padme_n (padme_n) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-01-22 22:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, ahsoka tano, anakin skywalker, padme amidala |
Who: Ahsoka, Anakin and Padmé
What: A surprise set up turns into a surprise attack
Where: Ahsoka's place
When: First night of the plot
Rating/Warning: Low
Status: Complete
When Ahsoka asked him to come over, Anakin said yes without any hesitation. She wasn’t just a connection to their shared universe, she as someone he’d come to care about. He knew she still had hard days dealing with Li’s death, and he would do just about anything to help make those days less hard.
And then she explained it was to help her plan a Social Services Event and she wanted his input. And he realized this wasn’t for an afternoon of playing video games. In that brief second before Ahsoka told him what they were doing he’d already planned five or six raids.
But, again, he would do just about anything and he had said yes unconditionally.
And he still brought gummy worms because those were delicious.
With a fidget toy already in one hand, he was going to need to do some serious concentrating to be helpful, he knocked on Ahsoka’s door.
Ahsoka knew that Anakin might actually kill her for this, but she hoped the fact she legitimately was planning a social services event would at least make him kill her painlessly.
She had the basic idea spread out on her coffee table as she waited for Anakin and Padme to arrive.
She threw the door open and grinned at him. "Hey! We're just waiting on the event coordinator I hired to arrive and we can start figuring this thing out. And this is not at all an attempt to set you up or anything."
If that didn’t just make Anakin instantly stop and suspect something. One didn’t need to announce when they aren’t doing something nefarious, the default was one would be a good friend.
“Ahsoka,” Anakin said cautiously. He stepped inside but not much farther than beyond the door.
“Why did you do?”
"Anakin!". The last person Padmé expected to see at Ahsoka's was him, but she wasn't upset. In fact, she was pleasantly surprised, as evidenced the smile on her face.
She really hadn't expected the beach stranger to call her, let alone hire her so when it happened? Padmé agreed to do it all, and at a very reduced rate. She was a sucker for charity events that were legitimately charity events.
When she came to the place and found the door open, she couldn't help but walk in. And there he was. Cool.
"Do you live here too?"
Anakin could never forget that voice.
Padme.
He quickly shot Ahoska a look, the kind that siblings share when the other one has crossed a line but it’s forgivable - in the long run. Every line on his face said that they “were going to talk about this later.”
When he turned to greet Padme, he had a more pleasant smile for her.
“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. “I don’t- live here. Ahsoka’s family. She asked me to help with planning some charity event.”
He was holding his backpack with his metal hand - something that he hadn’t had on the day he ran into Padme at the Wounded Warrior’s Charity Ball. It was bound to stand out, alien as it was. No hiding that now. He walked in to take a seat around the coffee table. He dropped the bag and tossed the fidget toy back and forth between his hands.
“So, uh,” he looked at Ahsoka, “You just did a Yelp search for the best event planner in the OC?”
Ahsoka smiled back at Anakin, sheepishly, clasping her hands behind her back. "I ran into Padme at the beach, actually. And when I was thinking about the event she was the first person I thought of."
She looked between them, maintaining a pleasant expression despite the fact her Grand Plan may have not been necessary. "So you two know each other?"
Padmé looked at Anakin before smiling at Ahsoka. "We've met a few times." she wasn't one to gossip, and really, if the two of them were family, she was sure Anakin would say something. Maybe. Unless she wasn't nearly as memorable as she hoped she was.
Hefting her shoulder bag in place, she glanced at the table. "Oh, you look like you're good to go. Awesome! Usually, when I show up at these meetings, I'm the only one with any idea. This makes things easier."
“Ya, we were both at the Wounded Warrior’s Charity Ball earlier this week.” There was nothing wrong with explaining that. Nothing wrong and nothing happened, Ahsoka, he wanted to convey to his sister-in-Force. But he wasn’t sure he could click that out in Morse code on his fidget box, he wasn’t sure if she knew Morse code.
He furiously clicked at the fidget box anyway.
Maybe he could try saying something in Huttese under his breath?
“I’m in the dark. Ahsoka called me up and asked me to come over, but… I don’t know any of the details,” he said instead, meeting Padme’s eyes only a few times. No, this wasn’t awkward at all.
