Saga Before the Saga SW Triathlon - Ahsoka Tano - Summer Olympics Challenge

Challenge: Fan Fiction Summer Olympics
Featured Character: Ahsoka Tano
Timeframe: Before ANH (SW Rebels), Before the Saga
Genres: Action, Adventure

Leaving Malachor
110 Word Hurdle (without mentioning name of character)

"You again," she greeted the bird at the bottom of the stairs. "Still rescuing me?" It chirped its confirmation and twitched its prehensile tail.

"Afraid I'm not much of a playmate, right now." She gripped her wounded side and limped down to the water's edge. "Happen to know a way off this rock?"

It flapped its green-and-white wings and swooped off into the cavern. She waded in and followed. Around her, the water seemed to glow. Or maybe it was just in her mind, but the pain of her wounds receded like the tide.

Ahead, the convor disappeared up another flight of stairs.

"That's two I owe you, little friend."

 

Ooooh! Nice start and welcome to the boards. I loved the imagery of this.

 

Great debut The convor indeed proved to be a rescuer and a guide.

 

Great start and welcome to the boards! Cute and helpful convor Love how in a few sentences, so much imagery is conveyed! Looking forward to more.

 

Welcome to the JCF!!

What a great story!

This part in part in particular was beautiful! I really felt it!

Great job!

 

Skywalkers
400 Word Cross Country

The loth-wolves danced and Ahsoka stepped between the stars. She walked out of solid rock, as if crossing into the next room, and found herself on what must have been Lothal. One of those strange, oblong rock formations loomed behind her, but a forest stood where there should have been grassy plains.

A golden mural emblazoned the stone a few meters away from... the portal was gone! Even as she watched, the loth-wolves marched back to the mural and took their place at the feet of a dark figure with red eyes. Two others completed the scene: a beautiful, young woman with flowing hair and the stern, bearded father who stood between them.

"Greetings, Skywalker." A monk in white robes knelt before the mural, ticking off a string of prayer beads with one hand.

"What did you just say?" Ahsoka gasped, not sure which part of this whole thing was more startling.

He pulled his hood back and regarded her, paying particular attention to the lightsabers on her belt. He was older, hair and beard gone gray long ago, but his honey-colored skin harbored few wrinkles.

He smiled disarmingly. "I welcomed you to my little corner of the pilgrim trail. From where do you hail?"

His accent was musical, but thick and wholly unfamiliar to Ahsoka. She strained to understand him. "I was just on Malachor."

"Beautiful place," he nodded as if conceding a point. "I'm afraid you won't find the same pedigree of accommodations here. Lotha's Rest is a bit more... rustic, but she does have her charms. How long will you be staying?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "What did you call me, before?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the monk sputtered. "You came through the portal, so I just assumed. Well, you're welcome all the same. Come, sit."

A convor flew past the mural -- green and white, just like the one depicted on the female figure's shoulder -- and lighted upon a branch above the stranger. Ahoka took the hint and kneeled beside him.

"Do you know them," she asked, indicating the mural.

"I like to think I do," he smirked.

"Who are they?" This time, he looked at her like she had a hole in her head.

"They're the Makers, of course. They created the pilgrim trail, bridged the stars and seeded them with life. Where did you say you were from?"

"Far, far away, I'm beginning to think."

 

Hi and welcome to the boards!

I'm really enjoying the otherworldly, mythic feel to Ahsoka's journey here with all the references to Mortis and the traveling through time/space/reality/whatever it is. It's a side to her character and story that is less explained, and it's really interesting as a focus for these last two stories.

This was such lovely imagery, and there's an intriguing resemblance to some beings Ahsoka has (probably, depending on what time we're in) met before. Also I always enjoy a picture that moves, or otherwise isn't only a picture in some way.

 

Fascinating encounter

 

Thanks, everyone Rebels really reignited by interest in SW, a few years ago. I also love time travel stories, so a Jedi spirit journey across time and space... I couldn't resist. I based these first two on a series of cards created by Dave Filoni a few years back... https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/201...e-filonis-plan-has-rewarded-our-patience.html. Plus, so stray thoughts on what "Skywalker" really means in the SW universe, from the lead up to the last movie.

