Jisa is experimenting with Gates. In secret, in one of the old Work Rooms, because no one in Haven is supposed to know she's a mage. Also because Vanyel would probably yell at her for what she wants to try. 

She doesn't even know what's going to happen (which is very exciting!!) as, instead of the normal sort of destination, she feeds the Gate-spell the blurry image of the moon close-up as seen through Kilchas' telescope, and a sense of distance, that direction, far far far– It probably won't work, you probably can't Gate that far, but she's figured out that she can do faster and less tiring Gates if she routes the search through the Elemental Plane of Fire and then the Plane of Water, probably something about the mage-energy density differential boosting the spell, Brightstar claims it makes sense but she doesn't really understand it.

- and it is hard, very hard, but then the Gate lands on something. She doesn't have as clear a usual a sense of 'where', and she can't actually see through it. 

If she asks her Companion about it then Enara is going to yell at her, so she doesn't, and just ducks across. 

Sweet Yoda's breakfast! It's a young girl–maybe a year or two younger than Ahsoka herself–and she doesn't look so hot.

Ahsoka's suspicion, caution, and concern battle briefly within her. Of course, concern wins outs. Besides, the girl is unarmed and...Ahsoka wouldn't say that she detected the Force in the girl, but she also wouldn't say that she didn't, yet overall she had a positive impression. She'll have to come back to that, but for now...

"Are you okay?"

Jisa has no idea what language the person is speaking! Also the person doesn't look human at all! She's not any other species that Jisa knows, though she has some colourations on her a bit like hertasi do.  

She sags to her knees, utterly exhausted and also - she can't feel Enara at all, or Treven. It's not even distance - this isn't the moon, anyway, she's indoors and the moon doesn't have any indoors - but distance would just pull on her mind-bonds and wherever she is now seems to cut them off entirely.

"Do you speak Valdemaran?" she says, breathlessly and without much hope. 

That's not Basic, or any other language Ahsoka could recall hearing. Her senses told her the girl wanted to establish communications, but little more than that. Very, very odd. How and why did someone who didn't speak Basic or another common tongue, or who was pretending not to, end up here?

They hadn't attacked yet, so probably it was safe to proceed as though she wasn't going to be attacked in the next few moments.

"DD, I need you,"  Ahsoka spoke to her comm. It wasn't the done thing, for some bizarre reason, yet nonetheless, Ahsoka had added a protocol module to her astromech. She was sure she was missing something – her best guess is astromechs and protocol droids were sold separately just to make more money.

DD rolled into the room, one wheel a little squeaky. "Could you say something again, please?" Ahsoka requested of the exhausted invader. "My droid can figure out your language." It was good to send the correct tones even if the words themselves wouldn't be understood.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand your language." Jisa speaks half a dozen languages, too, if you define 'speak' to include 'can muddle through a basic conversation', and this doesn't sound like any of them.

(Damn it she wants Treven here, she wants Enara...she wants her mother...)

She's almost too tired to Mindspeak at all, and trying it at someone un-Gifted is an additional level of difficulty, Van can do it no trouble but, as much as she hates to admit it, he's a stronger Mindspeaker as well as a stronger mage. The strange creature - person - isn't Gifted, but she does seem to have something, she doesn't feel like an un-Gifted mind either. 

:Hello?: Jisa tries. 

In a single blur of mental and physical motion, Ahoska pulled her mind in to herself / sent a blast of force energy outwards (not enough to harm most creatures, but enough to knock them off their feet) / and raised the blaster to point keenly at the being before her.

Her thoughts caught up with her actions. Something - probably this girl - had tried to enter her mind. Jedi might read the energy and feeling of those around them; Sith forcibly entered the minds of others, or so she had been taught long ago, back when she accepted teachings of the Jedi uncritically.

"I'm not going to assume that was a hideously hostile attack from you, but also I'm not going to assume it wasn't. Do not try that again." Ahsoka pushed all the meaning she could into her tone.

"DD, anything?"

"I'm sorry, Ahsoka, that language is not in my databanks. Beep boop beep."

Ow. Jisa's shields catch most of the blow and she's not on her feet to begin with, but she's still definitely not trying that again! 

She does try some more sentences, in all the languages she speaks - Rethwellani, Hardornen, the regional trade-tongue, Tayledras...

Ahsoka looks again at the mystery girl, still exhausted, yet not sent sprawling from Ahsoka's force push – more reason to think her not ordinary. Now the girls seems to be cycling through a number of languages, hoping to get a hit? Ahsoka looks to DD, but DD just holds up its two little arms in a robotic shrug.

Very, very weird. The girl trying further languages shifts Ahsoka's guess more towards this girl is not hostile, and that the knock on her mind was only a communication attempt. Shifts her guess. A bit.

Ahsoka lowers the blaster. Doesn't look like this is going anywhere fast. Ahsoka had been on a couple of expeditions to newly contacted worlds and had seen the droid-facilitated "training exercises" people of foreign tongues could use to learn each other's language. Slow yet usually effective. But this girl looks like she needs rest, maybe medical care, before anything else.

Ahsoka points at the girl. Then points at the corridor leading to the various rooms. Then makes "walking fingers" with her fingers.

Into her comm-link, she states quietly, "Tel, I've found a very strange visitor in our storage vault. Not obviously not a friendly. Can you search the scanners for a ship, and figure out how she got in without us noticing. I don't like it."

Tel is a bit taken aback by the message, and quietly embarrassed. Ahsoka wouldn't needle him about it, but his equipment should have picked up on anyone getting within a couple of parsecs of their location.

"Whoa. Yeah, I'm on it!"

