Aayla Secura looks over the holomap of local area of Felucia, and the Separatist base nearby. Opposite her, Commander Bly looks thoughtfully at a nearby water distribution plant.
"General Secura, Aayla, according to our intelligence this is one of three distribution plants that are connected to the Separatist base. We need to take control of this location if we're to prevent their parting gift from poisoning the eco-system."
Aayla nods, "What of the other two plants?"
"Commander Bariss has already left to secure plant 2, as it appears to be lightly defended."
"What of the last plant?"
Bly sighs, "I can send a detachment to keep an eye on them, but we don't have enough forces to take on both plants at the same time."
"How about local support?"
Bly shakes his head, "The only militia belonged to the resorts, and they evacuated when we arrived in system."
Aalya hits the table under the display, "Damn it. Here's what we're going to do. Send a fabbing unit to catch up with Bariss, and prepare a fabbing unit to accompany us. Once we're within ½ a day of the plants, we'll have the fabbers set up new forward bases while we engage the separatist forces. Meanwhile, send Lt Galle, with padawan's Ekria and Zonda, to the scouting party. Their orders are that if they see an opportunity to shut the third plant down, they're to take it. We have to shut off these plants otherwise this entire planet could be killed."
Bly nods, "Yes sir."
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Little more than a day later, Aayla is looking out over the jungle as her mobile command platform strides through the dense jungle following the armoured attack vehicles. A design developed a few years into the war when the Separatists started using weapons to disrupt repulsor lifts. Suddenly, there's a massive disturbance in the force, as if a bell was just struck.
"Bly, I just felt something in the jungle. I'm going to investigate."
As Aayla flows over the side of the transport, Bly slowly lowers his hand and looks down with a sigh, "It's days like this I wish our general was a little less flighty."
His second in command looks at him sympathetically, "Weren't you being thankful for that same trait only a few weeks ago, when she disrupted that ambush?"
Bly nods, "It's both a gift and a burden. At least she looks good doing it."
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Aayla has barely got 50m into the jungle before she's joined by Bly and her squad running to catch up. With a smile, she slows down to a walk, "Bly, I am a perfectly capable jedi you know."
Bly smiles behind his helmet, "Just because you're a jedi master, doesn't mean you don't get an escort in this jungle."
Aayla shakes her head as she sets a fast, but not punishing, pace, "Fine, but I feel like I need to get to whatever I sensed quickly. So you'll have to keep up."
After half an hour of battling past the native wildlife, the group finally reach a large stand of spore plants. As they do, Bly looks up at the spore laden plants, "General, we need to find a way round this."
Aayla shakes her head, "Negative Commander, I need to go in, as whatever I can feel is inside. Wait here, and make sure nothing disturbs the spores while I'm in there."
Bly sighs, "Yes General. Everyone fan out and form a perimeter."
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Allowing the force to guide her, Aayla slips through the plants without disturbing them at all. Less than 10m in, the stand opens up to a small clearing that is practically invisible from outside the stand. Sitting in the centre of the clearing is a solitary, leathery egg sack that sings in the force. Neither light, nor dark, the egg sings to Aayla of life, change, and freedom.
Cautiously, Aayla approaches as the top of the egg sack peels open like a flower, revealing that the source of the disturbance is coming from inside the sack. As she leans over to have a look, an eight-armed thing leaps out and wraps itself around her face and neck.
In an instant, Aayla's lightsabre is in her hand, and she's bringing it up to cut the thing away when her world goes dark.
A few minutes later, Aayla sits up with a groan as Bly shouts at her through her communicator.
"Bly, I'm fine."
"General, you weren't responding for over 5 minutes."
Aayla shakes her head and looks at the leather egg sack, "I think I was too late, and it knocked me out after it hatched. Whatever happened, I can't feel it anymore, so I'm going to bring the egg sack out with me."
"Understood General. Aayla, you need to be more careful. We can't win this conflict without your support."
Aayla sighs tiredly as she picks up the egg sack, "Bly, I am a jedi first, and a general second. My first duty is, and always will be to the force. It's only through the force that I've been able to help as much as I have."
As she walks out of the clearing, Aayla unknowingly steps on the dead husk of the face hugger that attacked her.
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Nearly a day later, Aayla, Bly, and her unit are trekking through the jungle as they skirt around the main fighting. According to the communications, Lt Galle had successfully drawn off the defenders, allowing the padawan's to make their way into the facility and turn off the water supply. Now it's just down to her and Barris to get their own jobs done before the poison finishes working its way through the water treatment, and into the ecosystem.
Suddenly, everything goes silent, the only sounds audible being from the battle being waged a few km away. Every single person in the 20 strong group freezes as they scan their surroundings for any sign of droids, or worse, predators.
A rustle of movement from a bush has Aayla take a step as she turns away from her unit. As a bird bursts from cover, each of the clones nods once before raising their weapons and opening fire into Aayla's unprotected back.
