And so, it begins. The arc that will last for several chapters. Of course, I can't reveal the name of it yet so you guys don't get a hint as to what is going down. All I'll say is that... it's going to be big. And wild.

Also, congratulations to:

🥳 @BlackCat2907 🥳

I've decided to go with her amazing OC entry!

Also, if you guys have noticed yet, I made a couple minor changes to the cover. I think I like it a bit better now.

"Hello Masters," Ahsoka greeted as she walked into the Council room. Now that her week off had expired, it was time for her to jump back into action. Apparently, according to a little birdie, they did indeed have a mission for the master and padawan.

    "Pleasant, your week as been, hmm?" Yoda asked with a small chuckle.

    "Very much so," Ahsoka replied, though that was quite the opposite. Despite the fact that she was supposed to be resting, she had spent the last few days studying the contingency orders and trying to see if she could dig up any more dirt on Palpatine. Of course, she had indeed discovered that Order 66 had been what she saw in her dreams, but the Togruta had little success figuring anything else out. It would just have to wait until after whatever mission she was being assigned to.

    "Good, that is," Yoda remarked, then set his tone to something more serious, "Mission, we have for you and young Skywalker. Invaded, planet Lothal has been. Conquer Separatist forces, the 501st will."

    "What do you believe made the Separatist forces invade that planet? There's nothing there for them," Ahsoka asked, slightly baffled. For how far along in the war they were in, she thought that the Separatists would be trying to play bigger cards.

    "Unexplained, their reasoning can be sometimes. In time, find out we will. Go, you must quickly," Yoda replied, trying his best to make Ahsoka see that this was indeed a time sensitive subject.

    "I'll get Master Skywalker and the 501st together. Thank you for assigning me to this mission, masters," Ahsoka said with a bow. Of course, she didn't like seeing more bloodshed, but it was still nice to know that they thought of her to assign the mission to. She guessed that over the past couple of years, the 501st had made a name for themselves with all of their wins and minimal casualties.

    Ahsoka stayed true to her word and practically dragged Anakin out of their sleeping quarters. For some *unexplainable* reason, he had stayed up incredibly late the night before and hadn't returned until well past midnight. Therefore, he had been napping most of the afternoon and was a big pain in the butt to wake up.

    "Anakin!" Ahsoka snapped as she saw him lean up against a frigate in the hanger and close his eyes, "We're trying to brief the clones on the mission, not have a sleepover!"

    "I don't know anything about the mission," Anakin mumbled back, his words slurred from lack of sleep and only half-coherent, "you go ahead and take the honors. It'll be a great experience for you."

    Ahsoka wanted to slap him silly, but she had a good idea about why he was up so late the night before. If it made him happy, then she would try her best to be a good sister and cover for him.

    "Alright boys," Ahsoka called out, bringing the clones attention to her, "we're heading out to Lothal to level out some Seps. We can talk about strategizing a little more when we get there. All clear?"

    The clones all nodded, and Ahsoka turned to Rex, who was standing somewhat by her side, "Captain, would you mind rallying everyone up and on the frigate? I've got a sleeping master to take care of."

    "I'm not sleeping," a groggy voice from behind them fired defensively, but Ahsoka and Rex only rolled their eyes.

    "You got it Commander."

    So, after some struggling to wake Anakin up enough to get him on the ship and to a cot of some sort, Ahsoka went to the control room to aid a few clone pilots in their journey to the grassy planet. However, before they took off, someone burst into the room.

    "I'm looking for Commander Tano?" The woman asked breathlessly. Ahsoka turned to see a human, looking to be around 20 or so, standing in the door way.

    "That would be me," Ahsoka answered cautiously, "and you are?"

    The woman walked up and offered her hand, "I'm Kayla Croslea, a Jedi Knight and Force Healer that was assigned to the 501st. I'm here for extra support, but mostly to aid CT-6116."

    Ahsoka took a moment to think before replying, "Oh! You mean Kix. Well, welcome to the team, Knight Creslea."

    "It's okay, you can just call me Kayla," she trailed off to look through the window of the frigate, "woah, it looks so cool from in here."

    Ahsoka turned to see what she was talking about. The Force Healer was right, a beautiful view of Coruscant was displayed through the front window. It was indeed, very jaw-dropping. However, instead of staring at the planet-wide city, Ahsoka turned her gaze towards the woman. Kayla had emerald green eyes and wore her long, copper brown hair in a ponytail. She used purple hair tie to keep her hair up, which perfectly matched the color of her black and purple Mandalorian armor. This slightly surprised Ahsoka, given that there hadn't been a Mandalorian Jedi in quite a while. She checked the girl's belt just in case, and there were indeed two lightsabers there, as well as twin DC-17 blasters. Ahsoka looked up to Kayla's helmet, which was tucked between her arm and her side, and three white scratches that ran along the side.

