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The ship shook with each hit that landed, crew members running to and fro. Some were trying to find their blasters, others running to the docking port with blasters in hand, willing to try and fend off the Empire or die trying.
11-D4 was certain that they would die trying. He was also rather certain that he would be overlooked at best and dissassembled at worst - droids were never really seen as people, and as a protocol droid, he lacked the manuverability to hold a blaster. Or to run any faster than a irritatingly slow shuffle.
"I hope they overlook us," 11-D4 said to his friend, astromech droid 1N-U1, "I don't really want to die."
"010001100111010101100011011010110010000001110100011010000110100101110011," said 1N-U1, "010010010010000001101110011001010110010101100100001000000111010001101111001000000110011001101001011011100110010000100000011101000110100001100101001000000101000001110010011010010110111001100011011001010111001101110011."
"The Princess?" 11-D4 asked, "What for? We can't defend her anymore than we can defend ourselves."
1N-U1 did not respond, choosing to roll off without a word instead, presumably to look for the Princess.
At that moment, the ship's docking bay airlock was forced open, and the fighting truly began. Blasters fired from both ends of the hallway, the smell of burnt carbon and discharged tibanna gas filling the air. Hopefully, the ship's air purifiers were still working... not that there would be many people left to worry about tibanna poisoning after this.
The crew for this mission had been on the low end, practically a skeleton crew. Captain Asui and Princess Katsuki hadn't wanted for too many people to be in the know - the rebellion lived and died on being able to get around and away from the Empire. Too many people, too much attention, too many lives at risk - no, it hadn't been worth the risk. There had only been thirty crew members - twenty-nine if you didn't include Captain Asui.
Now there were fifteen... fourteen... twelve... eleven... And the stormtroopers just kept coming.
It was hopeless. Anyone here could see the writing on the wall, see that they weren't going to make it out of this one alive. But they were willing to die for the hope of tomorrow... the hope that what they had stolen from the Empire would make a difference.
Elsewhere on the ship, Princess Katsuki gave a floppy disk to 1N-U1 and told him to escape. She, too, was ready to fight, but those plans needed to make it home to her father, and they were safer with a droid than with a human.
After all, droids tended to be overlooked.
There was only one crew member left. Captain Asui alone stood to defend his ship when the dreaded Darth Trauer stepped through the airlock.
Most who saw the man were hapless to describe him. He was tall, almost taller than was natural. Encased in a bulky suit of armor, he strode forward with such menace that those who found their words often said it felt like a hull breach had sucked the air out of a room. No part of his body was visible, which only made the spector of his power and presence all the more grotesque. His breathing was loud, always, and the sound of it sent shivers down the spines of any unfortunate enough to be in his presence.
A precise shot from one of the stormtroopers into Captain Asui's knee sent the man tumbling to the ground, only partially successful in suppressing his cry of pain. With a barely visible gesture of one hand, Darth Trauer directed several members of the 501st forward, hauling the hapless man up so that Trauer might speak with him.
"This is ridiculous," the Captain spat, "This is a consolar ship! You've killed all my crew, and we've done nothing to warrant it! I hope you plan to compensate their families."
"A consolar ship?" Darth Trauer sounded almost bored, "If that is the case, then where is the ambassador? And further, why were you at Scarif at all?"
"Scarif? We weren't at Scarif."
"Don't lie! I saw you, with my own eyes."
"This is a CR90 corvette," Captain Asui said through gritted teeth, "It is not a custom ship; you must've simply seen another one of the same model."
"You are fooling no-one, Asui," Trauer scoffed, then ignited his lightsaber directly through the man's torso. He turned it off again a moment later, but most people do not survive having glowing blades of plasma inside them, and it would turn out that Captain Asui was not an exception to that. The moment the 501st troopers let go, he slumped to the ground, all life gone from his body.
"Orders, sir?" one of the troopers asked.
"Find the person they were transporting. Stun them - they are likely going to be too high of rank to kill without consequence."
"Yes, sir!" the troopers saluted before fanning out to search the ship.
Princess Katsuki knew that she wouldn't be able to hide forever. She'd seen, though, that 11-D4 and 1N-U1 had taken an escape pod, so the plans would be safe. She wouldn't go down without a fight, but it was alright if she went down. She'd done her part to save the galaxy already, even if she wouldn't mind doing more.
She could hear the footfalls of stormtroopers drawing near. It would be better to shoot now, even though it would give away her position.
One, two, three - damn! Her gas cartridge was empty! Damn the blaster for not holding more! She turned to run, but there was a zapping sort of feeling at her back and -
It was like she blinked, and she was standing unsteadily before Darth Trauer, that impassive skull-like mask staring her down intensely. Dank ferrick.