 

A Circle Has No Sides
Prime Time Coverage, 1285 words

Those monsters had been hounding her for days. Sith, but there were so many of them! They'd overrun the temple, maybe the entire planet, and razed it to the ground. Ahsoka couldn't help thinking of Coruscant after Order 66. She hadn't seen the carnage for herself, but she imagined it was much like this. A single battle playing out across space and time.

Why the convor had brought her here, she could only guess. If it was to learn a lesson, it seemed pretty remedial. It certainly wasn't to change anything. Traveling through time meant seeing events out of order, from a different point of view, but history only happens one way... as The Force wills it.

When she'd arrived, stepped right through one of the few still-standing walls of a ruined temple, the floor was already littered with bodies. The sky burned darkly above, as if during an eclipse, providing just enough light to murder by. Young Sith warriors, their yellow eyes aflame, stalked amongst the dead. They severed heads and impaled hearts with their strange, bulky lightsabers. It all seemed so primitive.

Ahsoka had turned around -- to search the blank wall for a portal she knew would only reopen when it was damn well ready -- when a bellowing war cry shattered the night. A warrior in colorless robes descended upon the Sith like a shooting star. When she hit the cobblestones, a wave of concussive energy burst from the bottom of her long, slender staff and sent her enemies flying. She howled, dark tears streaking her face, as she disabled them one by one. She took them apart, staff blurring as it broke weapons and armor, swept legs and dislocated limbs, causing pain but never death.

It was an astounding display of power and control, but it was also a trap. The young Sith had been the bait and now their elders emerged from the shadows, baying and snarling without restraint. Somehow, the warrior sent The Force through her staff and protected it from her enemies' lightsabers. White light flashed whenever the weapons met.

Ahsoka had never seen anything like it, but it wasn't enough. The Sith were about to overwhelm her.

So she ignited her lightsabers and joined the fray, sliding on her shins between two Sith and severing their legs at the knees. She knocked away several slashes as she regained her feet, now back-to-back with the mysterious warrior, who regarded Ahsoka with obvious suspicion... but was in no position to refuse aid.

Together, they pushed back the rabid mob, but not without cost. As they retreated, the Sith pulled more of the temple down on top of them. Ahsoka and her ally dropped their weapons and thickened The Force around them, creating a bubble, but their enemies also collapsed the floor! They tumbled into a cellar and rubble crashed down atop of them.

When the dust cleared, Ahsoka discovered that the warrior had shielded her with her body. Several stone shards protruded from her back and legs. "At least I saved one," she smiled before passing out.

That night, Ahsoka built a small fire in the crook of a gnarled, ancient tree and treated the other woman's wounds as best she could. She was getting used to fighting for lost causes.

The sun had set long before, but never emerged from behind whatever was blocking it. Ahsoka had started to think it was more a metaphor than an astronomical event. Was she even in the same universe anymore! Or was this some kind of hell dimension for failed Jedi?

"You wield their weapons." The warrior's voice was so weak the wind almost stole away with it. Ahsoka followed her gaze to her lightsabers, sleek and compact compared to what the Sith had been using.

"These are the weapons of a Jedi," Ahsoka had started to explain, but the other woman nearly laughed herself to death.

"Then we are already lost."

"I don't understand," Ahsoka had pleaded, more desperately than she'd intended. "What happened here?"

The warrior had coughed dryly and Ahsoka handed her some water. She'd only taken enough to wet her lips. "We took up arms to defeat the barbarians... and we became barbarians ourselves," she'd confessed ruefully. "We turned The Force against itself."

Sometime in the night, she'd passed on. Ahsoka had fallen asleep, exhausted from her journeys. When she awoke, she was looking right through the white loop at the top of the warrior's staff. It had been laid in front of her like an orphan child. In that liminal space between waking and sleeping, it had seemed profound. A circle has no sides.

