I saw her look up, her eyes opening wide as an inexorable force crushed my wrist and yanked it away from her.

"Dude!" I was roughly snapped out my thoughts as my world rattled violently. Santo was shaking my entire body, hard. "Wake the hell up! We're about to be swimming in droids, we've gotta move!"

He then started walking, without letting go of my wrist, half dragging me along. I stumbled as I tried to reorient myself, but I had difficulty telling which way was up and which way the ground lay.

What the hell was that?

"God damn, stupid ass Force Powers!"

Someone needs to run an entire school on how to use these damn powers.

Oh wait.


Santo P.O.V.:

"So let me get this straight. The reason we almost got buried in droids, is that you were busy having a Force Vision?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at my scatterbrained friend. After a moment of thought, I took off my helmet, purely so he could see me narrowing my eyes at him in disbelief.

"Yes? Maybe? I think so?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose, then scratched my everything because wearing a full-face helmet for a long time gets uncomfortable.

"Look, I was just trying to imagine her mindset so I could, you know, put myself in her shoes and see what kind of decisions came to mind," he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "And I did that. She screwed up and pressed forward when she wasn't supposed to. She got cut off and panicked and went building to building but there were too many droids to hide that way and they were getting picked off. Then they got lucky and found a manhole without any droids around it and went into the sewers."

I pursed my lips and nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense." I brought up the much smaller hologram projector on my left vambrace. "I'll mark all the nearest sewer entrances on my HUD, we'll just have to hoof it till we find one, then hope we can make contact."

"Wait, you're just going to trust that?" he asked incredulously. "Dude, I barely believe that and I'm the one having the damn hallucinations."

I raised one eyebrow in my best imitation of Spock. "Dude…The Force? Duh."

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it. And frowned.

I had to wonder. Did…did he forget he was a knock-off Jedi?

"I didn't think visions were part of the package," he muttered sullenly in an attempt to defend himself. "I usually just get the physical stuff, not the weird mental ones."

"That's rough buddy," I deadpanned, doing the best I could to repress my limitless envy at not having Space Wizard Powers.

"You know," he said with a thoughtful frown, "that probably explains the mild hallucinations and not being able to go fifty feet without feeling like I've been shot and then dying."

On second thought, not having Space Wizard Powers wasn't so bad.

I made to put my helmet back on and paused. The upper part of the helmet had the somewhat iconic Clone Commando visor slit, the lower half had a grill that looked to be stuck in a rictus snarl, tubes running from the sides into the back of the helmet.

What kind of hellish design is this? And why does it look familiar?

Hmm.

Meh. Questions for later.

I put the helmet back on. "Alright, the nearest maintenance access to the sewers is half a click east," I said as I started to make my way to it.

"What about that way?" Hero pointed a finger in the complete opposite direction with a thoughtful expression on his face.

I consulted my numerous nav points. "One and a half clicks, but I'll remind you we came from that direction, fleeing from the third wave of droid reinforcements."

He furrowed his brow in thought. "Could we do something to distract them? Blow something up so they'll gather in one spot and we slip through?"

"We coooooould…" I drawled. "Or, and follow me on this one. We use that other closer and much more likely to be unguarded entrance…and head back that way through the sewers?"

There was a pause as Hero did the math in his head. "And there probably won't be droids in the sewers."

He finally caught on.

I sighed. "I wish Raven was here."

"Why? We don't need to assassinate anyone."

"You're right, we don't," I said with a nod. "But if he were here. There would be two of us making fun of you for missing something so obvious."

He stared at me long and hard. Before he yanked his hand back violently, my legs flying out from under me at that same moment, sending me to the floor with an impact that slammed the air out of my lungs.

I lay there for a few seconds before raising a hand, index finger extended. "This. Proves. Nothing!"

He sighed before helping me up to my feet.

"Let's just go into the sewers." He grimaced. "Hey, long shot, but are Star Wars sewers any cleaner than, you know, actual sewers?"

"If anything they're worse!" I answered cheerily. "Some of the aliens excrete substances that we'd find supremely toxic! But I'm not worried."

"Why not?"