Theoretically, he should be scared, and it's probably bad that he isn't, but Tel finds it hard to believe anything could best that teenage Jedi. Err, ex-Jedi?

The stranger's body language is less hostile. Somewhat less, anyway. That's a relief. Jisa nods at the mimed walking motion and, with some effort, hauls herself to her feet.

She really wishes she could Gate right home again but she has no idea where she is and she's too tired to make a mage-light right now, much less a Gate. 

Ahsoka directs the girl to the med-bay, more of a med-closet really. She points to the bed-bench.

"M8, sorry to wake you, diagnostic scan, please." The medical droid splutters. It was probably three times older than Ahsoka, rebuilt more than once, seen a few battles. Exile-fugitives didn't get to be picky with their equipment, not that new even meant better with droids. 

M8 waves its scanning appendages.

"No injuries to this lifeform. However, extreme fatigue. Rest advised."

"Also, I detect structures in this lifeform's brain not present in similar lifeforms. However, these appear to be healthy and not cause for concern."

Jisa has been trying not to stare too obviously at the stranger's weapon, it's not a sword and it's also not magical, she has no idea what it is or what it would do to her, although she's definitely not tempted to test it.

She is staring at the weird metal round thing that's rolling around on wheels and beeping. What is it? It moves it's alive but it's...not, or at least her mage-sight doesn't think so - but there's a mind there, kind of, her Thoughtsensing senses something but it's not at all coherent or legible, it doesn't look like anything more than noise, and the 'garden' her Mindhealing-Sight can sort of detect is almost unimaginably weird, and equally incomprehensible. 

The same is true of the new metal thing that's now waving metal arms over her head. Jisa ducks, unsure what's going on. 

Ashoka could go for some rest herself. “DD, bring something to eat for our, mmm, guest.”

Ahsoka waits until the droid rolls back with a ration bar and canister of water that it deposits next to the girl. 

“DD you’re on watch duty. She’s to stay here. If she does anything funny, let both me and Tel know.”

DD beeps in confirmation.

Ahsoka points at the girl, points at the medbay bench emphatically and with stern expression, then mimes going to sleep.

 She leaves and locks the door. The med-bay bed wasn’t the nicest quarters, but it was the only extra bed. Besides, from experience, Ahsoka knew that if you were tired enough, you could sleep anywhere.

If Gating home right this second were an option then Jisa would be doing it immediately, but she's far too drained, and - is starting to suspect she's a lot further from home than she intended. She gives the strange alien the best grateful smile she can manage, and tries to look around at the room she's in, but she's too tired to muster much curiosity. She does manage to gulp some of the water, and stares muzzily at the weird chalky-looking stick, unable to figure out what it's for. 

Oh well. The people here seem friendly enough, at least as long as she doesn't try Mindspeaking the stranger; have they never heard of Mindspeech here? 

She curls up on the offered bed and is asleep within thirty seconds. 

"Tel, you find anything?"

Tel leans over to the comm-link in his console.

"No...it's really bizarre. There's been no energy activity in the system for the last 30 days, not since those mining probes came by. Definitely nothing on our moon. The only thing I've got is any energy blip in the storage vault around when you found her. Who could put a ship down that quietly? She must have some crazy tech."

"If she does, she managed to hide it from M8 too. Scans didn't show anything, no blaster, sword, lightsaber – not even a comm-link."

"Though, there's something about her. Like she was connected to the Force, if the Force were the wrong flavor. She absorbed a force blast pretty easily. I wouldn't let her out of our sight for now."

"I'm confused, Tel. If she's here hurt to us, I don't think she's one of the enemies we know. Maybe we can cross the language barrier and get some answers. See you in the "morning".

This moon didn't have kind of cycle that had a "morning", but you had to live as though it did.

"So either she's got crazy tech or special powers. I'm up for being friends."

"I know, Tel. You don't stick around with me for my winning personality," she jived. He was cute sometimes, but not her type, fortunately– that'd complicate things.

Jisa, oblivious to their discussion, sleeps like a log for something like ten candlemarks if she had to guess - there are no candles in here, or any other indication of the time passing, the lights make her think of mage-lights but aren't magic at all. She wakes up ravenous. Enough to give the weird chalky stick a hopeful look; it doesn't look much like food, but the stranger gave it to her along with the water, so maybe it's what they eat here? 

She tries gnawing on it. 

"Good morning, sleepy." Ahsoka marches the girl toward their war room - not that they were at war, but she didn't really have another name for it.

She sits the girl down by the centre console. She hopes the girl is well-rested; she should be- the first time she'd checked in, the girl had still been asleep. By now it's mid-"morning." 

Ahsoka points to herself and says slowly. "Ah-so-ka." Then she points to Tel, sitting in the corner. "T-e-lll."

Tel waves. 

She points to DD and ennunciates "dee-dee", which gets a beep or two. Finally, she points to the girl herself. 

Ooh, they're doing names. "Jisa," Jisa says, enunciating it carefully. She looks around at the others, repeating each name while pointing. "Ahsoka. Tel. Dee-dee. Is that right?" They presumably won't understand her words but will hopefully get the gist that it's a question. 

Ahsoka smiles and says, "very good!" She presses a button and the holo-display comes to life. She chuckles in her own head. This is where the fun begins. 

The holo-display starts with easy things. Water. Trees. Planets. Each time, Ahsoka names them in Basic, then pauses, points to Jisa, indicating her turn. 

Wow! It's the best illusion Jisa has ever seen. Except for the confusing fact that she can't sense any magic at all from it.

