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I am the heart of the Force
in which force ghost fate!Anakin finds herself very rudely in canakin's body
Permalink Mark Unread

The general eventfulness of their lives since they left Jakku seems to be at a bit of a lull. Which - good. Her apprentice has needed a break.

(Anakin's needed a break.)

She's taking advantage of this to introduce Lily to the joys of archaeology. Not at all sarcastically so - Anakin's second greatest pleasure since she's died has been helping Luke poke around ancient ruins, especially those predating the Old Republic. It's usually less dangerous than poking around ancient Sith ruins, too, and Anakin wants a chance to really hands-on introduce Lily to the history of the ancient pre-schism Je'daii Order. There haven't been any really major Force traditions emphasizing a balance between the light and dark sides since the schism, but the Je'daii took a different enough approach from the direction Lily and Anakin are stumbling toward to set interesting questions in front of the girl...

Luke was the one who alerted her that this planet, not really near any used hyperspace routes, might have an old outpost that he thinks belonged to the Rakatan Infinite Empire before the Je'daii managed to seize it in the aftermath of the Force Wars. It's pretty far from where he's holed up avoiding his sister, so she offered to check it out for him.

Which leads her and Lily to wandering carefully through a half-collapsed base, the main remaining structures the parts that were buried underground - the basements and bunkers, as far as Anakin can tell, though it hopefully included some storage. Anakin's floating ahead of Lily, paying attention for dangers - or anything delicate enough her flesh and blood apprentice shouldn't step on it - while Lily takes scans with a holorecorder and notes on a datapad. They'll go back through later to start sifting through millennia of accumulated sediment, after they have an idea of what they can access without digging.

She's glancing over her shoulder, teasing Lily - "Maybe we'll find some old weapon for you to impress that boy you've been teasing with - "

- When she steps into a less damaged room than the others, a sphere made of interlocking rings on a dark pedestal in the center, and it feels completely inert in the Force, no different from every other harmless speck of dirt -

The world spins around her, Lily's alarmed shout the last thing she hears.

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Before an extremely unfamiliar rushing - almost a soft ringing - and there's rough cloth on her skin, there's air on her skin, the firm press of the ground under her feet and something in her hand and it's actually perceptibly dark -

- She hasn't had a body in over forty years and Anakin should therefore be excused for being a little bit freaked out as her consciousness slams into a form constrained by flesh and bone.

She stumbles, because how the fuck do legs work, especially legs without external mechanical support, and makes a soft sound of surprise, entirely unwillingly. She doesn't fall on her face, at least, catching herself with the Force - but it's pretty close.

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She seems to be in the same place, but she doesn't hear Lily shouting for her.  After a moment, however, she does hear an unfamiliar voice call out.

"You alright in there, Sir?"

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...This doesn't exactly feel like a vision. Could be something triggered or controlled by the artifact, though?

Either way, playing along is - probably a good initial bet.

"I'm fine!" she calls back, almost flinching at the deep, rough sound of her voice. It - cracks, a teensy bit, at the end, in a way that hopefully just sounds vaguely embarrassed. "Just some rubble underfoot."

Playing along would be easier if she had any idea what she's playing. Why is she even in this room in this - scenario?

She sweeps the light she's apparently holding for some reason around the room - it doesn't look any different from how it did. Nothing's out of place, though she's a lot closer to the pedestal than she was. (Well, 'look,' she only bothers filtering her senses as a ghost into visual input as a grounding exercise or when she needs to model what the living can perceive.)

(At least she can still sense and use the Force.)

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"Did you find what you're looking for yet, Sir?  We probably haven't got much longer." The same voice from before calls back.

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...What is counter-factual her looking for.

"There's a sculpture," she calls back, walking cautiously towards the pedestal. "Might not be the right thing, but looks artifact-y enough." Is counterfactual her wearing gloves. (She looks at her hands. That seems faster than parsing tactile feedback.)

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Counterfactual her is wearing gloves!  Her hands seem different then her hands ever looked in life.  Larger, for one.

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Well she hasn't had a body in over forty years but this is just. She does not like today. She would like to go back to where she was.

The universe doesn't spontaneously decide to be nice to her for the first time ever.

She gets up to the pedestal, gives the sculpture thing an unimpressed look, and picks it up (with the Force, and with her hand). (Maybe it'll dump her back?)

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It does not dump her back.  It doesn't do anything, actually.

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Rude.

"Sculpture's inert, but I can't find any exits," she calls back.

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"We should probably get out now then, Sir, we don't know how-" He's cut off by something, and then speaks again.
"They just commed from the ship, Sir, a seperatist ship just came out of hyperspace."

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"Joy."

Is she having a nightmare. Maybe she's having a nightmare. Why she'd be in a male body during a nightmare about the Clone Wars is a bit of a mystery but, well.