    "They're in honor of my father," Kayla said suddenly, causing Ahsoka to jump and look up to her in confusion, "the scratches. He was killed by mythosaur in the mountains of Mandalore. I kinda look up to him, you know?"   

    Ahsoka only nodded. She wasn't sure whether to sympathize for Kayla's father or praise her for being so determined, so she just kept her mouth shut. The woman had seemed nice enough, so she didn't want to do anything to offend her.

    "So," Kayla piped up cheerfully, "what's Lothal like? I haven't been before."

    "I don't know," Ahsoka admitted, "I haven't been there before. I've heard it's really pretty and has lots of lakes and grass, though."

    "Well, I suppose it's something for both of us to look forward to," Kayla said wistfully. They both fell into a comfortable silence and redirected their gaze to the windows, which showed the beautiful white, blue, and tan-ish streaks of hyperspace.

            ±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-±-

    "This is too easy," Ahsoka laughed as she sliced through 10 droids simutaneiously, then landed in a battle-ready stance and lunged forward, taking out several more droids. On top of that, the legion of clones behind her always had her back. Droid sneak up on her? No problem. The clones had it covered.

    Seeing that there wasn't really and land features to aid them in strategizing, the 501st had done what they do best: fight. So, here they were, on a full-fledged battle between the ever-dwindling Separatist legions. There had been minimal numbers of robots to start with, and then on top of that they seemed to have older, slower programmed thinking. Therefore, wiping them out had been no problem at all. If Ahsoka was being completely honest, she really thought that the locals could have easily rid themselves of the stupid hunks of metal on their own. However, since they were a Republican planet, the military was more than obliged to aid them in the planet's liberation.

    "Don't jinx us," Anakin yelled back, though they both know that there was nothing that could jinx them now. The Jedi Knight swiftly sliced off a droid's head, dodged a bullet, spun to the side and deflected a shot right back into the droid that shot it, and finished off the maneuver with cleaning cutting through several super droid's abdomens. While he hadn't even disabled half the droids Ahsoka had in the same amount of time, his moves were so fluid and beautiful that it didn't even matter. Each twist and turn practically melted into each other.

    Ahsoka took it upon herself to fall from the offensive and switch to a more defensive role. Now, she was deflecting as many possible blaster bolts from the clone troopers as she could. Sure, it was tiring, but it was also well worth it. Besides, it did feel good to work herself and give her muscles something to ache for.

    A couple droidekas rolled up and began firing at the clones. This angered Ahsoka a lot, given that the clones didn't have the opportunity of rolling a grenade into their shields since they were busy just trying to find cover.

    "You're gonna regret that," Ahsoka growled as she demised a plan. Finally, she settled on bounding forward as quickly as she could, initiating in a huge flip over them, and slipping her hands into their shields as she landed behind them. Once she was in, she activated her lightsabers and ran the annoying droids through. I won, Ahsoka thought triumphantly as she proudly surveyed her work. A B1 thought that it was going to be smart to try and fire at the Jedi while she was unsuspecting, but he ended up managing to receive an unpleasant surprise as she casually moved her lightsaber behind her back and blindly deflected the shot right back to him.

    "You thought," Ahsoka smirked, turning to face a wave of droids that had approached her. Deciding that she was bored of using her laser weapons, she decided to clip her shoto to her belt so she could free on of her hands. She could almost see the dismayed look on their faces as Ahsoka raised up her palm to send the group of metal piles flying backwards. They landed with a satisfying thump, which resulted Ahsoka to let a smile play on her lips as she spun to face more droids. However, slightly to her disappoint, she realized that the last few Separatist droids were currently being taken down by Kayla. The Mandalorian had a firm scowl set on her face as she furiously swiping at the robots. It didn't take long for Ahsoka to realize that the droids had made the mistake of trying to go after the downed clones that Kayla had been healing at the moment.They didn't get too much time to regret their decision though, given that within a matter of seconds they were chopped up so much you would've thought that they were just spare parts. Of course, it was clear that healing was her strongest ability, Ahsoka was still quite impressed by her skills with wielding her two lightsabers; one orange, and one purple.

    "I think we're done here," Ahsoka commented as she looked out at the field, relishing in the sight of piles of the destroyed machines. Not a single droid was left alive, but then again, were they really even alive in the first place?