She concentrates, though, and repeats the words after Ahsoka, using a touch of Mindhealing to cement their into her memory before adding the word in Valdemaran. She doesn't get what the weird floating ball against a backdrop of stars is, but she memorizes the syllables associated with it anyway, hopefully at some point she'll have enough vocabulary to ask. On her turn to give the Valdemaran word for it, all she can do is shrug and shake her head. 

During a brief pause, she points at the moving metal creature that has a mind but no life force, and makes a questioning face. 

Ahsoka smiles and says, "Droid," then after a moment, "a-stro-mech." 

Jisa repeats the words. It doesn't really answer her question, what is a 'droid', but realistically she won't be able to figure that out until she knows more words.

Chewing on how to ask for the word for 'life-force', she wonders if they have a word for magic. Making eye contact with Ahsoka, she cautiously raises her hand - she hasn't forgotten the strong reaction to Mindspeech - and makes a tiny mage-light in her palm.

"Magic," she says, and waits expectantly. 

Ahsoka jolts upright from her somewhat slouched position. That's new, she hasn’t seen that before. It doesn't seem like Dark Side energies; it just seems like the girl earnestly wants to exchange words for whatever this is. 

"Magic," Ahsoka repeats. 

Have they never seen mage-gift used? Jisa frowns, mulling on how to specify a question about what Ahsoka used to try to knock her back, when Jisa had the poor judgement to startle her with Mindspeech. If it wasn't magic, what was it? 

She meets Ahsoka's eyes again, points at her, then makes a shoving gesture with her hands, and a questioning face. 

Ahsoka gets the connection. Whatever the girl can do, it's something like her Force abilities. Ahsoka nods and then floats a cup into the air. "Force," she says. She causes the cup to rotate and bounce around. "Force." 

"Force," Jisa repeats after her, smiling, then adds the word in Valdemaran. "Fetching!" It hadn't quite clicked into place before, mostly because she had been too tired to think. Interesting, that they have Fetching here but don't seem to recognize mage-gift at all, and react so badly to Mindspeech. She wonders if it's like Lineas-Baires, where most Gifts are banned. 

Jisa is a fast learner, maybe faster than Ahsoka herself. Whenever the training program goes back to old words, no matter how long the interval has been, Jisa remembers even when Ahsoka struggles.

Several days pass. They make good progress on language learning but it seems likely to take a while longer; learning languages takes time. It interrupted Ahsoka's study- she's been trying to make up for her limited Jedi education, i.e, spending most of the last five years fighting on the frontlines of a galactic war. She has a lot to  catch up on: math, history, epistemology, ethics. Since leaving the Jedi, she’d realized there’s a lot more to know than combat, meditation, and starship repair.  

She's now hopeful to soon speak enough of Jisa's language to start getting some real answers. 

Jisa is already feeling much more able to communicate, but she doesn't have enough of the syntax or vocabulary for abstract concepts to get answers that actually clarify anything. She's able to ask where they are, but Ahsoka doesn't seem to recognize 'Valdemar' or the names of any of their neighbouring kingdoms, and Jisa still feels confused.

On the third day she feels rested enough to attempt a Gate back to Haven. Jisa feels some amount conflicted about this. On the one hand she desperately misses her lifebonded and Companion; on the other end she's discovered a fascinating distant other country and wants to learn everything she can, but if she checks in with the Heralds they'll quite possibly want to send someone who isn't lifebonded to the Kings' heir; on the other other hand, everyone must be worried sick about her disappearance and it would be irresponsible of her not to check in. 

She's a little more comfortable doing magic in front of Ahsoka, and has enough vocabulary to explain that she's attempting to go home- but - it just fails, the spell searches and searches and can't find the Heralds' temple, and she has to drop it. 

Jisa announces that she wants to go home, stands up, and walks towards the door. Ahsoka rises to stop her, or at least find out what she's going to try. She really doesn't know what Jisa will try to do. Tel's continued searching has found no ship or trace of a ship visiting, though increasingly Ahsoka suspected that Jisa doesn't actually know what a ship is.

Ahsoka's confused, Jisa keeps asking where they are– somehow she doesn't know despite being here, nor does she seem to understand "Outer Rim." [Ahsoka has put too much effort into security to be more specific.] This would make more sense if Jisa were from a primitive race, but how did she get here?

Ahsoka doesn't need to run after her. Jisa stops a few paces before the doorway. She seems to concentrate intensely...and fill the doorway with a white-bluish glowing "thing" like nothing Ahsoka has seen or read about. Ahsoka feels the power flowing from Jisa into it.

Ahsoka falls into a ready position. She is confident enough this isn't an attack, but she doesn't want to be caught unawares.

Jisa appears to be growing increasingly frustrated.

Jisa takes down her Gate and heads to sit down, slightly out of breath; she probably held it longer than she should have. 

"Cannot," she says flatly. She seems both upset and frustrated about it, and maybe a tiny bit relieved. 

Suddenly, Ahsoka has a very interesting guess about what's going on. She has seen something like that white-bluish glowing thing. Hyperspace.

It is crazy, but just maybe. Perhaps this strange girl's strange abilities went beyond conjuring lights and exceptional memory. Just maybe, she had the ability to directly move herself through hyperspace – even near massive bodies! Ahsoka had heard legends of gaint space creatures that could do this, though she'd thought those were more likely tales than reality. Could it be something people could do?

Poor Jisa, she looks so dejected. If she never meant to be here, if she never had any idea of where "here" is, hailed from a primitive, yet-to-be space faring culture that didn't even know the basic layout of the Galaxy...how could she be feeling if she's unable to get back, trapped in this alien place she can't even go outside?

Ahsoka walks over to Jisa and tentatively places a hand on her shoulder.

We'll get you home. She couldn't actually promise that.