"Because,"—I popped my helmet seal and pushed it up my head so he could see my shit-eating grin—"I have a sealed environment suit." I then put my helmet back on, made sure he could hear the click-hiss of it pressurizing, and made my way to the maintenance access.

The mutter behind me was music to my ears. "God damnit. Of course his weapons and armor are more convenient than The Force."


Interlude: The Penitent Padawan.

Ahsoka could not help but ask herself: How had it all gone so wrong?

It had all been so clear! A direct path to the AA weapon that was keeping their air support grounded. Once she'd retaken it, the counter attack would have halted and reversed the Clanker advance! If only Master Kenobi could have seen it!

Except, once she drove forward, she never even made it to the AA gun. Half her platoon fell in the charge, the rest of her men were pushed back, and the very last communication she received before the Seps jammed them was that enemy reinforcements had arrived in-system and the Republic was in full retreat.

In short, she'd screwed up, big time. And she had no idea how to fix things. Out of the twenty-five troopers that she'd started her idiotic attack with, three were left. She was stuck in the sewers in a city whose name she didn't even remember—probably should have paid more attention at the briefing, even though Master Anakin never did.

Sevens groaned, pain radiating off of him in waves. A quick check of her datapad showed that his vitals, while still relatively stable, were definitely in decline. They couldn't afford to wait much longer, but she wasn't certain that pushing forward wouldn't kill the Trooper.

Then again, if the Clankers caught up to them, he'd be just as dead, and the rest of them with him. She needed to be decisive.

"Random," she called out, one of the two standing Troopers guarding the 'perimeter' turned to face her, "how are we looking on supplies?"

"Not good, Major," he stated without preamble, "between the three of us we have enough food to last us two days, we're almost out of water, and we are down to our last three Power Packs."

She did her best to hide her grimace. She opened her mouth to give an order, any order, something that would make their situation better, but her head-tail twitched as she felt more than heard a sound bounce off the walls.

She tilted her head, frowning in concentration as she heard…voices?

"Possible contact!" she hissed, all the troopers tensing. It was two interminable minutes before the noise that had warned her resolved itself into recognizable Galactic Basic.

"—plosion, which would draw attention away from the Space Port. After that, we just get our hands on the current clearance codes, hop on a shuttle, and leave them eating our ion trail." A voice, deep, but rising in both pitch and speed as it outlined a plan, one that gave her a pang of familiarity, it sounded like something Master Anakin would do. "Once in orbit, we make a short hop to safety, then plot a longer jump to Republic Space. Honestly, the most difficult bit will be convincing some trigger-happy ensin not to shoot us down as we ask for permission to board a Republic Ship."

"That's way too dangerous," another voice said with a sigh, male, not as deep as the other, slower, more thoughtful, not unlike Master Kenobi, "that has way too many points of failure. How are we even going to know which codes to get?"

"It'll be the ones labeled 'command codes,'" the deeper voice deadpanned.

There was a slight pause. "You can't be serious."

"As a doornail."

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"Hero, you are drastically overestimating the intelligence of droids."

She signaled the troopers to hold their fire, she could at the very least be certain they weren't droids, and while they didn't sound like soldiers, they didn't seem to be friends of the Separatists either. Perhaps local militia?

A Blaster rifle barrel peeked out of the corner to their resting place, causing the troopers to tense. It shifted slowly, coming ever closer to being able to threaten them. She could see the tension in her men skyrocketing the further it tracked, then suddenly it stopped.

"Huh," said the deeper voice, "well, the auspex shows four life forms up ahead, think that's them?"

Auspex? And they were looking for them specifically? Could they have been sent by Master Anakin?

But…how would Master Anakin know that she had exactly three men left in her command?

She tightened her grip on her Lightsaber, the clones both aimed at the corner the voices came from, she saw Locket pull out their last thermal detonator and she felt a spike of fear jolt through her.

"Great help you are," muttered the deeper voice. "Oi!" The scream made them all twitch, but the troopers held their discipline and didn't open fire. "Couple of friendlies here! Don't shoot us!"

Ahsoka traded a look with Random.

"Prove it!" Locket shouted back.

