Ahsoka walked quickly, pausing occasionally to feel for Asajj. Asajj must've felt her presence, and occasionally sent out a little ripple in the force. The closer Ahsoka got, the stronger the ripple felt. Like a game of hot and cold.
Cautiously, she tried to hone in on Asajj's location, but the complex was foreign to her. A few wrong turns, a couple close calls. Two more to the body count. Ahsoka stopped in a shady alcove, panting. Her chapped and burned lekku ached as she tipped her head back against the durasteel. Her muscles burned. In the six months since she had left the order and her... more unhealthy habits without her husband, her muscle mass had waned from the strain of military life to that of a healthy civilian's.
Even though it had been a while, Ahsoka couldn't deny that she had missed some aspects of military life. Not jedi life. Military life. She missed the chase. The single minded goal to either find something or destroy everything. Fighting with her men, not just Rex. All of her men, side by side. The feeling that when things were at their worst, she was at her best.
Ahsoka realized, with a jolt, that as much as she had enjoyed civilian life, it wasn't meant for her. Her place was fighting for what's right. For the civilians.
Rest time over. She had to move.
Carefully, she made her way down the hall. She was getting close. She could feel it. Asajj's ripples in the the force became as sharp as whipsnaps. She closed her eyes, trying to feel where they were. No more ripples came, and it seemed like Asajj was right next to her. Just out of reach. She frowned, gripping her stolen blaster tightly. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a dry voice rasped from her right.
"Hey Commander. Don't forget to look with your eyes too." A familiar voice. Like the one she so often heard over holocomm. She relaxed instantly.
"F-er..." She refrained from saying his name as she ran over. Fives chuckled.
"Quintus." He whispered. Ahsoka grinned. Quintus meant Five in protobasic. Ahsoka nodded.
"Hold on. Let me..." She trailed off as she recognized the third member of the crew. Ahsoka opened the cell and raised it to point at the male Kiffar leaning casually in the corner, twirling a durasteel knife between his fingers lazily. He tilted his head in greeting, to which Ahsoka replied by flicking the safety off on the blaster. "Master jedi Vos? I was... unaware that you would be here."
Fives growled. "Yeah, I wasn't happy about that either."
Without taking her eyes off Vos she tossed her extra two side arms to Asajj and Fives. Vos sighed, slipping the knife back into the sheath on his hip. "Padawan Tano. I heard rumors that you had left the order. Chewed out the council spectacularly while you were at it."
Slowly, Ahsoka lowered her blaster. "They abandoned me and tried to kill somebody I was close to. They tried to accuse my master of treason for standing with me." She shook her head. "The jedi order has fallen. I just wish I could do something to let them see their folly. To make them change before everything they built crumbles." She pressed her lips together. The alarm blared louder in the distance.
"Are you going to rant again or actually get us out, M'leata?" Asajj asked. The coldness in her voice was countered by the term of endearment. Ahsoka tilted her head.
"The first. Let's go." She said. A flicker of danger in the force alerted her to the two guards behind her made their presence known.
"Hold it right there, jedi." A pyke snarled. Ahsoka sighed. "Turn around, slowly. Blaster on the ground." Ahsoka complied, keeping her wrists close together to hide the detonator controls on her inner bracer. "You've given us quite the wild bantha chase, haven't you. You think you're so smart, changing back through alcoves and ventshafts." He rambled, pointing his blaster at her. "I bet you-"
"-You're scared." Ahsoka interrupted him, feigning board confidence. "You couldn't kill me if you tried. Besides," She pressed the button for the detonator. The ground rocked and the walls trembled with the force of explosions. Once Ahsoka's montrals stopped ringing, she smirked up at the pyke, who was looking decidedly more pale. "When you wake up, you'll have bigger problems."
The pyke frowned even deeper. "Why when I wake-" He didn't get a chance to finish. Ahsoka stunned him. Fives was looking at her in a mixture of awe and humor.
"Who gave you explosives?" He asked. Ahsoka just shrugged.
"Are we going or not. C'mon. I know a way out of this labyrinth." She called. Asajj chuckled.
"So this must be what it's like to serve under Skywalker. Reckless and unplanned missions by people who are addicted to things that go 'boom?'" She asked Ahsoka. The togruta grinned over her shoulder. It wasn't a nice grin.
"I learned from the best." She gave a feral snarl. There were footsteps ahead, and she skidded to a halt as a squadron of guards appeared. Asajj swore.
"Then how is it that Skywalker always bested me?" She spat.