Might as well act like it's real, though.

She wraps the sculpture in a cloth bag she fortunately has, then jogs back to the exit. She's reaching out with the Force as she does so, instinctively - habitually - she hasn't battle meditated since the actual Clone Wars, and her mind's jumping to that, even though battle meditation sucks - she's trying to get a feel for the people in the area (the clones?), for the strange feeling of the enemy's own clone army, for her general surroundings - her brain almost desperately tries to glance for her training bond to Elesse (still severed by death, of course, why would she expect this nightmare to have nice bits)...

"Any info on the seps?"

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The clones feel different then the clones she remembers, but there's about 20 on the planet with her, and more on the ship.  The enemies she can't feel in the force at all, for some reason.  The terrain mostly matches that of the planet she was visiting with Lily, with, well, the amount of small terrain changes she would expect, given the time difference- parts of the ruin that had collapsed in her time, but are merely near collapsing now, bits of forest that haven't grown yet, that sort of thing.

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'Feel different' matches with the - clone? Definitely a clone - talking to her sounding male.

Nightmare about weird gender flipped Clone Wars???

She finishes getting out of the room, glancing around for the clone she was talking to earlier.

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He's standing just outside the door, apparently on guard.
"There's only one ship for now, Sir.  Sounds like the clankers weren't expecting us to have gotten here first."

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'Clankers' isn't... What they called the sep forces in her Clone Wars. But that sure looks like the armor her girls were using.

Low budget poorly researched nightmare?

What is the type of thing she would've said as a general about this. Ugh. ...Well, not said, there was a running joke in the battalions she worked with the most, where her girls would convince shinies she was deaf and see how long it took them to notice she could hear their gossip, which only worked because Anakin is a telepathy slut and hadn't been communicating verbally back then if she could help it. Weird nightmare her doesn't seem to be doing that if she's being addressed out loud and not mentally poked - or not constantly linked to someone. "How far out are they?"

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"About 10 minutes, sir."

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Crap. She clearly doesn't have good comms down here - wouldn't, if it's the same planet - she could link but she is terrified of battle meditating again and also it sounds like weird nightmare her isn't - 

She starts jogging towards the exit, distractedly snapping off questions about the situation and the position of their forces - modulating between the more positive relationships she had with her girls before the rise of the Empire and her knowledge and demeanor (and ability to communicate verbally) as Darth Vader. 

Not anything that wouldn't make sense for her not to know, hopefully, but - she can fill in the blanks from what she is asking, she bets. She was a general for over a quarter of a century.

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The clones answer her questions quickly and professionally, not showing much surprise at any of her questions.

When asked about starfighters, they reply,
"They've launched 2 squadrons of vulture droids so far, Sir."

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She doesn't remember what those are, or military droids in general being in significant use at any point in the war, and her memory of actual battles is mostly intact... 

She doesn't openly react, though, instead doing her best to poke around what the trooper's perception of the threat the squadrons pose - she's pretty sure they're droid starfighters, which had never been very useful in her war, but if they're being actually used here...

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They are droid starfighters- the clone trooper clearly thinks of them as the default enemy starfighter, generally winnable against but not notably weak.  Not a serious threat to their forces with only 2 squadrons, but might be with more squadrons.

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Okay. Doable.

She manages to guess whatever of her own force's strength she hasn't been told by the time they get near enough to the surface that she can effectively give orders.

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The clones seem surprised and impressed as her leadership lets them easily defeat the enemy ship before they reach the surface- just in time for 3 more Seperatist ships to jump out of hyperspace.

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Ugh.

Well, she wasn't exactly this competent last time, she doesn't think - of course, she was using battle meditation a lot, which changed the calculus...

She directs her forces against the new Separatists, paying some attention to the Force - if there's more coming, they should prepare -

(She doesn't want this place to fall into Sep hands if it's at all her way back, and, well, presumably keeping the planet would be a goal of this weird mirror Republic anyways.)

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The three new ships don't do anything when they first appear, apparently not expecting to find the first ship already destroyed, but shortly after they realize what happened begin a rather simple offensive against the Republic ships. 

If there are any more ships coming, even Anakin cannot feel them in the Force.

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She does orient herself some to check for organic sapients on board before blowing any of the new ships up - checking for sapient droids is much harder, though usually the droids who've been left active long enough to develop sapience aren't being used in operations like this. 

Permalink Mark Unread

There's one organic sapient onboard the lead ship.  The rest don't seem to have any organic lifeforms on board at all.

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Perhaps - target the other two most heavily, disable the hyperdrive and then weapons capability of the lead ship with some eerily accurate commands (this would be so much easier if she wasn't stuck in a biological meat sack, brains made of neurons have shitty processing power, or if she was using battle meditation, but it's doable).

