ɪᴛ's ᴏᴋᴀʏ... [ᴇɴɢʟɪsʜ ✓]

01. Tscheilash

Without a word to Rex, Ahsoka rushed into the gunship, which left the hangar seconds later and flew through the already escalating battle.

"Good luck, Snips!" she heard her Master say through the comlink, then his yellow-trimmed fighter flew past them towards the advancing droids.

Ahsoka could sense his enthusiasm, he simply loved flying and was appropriately good at it. But her attempt to distract herself from the queasy feeling she had felt since she had been assigned to accompany Master Windu to Tscheilash failed.

Luckily for her, she was not in a spaceship with the dark-skinned Jedi Master, or he would have sensed her apprehension.

And yes, she was afraid. Not for herself, no, for the lives of her friends, her brothers, and even, even if she couldn't stand him, yes, even for Master Windu.

"There is no such thing as luck"

Master Kenobi's words echoed through her thoughts as a jolt went through the ship.

If there was no such thing as luck, it couldn't help her, could it? Yet she had been clinging to his statement since Anakin's words, trying to have something to look forward to this mission with confidence.

But no matter what she told herself, the unsettling feeling of imminent loss remained. And she knew there was probably nothing she could do about losing someone today. She was just afraid of who.

The noise of the glowing shots bouncing off the squadron's meagre shields only rushed past Ahsoka dully in the background.

How she hated this ignorance. When she couldn't control her emotions.

But she had to. Master Windu would give her a telling off and possibly even drag her before the Council, and she didn't want that.

She loathed standing in this room and feeling the eyes of all the Jedi Masters on her.

Soon the ship the young Togruta was in entered the planet's atmosphere.

For a short moment the fire around her went out, but already more Seperatist projectiles took aim at her.

The shields, which had opened briefly, were closed again as the pilots skillfully tried to bring the clones and Jedi to the rocky surface of Tscheilash in one piece.

The sand between the reddish plates swirled aside in a cloud of dust as the first ships landed.

No sooner had Rex, Fives and the others charged into the fray than Ahsoka picked up her lightsabers and stepped into the glare of blinding sunlight filtered through several pale grey clouds.

Hesitating for another moment, the Togruta let a few men run past her, then followed the clones until she met Mace.

"Padawan, stay in the background! I don't want to have to pick up your parts," he ordered her snidely.

Wonderful, he thought she was defenceless right from the start. "I can take care of myself very well!", she hissed in such a way that hopefully he hadn't heard.

She flinched when she felt his gaze on her, but when Ahsoka looked to him, his gaze was focused on the enemy.

So she did the same. The blade of her sword blurred with the quick movements the young Padawan made, deflecting a shot at a droid each time.

The tanks dropped by some transport ships formed a kind of protective wall on the side of the attackers.

Soon not only droids could be seen, but enemy tanks were rolling out of the canyon, which was no longer far away.

"Master, what's the plan?", Ahsoka shouted across the battlefield.

She had an idea, of course, and if she had been travelling with Anakin, she wouldn't have even needed to ask but he would have listened to her idea before the mission.

But this time she had only been informed a few minutes before setting off that she was to help Master Windu on Tscheilash instead of fighting the battle in the weightless with her Master.

***

For a second, the tiny shift in the force brought Anakin out of concentration, but even so, the fighters in front of him went up in smoke.

It had happened too fast to make out what that pulse of weakness meant. And then it came again, only longer and more intense.

First the force of a presence swelled, but quickly fell back and rapidly diminished in strength. Anakin couldn't make out whose presence it was, he was too focused on the battle for that.

It could have been anyone, even a simple clone he didn't know. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it had faded away.

The young Jedi Master soon forgot, and no longer thought of the slight impulse that was yet to take on much meaning.