"By being stubborn." Ahsoka said. Her heart was pounding, the force was swirling around her. Her emotions gave her strength. Control gave her serenity. Hefting her blaster, she ran at the guards, and fully opened herself to the force since leaving the order.
She drew nearer and nearer, and the guards opened fire. Ahsoka ducked and twisted, dropping to the ground to slide into the legs of the guard in front. Spinning, she made a tumble and pushed off with her hands, firing two stun bolts to catch a pyke square in the chest. Distanly, she heard Fives sigh and join the fray, firing stun bolt after stun bolt with practiced perfection.
"Hey bozos, they're all sleeping for a week." Asajj called, breaking Ahsoka out of her trance. Ahsoka blinked, finding that the dathomirian was right. All of the pykes lay on the floor, stunned or knocked unconscious. Ahsoka stumbled, exhaustion beginning to set in. She really needed to get her endurance back up if this was going to start again. Vos whistled.
"You really take after your master. Always ready for a fight." Ahsoka shook her head.
"No. Always ready for a fight I can win. There's a difference." She hissed. Vos was one of the better jedi in her opinion, despite not knowing the man well. The tattoo on his face wrinkled as he rolled his eyes, face pinched like he had bitten a lemon.
"Any fight you can walk away from is a fight you won." He started before Ahsoka threw out a hand, catching him unawares and pushing him several feet back with the force.
"If I wanted to be lectured, I'd go back to the temple. I'm not here to rescue you, Master jedi." She mocked him. "I'm here for my friends."
Vos chuckled. "Right. Friends. An ex-sith and somebody who I'm fairly sure is a renegade clone. I'm sure Skywalker approves."
Ahsoka bared her fangs at him, snapping before turning away to continue down the corridor.
"He does, actually." That shut Vos up, thankfully. Ahsoka really didn't want to add a jedi master to the list of people she'd punched in the face.
Fives fell in step beside her. Ahsoka smiled at him.
"You're looking better." She didn't need to see his smile to know it was there.
"You are too. Lemme guess. Skywalker rigged some black market-definitely against regulations comm so you two lovebirds could talk?" Fives he nudged her in the arm a bit.
"That's... surprisingly accurate." She admitted. Fives shook his head.
"Which one is worse. Dying from a blaster bolt to the stomach or dying because you were sad?" He snickered. Ahsoka glared at him, which only made it worse. "And they called me dramatic. You learned from the drama king himself."
Ahsoka laughed too. "I'll give you that one. Anakin is the textbook definition of extra. Look up dramatic in the dictionary and there's a picture of him next to it." They rounded another sharp curve. Ahsoka raised her head, sniffing the air. There was the faint smell of smoke and burnt metal, presumably from the explosives she set off. There was also a faint whiff of spice and the rank smell of the prisoners unkempt bodies. And a draft of fresh air that made her perk up a bit.
"We're almost to the surface." She called. Asajj sighed from behind her.
"Do you have a ship to get us out or are we just hoping one will fall into our lap?" She asked, exasperated. "Somebody ought to teach you the benefit of planning." Ahsoka scoffed good naturedly.
"Like you plan every move you make oh so carefully. Remind me why I'm breaking you out of jail again?" She asked. It was Vos who answered.
"Krim had some family kidnapped. Hired us to get them back. We did, and the people who stole it just returned and killed the rest of his family except him. He blamed us for not doing the job properly, even through half the galaxy knows he's the leader of the syndicate and lives on Oba Diah." He deadpanned. Ahsoka clenched her teeth.
"Grief makes people do irrational things." She said softly.
"Like yelling at the jedi high council, probably the most powerful beings in the galaxy?" He asked.
"Oh, no. Not that. I was perfectly clear headed and meant everything I said." She said briskly. "If you're trying to get me to falsely being wrong, forget it. Windu already tried that a month or so ago." The rounded another corner and began to climb a large and narrow staircase.
"Why were you talking to Windu?" Vos asked. Ahsoka glared at him over her shoulder.
"I have a duty as a nurses aid to provide for people. Lives were in danger, so I did what I had to do." She spat out. "Will you shut up? You're like a broken protocol droid. I'm beginning to regret pulling you out of that cell."
Vos shut up.
"Hate to break up this free entertainment, but we've got guards up ahead. Lots of guards." She called. Ahsoka was too tired to use the force. She just hefted her blaster and started firing. Every little injury screamed at her. She gritted her teeth, just for the ragged edge of her broken fang to catch on her lip and tear it open, sending a trickle of blood down her face.