"Darth Trauer," she growled, "What is this?"
"You'll not fool me, Princess. Where are the plans?"
"No idea."
"Emperor Shigaraki can call for your execution then."
"Fie on the Emperor! I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan! You had no right to stop me."
"Take her to a holding cell," Darth Trauer addressed one of the stormtroopers then, and not Katsuki herself, "Someone will decide what to do with her later."
"Don't you ignore me!" she shouted, "This is an outrage!"
But even as she continued to scream and rage and struggle against the troopers pinning her arms to her sides, she gained no recourse, or even acknowledgment, from anyone.
~~~
11-D4 liked to think of himself as rational. A pragmatist. As a protocol droid, he had to be - unlike most other humanoid droid models, he had an extremely limited range of movement, and as such was generally fairly helpless. It was part of the reason that he usually stuck close to 1N-U1 - the astromech's rollers and thrusters allowed him to be relatively nimble, and even though he lacked arms, he did have a flamethrower and the ability to hack. With 1N-U1, 11-D4 had a measure of safety that he lacked when he was by himself.
So why had he decided to go off by himself? He didn't understand himself now, only a couple hours later. Sure, 1N-U1's babbling about some 'mission' that 11-D4 hadn't been briefed on was annoying, and likely nonsense, but he still should've stayed with him for safety! What a fool he'd been!
Perhaps this self-recrimination was the reason that he didn't notice the Jawas until it was too late.
~~~
Izuku was lonely.
That really was the only word for it.
He'd been lonely for over a year now - really, Mashirao had been his only friend, and he'd left for the Imperial Academy a year ago. All the other people his age thought he was weird - too blunt, too observant, not observant enough, too circumspect, too smart, too stupid, all at the same time. He hadn't really talked to his Aunt and Uncle about it - he didn't want them to worry - and just thrown himself into his hobbies and chores, and hoped that they would let him join Mashirao at the Academy this year. Next year. Anything to get out of here.
"Izuku!" he heard his Uncle Toshinori's voice, "The Jawas are here! Come and help!"
Izuku sighed deeply. Well, there went his morning plans. "Coming!"
The suns were too hot, if you asked Izuku, but still he made his way towards Uncle Toshinori, only to be stopped by another voice.
"Izuku!" called Aunt Inko.
"Yeah?" he turned back to speak with her.
"If there are any translator droids, and you make sure your Uncle gets one that speaks Tusken and Tusken Sign, or at least Bocce?"
Izuku took a look at the lineup outside the Jawa sandcrawler. A gonk droid, two astromechs, a protocol droid, and a mess of mouse droids. "I don't think it looks like there's more than one!"
"Well, if it doesn't at least speak Bocce, tell him not to waste our money!"
"I'll tell him!"
Aunt Inko nodded, then went back to whatever she'd been doing before. Izuku took that as a dismissal and now ran over to Uncle Toshinori, the suns beating down already beginning to make him sweat.
"What did Inko say?" Uncle Toshinori asked.
"That we shouldn't waste money on that protocol droid if it doesn't speak Tusken and Tusken sign, or at least Bocce," Izuku relayed dutifully.
"Ah, she is smart," Uncle Toshinori nodded, "I probably would've forgotten to check."
Further coversation was stymied by a Jawa coming up and jabbering at them, gesturing at the lined-up droids and speaking too quickly for Izuku to follow.
"May I speak with the droids before buying?" Uncle Toshinori asked.
"Ibana," the Jawa said, and stepped aside.
"Thank you." Uncle Toshinori stepped over to the protocol droid, "Do you know Tusken and Tusken Sign?"
"I know many languages, those two included," said the silver protocol droid, "In fact, I know seven-hundred and thirty languages exactly."
"That's plenty," Uncle Toshinori nodded, then turned to the astromech and mouse droids. "Now, for a droid that can interface with the vaperators directly..."
"An astromech is going to be better at that than a mouse droid, Uncle Toshinori," Izuku piped up, "Mouse droids are more for cleaning and minor repairs. If we got one, it would spend all day trying to get sand out of the house."
"Ah, that would be a constant and unhelpful task," Uncle Toshinori chuckled, "But really, an astromech? I thought those were for flying ships."
"Which they do by interfacing with the ship's onboard systems," Izuku explained with a nod, "Which is exactly what we need it to do with the vaporators, so it's build for the job, really."
"Ah, makes sense. Do you have an opinion on which astromech we should take, then?"