Everything will be okay. No, she couldn't say that without being flexible on the meaning of "okay".

I'm going to really try to help you. True. She spoke the words in her very best attempt at Jisa's native tongue.

It seems like Ahsoka recognized the Gate? Maybe; she seems confused but intrigued. And she's definitely offering to help. Jisa nods, gratefully. "Thank you."  

She still doesn't understand why it didn't work. It wouldn't be all that surprising if it were just too far; she's gradually managed to pick up - with deepening awe - that the pictures of ball-things called 'planets' are, in fact, entire worlds. But in that case, how did she manage to Gate here in the first place? 

The thing Van would do, if he'd been experimenting with a spell and accidentally done something impossible he didn't understand even afterward, is go over exactly what he'd been trying to do, and start working out a theory. Jisa's magical education is less complete than she'd like, though, and it's uncomfortable to admit but she has very little idea of where to start. 

For the moment it seems like the best thing to do is keep learning the language, so she can communicate better with Ahsoka and her friends, and then she can talk it through with them and get their advice. 

A couple weeks pass and Ahsoka and Jisa have become quite fluent in each other's languages. Jisa more so, but that's quite fine. If she sticks around, she'll be one speaking to people who don't speak her language.

Ahsoka and Jisa haven't just learned each other's languages, they've learned about each other's worlds. Ahsoka's suspicions about Jisa's origins have been confirmed. It would be uncharitable to say Jisa came from a primitive place–they had math, history, ethics, the ability to travel through Hyperspace around their world, and even theories of their "gifts"– they just didn't have droids, ships, speeders, blasters, bacta. Who knows, maybe their lives were better for their simplicity.

Their "gifts" were strange phenomena. In some ways like the Force she knew: moving objects, reading emotions, healing, visions of the future. In other ways, not: not any gifted person could learn any gift, which as far Ahsoka knew wasn't true of the Force; they also seemed to have many abilities she'd never heard of. It'd be unparsiminious (Ahsoka had grown to like this word since reading it a few months ago) if this was something other than a different style of Force use. There was precedent too–the Nightsisters of Dathomir were Force users with very strange abilities. If so...maybe Ahsoka could learn some of Jisa's abilities.

That was a dangerous path, though. Seeking power is a path to the darkside. The Jedi were probably not lying about that one.

Jisa, for her part, is really curious about the locals' abilities! She's now inclined to think that Force use isn't Fetching after all, or isn't just Fetching; other uses she's heard mentioned, either by Ahsoka or in the 'holo' illusion's reading material and lessons, include lightning and something sort of like compulsions.

"I don't get it," she says to Ahsoka. "It's like you're - accessing the same thing that Gifts use, but completely differently." She hesitates. "...One of the things my, um, uncle taught me to do, is test people for Gifts by looking at the relevant part of their mind. I - know you don't do mind-magic here normally, but - I promise all I'll do is look, and it's with mage-sight, there won't be any risk of me reading your thoughts by mistake." 

Ahsoka was now quite convinced that Jisa was not an extremely creative ploy to harm her, but the mind-abilities still made her uneasy. She'd been warming up to letting Jisa try her mindspeech again... and now Jisa wanted to just "read" her.

"Okay."

"I'm trusting you."

Jisa nods, looks seriously into Ahsoka's eyes, and opens her mage-sight wide. 

"This is going to feel a bit odd. It won't hurt and it won't affect anything in your head." And she dives in closer to peek at where Ahsoka's channels should be, if she's Gifted. 

Jisa does not find any channels, as such, in Ahsoka's mind. Instead, her mage sight finds that Ahsoka's entire head and body radiate with not-quite-mage-energy, as though all of her were one gaint diffuse channel.

If Jisa were to place her sight on Tel, she'd find that his entire being glimmered too, though much much much fainter than Ahsoka. DD does not glimmer at all.

Jisa backs off as soon as she's seen enough. 

"That's - huh. That's fascinating. You don't have our kind of Gift at all, but you do have something..." She does her best to describe the results of her Sight, fumblingly. 

"I'm grateful for the things I can do. They let me help a lot of people. I hope." Ahsoka actually isn't sure whether her actions throughout the war overall benefited people.

It would be a lie to say she wasn't envious of some of the things Jisa said she could do. Those were amazing Gifts – the term for them made sense. Her own advantage seemed to be in reflexes, intuition, premonition, and motion. In a purely physical fight, she'd definitely have the edge. Of course, what does that matter if Jisa could shout into her mind and paralyze her?

"I get it. I feel the same way, back home." A pang in her chest. "Ahsoka, I really have to try to get home. They need me." 

Ahsoka nods sympathetically. She and this girl weren't so different.

"If we can just figure out where your world is, we can fly you back home, even if you can't get your spell to work."

"Do you know what the night sky looks like on your world? If you can remember enough of the pattern of the stars, we might be able to find it in the star charts."

Jisa looks thoughtful. She did spend quite a few nights with Kilchas up on the astronomy tower, letting him show her the stars through his prized telescope and teach her the names of all the constellations.

"I can sketch it for you," she offers. "I probably don't exactly remember the placement of the constellations relative to each other, but I could guess that part." 

"Wow, this is really good!" Jisa's memory wasn't just for words it seemed, the diagram she produced was pretty detailed.

"If this is accurate, I'm confident it'll match to our charts."

Ahsoka feeds the hand-made chart to DD.

"Boop boooop" goes DD's sad chirp. "I'm sorry, I'm not getting any match with our charts."

"Beep. Boooooop."

It might have a protocol module, but dammit, DD was an astromech at heart and was going to sound like it!