Then - 

Has her enemy considered the great wisdom of surrendering? (...She does not know what nightmare her's name and rank are supposed to be but she can route around having to give those.)

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Her enemy has not considered the great wisdom of surrendering.  They've sent out another wave of the droid starfighters they're using to attack her ships.

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It's very hard to send out droid starfighters when your bays have been shot to bits, don't you think? (Anakin closes her eyes, skims along the minds of her troopers without revealing herself - enough to get visual on the enemy ship - and uses that as an anchor and the fire fight as cover to start breaking things directly with the Force.)

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It doesn't take long before the ship is dead in space, and soon enough she receives a comm request.

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She has her ships temporarily stop tearing the enemy apart and accepts the comm.

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A spider-like alien who appears to be nearly half cybernetic appears in the blue of the holo.

"General Skywalker," he chitters, "I did not expect to find you in this system.  What is the Republic doing this far out in the rim?"

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Still a Skywalker. Alright. She can roll with that. Male Jedi, Skywalker, general, clones seem surprised she's this competent, she's not using battle meditation - the body feels young, late teens maybe...

"Getting in your way, apparently."

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He chitters again. 

"Getting in people's way seems to be your only skill, yes."

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"A rather important one for a general."

"Do you feel like surrendering?"

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"Do I wish to surrender?" he chitters again, "No.  Unfortunately, it does seem as though your unfortunate tendency to be whereever you are most unwanted has managed to gain you the upper hand, this time.  I am willing to hear your terms."

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She does remember how terms of surrender work. Nothing too onerous for 'we stop shooting you' - basic cooperation, don't resume hostilities, be a nice well behaved prisoner, etc. She does want to wiggle more information out of him, but she'd rather not have to kill him, so, standard surrender with dignity intact it is.

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He accepts, grudgingly.  The droid starfighters all return to the main ship, and the shields and weapons bank power down.

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Not as bad as it could've gone. 

She does try to draw out of her clone commanders what they expect to be doing with prisoners of war - she (somewhat privately) wants to spend a bit more time on this planet, check everything she can for 'a way back,' make sure this nightmare's Separatists (or, worse, Sith) don't find their way through -

Palpatine is going to be alive here, isn't he. Unless something else has changed, but - so far, all she's seeing different is the gender flip and that her gender flipped self isn't using battle meditation yet. 

Maybe she'll stick around a bit longer, actually. 

(She does still want to canvas this place some more, but - honestly her confidence she'll find anything is fairly low, and she can always get their prisoners dropped off and then come back. Though she'll want to avoid alerting any enemies that she knows something important is here...)

She takes the after battle breathing space to ask for a full accounting of their strength and any damages they took. 

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They brought 2 dreadnoughts and their full contingents of starfighters to the planet.  The dreadnoughts haven't taken any serious damage, but they've lost 2 full squadrons of starfighters, plus another 5 from all their other starfighters combined.

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The reports of deaths are... Unpleasant.

This was always her least favorite part of war.

She turns her attention, now, to search and rescue of any survivors among the destroyed starfighters, getting medical response coordinated.

(She reaches out in the Force, in a broad, somewhat intense way she hasn't done since she was dumped unceremoniously in this body, to sort through the wreckage for signs of life.)

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The force is full of movement as she reaches out into it.  Thousands of currents and eddies, pulling her, some gentle and others more forceful- one catches her up, as she looks for signs of life, and pulls her attention to one of the downed starfighters, a faint flicker of life echoing out into the force from it. 

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This feels very strange. Different, at least a bit, from the way she's accustomed to using the Force - more insistent, more... Responsive, in an odd way, feeling like it's anticipating her - far more than how she would use it as a ghost, but even compared to the course of her life...

She directs rescue efforts towards the downed starfighter, dives farther - Anakin doesn't have time to analyze, but she's always been good at adapting on her feet. 

She doesn't intend to leave a single person to die who she can save. She tells the Force to direct her to the more urgent cases as a priority, passes forward her triage methods - weaves herself into the rescue efforts, she can heal the most severe, get wreckage open far more safely than basically anyone or anything else...

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The force shows her the most urgently injured easily and quickly, but pulling apart the wreckage and healing them requires fine, detailed control- she doesn't mess up, badly, but there are many times when the force warns her that what she's doing will injure someone and she has to correct herself.  In the end, she's able to save roughly a third of the downed pilots.

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She's used to healing being easy, something she sometimes has to restrain herself from doing automatically. It's working differently, here, enough to trip her up, enough to add to the background stress - she always corrects herself in time, isn't slowed down too much - but she hates the feeling of being slowed down at all. 

And this stupid body is having stupid emotions about that. 

