Snips of the Future: Chapter 1
On Lothal, a long-forgotten Jedi monument flashed and shuddered with an invisible force.
In the Unknown Regions, every Chiss navigator refused to perform any jumps, and several went into hysteric fits, leaving one Chiss lieutenant to gaze on his art collection and ponder.
On Dathomir, all the rituals of all the Nightsister covens failed at once.
On Lucazek, the Falanassi gathered to commune with the White Current and try to understand the new great ripple they had all detected.
On Tatooine a young slave boy ran for shelter, before realizing that the storm he felt was not one of blowing sand, and that no-one else seemed to notice.
On Korriban, spirits stirred in long-forgotten tombs, and
In his office, Sheev Palpatine, senator from Naboo, pleaded fatigue and cancelled all his appointments for the day. His staffers realized that the crisis on his home planet must be causing more strain than he was letting on and expressed their sympathies, as a mighty storm broke the constraints of the weather control systems and raged across the planet.
And in the Jedi Temple, four year old Ahsoka Tano screamed.
She wasn't the only one. Many of the younglings were screaming or crying as they wakened from sudden nightmares of death and loss, but her screams seemed to reverberate with the thunder of the storm, just as all the lights in the temple went out.
The creche nurses instructors and fosterers were being run ragged. The halls of healing were seeing a most unwelcome surge, and even venerable Jedi Masters were feeling unsettled by the massive surge of force energy they had felt sweep through the galaxy. Some tried to meditated, others practiced katas, or paced too and frow according to their various natures, and those Masters and Knights who had Padawans attempted to distract themselves by looking after their students.
When Ahsoka came to herself she found herself perched in a ventilation duct opening three meters off the ground looking down as the familiar yet new wizend face of Master Yoda curiously examined a grill which had obviously torn from the wall, and which he was currently levitating to look at from all angles, before looking up and meeting her gaze.
"So. Like high places, do you? Hmm?"
Most beings would have struggled to produce a genuine smile under the circumstances. But Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, was not most beings. Not by any stretch. At the sight of that smile, Ahsoka burst into tears, and launched herself out of the duct and towards Master Yoda. Small as she was she was already almost as large as the wizened Jedi Master, yet he caught her easily with the Force and lowered her gently to the ground.
"Master Yoda! The Jedi! The-the Sith, they... Anakin! How could... Master Kenobi! I don't... we must..." Her words tumbled over themselves as Ahsoka realized she didn't even know what to say. The tears were streaming freely down her face.
"Worry not, young one." Yoda patted her back as he used the force to pull a tunic from a nearby dresser and start to wiper her face. "A vision, it was. Nothing more. Always in motion the future is. Relax. Sleep now. With you I will be."
She wanted to tell him that it wasn't a vision. That she'd really been there. Really seen the end of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith. That they had to do something now to prevent all the evil that was to come. But suddenly she felt as if all the strength had left her body, and her eyelids were weighed down be a dozen anvils.
"Kriffin'... sleep... suggestions," she murmered as she felt herself being gently lowered into bed, and covers lifted off the ground to be gently tucked around her, and Yoda's creaky barking laugh was the last thing she heard as sleep took her at last.
Ahsoka Tano had seldom been more frustrated in her life. In either of her lives, she guessed she should say now. It had been a week since she'd returned to her past self, and she was running out of time. She tried dilligently to remind herself that she was no longer the experienced war veteran with countless successful near-suicidal operations under her belt. It didn't help much. Some treacherous voice in her mind insisted on reminding her that the Jedi hadn't been willing to listen to her even then. That they hadn't even been willing to listen to master Skywalker, and he had been a decorated hero and their Chosen One.
She had to admit, grudgingly, that in this case their lack of attention to the dire portents offered up by a four year old youngling with barely any training, who had just recently joined the Jedi, had never shown any particular gift for precognition beyond that shared by most Jedi, and had only come up with these warnings after an upheaval in the Force that had given even some fully fledged Jedi Knights nightmares was understandable. It still irked her.
Her first attempt had been with Master Plo Koon, who's holocom number she'd had memorized since her first week in the temple. He had been sympathetic, and understanding, and even proud of her potential development in force potential, if a bit saddened when she admitted she hadn't discussed it with the creche master. It probably didn't help she'd been so overwrought that she'd babbled, and lost track of what she was saying at least three times.
