Star Wars: Advent of The Hellwalker (Ahsoka x M! Reader)

Chapter XIX - Out of the frying pan

"Do y'all remember where we go from here?" Dama asked as we came to a fork in the road.

"It's a right," I said, having intensely studied the layout of the tunnel network that they had shown us.

"You sure?" Dama asked.

"Positively," I said, remembering the chart clearly.

"Alright then," Dama said with a shrug and led us down the path on the right. We continued down the corridors, completely uninterrupted for a few minutes until I caught something in my senses nearby.

"Hold up... I think I sense something," I said, "... it's close by."

"Droids?" Noirah asked.

"No... I don't think so," I said," It was just one... thing." I wasn't sure what it was. It sure had a lot of aggression radiating from it. Could it be a Sith? Turning to my left, I waved my lightsaber around the walls, revealing the terror that had caught my senses.

Noirah gasped as a stintaril leaped off the wall toward her face, claws held out and mouth gaping open, hissing wildly. As Noirah staggered back, caught off guard, I swung my lightsaber at the stintaril and sliced it clean in half, it's bisected body splashed in a puddle of moisture on the ground and it writhed in place, kicking up the dew for a few seconds before it lay silent and dead.

"Eugh, disgusting!" Noirah whispered, looking at the nasty rodent and then at me, "Thanks."

"No big deal," I said.

"It almost tore my face off!" She said.

"Hey, did you hear that?" a distinctive battle droid voice said, not too far away, making us all freeze in shock.

"It came from this way," Another battle droid said, "Heyyyy, what's that blue light at the end of this hallway?" And suddenly, the sounds of splashes and mechanical steps could be heard growing close.

"Maybe I did sense a few droids!" I whispered.

"This way!" Noirah said, directing us to turn back, but from the other side of the corridor, more lights appeared against the wall.

"KRIFF!" I whisper-yelled, "What do we do, what do we do??" I caught Dama darting his head around frantically and desperately, until his eyes landed on a grate in the wall close to floor level. Quickly, he knelt down and grabbed the sides of it, doing his best to suppress his grunts as he pulled the edges of grate until it finally popped off, revealing a small duct.

"In here, quick!" He said and I crawled in, with Dama following me and Noirah coming in last to twist herself around and pull the grate back over the hatch after we all deactivated our lightsabers and lay quietly.

A decently sized squadron of droids flooded into the area.

"Keep your photoreceptors open," A commander battle droid ordered, "That Republic extraction team has to still be wandering around down here."

"Roger roger."

"Hey, look at this," A commando droid said as he knelt down. I almost slapped my hand over my mouth when I saw that he was shining his light on the cauterized bisected remains of that stintaril I sliced up. "It appears this rodent was killed with a lightsaber."

"That means there's a Jedi in here with the extraction team," The droid commander said, "We've got to report this immediately. Spread out, they can't have gotten far."

"Roger roger."

"Roger roger."

"Roger roger," The droids responded over one another and began their careful search of the wide corridor. Noirah, Dama, and I stared at the droids at a loss for words. It was small and low in this duct, we had to lay on our chests with our fronts mostly submerged in the water.