I'm no Jedi (ahsoka_tano) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-05-07 18:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, ahsoka tano, li-ming |
I don’t know who you are
Who: Ahsoka and Li
What: Fighting a Sith, electrocuting a rancor, engaging in aerial acrobatics in Ahsoka's starfighter, the usual
when: 5/5
Where: in and around orange county. also above orange county
status: complete
Rating: PG-13
Seeing stormtroopers had woken something inside Ahsoka that she’d forgotten existed. A little bit of fear, a little bit of excitement, even some anger. A day later and they’d brought in weapons, and vehicles. She knew that Raven and her other friends could take care of themselves, but she didn’t know if Li could. Maybe she could get her somewhere safe before returning to the fight.
She’d enjoyed their dancing probably a little too much, though that wasn’t the reason that she wanted to come to her aide.
Li didn’t have the magic that her dream self did, but that didn’t mean she was sitting in her room cowering and waiting for this to pass. No, Li was out there attempting to fight and to help others get to safety if she could. She wasn’t paying attention to who was around, she was just trying to do what she could.
She’d gotten ahold of a blaster from a fallen stormtrooper. She wasn’t exactly a good shot, but neither were the stormtroopers, it seemed. She spotted someone up ahead running from blaster fire.
“Hey!” She called to them and waved. “Over here!!” Li directed them towards a building that could be used for shelter. Li charged forward, taking aim at the stormtrooper that was following them and she shot at him.
“Oh.” Ahsoka watched for a moment, impressed. That certainly made things a little simpler. But there was a squard of troopers coming up behind Li, and she didn’t think Li would notice in time. Ahsoka darted forward, flipping over Li as her lightsabers sparked to life. In a single graceful movement all four troopers lost their heads.
Ahsoka straightened, and turned to look at Li. “Are you okay?”
She probably should have worn her glamour today.
The woman who flipped over her had barely caught her attention. She was more focused on the target she was shooting at. However, the sound of the lightsabers coming to life got her full attention. Once the trooper was down and not getting up, Li turned around to see four stormtroopers without heads.
She blinked at the woman. It sounded like Ahsoka, but it didn’t look like Ahsoka. Li was more confused than she was scared of the woman’s appearance. After all, things were attacking the city and people, there was little that could actually frighten her after that.
“Ahsoka?” She asked in confusion.
Shit. She nodded her head and tried to smile non-threateningly. “Yes, it’s me. It’s a long story, but right now we’ve got bigger problems to worry about. They’ve brought in heavy weapons.” She kicked at a fallen blaster. “These guys are from my dreams.”
Overhead there appeared to be some kind of battle between different kinds of star fighters. Ahsoka kind of wished she was up there.
Li gave a slow nod. This was unexpected, but she was able to push it aside for the moment. There was too much danger around them to be distracted by things like what Ahsoka was. But when she heard that these things were from Ahsoka’s dreams, it certainly explained some things.
“How do we fight them?” She asked, glancing above them as she heard the sounds of battle from the ships up there.
“Just like any other soldier in any other war,” Ahsoka said. She sounded grim, though there was sad note to her voice. “They’re not going to go very easy on us, but at least there are no Sith...” She knelt and picked up the blaster. “But this should do nicely. Think you can aim?”
She held the blaster out.
“I will do my best. I have not fired a gun before today.” She took the offered blaster, knowing that she needed all the firepower she could get. “Where to now?” Li didn’t know if there was some grand plan to the invasion, or if it was simply chaos, nor did she know where Ahsoka had come from or where she’d been going before crossing her path.
“There’s not much of a kick and you just want to aim at the Stormtroopers. If we’re lucky there won’t be any AT-STs to deal with.” She spun her lightsaber hilts in her hands then ignited them again. The hum was comforting. “I’ll provide shielding. I think we should head farther into town. Towards the Agency building. I’m sure other dreamers may congregate there.”
She hoped Leia was okay.
While she wanted to know what all of these things were precisely, this was not the time nor the place to ask such questions. Now was the time to move before they were surrounded. Or worse. Li looked at the lightsabers when they came to life again. They were fascinating, but they couldn’t be distracted from their goals.
“Lead the way. We will take down as many of these things as possible.” Li was demonstrating the same level of fearlessness that her dream self wielded. She was cocky in the dreams, and it was starting to show here.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.” Ahsoka winked.