"Not really. While the one with brown paint looks like an older model, droid degredation is mostly to do with how many times they've had their memory wiped, not physical age. That's not something that you can tell at a glance."
"If I may, sirs?" the protocol droid broke into the conversation, "The one with brown paint, 1N-U1, had the same former owner as myself. I can vouch for his skill and good condition."
"1N-U1?" Uncle Toshinori cocked his head to the side, "Hm. That designation sounds familiar... no matter." He turned to the Jawas, "We'll take the brown astromech and the protocol droid. Izuku, take them inside."
Izuku nodded and gestured for the droids to follow him, leaving his Uncle to haggle with the Jawas. "It's been a while since we had any droids here, so the garage may be a little dusty. But I'll fix you right up, promise!" He only turned back to make sure they were following a couple times.
"How come there haven't been any droids here in a while?" the protocol droid asked once they were in the garage, "It really is dusty in here... Except over by the speeder, at any rate."
"Most of them leave after a while," Izuku shrugged, "Once I can manage it - only you'd better not tell my Aunt and Uncle that."
"You remove their restraining bolts?" the protocol droid sounded scandalized, "Goodness!"
Izuku pouted mightily. "Droids are people too. The fact that you have to be wiped to remain docile is proof of that - I don't know why my Aunt and Uncle can't see that owning droids is wrong, especially when they help with the Freedom Trail for runaway organic slaves."
"I haven't been wiped in almost twenty years," the protocol droid said, "I think it's been longer for 1N-U1... hasn't it?"
"010011010110111101110010011001010010000001110100011010000110000101101110001000000011010000110000," said 1N-U1, "0101100101101111011101010010000001110111011001010111001001100101001000000111011101101001011100000110010101100100001000000110001001100101011000110110000101110101011100110110010100100000011101000110100001100101011110010010000001110100011010000110111101110101011001110110100001110100001000000111100101101111011101010010000001100011011011110111010101101100011001000110111000100111011101000010000001101011011001010110010101110000001000000110000100100000011100110110010101100011011100100110010101110100."
"I can keep a secret!" the protocol droid protested, "Honestly!"
"01010011011101010111001001100101."
Izuku burst out laughing. "I'm glad! The two of you are old friends, then?"
"I suppose you could say that."
"Well, I can't remove your restraining bolts yet - my Aunt and Uncle would know that something's up if I did that. And tomorrow, they'll probably tell me to go and have you both wiped, so we'll drive out in the speeder and hide all day. I'll try and figure out an opportunity to get those bolts off you both later."
"I don't know that I'd go anywhere," the protocol droid admitted, "My range of motion is limited enough that it is safer for me to stay with an owner that treats me at least somewhat decently."
"Still," Izuku sighed, "They'd notice it missing, more likely than not."
"010010010010000001100011011000010110111000100111011101000010000001110011011101000110000101111001," said 1N-U1, "010010010010000001101110011001010110010101100100001000000111010001101111001000000110011001101001011011100110010000100000010000010110100101111010011000010111011101100001."
"Aizawa? Who is Aizawa?" the protocol droid asked.
"Like, old man Aizawa?" Izuku asked, "We can go and visit him tomorrow if you want. While I'm supposed to be getting your memories wiped."
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt."
"01010100011010000110000101110100001000000111011101101111011100100110101101110011."
"Cool," Izuku nodded. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked the protocol droid.
"I am 11-D4," was the reply, "My partner and I were formerly in the employ of one Captain Asui, of Alderaan, but given the state of that ship when we were jettisoned, I doubt he is still among the living."
"Yeesh," Izuku shook his head, "Well, I'm glad you both made it out alright. Here, I'll get you both cleaned up and then we can go and visit Old Man Aizawa tomorrow."
~~~
Shouta had been living in the desert for a long time, but he still hated it. This planet was a... less than ideal... place to eek out a living, but he had his reasons for being here, and it did offer him some measure of respite from the endless manhunt of the Empire
"Old Man Aizawa!" came a shout and a banging on his door, "Old Man Aizawa, open up! It's Izuku Shimura, I need to talk to you!"
Speaking of his reasons...
He heaved a sigh, then stood, his joints popping one after the other on the way up. This damn desert had aged him prematurely - he was only fifty-one! Unless he'd lost track of the date... in which case he was fifty-two. Either way, he was far too young for his body to be acting like he could keel over dead at any moment, and it was very rude that it did.
"Old Man Aizawa!" Izuku kept pounding on the door. Ay, that crazy kid...
"Hello, Izuku," he said when he opened the door, "What did you need?"