Jisa looks baffled. "Ahsoka, what does that mean? I'm sure I had it pretty close to right, I have a really good memory." 

Ahsoka does her best to be reassuring. 

"It means...we don't have what we need to find your home."

Ahsoka looks tenderly at Jisa, genuinely sad for her. Ahsoka had been hopeful that it wouldn't be harder than this.

"It might not be your chart. That's only half the picture, the other is our charts. They only cover the well-inhabited regions of the galaxy - many unnotable systems are left out. The archives at the Jedi Temple were more complete...but the temple doesn't exist anymore." She frowns. And if it still did, I couldn't exactly go there.

"Oh no, what happened to it? Was it destroyed in the war we were reading about?" Jisa is still piecing together the recent history of Ahsoka's world. It hasn't been the thing on the top of her mind. 

"The Jedi were the greatest threat to the Emperor. At the end of war he orchestrated, he rose to power by destroying the Jedi and everything they once had, including the Temple. I don't know how many Jedi survived. Me, maybe a few others. I'm not hopeful."

"I'm sorry." Jisa is quiet for a bit. "I, um... I don't actually have a way of getting home right now, do I? I can - keep trying with my magic, I got here with a Gate, surely I can get back that way and I just need to figure out exactly what I did and do it in reverse. I was doing an experiment so it was a weird Gate, but..."

She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. "Is there anything I can do to help you, while I'm stuck here? Maybe we can try to find if there are other Jedi who survived. If the Emperor has no idea my kind of magic exists, that could be an advantage for you." 

"Jisa...that's very kind of you, but you told me how much you're needed back home. I couldn't ask you to risk yourself helping me."

"I hope the Empire doesn't know I'm alive and isn't actively searching for me, but if they did, the Emperor would spare no expense hunting me down. The Jedi that remain are the only threat that remain to the Empire, and he has a galaxy's worth of resources for the hunt. I really meant it when I said I'm on this moon trying to stay safe long enough to do something. I couldn't ask you to become part of my situation."

Consequentialism said that recruiting Jisa's help to aid the thousand of worlds and trillions of people in the galaxy was far greater good than Jisa would ever do on her small world with maybe a few million inhabitants, no matter how crucial she was there. However, Ahsoka had come to think that true consequentialism meant sometimes sticking to principles – like not taking advantage of people who didn't understand the choices they'd be making.

"I don't know what I should do," Jisa says, uncertainly. "I - would ask you for help, back home, if I could get home at all. We think there might be a war, I don't even know the whole story with it yet. But, your Empire sounds so much worse." It's so hard to think about what makes sense, here; for the first time in her life she finds herself wishing her life were more normal and mundane, rather than more exciting. 

"I guess I really can't do anything risky without at least talking to my Companion and Treven, they have a right to have input there. Just, if you're staying here trying not to be noticed anyway, and I'm studying magic to get home, maybe I can at least see if I can learn things about how our magic works together. That's not dangerous by itself, right?" 

Jisa considers whether greater knowledge of the Force would be a path towards defeating the Emperor. Maybe, yet as always, power was a dangerous path.

"Study might not be dangerous. It just might not be very effective. The Force is complex and subtle. Jedi scholars have studied it for millennia. Just muddling on our own, I don't think we'd get very far, not further than what's known already, not further than what the Emperor knows – he now has all the knowledge the Jedi ever had, minus what he might not have been able to extract from Jedi Holocrons. As much faith as I have in our combined ability, I don't think we're going reinvent that knowledge on our own."

"That makes sense. I want to do my best to do something useful, though, and it'd still leave you better off than you would be otherwise, right? Besides, I have the sense that Jedi don't have the same kind of magic senses we do, so there could be things that the Jedi scholars couldn't've found out without that." Or maybe not, but she really wants to hope she can do something helpful, if she's stuck here anyway. 

Ahsoka sighs.

"You make a good point. I can't deny it." Ashoka takes a deep breath. "But it just makes me think the time has come for something I've been wary to do."

"Jisa, what's our key problem here?"

Jisa frowns, thinking hard. "That you don't have much in resources, or any way of coordinating with other people who want to fight back against the Empire? I don't know, I'm not actually trained in military strategy or anything." 

"Those are problems, but the problem facing us right now in even approaching those problems is information. Our key problem is knowledge, Jisa."

"We can't get you home because our star charts are incomplete."

"We can't find surviving Jedi because we don't know where they are."

"We can't study our powers effectively because we don't even know what is already known."

"The knowledge is out there, we just don't have it!"

"I mean, that makes sense, as the reason you can't even start addressing the things you need to do. I - still don't really know how to solve it, though. I don't have magic that can directly learn things - I don't even have Farsight or Foresight, both of those could maybe be useful here, but..." Shrug. "I'm sorry." 

"The knowledge is out there, the Empire has it. All of it. The Emperor knows that information is power, just as much as the Force is."

"Jisa, since it'll help get you home too, I'm okay with asking you to help me raid an Imperial information center and copy as much of their databanks as we can carry. At the least we'll get the star charts and find your home."

"I'm terrified, I've known the day would come. Just getting caught on a recording will make my life twice as difficult, but I'm also optimistic that you and me, we can do it."

Jisa listens, seriously. 

"That makes sense. I - can probably do an illusion on you, so you look like a human. Actually, it's possible I could disguise both of us to look like personnel who are supposed to be there. I can't do an illusion that doesn't leak magic, yet, but no one except Force users should be able to tell, in your world. - Actually, I should check if you can tell. One second, I'll try to make myself look like someone else and then tell me if you can sense that something's fishy with it?" 

Jisa closes her eyes, concentrates, and illusions her face to look like Treven's. His is the face she's spent the longest staring at adoringly, after all. 