There was the sound of a hurried, whispered conversation. Then, with a familiar snap-hiss a blue lightsaber ignited at the end of the corridor and waved up and down. "Hey. Hey. Friendly."

"Oh my god," whispered the other one.

"I'm going to come out, please hold your fire." The voice was soothing, in control, and a little tense.

A man in the robes of a Jedi Knight stepped around the corner, and Locket shot at him. The bolt rushed forward in an intercept course with the Knight's heart; she could feel her shout of alarm readying itself to tear out of her throat, much too late to prevent the tragedy.

The Jedi did not seem to move, one moment he stood with his saber at his side, his guard open, the next he'd batted the bolt away, his lightsaber held in the quintessential shii-cho stance, as if it had been a vid recording, and he'd been edited from once stance to the other without a frame of transition.

As her shout to stop Locket made its way out of her throat, she saw a bulky form peek out of the corner, a single luminescent eye glaring accusingly at them as it raised an unfamiliar Blaster Rifle, she started to move forward, hoping against hope that she'd be fast enough to intercept the shot. Locket fired a burst, all three shots deflected by the Knight as his trooper pulled the trigger, a bolt slamming into Locket's chest and knocking the Trooper to the floor.

Random shouted, surging forward as he unloaded a fusillade of Blaster Bolts. The man's movements were less smooth, his expression falling into a tense scowl as he blocked Random's shots. "Santo!" he barked.

Another shot rang out, slamming Random off his feet, his corpse falling into an ungainly pile on top of his brother. "Got him!"

Ahsoka set herself between the enemy and Sevens, igniting her lightsaber and preparing to sell her life dearly.

"Not…Not what I meant." Out of all the things she had expected from the disguised Sith, resigned disappointment was not one of them.

"Bruh, they shot you," the bounty hunter said.

"You were supposed to back up so I could get back around the corner," the Sith explained with surprising patience. "I'm kind of standing in a kill box."

The man wearing stolen Clone Trooper armor stared at the Sith for a long moment. "Oh…whoops."

The Sith stared at her with a sheepish expression, raising his hands up in seeming surrender with a still active lightsaber…she had no idea which form would use such a stance, was he trying to trick her into attacking him? "Would you believe me if I told you," he said, sounding contrite, "that this was a horrible misunderstanding?"

Anger surged within her, her grip tightening on her lightsaber until her knuckles stood out against her skin. "A misunderstanding!? You killed my men!"

Random's corpse groaned and shifted. She stared at it in disbelief.

"Uhh…Blasters have a stun setting," the bounty hunter called out. "It's a standard feature."

"...Huh," Ahsoka said, now that she was not in pitched combat and took a moment to look for it, she could sense both Random and Locket's life force through the Force, both burning brightly if subdued by their unconsciousness. "I…didn't know that."

"You know," Sevens said, his pistol trained unwaveringly on the man with the Lightsaber, reminding her that he had been awake and resting, "we don't exactly get much of a chance to use the stun setting on our weapons."

"Makes sense," the bounty hunter called out, his weapon still out and aimed at her, "so…how about this: I'll bring my Blaster down, you put yours down, then your Commander puts her lightsaber down and my idi—" He coughed. "—General can turn off his Lightsaber, and we can all proceed to have a civil conversation?"

The man with the lightsaber sighed, turned off his lightsaber, turned his back on her and Sevens and stared disapprovingly at the bounty hunter with his hands on his hips.

"What?" the bounty hunter called out with an indignant tone, his voice rising in pitch, "they shot you!"

"And you shot them back and succeeded, while they failed to hurt me at all." The man with the lightsaber shook his head, then started to make his way to her. She tensed, Sevens tensed, the bounty hunter grumbled something about a stun grenade, his aim not wavering in the slightest.

The man with the lightsaber stood just outside striking range, then offered his lightsaber to her hilt first. "How about we do the Jedi thing and negotiate, instead of, you know, try to kill each other?"

She stared long and hard at the shiny silver hilt, then, taking a deep breath that burned her nostrils, she deactivated her lightsaber.


Notes: Thanks as always to Keel the Swift for betaing, without whom's efforts, this would probably be utterly unreadable.