“But I did bring gummy worms.”
Huh. Well that made sense. Ahsoka nodded, closing the door behind Padme. "I ordered some take out too, in case you're hungry. We might be here awhile. What I was thinking was some kind of workshop to help people with learning new skillsets, particularly homeless vets, but also older folks who've been laid off or something."
She gestured. "Which is why I invited Anakin."
Mostly.
Right, mostly.
But there really was no other polite, and not-weird, way going forward but to accept his fate and go with what Ahsoka had planned.
The takeout food came. Anakin pulled out the gummy worms and put the bag on the table for everyone to share. And they started planning Ahsoka’s event.
Besides the obvious beginning awkwardness, everything was proceeding normally.
Until a high pitched screech cut through the air. A few seconds later, screeches from other directions answered the call.
Anakin’s hand froze with a gummy worm halfway to his mouth. Something in the pit of his stomach dropped, like a fire alarm going off in his head.
“What was that?” And without really thinking about it, he said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Padmé had been sketching out a floor plan when the sudden screech pierced through the room. Dropping her pen, she covered her ears and looked around, her brow deeply furrowed. Like Anakin, she had a visceral reaction. Her first instinct was to rush to the window, see what was making that noise, but in all reality, she couldn't even move. The screeching was everywhere, and she could barely hear herself think.
"Something's wrong," she said softly to herself. Her heart started beating painfully.
Ahsoka rubbed the side of her head, then peeked through the blinds. She started, then slowly turned towards the others, her expression carefully collected and calm. ”Anakin, in that end table on your right, top drawer. There’s a false bottom. You’re probably going to want one or both of those.”
She stored her Clone Wars era lightsaber and shoto in that drawer.
She glanced at Padme, then peered back through the blinds. “I guess we couldn’t have eased you into this place.”
Another sound, less a screech and more like a low moan accompanied sudden pounding on the door. It shook, then the wood started to crack.
Ahsoka backed into the room, putting herself between the door and Padme as she withdrew two cylindrical objects from her pockets. Brilliant white light flared to life as she ignited them and fell into a defensive stance. She wasn’t sure how much longer her glamour would remain up once fighting started, but she wastrying to avoid freaking Padme out any more than necessary.
A fist, rotted skin, with exposed bone on the forearm, punched through the window.
Anakin didn’t question Ahsoka’s command though he had been expecting a blaster rather then what he did find when he opened the draw. He recognized the pair of lightsabers – the pair Ahsoka used when she had been his apprentice.
But there was no time to reflect over regret and loss, emotions gifted to him by the memories in his dreams.
He grabbed one. In a fighter jet, he knew he could let his ego out, but he only had a few memories of fighting or training with a lightsaber. And while they played on rotation in his dreams, he had no actual training in this life, he wasn’t stupid enough to jeopardize them all by taking a chance.
He rushed to Padmé’s side, focusing on her, even as the first thud hit the door.
“Padmé,” he said directly. “Everything you know about the universe is going to change tonight. But Ahsoka and I are not going to let you get hurt, okay? I promise.” At least not physically. Learning about the OC from a zombie monster attack probably caused some mental trauma.
As he finished talking, the arm punched through the window, followed by the head and upper body. The monster struggled to crawl through the jagged hole, but body parts kept getting caught on the sharp glass. Which gave Anakin the advantage.
He ignited the lightsaber and swiftly cleaved the monster’s head and torso in two from the top down. Leaving the body slumped in the window made it just a bit more difficult for other monsters to follow.
“We need to get somewhere less accessible to these things- my place?”
When the arm broke through the window, Padmé flinched at the sudden sound of screaming. It wasn't until her throat started to hurt that she realized it was her screaming.
Tears of fear were streaming down her face. There was no way she could process any of this, let alone Ahsoka's comment about 'easing her in'. When Anakin suggested going somewhere safer, she nodded before he could finish his sentence. "Is there somewhere safer?," she hiccuped, trying to calm down. "I don't even know what's happening. What's out there?"