"That sounds pretty useful...Wow, that's amazing! One time we wanted Obi-Wan to infiltrate...eh, I can tell you story time another, but wow."

"Hmm, to my Force senses you basically look like you did before–same strange flavor of *something*. A Force user wouldn't know that this isn't your real face, just that you're no standard person. We're in trouble if we encounter someone with Force senses, which is going to make this difficult."

"This is going to take some prep. If we want more than just star charts, say, the stolen Jedi Holocrons, we're going to have to hit the Emperor's own information center, and I'm betting it's more heavily guarded than he is. That means, first, we have some "shopping" to do (ships, weapons, droids), and second, we have to find out where the information center even is."

Ahsoka laughs. "In short, we're going to need to get some information to get our information."

"Right. I'm guessing you know where to start. Um, I can do illusions for us too, we should probably look different for each step of this, so they don't connect the pieces." It's very interesting that the Force senses can't tell the magical signature from the illusion apart from her background magical-ness; Jisa isn't sure what it says about the differences between their magic, yet.

"I can Gate, probably - I should test it but I got the threshold, I think I can still Gate fine and it's just too far without whatever accidental trick I used and can't replicate yet. I can't Gate us there, I wouldn't know where to go, but if we need to go in a hurry... And I can fight some with magic. I can also disable people and - make them do things - with Mindhealing, but I should only use that in combat if it's really really really an emergency." 

The Jedi were possibly a bit inconsistent about mind-affecting Force usage. It in fact wasn't true that only the Sith used it. Jedi were fond of their mind tricks, and somehow those were light enough that no one  had questioned why those were allowed and more serious domination of another's mind were out. Even in emergencies. They could chat ethics later though, there'd be enough periods of waiting.

"That could be very handy too...if they don't meet you or talk to you, they'd never figure out what caused the energy blip from your Gate. Hmm, though we could just disguise it with a convenient explosion. Don't underestimate a good explosion, that's what my master taught me." Ahsoka winks.

"The challenge is still leaving no trace. I've completed enough missions like this, but never with the constraint of them not knowing that a Jedi was involved." Ahsoka pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. "This plan is going to take a while, Jisa, but we can get started on the first pieces even as we figure out the rest."

"Your illusions may or may not help us at the Emperor's information center–there will likely be Force users there–but they do solve a problem I've faced: how to go visit my old friends."

"That makes sense. Do they have some of the things we need - the shopping, or knowing where the information centre is? And do you want to go as strangers, or pretend to be different friends of theirs, or something else?" 

"Yes, I'm talking about those kind of friends. The kind I wouldn't want knowing I'm still alive. Oh, there was one fellow...you'd pay him to help you escape, and then he'd go sell your whereabouts right to the Separatists! Somehow we kept dealing with that pirate anyway."

"No, we're not going to these friends as ourselves."

"Tel, stop being so quiet. What do you think?"

Tel looks up from his game of remote Pazaak. He would have thought Ahsoka and Jisa planning a grand heist of the Emperor's own information center would be completely riveting. Turns out he's very seriously, maybe-unhealthily, addicted to Pazaak. It's an ancient game, but across an entire galaxy, there are enough players. Tel's good, very very good, which is fortunate – his vice is the only reason they the store of Imperial credits needed for their particular "lifestyle".

"You know it's hard for me to believe you could fail. But hmm. As always, we'll want to pick up a burner ship, a fast one, you know we know how to do that. What we don't have is the security equipment for this kind of work. DD and I are good, we're not Empire's own good. Nor do I think we can trust your Force abilities to get us through. You know who we need to visit."

"Cad Bane."

That sure is a face she's making. "What does Cad Bane, er, do?" 

"Bounty hunter. Ruthless and amoral as he is competent, which is to say, excessively."

"He gave Obi Wan–Jedi Master, my master's master, powerful and wise Jedi, if you remember–he survived a tumble with Obi-Wan, almost to the point you could say Obi-Wan survived a tumble with him."

"And...he once infiltrated the Jedi temple." Ahsoka pauses remembering how she failed to act faster to prevent that plot from happening. "All that as a non-Force user. Poodoo, if Cade Bane was strong with the Force, probably he'd be the Emperor now."

"He doesn't sound like a very trustworthy person, but I guess we don't need him to be that, just competent. Is he also going to be very suspicious, though?" 

"Someone who reliably acts in their own best interests is trustworthy, in a a way – they're much more predictable than most criminals...well, so long as you're as good as him at knowing what's best for him"

"Yes, he's going to be suspicious. Anybody who'd approach a ruthless criminal mastermind for experimental security tech is somebody you want to watch. We could be idiots, in which case he doesn't want to associate with us, or we could be a threat, in which case he wants us eliminated, or we're simply good, in which case he wants us to work for him, or one of several more possibilities."

"The biggest question is what can we do for him. I don't know that we've got enough credits to make us worth his time."

"And I can't offer to pay him in magic because that's a secret. Are there other sorts of things would he be interested in bartering for, in general?" 

"What do you mean pay him in magic?"

Well, Jisa explains, when some of her friends back home were traveling and ran out of money, one of them was a mage like her and could do helpful magical services for people that were hard to do otherwise, and trade that directly for their campsite and such.

Ahsoka marvels at Jisa's world's use of Force magic for infrastructure projects. She replies that as low as they thought their numbers of mages were, per-capita Force users in the Galaxy were much, much lower– too low to make any part of their construction workforce. Besides, technology could do most things better.