She'd buried the warrior in the crook of that tree, piled enough rocks over her body to deter scavengers (or so she'd hoped). She considered using the staff as a grave marker, but the warrior had made her wishes clear. Instead, she took it with her up the mountain.

The climb had taken a couple of days, during which she'd thought she'd lost her pursuers. The terrain was challenging: thick brambles and sheer cliffs, wind that cut her fingers to the bone. She was looking for signs of a settlement or a spaceport, even a Sith ship she could steal, but there was only amber forest as far as she could see.

And then she spotted the search party. They'd tracked her, after all, a pack of Sith soldiers charging up the trail behind her. She'd been careful not to leave tracks; maybe they could sense her through The Force? She wondered if being out of her own time made such things harder or easier.

Easier, it would seem.

She decided to set a trap of her own. She'd been practicing with the white staff, learning how to channel The Force through it like a kyber crystal. By the time the Sith dogs reached the summit, and fanned out around her, the staff's aura was bright and clear.

Ahsoka brought it down on the steeply tilted shale as if striking an anvil. Layers of stone split and sheared away from those below, began sliding down the hill like water over a fall. Ahsoka butterfly kicked up and back, landing on the still solid ground.

The Sith, however, tumbled down the mountain. Even plunging their lightsabers into the rock wasn't enough to save them. Only one managed to run along the spilling stones and reclaim the summit, roaring his rage.

Instinctively, Ahsoka's hands went to her weapons, but another impulse overcame her. She was inspired. The Force pulsed through the staff, all but wielding itself as it deflected one savage swing after another. Even so, the Sith's onslaught pushed her to the cliff's edge.

Stop playing defense! she thought. To the staff or herself, she didn't know.

The staff slipped behind the Sith's ankle and swept his leg out from under him. He cartwheeled away, swinging his blade in a wide arc to open space between them, but Ahsoka was not pressing forward.

Instead, she held the staff high. A point of light appeared inside the loop at its top, flared like a sunrise, and flashed bright enough to sear the Sith's retinas. Momentarily blinded, he was easy pickings.

Ahsoka knocked the lightsaber from his hand, extinguishing the blade, and jabbed him hard in the chest. A pulse of energy launched him into the air and off the peak, down the mountainside to join his brothers.

Wasting no time, Ahsoka started down the opposite face... where a familiar convor was waiting. It was perched in a tree down the trail, in the direction of the ruined temple and its portal.

"If you insist," she told her enigmatic friend," but the staff comes with us."

 

Riveting action

 

That was really cool and very intense. Love the different universes and how a decision of a point in time changes everything.

 

Thank you both for the comments. I really enjoy writing action. This was, if anything, a little restrained.

That's it for my triathlon entry, but here's a bonus Single-Sentence Shotput...
His apprentice lived, but not for lack of trying.

 

I find this idea of time travel and a Force "spiritual journey" intriguing. And it seems as though Ahsoka has her own Spirit Guide. Will this become an ongoing series of stories outside of this triathlon?

 

I've got two other ideas, using original characters, that I'd like to get to first... but I _have_ basically reinvented the premise of Quantum Leap, here. Honestly, this is something I desperately want to see in the Ahsoka series, woven into the story of her and Sabine's search for Ezra. So maybe, unless Dave Filoni gets to it first.

 

Ha! I could think of a number of apprentices to which that would apply. Seems that you should really become a Jedi because you managed to make it to your early twenties and didn't die or didn't give yourself a major and irreversible injury.

 

I really enjoyed this triathlon! I'm not super-familiar with Ahsoka's story or Rebels but I love mystical journeys and time travel. And you also write amazing action scenes!

I love this sentence.

Love how the convor is Ahsoka's companion/guide in all three of these pieces, as well.

Excellent work on these, and hope to see more of your writing!

 

I love that the convor is Ahsoka's guide through her travels. Very well written. Loved the action. Very well done, and welcome to the boards!