For all Vos lectured her, he was just as good in a fight as she was. Probably even better, considering he had sat the first couple little skirmishes out and let Ahsoka and Fives deal with it. Ahsoka was so tired she didn't even have the energy to banter back when Vos made a snide comment at a couple missed shots.
Fives noticed her slowing down a bit and she redoubled her efforts to get to the surface, bounding up another flight of stairs despite her leg muscles screaming for a break. Her lip stung and her jaw throbbed where Rafa had punched it earlier. The burns on her lekku and arms from close calls made her want to cry out with every movement. Asajj was taking a couple glancing hits too, without the defensive capabilities her lightsabers gave her.
She dodged out of the path of one bolt only to get hit with another in the leg. Her knee buckled and sent her stumbling into a wall, hitting her head hard enough that a bruise didn't take long to form, dark and ugly beneath her white-blonde hair.
"Asajj!" Fives called, instantly looking back. Asajj. Not Ventress or harpy. He had used her first name.
"I've got her, Quin. Keep going with Tano." Vos said, slipping an arm under the stunned Asajj and throwing her over his shoulder like a bag of flour. Fives frowned but turned back to the matter at hand.
There were too many. They were surrounded. Ahsoka raised her blaster. She was not going back in a cell, and if she was going to go down, then she was taking as many of these pykes as she could. Rex briefly flickered across her mind. If she died now, what would he think?
He'd be heartbroken. Even without the biological kill switch Ahsoka had, he wouldn't live nearly half the life he still had in front of him. He was the reason she was alive, and continued to fight. Because she had to get back to him.
The call for surrender came. Ahsoka nearly fell to her knees from exhaustion, covering the moment of weakness up so she appeared to be couching to place her blaster on the ground. Fives crouched next to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. Ahsoka felt a wave of guilt for sending him with Ventress.
She and Rex were all he had left. And she had abandoned him, and even though she left him like that because she wasn't strong enough to look him in the eye and not see her husband, he still stood by her. His hand was different on her shoulder. How had she ever looked at him and seen Rex? Sure, they looked similar. But they were so vastly different in everything else. Rex was all cold confidence, while Fives was all snarky and arrogant with the bite to back up his bark. They couldn't be more different from Hoth to Mustafar.
A flicker of motion caught her eye. Looking up, she saw a flash of blue and white armor above her. Part of her mind instantly went to Rex. She squashed that part. Rex was with Anakin. Lightyears away on Yerbana. She would have felt him.
She nudged Fives and nodded at the struts on the beams above them. His eyes flickered upwards.
"I count three unidentified individuals." He muttered practically into her montral. Ahsoka opened her mouth to say something when their friends in the rafters acted, dropping down in the midst of their captors. In the chaos, the pykes ended up shooting each other while trying to hit the armored figures.
It was over in seconds. Twenty dead bodies in a pile around the foursome and three obvious mandalorians standing around them, blasters trained on the group. In unison, they all put their blasters away smoothly. Ahsoka frowned. One of them looked familiar. It became apparent as the blue and white armored figure lifted her helmet off, revealing short red hair and striking green eyes.
She was one of the mandalorians from Carlac. Death Watch. Ahsoka gripped her blaster tightly and resisted the urge to glare as she got to her feet. The red headed scary lady tipped her head in greeting.
"You may not know me, but I know you, Ahsoka Tano." She said coolly. "My name is Bo-Katan Kryze. And I'd like to make a deal with you." Ahsoka said nothing as the mando pulled out a holoprojector, showing a picture of Caedus as Ahsoka had seen in the holocall.
"It appears," She said slowly. "That we have a mutual enemy that we would both like to see in shackles. You have encountered Caedus several times. If he lives up to his name, then we need to work together to destroy him."
Ahsoka smiled bitterly. "Caedus has taken Mandalore and killed the Duchess Satine. If we capture him, you would get an entire planet." She was glad her voice mostly hid the pain and weariness that she was sure was evident. "What's in it for me?"
Bo-Katan smiled. "Revenge isn't enough? Very well. You can collect the bounty the republic has put on him. A hefty sum. You will also have a right of amnesty within the ranks of the niteowls. Any places, allies, and resources we have are available to you, within reason. We also can get you and your friends out of this compound." She listed.
Ahsoka weighed her options. Smiling, she held out her hand. Bo-Katan clasped her forearm in a mandalorian handshake as Ahsoka smiled.
"I accept."