Yeah, surprise, another chapter. Got bored, decided to write another one for the p@treon so that means yall get another chapter. This does not affect my update schedule, you'll still get one this Tuesday. Unless I like, get sick or something.
See my notes at the bottom
P@treon Hermit47 for 15 chapters ahead.
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Ahsoka barely had time to set her feet.
The black-furred Wookiee hit first.
He came at her with terrifying speed for something so massive, his crimson blade cutting down in a brutal diagonal strike that rattled her arms all the way to the shoulder when she caught it. The impact drove her back half a step instantly. Before she could recover, the pale twin was already there, his own red saber slicing low for her legs.
She jumped, twisted in midair, and came down hard with a slash meant to force distance.
It didn't.
The black one met her blade with contemptuous strength. The pale one moved around his brother's shoulder as if the two of them had shared the same body for years. They did not crowd one another. They did not overcommit. They fought like hunters who had done this together so long the space between them was as disciplined as any form taught in a Jedi temple.
Ahsoka ducked under another sweeping cut and heard a clone scream behind her.
She risked a glance.
Two of Gree's men were already down.
The black twin had cut through them on the way in as if armor meant nothing. The pale one twisted aside from a burst of blaster fire and sent a trooper sprawling with a savage backhand before driving his saber through another clone's chest at close range.
Ahsoka's anger flared.
She lunged hard, green blade flashing in a tight upward arc meant to split the opening between the pale twin's shoulder and throat.
He caught it on one red blade.
Then the black twin struck from the side.
She barely turned in time.
Their sabers crashed together in a burst of sparks so bright the corridor seemed to vanish in white-green and red. The impact nearly tore her weapon from her hand.
They were too strong.
Not just physically strong—though they were that in abundance—but old-strong. Deliberate. Their pressure never faltered. Their attacks weren't wild or bestial, despite the size and fury behind them. Every motion had purpose.
She gave ground.
Not because she wanted to. Because if she didn't, she'd die.
"Ahsoka!" Gree shouted from somewhere behind her.
Blasterfire lit the hall around them, blue bolts streaking past her shoulders and bursting against the stone walls, but the Wookiees barely seemed to notice. One of them—she no longer knew which in the blur of motion—caught a bolt across the armored shoulder and never even flinched.
Ahsoka spun away from another strike and drove her saber in at the pale twin's ribs.
He let it hit.
Not his body.
His Bracer.
The armor there hissed, scorched, and he caught her wrist in one giant hand.
Her breath caught.
The black twin came in immediately, slamming the hilt of his saber into the side of her blade hard enough to wrench it away from center. Then the pale twin's other hand closed around her throat.
The floor vanished beneath her feet.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing.
Ahsoka kicked, clawed at his wrist, felt the pressure on her windpipe tighten as he turned and drove her straight into the wall.
Stone cracked behind her.
Pain burst white through the back of her skull.
She heard Gree yelling, heard more clones die, heard the corridor dissolve into blasterfire and roars and the shriek of sabers—
Then everything folded inward.
The last thing she saw before blackness took her was the black twin turning away from her entirely, already moving back toward the deeper shadows as if she had ceased to matter the moment she stopped being a threat.
Voices.
Far away.
Muffled by dark and pain.
At first Ahsoka thought she was dreaming. Then one of the voices sharpened just enough to irritate her into awareness.
"…told you she'd be trouble."
That one she almost recognized.
Not the voice itself. The cadence. The kind of dry irritation that sounded less emotional than factual.
Another voice, helmet-muffled and rough through some kind of scramble, answered from farther off. "Doesn't matter now. We've got what we came for."
Boots moved close by.
A metal click.
Then a new voice, unfamiliar, colder and lower than the others.
"Leave her."
Someone hesitated. "Sir—"
"I said leave her as she is."
The words had finality in them. It was not anger nor strain, but command.
Ahsoka tried to open her eyes.
She got one half-lidded glimpse of black armor and a silhouette crouched near her before the dark dragged her under again.
When she came back the second time, something was shaking her shoulder.
Not hard.
Steady.
Insistent.
"Ahsoka."
The voice was close now. Controlled. Familiar.
She forced her eyes open.
At first the world was only pain and light. The corridor swam above her in shifting gold and shadow. Then faces resolved.
Master Luminara was kneeling in front of her, one hand on her shoulder and the other braced against the wall beside Ahsoka's head. Barriss hovered just behind her master, pale and alert. Commander Gree stood over them both, blaster still drawn, his armor streaked with fresh carbon scoring.
Ahsoka tried to rise and immediately regretted it.
Pain flared through her neck and the back of her head. She hissed and pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself.
"What happened?" Luminara asked.
Ahsoka blinked hard, forcing the fog out of her mind.
"The Wookiees," she rasped. "Two of them. Black armor, red blades. They cut through the clones and came right at me."
Barriss knelt at her other side now, quick hands checking for blood, for skull fracture, for anything visibly wrong. "Can you stand?"
Ahsoka nodded once and instantly wished she hadn't.
Luminara slipped one hand beneath her arm and pulled her carefully upward.