They encountered another squad, and Ahsoka deflected their blasts with her sabers. “Quick, down that way!” She could give them cover on the way to the alley, and if they were lucky they could cut around to the other side and avoid more people shooting at them. She just hoped that Li’s confidence wasn’t misplaced.
Li smiled at Ahsoka before following after her. She aimed and fired at the squad, managing to hit a few of them while Ahsoka deflected the blasts. She wordlessly followed directions and headed for the alley while taking pot shots without hitting Ahsoka in the process.
“good shot,” Ahsoka complimented. An X-wing roared overhead, and she followed it’s trail with her eyes before stepping out of the alley. She nearly jumped when she heard the all too familiar sounds of a jedi starfighter engines. The delta shaped craft landed, and the astromech in front of the cockpit beeped at them. It was nearly 24 feet long and 12 at it’s widest.
“Oh my god…” She stared at it.
“Thank you,” she responded. Li duked slightly at hearing the X-wing roaring overhead. It was hard to tell what ships were friends and which were foes at times. Though when she saw the ship land in front of them. Hearing Ahsoka, she looked at her and looked at the way she stared at it.
“I take it that is a friendly vessel?” She asked.
“It’s...it’s mine.” Ahsoka took a step towards it, before she felt a disturbance in the force. A figure cloaked in black flipped over from the other side of the craft, a red lightsaber illuminating an expressionless black mask.
Ahsoka changed stances. “I don’t know who you are but you really don’t want to mess with me right now.”
Well that was certainly fortuitous that Ahsoka’s ship landed there. However, she was distracted from that when the black figure appeared. She leapt back about a foot and held the blaster up, aimed at the cloaked figure. This didn’t seem to be a good thing at all, and the person had a weapon like Ahsoka’s except that the blade was red. Which probably meant something very bad.
“He’s a Sith. Kind of like the evil version of people like me,” Ahsoka explained. It was all very complicated but there was no time to get into nitpicking. “If you can watch my back I’ll be able to take him.”
It didn’t matter how capable Li was, a Sith wasn’t exactly something you wanted to tangle with without a lightsaber or the force. Or something equally as powerful.
“I will do that,” Li said. She was content to let Ahsoka fight him considering she knew what he was and what power he wielded. Li wouldn’t stand a chance against him. So she turned her attention to the surrounding area, keeping an eye open for trouble that she could handle and keep Ahsoka’s back covered.
It was right about then that she was seriously wishing she had the magic her dream self had. At least then she could do more than use a gun that she felt awkward using.
Something roared in the distance.
Ahsoka had her blades locked with the Sith’s, before she twisted and sent him stumbling. She kicked him in the butt and leapt forward. “You have a Rancor? Seriously?”
The Sith laughed, backflipping and then shooting a bolt of lightning at Ahsoka. She blocked it with her saber.
The roaring got closer, and a tall and wide bipedal creature came lumbering towards Li.
The roar was slightly unsettling. Li had never heard anything like that sound before. She spun in the direction of the roar, and saw the creature coming at her. She cursed in her native Chinese, then quickly aimed and fired the blaster at it. However, she wasn’t the best aim despite it being a rather large target. She took a moment to take a breath and steady herself, then shot at it again, this time hitting it a couple times, but it didn’t seem to do much damage.
And then came the Chinese equivalent of ‘oh shit’ out of Li’s mouth. She dodged a swipe of the creature’s arm, rolling to the side and she held out her hand. And, to her surprise, a cone of lightning shot out of it and electrocuted the rancor.
Ahsoka and the Sith were exchanging blows with an increasing furiosity. The Sith seemed fueled by rage, bringing his saber down with bold, strong strikes. Ahsoka was quicker, her reverse grip allowing her more mobility though she had her own strength, muscles straining as she held back one particularly powerful blow. There was the...oddest sense of deja vu, though she ignored that for now. The Sith was better than the Inquisitors she’d fought, but he lacked the skill of Ventress. Were she still a teenager in the Clone Wars, she might have been outmatched. But she wasn’t.
She caught the cone of lightning out of the corner of her eyes, the smell of burnt flesh wafting through the air. The Rancor fell forward with a heavy thunk, shaking the ground.
The Sith dropped his guard, and in that split second Ahsoka’s off-hand saber cut through the Sith’s shoulder. She finished him, running her other saber through his chest. Darth Maul or Count Dooku, he wasn’t.
She turned to check on her friend. “Li! Are you all right? How did you do that?” It looked a lot like Force lightning and she didn’t know how to feel about that.
