Heyo, human beings from outer space!
So, this may be physically incorrect because I know like ✨nothing✨ about sinkholes and, spoiler alert, there's gonna be a sinkhole in this one.
Read on if you dare.
Ahsoka stood next to Plo Koon in the War Room as Anakin briefed everyone on the mission. Plo Koon and his forces would be joining the 501st in bombing a Separatist base.
"...we'll sneak up on them and detonate the base before they attack," Anakin was saying. "We'll spend the night hiking on the back trails to get to the base. The trails are untamed and uneven, so we'll have to make slow progress. Once we get there, we'll quietly place the detonators in the red spots on this map and return back on the same trail. We'll detonate the base once we reach a safe distance. Any questions?"
No one said anything.
"Great. Get ready, we depart in an hour."
🪐🪐🪐
Anakin led the troops down the muddy, uneven path. The mud bubbled and wheezed around everyone's boots as they trudged along. It suctioned around their feet and made a popping, slurping sound as the feet broke free.
Spooky darkness loomed over the misty forests which the trail wound through.
"Master, how much longer until we reach the base?" Ahsoka said between grunts as she yanked her feet out of the mud to keep stepping along. The poor child's boots sank nearly halfway into the mud puddles. She had to make a great effort to move forward.
"Sorry, snips. We still have four klicks to go," Anakin said apologetically.
Ahsoka sighed heavily but didn't complain. She lurched forward to yank her foot out of the ground again, but her leg twisted. Anakin stopped as Ahsoka restrained a hiss, righted herself, and yanked her foot free from the mud. She eased her expression and plunged her foot forward, back into the mud. Anakin didn't say anything because she seemed to manage without much trouble, but that didn't stop him from worrying.
Plo seemed to share the same worry. He quickened his pace to catch up to Ahsoka.
"How are you faring, Little 'Soka?" Plo set his hand on her shoulder.
"It's a bit hard to walk and my boots are really muddy, but I'm okay," Ahsoka assured him.
Plo didn't press her about her ankle. Ahsoka was the stubbornest child he'd ever met and conversating with her would only be a distraction. She'd been injured much more gravely before so she could though out a little twisted ankle.
The group approached a fork in the path. Anakin held up a fist and the group came to a halt. He pulled out his holo map. Studying the map, Anakin pointed to the left path and began walking. "This is the fasted route," he announced. Rex stepped ahead of him, surveying the land.
As they walked along, Ahsoka began twitching and flicking her glow-in-the-dark eyes back and forth. Her anxiety levels rose and leaked out of her secure mental barriers. Anakin, unnerved, began glancing around. She obviously sensed something that he didn't.
"Ahsoka, is something wrong?" Anakin whispered between his teeth.
Ahsoka abruptly halted. The ground below the group quaked and rumbled. Ahsoka's eyes blew wide with urgency and she whirled around.
"RUN!" Ahsoka shrieked, thrusting her hands forward to Force-push the surrounding troopers away. Everyone tumbled back, including Anakin and Plo, except for the clone behind her.
And Anakin watched in pure horror as the ground all but gave out below Ahsoka and Rex.
🪐🪐🪐
Ahsoka's stomach dropped as the ground caved beneath her. Rex yelled loudly. Ahsoka tumbled forward, calling on the Force to at least give her a soft enough landing that she wouldn't shatter every bone in her body.
She slammed against the hard ground. The impact forced all the air out of her lungs so she couldn't breathe or scream. Rocks and boulders rolled and thudded around her. Dust exploded from the ground. Everything trembled.
Then the trembling subsided and the horrible, loud sounds of boulders falling stopped, but the ringing in her montrals only grew louder. A sinkhole, she thought.
Ahsoka wheezed and coughed. She dragged herself to her knees and waved her hands through the air to clear the dust. Ahsoka must've broken a few ribs and her arm was hurting something awful. Climbing to her feet, she looked around at the damage.
"Rex?" Ahsoka coughed. "Rex? Are you there?"
Ahsoka reached out to the Force, fearing the worst. She searched for Rex's familiar life force and breathed a sigh of relief when she sensed it. She waddled over to a boulder pile and found him there, pinned down by the heavy rocks.
"Rex," Ahsoka wheezed, leaning against a boulder. "Rex, can you hear me?"
No response.
Ahsoka rolled a boulder off the pile and used the Force as an aid to clear some others. She fell to her knees next to him and ripped his helmet off. Rex lay still and blood dripped from a gash on his forehead but he was breathing and had a steady heartbeat. Ahsoka puffed out another breath of relief.
"Rex," she shook his shoulders. His head rolled limply. "Rex, wake up. Rex! Come on, we have to get out of here."
Rex's eyes opened and he looked blearily at Ahsoka. "Commander?"
"Yeah, it's me," Ahsoka helped him sit up. "We fell in a sinkhole."
"You're bleeding," Rex told her.
"So are you. It's okay. We have to find a way out," Ahsoka insisted.
Rex examed the dark cavern they'd fallen into.
"It looks like a system of tunnels," Rex noted. "If we follow them, we might find a way to the surface."
"Good idea," Ahsoka stood and hoisted Rex to his feet, ignoring her vertigo. She used the Force to try to figure out which tunnel they should follow.
A nagging came from Anakin's end of their Force bond. Ahsoka stopped and listened.
Ahsoka! Ahsoka, where are you? Are you okay?
We're fine, Master! Ahsoka replied. Keep going without us. We found a system of tunnels to follow to see if we can find the surface.
I have to find you, Anakin insisted.
Don't worry, just go. We'll be fine! Ahsoka said.
Promise?
Promise.
Anakin stopped nagging. Ahsoka opened her eyes.
"Hello," Rex waved a hand in front of her face. "Coruscant to Commander Ahsoka, are you in there?"