“That’s a good place to start. I’m not sure we can get to my fighter from here. We’re going to have to hoof it. Or drive through it like Mad Max.” Ahsoka flickered, appearing for a brief moment like her dream self before the glamour reasserted itself.
She’d … have to figure that out later. Sounding every minute of her nearly fifty dream years (when accounting for the end of the rebellion), Ahsoka said patiently. “We’ll explain later, Padme, when we’re in a safer place.”
With a heavy sigh, she jabbed her sabers into the ceiling and spun around to create a quick access to the roof. “Lets try going over them first.”
Anakin shot Ahsoka a look, he wasn’t going to be that enigmatic about this. Sure, a lengthy explanation wasn’t doable right now, but they could say a little bit.
“Short answer is it’s a monster invasion,” Anakin said. “Quick, grab what you have to.”
He followed his suggestion, but he didn’t have to physically cross the room. He reached out his hand and his backpack flew to him. And the bag of gummy worms – he might get hungry.
“I suggest Mad Maxing it,” he looked up at the hole Ahsoka was making. “It’s quicker.”
“Sorry,” Ahsoka said, before picking Padme up and jumping up through the hold and landing on the roof. She set her down, waiting for Anakin before suggesting, “If we can make it to the fighter, it’s fast-”
Something like leather and bones rattled above, a shadow crossing the roof. Ahsoka looked up in time to see a skeletal dragon with glowing blue energy for its heart land on top of a large covered object in the back yard.
It bellowed, ripping the cover off of the starfighter before flipping it over.
“Mad Max it is,” Ahsoka said, eyes wide.
Nothing was making sense. She was hoisted over Ahsoka's shoulder, who had seemed small and not strong at all, and then through a hole and did Anakin summon /i> something to his hand?
Standing on the roof, she looked around, her arms clasped around her body. She was shivering but not from the cold. There was destruction everywhere she looked. When Ahsoka mentioned Mad Max, Padmé frowned and looked at Anakin. "What is she talking about?"
“The fuck!”
Anakin looked on with the same shock Ahsoka did as her fighter option was taken off the table. Okay, the monsters were flying this time. And neither he nor Ahsoka had means to compete with that.
“We’re going to take a car to get to my place,” Anakin explained.
“Ahsoka, where’s your car?” He asked, and made a silent pray that her car was working right now. “Do you have blasters inside it?” Lightsabers were good, but it was also good to have options.
“Sorry,” Ahsoka repeated from earlier, picking Padme up again, this time bridal style. “It’s down there by that semi truck, there’s a couple blasters in the trunk, if we can make it!”
Then she took a running leap off the roof, still clutching Padme as they soared much farther than they had any right to jump.
With a shriek, Padmé clutched tight to Ahsoka's shirt, her eyes scrunched tight. At no point was she worried she'd fall, not with the confidence the other woman had, but she didn't want to see how they got to this truck.
When she felt herself back on her feet, she peeked an eye open. "Are we safe yet?"
Anakin followed, though he didn’t cross as much distance with his jump that Ahsoka achieved. He was starting to rethink the slower pace he’d set for learning how to use the Force. But it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to reach Ahsoka and Padmé at a run.
Given that Ahsoka had let Anakin work on her car, he had a good feel for the mechanics of it. It wasn’t hard at all to focus on the locks and nudge them with the Force. Then he pushed the trunk hatch up so they had access to the blasters.
“Sorry Padmé, not yet. Get in.”
He helped himself to one of the blasters and then turned to Ahsoka. “Driver or shotgun-” he got out before two rotting monsters bolted from around the semi towards them, faster than Anakin felt they had any right to move. And he raised the blaster at one.
“I’ll drive,” Ahsoka called out, sliding into the driver’s seat and starting the car. Thank god Anakin had done some work on it, otherwise it would have been a death trap.
In a casual aside to Padme, she remarked, “Ani is an ace pilot, but he’s probably a better shot than I am, and I’m a pretty good pilot myself anyway.”
Not quite as good, and driving wasn’t exactly piloting, but that didn’t matter; Ahsoka floored it as soon as everyone was inside, if not secure, using the Force to guide her through the undead and abandoned cars on the road.