    Anakin and Kayla nodded in response, then the three began to round up all of the 501st soldiers. After a quick headcount, they were satisfied with the fact that there had been very minimal losses. Between Ahsoka and Anakin's defensive tactics with deflecting bullets and Kayla's Force-healing abilities, it was indeed hard for a clone to manage to get himself killed.

    "It's getting late, so I think we should set up camp for the night," Ahsoka pointed out before continuing, "after that, we can lead a few squadrons into the capitol and smoke out the rest of the Separatists. Does that sound fine to you guys?"

    "Sounds good to me," Anakin replied with an indifferent shrug. Kayla's response had been pretty much the same, so the three led the legion into a wooded area and got everything situated for the night. While it had been weird to have three Jedi in a legion and not follow the master and padawan rule, Ahsoka did admit to herself that it was nice to have another female fighting alongside her. Even if she didn't participate too much in the actual battle and much rather preferred to spend her time healing troopers, Ahsoka did indeed take a liking to the brunette. The Togruta had a good feeling that they would be getting along quite well in the future.

    "Hey Kayla," Ahsoka greeted as she entered the tent that the two would be sharing, "whatcha up to?"

    The Mandalorian looked up from the holopad she was reading off of to flash Ahsoka a smile, "Have you ever heard of the Gray Jedi?"

    Ahsoka immediately froze as soon as those words slipped out of Kayla's mouth, but the Togruta had to force herself to relax. Otherwise, she knew that Force healer would catch on that something was wrong. "I don't think so. What are they?"

    "Well, I picked up these old files some abandoned place, so I don't really know if any of this is actually true or not. Apparently they were some group that was like the Jedi and the Sith, just different beliefs or something. Then after working to maintain balance and peace in the galaxy, they died out for some random cause. That part of the file was deleted. I wonder why..."

    "It's probably just some old tale," Ahsoka assured her. However, on the inside, she was spinning. So there were files on the Gray Jedi? Obviously someone had gotten to them previously, given that the information was wiped out. It wouldn't surprise Ahsoka if it had been the Jedi themselves, since they didn't want anyone to find out about their major screw up.

    "Are you okay Ahsoka?" Kayla asked as she powered off the device she was using and set it down.

    "Yeah," Ahsoka replied, quick to dismiss her concerns, "just tired, that's all. After a long day of excitement like that, a girl's gotta get some rest."

    "You call that excitement?" Kayla questioned with her face scrunched in disgust, "I wouldn't go there. Dying clones is not at all exciting."

    "I agree," Ahsoka admitted as she slipped into her cot, "I wasn't being serious."

    "Alright then," Kayla said, reaching for the light that they had previously been using to illuminate their tent, "good night I suppose?"

    "Good night."

       Anakin had been the first to find out. His eyes flew open as he felt the energy signature suddenly send out a wave of alarm in the Force. Then, without further warning, the Jedi Knight could feel its presence get further and further away.

        "Ahsoka," he gasped as he quickly hoisted himself up and threw off his covers. He attempted to bound out of the tent, but was paused by a disgruntled clone captain that he had been sharing the shelter with.

        "General? Is everything alright?"  

        "I don't know," Anakin frantically admitted, "stay here and keep a lookout. I'll be right back." With that, he ran out of his tent and towards the one that Ahsoka and Kayla were sharing. He burst in and glanced around, but found that they only person in there was an arousing Force Healer.

    "Where is she?" Anakin demanded, trying his best to keep his voice soft. He knew that she wasn't responsible, but he needed someone to vent to.

    "I thought you would know," Kayla replied back, scrambling out of bed and looking around.

    "Why would I know? It's not like we go droid-hunting in the dead of night!"

    "Could've fooled me," Kayla mumbled as she slipped on her boots, "well what are you waiting for? We have a commander we need to find!"

    Anakin nodded and followed the other Jedi Knight out of the tent. Together, they followed the ripples in the Force down a few winding paths. They ran right through brush, tall grasses, and watery swamps, but neither cared. All they knew was that someone very important to them was missing and most likely not okay.

    "She's this way!" Anakin exclaimed, pointing to the left and dashing into the thicket. To be quite honest, Kayla was apprehensive about entering the wooded area, but she followed him nonetheless. To both of their surprise, the trees soon gave way to a clearing.

    "Oh no," Kayla whispered in fear as she watched what was playing out before her eyes. There was a very distinct Separatist shuttle in the middle of the clearing, and walking into the ship was none other than the infamous Count Dooku.