"It was Anakin," Ahsoka replied simply. "He was asking if we were okay. I told him to go on without us. We'll catch up."
"Good," Rex nodded curtly and slid his helmet over his head. "We better get moving, too."
The two of them trudged through the winding tunnels. Neither of them knew where they were, where they were going, or if they were walking in circles, but they kept moving. The mud down there wasn't so wet, making travel easier.
After they walked for what felt like forever, the Force started behaving strangely as it had done before the sinkhole. Ahsoka chewed on the inside of her cheek and her gaze darted back and forth in search of danger.
The ground began to tremble slightly. At first, Rex obviously couldn't feel it. Ahsoka, being a Togruta, could. But she convinced herself that she just hit her head too hard; it was probably nothing.
Then the Force sent a dizzying, sickening warning. The trembling suddenly erupted into dramatic quaking and jerking. The first large blow sent Ahsoka slamming to the ground and the second sent Rex down on top of her.
Ahsoka felt a painful crack in her already aching chest. She wheezed and coughed, tasting blood.
A third jolt sent Ahsoka and Rex into the wall. Ahsoka couldn't draw in any air and her eyes watered unmercifully.
"We must be under the base!" Rex hollered over the commotion. "They detonated it!"
Ahsoka didn't respond. She couldn't
The fourth jolt brought boulders down around their heads. Rex grabbed Ahsoka's arm and yanked her to his chest. He curled around her as the fifth, sixth, and seventh jolts came all at once. The cavern rocked violently and the whole land above them seemed to give way and tumble down.
The only thought that successfully made its way to Ahsoka's oxygen-deprived brain was, We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die...
🪐🪐🪐
Anakin watched the firey explosions erupt from the Separatist base from afar. He willed it just to hurry up and burn to ashes so he could go back to the sinkhole and pull Ahsoka and Rex out.
Ahsoka's sudden fear and panic crammed into his Force bond. Her desperation screamed out to him and scraped his nerves raw. Anakin bristled and pricked.
The tunnels that Ahsoka told him about must've led under the base. When they detonated it, they might've brought everything down on Ahsoka and Rex.
"Stop the detention! Don't detonate anything else! Get a search party out there, Ahsoka and Rex are under that base!" Anakin barked, already racing towards the base.
The detentions subsided. Everything was in ruins. All the bombs had gone off before Anakin had stopped them, and sure enough, the whole ground gave way under the base. Heaps of rubble piled in a cavern below.
The clones ran up behind Anakin. "Sir? The Commander and Captain are down there?"
"Under that rubble," Anakin reached out with the Force and felt Ahsoka's dwindling presence.
Anakin called on the Force to lift some of the boulders and debris from the cavern. The clones slid down the sides and began manually removing boulders, shining their lights around in search of the members.
"Found the Captain!"
Anakin leapt down the side of the cavern to find the clone who shouted that. Sure enough, Anakin could see Rex's blue and white armour pinned beneath boulders and rubble.
Anakin shoved the boulders off of Rex, but there was no sign of Ahsoka.
"Rex," Anakin gritted out, searching for his padawan. "Rex?"
Rex coughed below his helmet. His head bobbed up and down. "General?"
"Yeah, it's me. You're going to be okay. Do you know where Ahsoka is?"
Rex coughed again and rolled to his back, splaying out his arms and revealing a battered Ahsoka curled against him. She was unmoving and littered with injuries. Watermarks streaked her cheeks.
"Sir, she had no armour, I tried to protect her..." Rex coughed again.
Anakin dropped to his knees next to Ahsoka. She wasn't breathing.
"Ahsoka? Ahsoka?! Ahsoka! Don't do this to me!" Anakin snatched her wrist, pressing his thumb down to check her heartbeat.
Her cold fingers suddenly twisted around his and her eyes snapped open. She shot up, sputtering and gritting out strangled sounds.
"Breathe, Ahsoka!" Anakin pressed. "Breathe!"
"C-c-can't." Water shone in Ahsoka's eyes.
"You can. Just breathe," Anakin patted her back. He twisted around to look out of the cavern. "Kix! Where the kriff is Kix?! We need Kix!"
Kix and the medic of the 104th skidded down the edge of the cavern. Plo was right behind them.
The 104th medic rushed to Rex's side and ripped off the captain's helmet. Kix dropped to his knees next to Anakin.
"Breathe with me, Commander," Kix urged, pulling out his medkit. He exaggerated his breaths, trying to get Ahsoka to breathe.
Ahsoka gasped in a breath of air. She coughed and drew in another shaky breath.
"See, you're doing just fine," Kix praised.
Ahsoka's gasps grew rushed. She struggled to make up for the breathing she'd missed.
"No, no, don't hyperventilate," Anakin set his hands on her shoulders. "Take a deep breath."
Ahsoka tried drawing in a shaky breath but she puffed it out again as if her lungs had a mind of their own.
Kix pressed the prepped oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. Her gasps evened out.
"There you go. Good job," Anakin praised.
With the permission of Kix, Anakin helped her to her feet and up the edge of the cavern. They loaded her on the gunship and helped her sit down, where she leaned her head against the wall.
"How bad is it?" Anakin whispered to Kix.
"Several broken ribs– I can't be sure how many– definitely a broken arm, a concussion, and perhaps some lung damage," Kix reported. "We just need to keep her awake until I have the proper equipment to help her."
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Word Count: 2,116
Published: Jun. 28, 2022
Well, I don't know what that was, but it was better than nothing. Yay? It didn't turn out the way I quite wanted it to. I wanted to have more Rex and Ahsoka time because I feel like I haven't written a lot of those.
Requests are open, feel free to message me or make a comment if you have any ideas/suggestions/constructive criticism.
Bye, peoples!