Battle for Earth - REWRITE(A Star Wars Rebels Story)

Reliving the Past

 The ground was surrounded by bright yellow, but the sky was a dark purple. The air was hot, but her veins ran cold. Her brain was running thousands of lengths per minute, but the world around her was sluggish and murky.

Athena paused in confusion as she stood in the center of the arena. Children with mean scowls surrounding her. The dark gymnasium's windows pouring in the bright yellow light from outside. Dark purple skies swirled with slowly growing intensity above.

Her breath hitched in her throat as she looked in front of her. The teenage girl called Venom standing there - her red blade out and ready to swing.

She thought she'd escaped this hell hole. She thought she'd escaped the torture. The brutality of it all.

Only for it to begin all over again.

Every day she had lived in that Citadel was on replay. And she was helpless to stop it. She couldn't stop her hands from crushing the windpipe of one of her classmates. Her feet from kicking a prisoner to a breaking-point.

She couldn't even turn her eyes in a different direction as she had to watch one of the five-year olds be executed by Vader during class time.

All she could do was relive every detail down to the most minute yet excruciating moments.

She was a prisoner to her own memories.

Her cries were the same as she was once again subjected to Fifth Brother's, Seventh Sister's, and Vader's torture sessions. Nothing would change. Nothing could.

She'd experienced yet another month pass by in that Citadel.

Again did Vader crush her throat as he told her he was off to kill Ahsoka. Again did he drag her down those halls and throw her into the belly of the beast. Into the circle of trainees.

Athena shakily breathed as she curled up on the metal ground. This was the first time she hadn't recognized a memory in Lola Sayu. For the first time, she could move to her own command.

But, she left her flesh as she did so. Like a soul being removed from the body, she floated out of the flesh prison she'd been trapped in for a month now. The phantom of the girl floated just beyond where her flesh lay on the ground.

A shiver ran through the girl's soul as she realized that this must have been the one blank memory she had always dreaded. Her last moments on Lola Sayu.

Then the slaughter began.

Athena wanted to turn away, to remove herself from the atrocities she saw. But she couldn't. Her body was still on the ground, surrounded by an indescribable and potent energy. A blinding black and white light flashing from her hair and eyes.

She wanted to get out of this memory, but she was forced to listen. Listen to the children who begged for their lives. The children who died brutal deaths.

The children begged for mercy as they were consumed by the turbulent lava as it splashed against and into the building. The floor melted away and their bodies plummeted into the molten lake below. The children who howled in pain as their eyes looked into the blinding light emitting from the girl - their skulls burning with pain as their eyes disintegrated into nothing. They died slowly. The ones who tried to avenge their classmates were struck down by the lightning from above. The massive building above them ripping apart for the heavens to open up their blundering and brutal attacks.

The ones who were too scared to even move were encapsulated in a brutally cold ice. Some of them cracked in a brittle break as the cold seeped far into their bones.

The worst was when they cried out for their parents. When they cried out for someone to help them against the monster in front of them.

The monster who didn't even have to stand in order to slaughter them all. The monster whose cries of hurt and rage were enough to bring new cracks to a broken planet and bring unsurvivable storms upon them from the skies.