    "What's he doing he-" Anakin was asking, but his voice tripped as he realized what the man was holding in his arms.

    An unconscious Ahsoka.

    "We need to get her off of there!" Kayla was panicking as she watched the ship's hatch close. However, before they could even make their way out of the hiding spot, the ship took off.

    "NO!!!!" Anakin yelled, jumping out of the trees and running towards the rising ship, "No, no, no! You've already done it once, you're not taking her from me again!"
     Although both the Jedi Knights knew that all he could do was slump down to the ground and break down. There was no stopping the Count now, he had already exited the atmosphere and was preparing to travel to Force knows where. Altogether, Anakin just felt completely hopeless. How had he managed to get his padawan separated from him, AGAIN?

    "Anakin," Kayla said softly, "you have to calm down. No amount of yelling is going to get her to come back. I think we should talk to the Council."

        "Ugh..." Ahsoka moaned as she reached up to rub her throbbing head. Actually, is she was being honest, everything throbbed. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have an infinite amount of arms like Grievous did to rub all the places where she aches. "Where... am I?"

         The pungent smell of ash and burning ground suddenly assaulted Ahsoka's nose as she used her different senses to study her surrounding. There was only one place that had smelled as awful as this before, and that planet was Mustafar. Now, was that the planet she was currently on? She did not know. Another thing she did not know is how in the Force she got here is the first place.

           "Hello?" Ahsoka called out, studying the room she was in. It wasn't awful, is she was being true. Sure, the walls, floor, and ceiling was made out of metal that wasn't pretty, but it had a bed, desk, chair, and small barred window. Ahsoka would've thought that she was in a cell, given the circumstances, but this did not seem like a jail. Shoot, she didn't even have cuffs on.

           "Greetings, young one. Welcome to our, humble abode," a voice cackled from behind her. She spun around to face the stranger, only to find herself in the face of one of the people she hated the most.

    "Dooku," Ahsoka spat, "what do you want?"

     The Count cackled maliciously before replying, "You will see soon. Very soon."

    "I mean, for the love of Force, why don't you just kill me or something? You stupid Sith always draw out execution, and then we always manage to get away," Ahsoka asked, her tone implying that he was indeed dumb.

    "Have you ever considered the idea that we don't want you dead?" Dooku snapped, walking up to Ahsoka. Seeing the angry look on his face, she backed up as quickly as she could. However, she soon found herself with her back against a wall and Dooku inches away from decapitating her.

    "We?" Ahsoka cautiously asked, "Who is we?"

    "My master," Dooku chuckled, "my master wants you very much alive."

    Ahsoka wanted to scream bloody hell and declare that she knew exactly who his master was, but she forced herself to be quiet. If they found out that she knew everything, she would be dead meat.

    "May I ask as to why?"

    "You know exactly why, Gray Jedi," the Count hissed, making Ahsoka flinch. Great. So they knew. However, that still didn't solve her issue.

    "No, I actually don't."

    Dooku rolled her eyes before grunting in exasperation, "Are all Jedi this stupid? Actually, never mind. I know the answer to that question."

    "Well, you aren't lying," Ahsoka admitted, earning a confused glance from Dooku.

    "But you're a Jedi..."

    "So? Just because I'm on someone's side doesn't mean I worship them. I mean, take Master Windu for example. He has the IQ of a snail, and that's being generous."

    Dooku just sat there, baffled. Maybe his job of turning Ahsoka to the Dark Side would prove easier than he thought it would be. "Well... since we know of your powers, my master has demanded that you are turned to our side."

    Ahsoka sat for a moment, pretended to think, then said, "Yeah, no. That's not gonna happen buddy."

    "You'll think twice whenever you meet the wrath of the Sith," Dooku growled, inching towards Ahsoka to make her scared. All he received was Ahsoka's eyes rolling and an unimpressed look.

    "Are all villains this generic? I mean seriously, can you not find something better to say? You sound like an upset toddler that ate too much chocolate and is constipated," Ahsoka grunted.

    "You won't find yourself so funny when you fall to the Dark Side," Dooku boasted, but this too did little to affect the Togruta.

    "See? There you go again! Gosh, no wonder you don't have a padawan. Nobody could stand you long enough."

    "Silence!" The Count demanded. Ahsoka only obliged because she really didn't want to make her captor too angry. "I won't be without an apprentice for long. My master has decided that I will take you on."

    "And if I don't agree?"

    "Oh you will," Dooku laughed, turning and walking away from her, "and it will all be your doing."

Hehe...

(By the way, that is nervous laughing. VERY nervous laughing.)