Li had to stare at her hand once the rancor fell over and the lightning dissipated. That had been entirely unexpected, and yet it was invigorating. If she had her lightning ability here, that meant that the rest of her magic abilities must be attainable. That was something that excited her more than anything else. Her magic could be used here!
She had a wide grin on her face, even as she looked up and saw Ahsoka finish off the Sith. She didn’t blink an eye at the violent death.
“I am fine!” She responded, perhaps a little more excitedly than she intended it to sound. “That was one of my spells. My signature spell, to be precise. It seems I am getting the magic my dream self has.”
“That tends to happen here.” Ahsoka almost looked relieved. “As you can see, I’m affected too.” She knelt, picking up the Sith’s lightsaber and hooking it to her belt. It was too dangerous to keep around, and maybe she could find a different crystal. Part of her wouldn’t mind a padawan. She looked up at the battle overhead. “Want to tell me about your magic while I show you how good a pilot I am?”
“You will take me for a ride?” Li asked, looking back at the ship. She hadn’t expected to be taken for a ride in it. “I can tell you what I know of it. Though it is not much as it currently stands.” All that Li knew was that she was special, a prodigy. Everyone at the Sanctum called her that, and she had quite the affinity for magic, even at such a young age.
“I don’t really want to leave you behind.” Ahsoka almost appeared to be blushing. “It might be a tad cozy but I’d feel better knowing you were somewhere safe.” As though thousands of feet in the air in the middle of a spacefighter dogfight was safe.
“Anywhere would be better than here.” Even with that one spell she’d cast, Li didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a bunch of stormtroopers and whatever else was out there alone. She may be confident and unafraid, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to run headfirst into danger again so soon after seeing that rancor.
The droid beeped at them as the cockpit slid open. “That’s right, she’s coming with us.” Ahsoka patted the astromech’s dome, and flipped in. “Li, there’s room behind me?” She just had to pretend it wasn’t a tight fit.
Li blinked a bit as Ahsoka seemed to respond to the beeping noise. “Those beeps were a language?” It wasn’t anything Li understood. She watched Ahsoka flip into the cockpit. Well, she wasn’t that agile, so she climbed up and slid in behind Ahsoka.
“Binary. Astromechs don’t speak basic.” Though why, Ahsoka didn’t know. It wasn’t like they couldn’t install a voice modulator on one.
Hey, now that was an idea.
The cockpit slid closed as Ahsoka re familiarized herself with the controls. It wasn’t an X-Wing, but it was also designed for the force sensitive.
“Binary? Like computer code? You can understand that?” Li was more than a little fascinated by that. She was also more than a little fascinated by this ship. She was careful to not touch anything that she wasn’t supposed to. After all, she didn’t want to accidentally hit a button that catapulted them out of the ship mid-flight or something.
“Very similar,” she replied. She could do this. She could do this even though this was real life and starfighters weren’t supposed to exist and she’d only ever flown them in dreams.
Ahsoka took off so fast she slammed back against the seat and hoped she hadn’t accidentally knocked out her friend.
Li was still conscious, but she was plastered to her seat. While she expected the ship to go fast, she hadn’t anticipated it going that fast. Though she also didn’t quite think this was Ahsoka’s first time flying the ship here. Which perhaps if she did, she would hang onto something a bit tighter.
“Hooooly….!” Ahsoka cursed in a language Li had probably never heard before, yanking the stick to the left and blasting a Tie Fighter to dust. The starfighter barrel rolled through the debris, and she brought it around behind another one.
Above them, a massive pie-shaped battleship was engaged with a much smaller but heavily armed cruiser of a kind Ahsoka had never seen before. The Star Destroyer was nearly eight times the length of that other one. “Lets see if we can give them some cover from these fighters.”
Did Li get airsick? Under normal flying-in-an-airplane experience, no she didn’t. But the way this ship moved was possibly going to skirt that line. For now, though, Li was doing okay. The foreign language was odd to hear, but there were bigger things to question right now.
Seeing that large pie-shaped ship, Li’s eyes went wide and she cursed in Chinese. Actually, she did more than just curse in Chinese, she also made some comment about it. Then she realized that Ahsoka probably had no idea what she’d said. “What is that?” It was a short summary of what she’d actually said.
“It’s called a Star Destroyer. You don’t want to know how many guns that thing has.” She got behind another Tie Fighter. “So uhm. My dreams involve a couple galactic wide wars with space ships and people who are kind of like magic space monks. I used to be a magic space monk.”