As soon as Ahsoka got her feet under her, the palace exploded.
Blasterfire ripped down the corridor from both ends at once.
Dozens of shots.
Not a scattered burst. A coordinated ambush.
"Down!" Gree barked.
The Jedi moved on instinct. Green sabers flared to life as Ahsoka and Barriss stepped in close with Luminara, blades catching and throwing back blaster bolts in every direction. The corridor strobed with red and green, shadows breaking apart under the violence.
Clone troopers behind Gree dropped into firing positions, but the attack had been set too well. Shots came from alcoves, cross halls, and dark service cuts in the walls. Whoever was firing knew the corridor and knew exactly how to drown a defensive position in overlapping lines of fire.
Ahsoka caught one bolt, two, three—then lost count.
Barriss deflected a stream from the left while Luminara anchored the center, her blade a controlled green arc in the dark. Gree and his men returned fire between them, but every time a shooter fell, another opened up from a different angle.
Then movement struck from both sides.
The black twin came from the right.
The pale one from the left.
They hit the formation like a pair of battering rams.
Luminara met the black-furred Wookiee first, her green blade slamming into his red with a crack that seemed to shake the hall. The force of the impact drove her back but did not break her stance. She pivoted immediately, elegant and exact, turning his sheer aggression aside with classic control.
The pale twin hit the Padawans.
Ahsoka and Barriss split instinctively, trying to force him to choose one angle or the other, but he was too fast and too deliberate. His blade swept in a brutal horizontal cut that Ahsoka caught high while Barriss stabbed low toward his exposed side. He twisted between them with impossible economy, knocking Barriss's blade aside with one hand while forcing Ahsoka into a retreat with the other.
Gree shouted for his men to hold the line.
Then two bodies hit the floor.
Ahsoka heard the impacts before she saw them.
The Queen and the Prince.
They had been behind them in the corridor after all, trailed by too few guards and too much panic, and now both dropped hard onto the marble with dark blaster burns in their torsos. The Queen's silks spread around her like spilled moonlight. The Prince hit beside her, eyes wide, one hand still half-raised as if he had only just realized what was happening.
For a single stunned heartbeat, the whole corridor seemed to stop.
Then the blasterfire ceased.
All of it.
As abruptly as it had begun.
The black-armored shooters vanished back into shadowed exits, disciplined enough not to waste a second more than necessary. The Wookiees disengaged just as quickly, stepping backward with blades still raised, neither pressing for another kill now that the real objective lay dead at their feet.
"They're retreating!" Gree shouted.
Luminara's eyes flicked once to the bodies of the royals, and the fury in her face went cold.
"After them."
The black twin and the pale one were already gone, pulling back into the maze of darkened corridors and side halls beyond the ambush point.
The Jedi pursued.
Ahsoka ran with the taste of blood in her mouth and pain still throbbing through her skull. Barriss kept pace beside her. Gree and the surviving clones thundered behind them in armor and anger.
They tore through one corridor, then another.
One of the retreating shooters appeared at the far end of a hall only to vanish left. Gree fired without breaking stride. A curse echoed from around the corner.
"Hit one!" he shouted.
They followed the sound.
At the end of the next hall, beneath a flickering wall lamp and half-hidden in the angle where two corridors met, one of the black-armored assailants had gone down. He was propped against the wall now, rifle fallen beside him, one hand pressed against a blaster wound in his leg. The armor was dark, matte, built to hide shape and insignia alike.
The rest had fled.
Or left him.
Gree raised his rifle and the clones behind him formed a firing line at once.
Luminara advanced a single step past them, green blade pointed straight at the seated figure's throat.
"Surrender."
The armored figure didn't move.
Didn't raise his hands.
Didn't reach for the weapon either.
He simply leaned there against the wall, breathing hard, blood darkening the armor around his thigh, and gave no sign at all that he intended to obey.
Luminara's eyes narrowed.
"I won't ask again."
Still nothing.
Ahsoka could hear her own pulse pounding in her ears.
Whoever this was, he wasn't panicking. He wasn't begging. He wasn't even trying to crawl away.
Gree glanced at Luminara. "Orders, General?"
Luminara never took her eyes off the figure.
"Remove his helmet."
Gree moved in carefully, rifle still trained until the last possible second. Then, with one sharp motion, he caught the seal at the side of the helmet and tore it free.
The breath left the corridor.
Even the wounded man seemed to know the effect the reveal would have, because he did not resist. He only looked up at them through the harsh corridor light, face pale with pain but jaw set.
A clone.
Not clone-shaped.
Not similar.
A clone.
Ahsoka stared.
Barriss went visibly still beside her.
Gree's expression blanked with shock behind the hard discipline of his training.
Luminara's blade did not waver, but something in her face changed all the same.
Because staring back at them from inside the black assassin's armor was one of the Republic's own.
...
Yeah, that's right, we got clones killing clones. Were going Pong krell up in this. Whats happening, why are clones doing this and why the heck are wookies wielding lightsabers. Youll never know. Well, not untill tuesday or this weeknd if I make another chapter.