Feeling she owed it to Master Plo, she'd spoken with the Creche master next. Knight Tenri seemed almost relieved. Ahsoka realized she hadn't been playing with the other members of Clawmouse clan, or really interacting with them at all, since that night. Knight Tenri encouraged her for her growing Force abilities, trotted out the standard lines about the unreliability of visions, and promised to make a note to see if they could get her into Introduction to Foresight early in a few years when Ahsoka kept trying to bring the topic back to the subject.
Ahsoka's next attempt was for Master Yoda. The venerable master was in extremely high demand, but he still took time on occasion to come and teach a class of younglings. She just had to lie in wait for him at the end of one of his classes. Not that she figured she'd hidden from him, but if others had noticed her 'dawdling' they would have found something 'productive' for her to do.
Master Yoda was, admitadly, very good with children. He gave no visible sign of completely dismissing her concerns. Instead, he took her aside to a private room, and gave her a one-on-one lesson on the dangers of following a vision without question, told her the story of a group of Jedi masters who had attempted to kill their own padawans to prevent a vision of one of them becoming a great threat, only for one to escape and turn against them in reaction. He also meditated with her, and gave a mini-lesson on meditative techniques, and another on how to tell alegorical visions from literal ones, and visions of the past from those of the future. In all, he gave her more individual attention than many masters and most knights would regularly receive from a member of the High Council, let alone one as busy as Yoda.
He did not, however, promise to put the temple at alert, or start a hunt for Sith, or even send someone after Qui-gon and Obi-wan. She did at least learn when she was. She had to admit her future memory of her time as a four year old was vague at best, and her current memory was caught up with adapting to the temple, trying to fit in, and neat things she'd learned.
She didn't know Master Jocasta Nu well at all, having never been one for research and deep reading. However, she was one Master a youngling could meet naturally, so she tracked her down two days ago. Master Nu seemed fond of Qui-gon Jin, and she seemed concerned when Ahsoka told her that he was going to die soon, but upon hearing that Master Yoda had been informed, and didn't seem to think there was any cause for concern, she seemed relieved. From Master Nu, Ahsoka learned that Obi-wan was still Padawan Kenobi, and though he was doing well there had not been any talk of him undergoing his knighthood trials yet, and that Kenobi and Master Jin were about to leave on a mission to mediate at Naboo. In fact they had left just that morning.
She'd even tried to talk to Qui-gon or Obi-wan, but without success. The best she'd been able to do was leave them each a message, and she had no idea if either of them had even read it.
That meant time was critical. She thought she remembered that he'd come back safe from the first part of the mission with Anakin, but she also remembered that they'd met Maul on Tatooine when they met Anakin, and that didn't sound very safe to her.
So here she was, in another duct overlooking one of the temple hangars, trying to figure out how she, a currently four year old youngling, could steel a hyper-capable ship and make it all the way to Naboo, or possibly to Tatooine, with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pair of 'borrowed' youngling practice sabers.
So caught up in worrying was she, that she didn't even notice the approaching presence until it was directly beneath her hiding place, and a mellifluous voice that had been the mark of approaching doom for years in her past life.
"Young Tano, I presume. I have been searching for you."
Notes: Thank you very much for reading an commenting. I believe I may not have made it clear enough in the prologue, but the Daughter is not Ahsoka's daughter (so far as we know.) This is THE Daughter. One of The Ones, the ultrapowerful force beings Ahsoka Anakin and Obi-wan met on Mortis.
This chapter took a lot of thought. In Legends Ahsoka is 4 years old at the time of The Phantom Menace, which severely limits her options. Historically the Jedi have very good reason to be wary of acting on visions, and Ahsoka was not known for being able to predict the future. The closest thing I know of is when she figured out that the fake Jedi who wanted to kidnap and use her was indeed a fake. Also, she has a lot of combat experience from her old life, but she doesn't have combat experience for her small current body, and her body doesn't have the muscles and conditioning needed for the formidable combatant she has been.
I was strongly tempted to make a story where she was sent back in her Rebels body, or somehow regressed to her The Clone Wars body, but for this story I decided to go with this.
As for who has found her, well I guess you'll have to wait for the next chapter.