With a name like Star Destroyer, Li could imagine how many guns it had. Not to mention it must have some really big guns as well. “Magic space monks? That sounds intriguing. Though what do you mean by you used to be one?” Li was assuming that Ahsoka hadn’t lost her magic, or whatever it was she had.
“Long story short, I was framed for a crime and they didn’t have my back, so I left the order. The scary thing is…” Ahsoka grunted a little as she tried to keep up with the Tie. “Scary thing is, the person that framed me wasn’t actually...wrong? She just did something really bad to prove her point.”
Li frowned a bit and focused on Ahsoka. She was trying not to focus on how fast they were going. She was also trying to ignore watching things go by as much as possible. “What do you mean she was not wrong? Why did she need to frame you in order to prove her point?”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was trying to prove that the order was corrupt. We were...generals. Leading armies on a grand scale. Everything obscured by the Dark Side. And then the Republic fell, replaced by an Empire and…” Ahsoka’s voice choked and she trailed off. “Well most of the order was killed.”
“I am sorry that happened to you, and that most of the order was killed. That is not a pleasant experience.” Li genuinely was sorry that Ahsoka had to go through something like that. And for people to be killed like that? It was beyond horrible.
“Thanks…” Ahsoka smiled to herself, then glanced back at Li. “How are you holding on? What kinda magic was that?” She was intensely curious. Li didn’t seem like a bad person but she’d totally shot lightning, and that was just a little alarming.
“I am okay. I will let you know if I begin to feel unwell or something.” For now, Li could handle it. She just would rather not see the chaos they were flying through because that might do her in. At the question about her magic, she had to think for some moments. “It is...arcane power, I believe is the correct term.” As she explained, she stopped and started, clearly trying to translate words between languages. “My teachers at the Yshari Sanctum are of different magical backgrounds. There are sorcerers and sorceresses, and various others. Most of them channel their magic through indirect means, I suppose you would say? However, I have begun to feel like their training is doing nothing for me. I feel more power within me than I am utilizing. There are arcane arts, where my body itself is a vessel, and the energy of the spells course through me.”
It was an awkward explanation, but Li was still a little uncertain of what her brand of magic actually was. She needed to dream some more in order to find out.
“So...you’re like a wizard then?” Ahsoka knew that some jedi or sith could be considered like wizards or sorcerers, but it was a different kind of thing from magic magic. Instead of Force magic, anyway. Ahsoka peered down and then took them on a steep dive to strafe an AT-AT.
“Something like that, yes.” Li hadn’t garnered the title of wizard yet, but wizards weren’t exactly looked upon favorably by the rest of the magic community. They were deemed far too dangerous and dabbling in magic more powerful and unreliable than a magic-user should dabble in. When they went into the steep dive, Li closed her eyes and white-knuckled her way through it. This was the most intense rollercoaster-like ride of her entire life.
“Is there a place you want me to drop you off?” Ahsoka didn’t need the force to tell her that Li was getting a little green around the gills. Somehow it made her cuter, but this wasn’t the time or the place to reflect on that.
“It does not matter where. Somewhere relatively safe. I do not want to lose my lunch in here.” Or anywhere, for that matter. Plus Li had a feeling that she’d need a couple minutes to get her legs back under her once she was on solid ground. “I am sorry, I normally do well on roller coasters and airplanes, but this is something else entirely.”
“If you want, I can take you on a normal flight later? When we’re not getting shot at. It might be nice to take a nice relaxing tour in space?” She sounded almost bashful as she asked it. It wasn’t like a date or anything. Right?
“I would like that. It would possibly be a better experience for both of us.” For Li because of the obvious turning green aspect of the up and down and zipping this way and that. For Ahsoka because she wouldn’t be in the midst of fighting the army that was trying to invade.
“Great!” Ahsoka grinned as she brought the fighter down for a landing. “Be careful, okay?” She popped the canopy and turned to look at Li.
Li gave a smile to Ahsoka once they landed. “You too, Ahsoka. I shall see you later.” She climbed out of the cockpit slowly, mostly because she wasn’t certain if her legs would hold her, but they managed to. Even so, she’d still find a safe place and sit down for a few minutes before she tried to do anything else.
Ahsoka gave her a little salute, then lifted the starfighter off the ground. A cocky look came over her face, a shade of the young padawan she’d once been. Then the fighter rocketed towards the battle above.