Aayla's last thoughts before her world is engulfed by fire, is of the screams of agony starting to reflect through the force.
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A few months later, Queen looks up from the latest of the poison reservoirs she's made. Already her hive had grown large enough to split twice, and each time she gifted queenship to one of the natives that attracted her attention. It took her weeks to work out how to reproduce the water conjuring and switching spells as runes. Longer to work out how to tune the switching spell to the poison that's now flowing through her planet. Something that was aided by the inclusion of sentients in her hive.
Only in the last week had they cracked the problem of having the two spells connected to a third scrying spell that would detect the poison and pass the location to the switching spell while activating both the other spells. Already she had workers taking shifts keeping the first two reservoirs going.
As she sits back from her carving, Queen takes a moment to meditate and check over her hive. Even the faint link that's even now growing stronger since she sent a couple of scouts with an adoption egg to make the sentient at the other end an official part of her hive and protect them until they could protect themselves.
As she meditates, some of the instincts, from her life before becoming Queen, twitch and she turns her head to the sky.
"Ulli, take over for me, as I can feel something familiar approaching the planet."
A green skinned twi'lek appears in a burst of fire before bowing gracefully, "Yes my queen."
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Ekria abruptly sits up, breathing heavily, in her bunk. The fleeting nightmare of living on a jungle world and fighting for her survival slowly fades and she checks her chronometer. There's still 4 hours to go until they have to meet Kodo Finn and then Prince Xizor.
Lying back on her bunk, she goes back to sleep and dreams of training with a lightsabre against Master Vos. As she does, tears prick her eyes and she mumbles, "Master."
Unseen on the ceiling, two scouts watch their new hive member.
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Jedi Master Shaak Ti walks down the steps of the tramp freighter she commandeered as she was trying to evacuate children from the temple. Children that were now safe on worlds still friendly to the Jedi. Though it's unlikely any of them would become padawans.
Behind her, her new padawan, Maris Brood, looks around the secluded clearing that Shaak Ti landed in. "Master, are you sure this is a good place to land?"
Shaak Ti nods absently as she reaches out with the force. "It will be. The planet will mask our presence somewhat, and our ship won't appear on any registries. If I remember right, there should also be native settlement near here. I'm sure they felt us land, so we shouldn't need to wait too long for them to arrive."
Maris nods, "Yes Master."
Shaak looks around curiously, "Maris, something about the planet is… odd. Almost familiar, like there's an echo in the force."
As she's looking around, there's a burst of fire that ripples through the force, and suddenly there's a massive near bipedal creature with a sensory dome, where their eyes should be, that seamlessly merges with a large bony crest that flares out to protect the creatures back. Its entire skin is black, and seems to be stretched taut over its internal skeleton. Behind the monstrosity flicks a dangerous looking tail.
Subconsciously, Shaak Ti summons her lightsabres to her hands, though she doesn't ignite them yet. Behind her, the snap, hiss, of Maris' own lightsabre shows that the padawan is still ruled by her emotions, rather than being guided by the force.
After several minutes, where neither the creature, or the jedi, move. The monster grunts a few times, before it seems to shimmer and shrink down.
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Queen observes the being in front of her curiously as she searches her memories for why it seems so familiar. Eventually, she reaches the most recent memories, her memories. The memories that she's avoided looking at since she became aware of herself, as the most recent of those hurt her on a deep level, and left her hive agitated.
In order to avoid pain, Queen starts at the beginning and systematically works her way through her life. Aayla's life.
As she reaches a period of time where Aayla was dosed with a drug that erased her memories, something inside her recoils and she whispers to the hive, "Never again."
After that memory, someone that seems like this being appears more and more frequently, until she's finally able to put a name to the way they feel, Shaak Ti.
Despite finding the answer to her query, some part of her continues to follow these memories, dragging the rest of her along too.
Finally, she approaches the pain, and she tries to escape, to leave the memories and return to her own mind. She watches as Aayla crouches down as the wildlife goes silent, and then a bird bursts from the bushes.
Time seems to slow to a crawl, as her back explodes in pain for barely an instant, as blaster bolts hit her from behind. Then her world explodes into fire, before she falls to the floor and rolls into the undergrowth. That's when the visions start, of jedi being slaughtered across the galaxy. Of Barriss being shot at point blank range with the gun of an AT-TE. Of her old Master Vos dying at the hands of his own clones, of so many deaths hitting her one after the other until she retreated into her own mind.
Then, driven by instinct, her memories continue as she flees the danger behind her, and hunts her first prey. A small mammal like creature that's slightly larger than she is. A few hours later, she's found a hole to safely molt in.
As the memories of the previous queen merge seamlessly with her own, Queen shatters as she broadcasts to the hive, "I am Aaylas'cura, and I remember who I am!"