"More likely than not, we're going to have to help him with a job, hopefully, a relatively benign one. Or, on the lucky chance he's got such tech in hand, we could, ah, take it." Ahsoka did not have any qualms about stealing from Cade Bane.
"Pack your things, we're going to Nar Shaddaa."

"I don't exactly have a lot of my possessions with me," Jisa points out. "Er, what am I going to need? If we have to do a job for him, do I need - weapons, other gear...?" 

"Oh, it's just an expression! DD will grab you a bag for the spare clothes we gave you."

"Weapons...could be needed. Probably today's not the day for you to learn how to fire a blaster, but maybe you're decent with a blade or staff if your training was any good." Ahsoka winks, teasingly. "We could train briefly, while Tel prepares the ship."

"I've trained with a sword since I was seven. And a bit with daggers. I'm - decent. Not amazing or anything, at least not without my intelligent magic sword to help me cheat." 

"Alright then, let's ready our things, and if there's much time, we'll see what you can do before we leave. Come back to the cargo hold when you're ready."

"All right!" 

Jisa gets the travel bag from DD and then heads to the cargo hold as specified. 

Ahsoka hands Jisa a metal staff.

"Your task is to hit me." She steps back, arms by her sides, palms facing outwards.

Jisa squints at the weapon. She's trained a little with a wooden staff but not much, her teacher thought it was an unusually useless weapon. "With any part of it? I haven't seen this exact weapon before, am I supposed to hold at the end like a sword, or in the middle?" She really wishes she had Need for this. 

"Oh, hmm. I misunderstood what you knew. I'm guessing you want something like a vibroblade, which we don't have, but could definitely get on Nar Shaddaa."

Ahsoka walks over to a crate. "I have these small blades, if you prefer. They've got much less reach though. It's a staff, you whack people with it, it does the trick!"

"Does your world not use just normal swords at all?" Jisa peers at the small blades. "Those are small. I've trained with a staff but a lot less than with blades. Can give it a go, though." 

"Jedi use lightsabers, everyone else uses blasters, pretty much, with some exceptions for sport hunters, bounty hunters, ceremonial guards– oh, and those looking to bully and intimidate. For most people, being able to attack at a distance is more valuable than anything else."

"A long time ago, I read, when personal shields were in use, many people used swords, some even capable of withstanding lightsaber blades, but that was even before the Republic, thousands of years ago."

"I guess that makes sense. In my world only mages can do that, and a sword isn't that much good against a mage, but there aren't enough mages for it to change everyone's fighting style - but if you could just build a blaster, like a sword, that's really different." 

Tel hits the button on the ship's commlink hard. "Guys, we need to go. Now. Mining probes are back with their mining parents."

"- What does that...?" Jisa feels like she should be able to parse it but has to think through 'mining parents' a couple of times before it makes sense. "Oh, are people going to find us here who shouldn't find us here - um, I can do an illusion to hide us, maybe?" 

The hideout shakes VIOLENTLY.

Lazer fire can be heard raining down outside.

"They know someone is here and they want us gone, more likely, they want us dead so no one else knows they're here. They're gonna bring the place down! Get to the ship!!"

Jisa snatches up her travel-bag. Staff still in hand, she runs. 

- how big across is the ship, she gauges if she can actually cover all of it with an illusion. 

A blast roars right above them and a giant section of ceiling crashes down. Ahsoka springs out of the way, aided by some Force speed, but the insides of the base are now exposed. This moon doesn't have an atmosphere. As she's sucked up by the vacuum, Ahsoka manages to wedge her foot between some broken struts preventing her from being completely carried away, but the air is forced out of her and she fades to unconsciousness within moments.

Jisa shrieks and grabs onto the nearest intact strut, with a cord of force rather than her hand, yanking herself within reach. 

- Ahsoka - Jisa can't even see her but her mage-sight can pick up on the other girl's life-force. Which is not currently in great shape. 

No. Vanyel would know what to do instantly, she thinks. Focus focus focus. 

A loose (kind of sloppy) force-net first, to wrap around Ahsoka and at least keep her from slipping any further, then deal with the part where they're about to lose all their goddamned air. Raising and holding a barrier wide enough to block most of the now-absent ceiling makes her vision dim around the edges, but she can hold it. For a little while. The storm of escaping air slows to a loud hiss through the gaps she hasn't fully covered. 

Including the gap where Ahsoka's ankle is. With another burst of effort, Jisa yanks her through - and then has to pull on her messy force-net again to catch her, with the torrent no longer sucking her away. 

She manages to get Ahsoka down to the floor of the cargo bay in a semi-controlled landing, grabs her, and sprints for the ship, the shimmering mage-barrier straining behind her. 

Tel's voice comes out of Ahsoka's wrist commlink:

"Finally you guys are on board! We gotta get outta here, this is gonna be hot. Ahsoka, you're gonna have to get two or three nasties of our tail while I position us for the jump."

Several more rumbles and explosions punctuate Tel's point.

Shitshitshit how does she answer. "Um, Jisa here, can you hear me?" 

"I hear you JIsa, where the hell is Ahsoka??!"

"I've got her - she's unconscious, though, she nearly got sucked out of the roof. I can try to help instead, what does Ahsoka normally do? - Also is it okay if I let all the air out now, the mage-barrier is really tiring."  

Tel lifts the ship in the air, jerking suddenly to the right to avoid a laser blast before accelerating hard.

"Poodoo! Worst timing. Okay, Jisa, it's you mean and me...and DD" Tel adds that after an insistent beep. "We've got three nasties on us, whoever these miners are, they've got good equipment. I need to you destroy them. We've got a gun on top and gun at the back, pick one and DD will take the other, or use your not-quite-Force- powers. Ahsoka seemed to think you could do a lot, here's your chance to show---Aww poodoo!!" Tel jerks the ship then rolls it several times trying to shake these miserable SOBs.