Anakin regulates the body's breathing, minimizes the external irritants hitting the body's senses - turns off anything trying to make noise at the body, turns off any blinking lights, closes the body's eyes, adjusts the temperature, the body's posture - but the body still seems very determined to skirt the bottom edge of overstimulated and then to try to drag her over with it. 

She's saved a lot of people, though, despite that. She firms that in her mind, and catalogs some of the causes of stress wracking the body for later handling before gently nudging them aside. 

And at least the Force here is being - helpful, even if in a way she's not used to it being. 

She asks for another status report, this time on the situation back in medical. 

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The situation in medical is good!  Everyone injured seems to be recovering alright, though with how many downed fighter pilots she was able to save they're starting to run low on beds.

A clone trooper steps up to her, after a moment.

"You look like you could use some rest, sir.  We're out off combat now, and everyone's doing alright in the medbay, you might want to sleep before you talk to the prisoner." He says, voice lowered.

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...Yeah. She's - exhausted. Shaking.

She hasn't noticed. 

Anakin nods. "Thank you," she says, softly. "I am... Tired, I think."

...Where does she sleep on this ship. Can she fake brain fog enough to get someone to lead her. 

She closes her eyes and - lets the way she's burned through this body's mental reserves show. 

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The trooper who pointed this out leads her to another clone, who he instructs to "Lead the General to his quarters".

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"Thank you," she says, voice still worn, scanning for and committing to memory identifying signs on both - though she's hoping she'll get them to give her their names and not their numbers eventually. 

(...Assuming they haven't already given weird mirror her their names, which, might get awkward. She needs to figure out exactly when it is... A good use for alone time in her quarters.)

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The trooper who escorted her walks away as soon as they're at her quarters, heading back the direction they came in.

The room is not quite like her own officers quarters, but there is a bed, and she is alone.  There is also a holopad available if she wants to start looking for information about when she is.

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She grabs the pad and sits down on the bed with it as she powers it on. 

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The pad has a lockscreen showing the date and time- 16:34 on 13:9:14.  When she unlocks it, she immediately sees a report of a recent battle, seemingly sent to this pad for review, and a row of files in quickswap along the side, with labels indicating that they're more recent battles, and one just labeled "Cryssul Mission".

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That's... Twenty two years before the Battle of Yavin, by the new calendar. About four months into the start of the Clone Wars. 

She pulls up 'Cryssul Mission.'

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The document informs her that the planet of Cryssul is home to a ancient force temple, believed to hold powerful force artifacts.  They have intelligence indicating the Seperatists are seeking out those artifacts.  The mission, assigned to General Skywalker and the 501st battalion, is to extract the force artifacts within and, if nessecary, hold off the seperatist forces.  This is followed by coordinates, descriptions of the temple, and a few maps of the planet.

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Yeah that looks like the planet she was just on. 

So, she has an excuse to stay here and keep looking - any indication of timeline on this mission, like when she's expected to report back? Also, how long have her forces been here? 

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According to the mission brief, it's expected that this mission should take no more than 4 days, unless there is an unexpectedly strong Separatist presence, in which case a report is expected in order to let the higher-ups know their information source is likely compromised.  The brief is dated from 3 days ago, but it's unclear when they arrived relative to receiving it.

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She wouldn't call this especially strong, nor compromised information. 

Militaries don't move in a single day. They've likely been here two days at most - and she can get records of what they've searched so far, she bets. Get an idea from that. 

Doesn't give her a lot of time to trouble shoot, though. 

(Her body is crashing, trying to drag her down with it.)

(Anakin fights it - or tries to. She falls asleep with the holopad still turned on.)

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She dreams.

It's horrible. She hadn't dreamed as Vader; she'd been drugged to sleep each night, then.

She'd dreamed as Anakin, but the worst dreams had been during parts of life she's mostly forgotten.

She dreams of the Clone Wars. Of the end of it.

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She wakes up.

She hasn't slept long, and she feels exhausted, but - more settled in this stupid body, at least.

She spends a while staring at the ceiling, trying to convince herself she has a mystery to unravel and a war to manage.

Eventually, her body starts protesting.

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Horrible body things should not happen to her. It's unfair. And - it's the wrong body, a constant mismatch in her head that makes her feel like she's started dissociating again.

She deals with the worst body things with her eyes closed and her senses focused very, very firmly on trying to figure out where she'll need to go to eat food. At least she got a good enough idea of the layout - basically the same as in her war - to mostly just need to confirm where the mess is...

She heads down to eat about six hours after she went to her room.

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One of the clones comes over shortly after Anakin has gotten food.

"Sir, the prisoner is ready for interrogation at your convenience.  Is the mission on the planet completed?"

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"Thank you," she says, then - "There's still some things I want to check out a bit more thoroughly, so long as we can spare the time."