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Aayla looks down at Shaak Ti and tries to say something, anything. After a couple of seconds opening and closing her mouth, and only grunts come from her mouth. Following Queen's example, she checks the memories of her predecessor for a possible solution, before finding one.
Picturing herself as she was, Aayla throws magic, force, something at it. Less than a second later, a sense of vertigo overcomes her, as her body seems to flow like liquid as it shrinks down to almost fit into that version of herself.
As she looks down at her now taloned hands, Aayla says, "Well, it doesn't look like I'm doing any more undercover jobs."
The snap and hiss of a lightsaber igniting draws Aayla's attention, as Shaak Ti points one of her lightsabers at her. "Who or what are you!?"
Aayla steps back in surprise, her own hands reaching for a lightsaber that no longer exists, "Master Shaak Ti, I'm Aayla Secura."
Shaak Ti shakes her head, "She died. I saw the footage the padawans retrieved. I don't know what you are, impersonating her."
Aayla shakes her head, "I remember, I didn't until you arrived. But I remember now. I…I…" her shoulders slump, "I cannot prove who I am. But I now know how I survived. Will you at least allow me to tell you my story?"
Shaak Ti closes her eyes and tries to get some guidance from the force. The only thing that came back, is a feeling that she would regret not listening.
With a sharp nod, she descends the last few steps to the ground and sinks gracefully into a cross-legged posture on the undergrowth.
Aayla smoothly follows suit before she begins her tail, "I suppose I should start at the planning meeting just after our last holocall, where Ashoka joined to inform us that she'd captured Maul. I was distracted on that call, because we'd just found out the Separatists had left a poisoned well with a deadman's trigger in their main base. Not being idiots, they left a couple of days slack in case of a false alarm, but they also stationed droids to defend each of the water facilities that were affected. As we didn't have the override codes, I judged that our best course of action was to split up, with Barris taking one platoon to Har Gau, I was to head to Niango while the Padawans and the remaining troops would stay back at the base to ensure our fallback position.
"It soon became apparent that the facilities were more heavily defended than we expected. Which, combined with how hostile my world can be to invaders, meant we were running short on time so I…"
As she gets to the part about the egg, Shaak Ti holds up her hand, "Wait, egg?"
Aayla nods, "Yes, egg. I had it sent back to the base to be returned to the Republic for analysis."
Shaak Ti shakes her head, "There were no reports of an egg."
Aayla shrugs, "Were there any reports about what happened at the end?"
Shaak Ti looks down thoughtfully, "Not to the temple, however the news stated that you were executed for trying to poison the planet."
Aayla nods, "Now that we know the Sith were behind the war, the egg has probably vanished into one of their labs. Not that it will do them much good."
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In his private lab, Darth Sidious rubs his hands together as a pair of droids places the box containing the egg from Felucia on a table in an isolation room. Preliminary results from samples taken on the ship suggests that this is something engineered, not evolved. It's therefore likely that the Jedi stumbled across an ancient sith experiment.
Pressing a button on the console in front of him, he instructs, "Open the box!"
Obediently, the two droids undo the electronic locks before taking one side of the lid each and lifting. As the four sides of the lid move up off the base, a flood of liquid spills out from each side, and immediately starts to burn through both the table, and the droids, wherever they are splashed.
As their internal components start to fail, the two droids topple over to one side, taking the lid of the box with them. As Sidious screams with rage, the acid scarred base sits there completely empty.
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Shaak Ti nods seriously, "So your blood is now so acidic that it will eat through almost everything?"
Aayla nods, "It is, and once we're dead, our cells will stop metabolising the acid, causing it to eat through our bodies. Back to the story. After I was shot, I was reborn in fire before being bombarded by the feeling of so many of my friends and other jedi dying that I retreated inside myself."
Aayla looks down at the ground, "I'm ashamed to say that I forgot myself and allowed the xenomorph to take over. If I ever meet Arry, I am going to thank her from the bottom of my heart. As she's the reason why Queen, my alter ego, hasn't wiped out everything and everyone in range of her nest. Instead, she's been converting the slavers and criminals, and adopting those that fitted her definition of good."
As she looks back up, Aayla adds, "It's also why she's been working on extracting the poison from Felucia's ecosystem. As you can't survive on a dead world. We have a working solution now, so it will just take time."
Softly, Shaak Ti opens her eyes as she comes out of the semi-trance she'd fallen into, "Aayla, I believe you. I am glad that you did not fall to betrayal like the others did."
Aayla nods, before she elf-pops next to Shaak Ti, and embraces her in a hug, "I'm so glad to see you Shaak, if you hadn't arrived I might have been lost forever."
Beside them, Maris stares at the space Aayla just was, before looking around for her. When she spots her sitting next to Shaak Ti, she can't help saying, "By the Force, how did you do that?"
Aayla laughs, "Magic."