"What are you talking about let the air out?! Generally, we, need, our, air"

"I mean out of the cargo bay, not the ship! There's a hole in the ceiling and I won't be in range to hold it much longer if you keep moving–" Focus. "I'll take the one out back," or try at least, "are they more vulnerable to fire or lightning?" She holds onto Ahsoka, not wanting the girl to get thrown around during their frantic acceleration. 

"What??" Tel shouts as he stretches his reflexes to dodge the stream of laser fire threatening to engulf them."That whole place is set to blow in another minute, don't worry about it! Lightning?! Fighters have heatproofing anyway for re-entry."

What the hell? Lightning? Is the girl a Sith? Oh well, if it helps them survive this...

Jisa grits her teeth and tries to focus on the fighting-ship with her Sight. It would be really useful to be Van right now, she thinks darkly. Or at least to have any nodes within reach. She's unclear on whether their world lacks node-energy entirely or it's just the arid, lifeless moon that doesn't have any.

Still, she can yank enough power out of her reserves for LIGHTNING!!! 

THE ATTACKING STARFIGHTER BURSTS INTO FLAMES AND EXPLODES. SHSHWWPHHHWFSDFSFSHLJKKSFHWFSHHFFFBOOOOOM!! 

"Aww yeah! Whoever got that, DD, Jisa, good work. Don't rest yet, two more to go." Swerrrve goes the ship under Tel's direction.

Jisa hooks another tendril of mage-energy onto the nearest handhold, keeps a firm grip on Ahsoka, and looks around for screens or windows or something to try to find the other two ships, it's not very high-contrast to her mage-sight and she's getting a headache. 

Amidst the violent jerking of the ship. Ahsoka moans softly without coming to.

A horrendous cracking-fizzing resonates throughout the ship!

"JABBA'S POODOO!! They hit the starboard stabilizers, guys!! Those fighters have to go down now or we're gonna be splat on that damned moon in the next minute."

Tel was actually pretty resigned to his death and felt pretty calm. He knew what he'd signed up for and dying at this point made as much sense any other. Still, he had part to play and he was gonna play it.

"Poodooooo!!!"

There's a seat up there with a view of outside the ship and a screen displaying the locations of the attacking fighters. The only problem is that it's up there and Jisa will need to climb to reach it, and she can't do that carrying an unconscious Ahsoka. 

"Sorry," she murmurs, and rather than use mage-energy again, she yanks off her jacket and uses the sleeves of it to tie Ahsoka to a strut, then scrambles up. 

She grits her teeth, selects the fighter that looks closer, concentrates hard - and blasts it with levinbolts until her vision darkens around the edges. 

Was that enough?  

A few of the levinbolts make contact but are absorbed by this larger fighter's shields. The rest miss as the ship is moving too fast and on a different plane. The assault continues.

At least she might've distracted it. Jisa takes a few seconds to catch her breath and then looks for the other one, maybe it won't be so shielded. 

The ship Jisa had attempted to destroy moments before burst into fire, heat, and light!! 

"WWWWEEEEERROOOOPPPPP!!", cries DD triumphantly up and down the ship's comms.

- okay, adorable. 

Also they're one for one now and Jisa is, perhaps, feeling a tiny bit competitive, now that she's slightly less terrified for her life. Her head is hurting quite impressively badly now, but she aims a levinbolt at the remaining ship and pushes. 

Sparks arc across the bow of the remaining fighter but ultimately die down. It continues its barrage against Tel, Jisa, DD, and Ahsoka's vessel.

"I'm not joking guys, 40 more seconds of this and we're all gonna be one with the Force!!"

Jisa tries for another levinbolt but she's near exhaustion; her vision half-blacks out this time and she barely grazes the ship. 

"DD, help - can you do something...?" She gestures wildly. 

"Don't worry, I got you."

Ahsoka nudges Jisa out of and maneuvers herself into the dorsal gunner's set. With a startling little and brief finger action, she rotates the gun to lead the enemy starfighter's motion, and fires off three rounds of laser bolts.

"By the way, you tie a mean knot."

The remaining starfighter goes:

"Thank you." Jisa sags against the nearest surface. She's very relieved. Mostly. She's also a teeny bit resentful, she wanted to get that one, but - well, it's true that she was exhausted and yelling to DD for help, so, good. "Ahsoka, are you feeling all right? You nearly got sucked out the roof hole." 

"Thanks for saving me, Jisa. I nearly did get sucked out – I thought that was the end of my life as Ahsoka Tano!"

"I've got a headache still but I think my body has caught up on air. You're gonna have to tell me what you did."

"Good job, guys! Live to be one with the Force another day."

"Here we come, Nar Shaddaa! I hope people packed their swimming gear."

"WWWWEEEEERROOOOPPPPP!!"

"How long will it take to get there?" 

"About half a standard-day."

"We happened to be pretty close, distance-wise, on the other hand, we're traveling in a Hyperspace lane, so that's how it nets."

"Long enough for you to take a nap."

"I'll do that in a minute, thank you." Jisa turns back to Ahsoka. "You asked what I did? I, um, saw you get sucked out and used magic to grab you, and to cover the hole in the ceiling for a bit so we wouldn't get sucked out, and I got us both to the ship. Then Tel started flying but the fighters were after us. I asked Tel what they were vulnerable to, he said lightning, I managed to hit one with some levinbolts and took it down. DD got the second one, then I was trying for the third but I was getting pretty tired. So - thank you for stepping in, that was good timing." She says it with only the slightest hint of wounded pride.