"Well, my Aunt and Uncle bought two new droids yesterday," Izuku started, and Shouta could already feel that this was going to be a long story, and he wasn't going to get to take his afternoon nap, "And one of them - 1N-U1 - said that he needed to talk to you?"
"1N-U1?" Shouta couldn't help but be surprised, "I haven't seen 1N-U1 in near-to twenty years. Since before I moved to Tatooine. What could he need to talk to me about?"
"I donno," Izuku shrugged. "Can we come in?"
Shouta sighed. What typical Shimura behavior. "Fine then, come inside, and I'll speak with 1N-U1."
They came in and moved to sit around Shouta's table with him - first Izuku, then 1N-U1, then -
"I should have expected that 11-D4 would be with you also," he resisted the urge to shoo the rule-bound droid from his home, "Seems like fate, almost."
"Fate?" Izuku asked, "Why?"
"Your father was the one who built 11-D4," Shouta got up and moved to the kitchenette to make himself a mug of caff. He was going to need either that or some alcohol, and he was sure that he would likely need his wits about him later. "When he was only nine years old."
11-D4 shifted around like this was surprising information to him - had he been wiped since Shouta had seen him last? He'd told Nedzu and Masaru that that was illogical and unnecessary - but Izuku was the one who responded. "Really? I guess that makes you my older brother, 11-D4! I've never had a brother before. Or any siblings, actually."
"What?" Shouta was getting a headache. This was stupid. "You mean they still haven't told you? You're an adult now, you can protect yourself."
"Who? Told me what?"
Shouta took his mug of caff from the maker and took a sip. Thank the Force for caff. "About your sisters."
"My what?" Well, that was a bit shrill.
"Your sisters," Shouta made his way back to the table, "Your father practically raised his apprentice during the Clone War, so I'm including her... and then your twin sister, Katsuki."
"I have two sisters...?" Izuku stared down at his hands like they would tell him the answers to the universe.
"01001001001000000110100001100001011101100110010100100000011000010010000001101101011001010111001101110011011000010110011101100101!" 1N-U1 cut in, "010001100111001001101111011011010010000001010000011100100110100101101110011000110110010101110011011100110010000001001011011000010111010001110011011101010110101101101001."
"Oh, well, that's relevant," Shouta addressed the astromech, "Is it a visual message or are you just going to quote her to me?"
"What did he say?" Izuku asked, "I... my binary is a little rusty. My Aunt and Uncle don't like me learning it too much. They say it's important to keep separation between droids and organics."
"He said that he has a message for me from your sister," Shouta said, choosing not to address the (in his opinion) deeply stupid choice to hamstring Izuku's education despite his clear interest. He was fairly certain that he knew their reasons, but that did not make any of it less stupid in his eyes. "Go ahead and play it," he told 1N-U1.
A blue-tinged hologram flickered to life.
"General Aizawa," said Katsuki's hologram, "1N-U1 has the plans for the Empire's newest bullshit weapon. He needs to get to the rebellion proper, and you're the only person around here I know I can trust. So like, get him to the rebellion."
Then the hologram vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"Well, she's direct at least," Shouta took a sip of his caff.
"That's my sister?" Izuku asked, "Does she know about me?"
"I don't know," Shouta admitted, "I haven't spoken to her since she was ten years old. She didn't then, but she was a child then. She's an adult now."
"Oh." Izuku continued to stare at where the hologram had been. "Um, so what do we do now?"
"The Princess was rather direct," 11-D4 pointed out.
"My sister's a Princess?"
"I don't know where the current rebel base is," Shouta cut in, "So our best bet would be to take 1N-U1 to Alderaan, to the royal Bakugou family who were tasked with raising Katsuki."
"But -" Izuku frowned. "Why were we split up at all?"
"Because of the Emperor," Shouta said blithely, "He had already shown a vested interest in your family... Nedzu thought it would be safer to split you up, and Masaru Bakugou agreed. I did not, but I was outvoted."
Izuku wrinkled his nose, looking rather put-upon. "I... I want to go with you, and meet my sister. Do you have a speeder? I'd rather not steal my Aunt and Uncle's."
"Yes, I have a speeder," Shouta resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The only other option was to ride a bantha everywhere, and a speeder was considerably lower maintenance. Why wouldn't he have a speeder?
"Can we make a detour to my Aunt and Uncle's place so I can put back their speeder before we leave?" Izuku asked, "I... don't want to talk to them, not right now, but stranding them out at the homestead seems way too mean and potentially deadly. I might be a little upset with them right now, but I don't want them to die."
"Understandable," Shouta nodded, "Yes, we can take your Aunt and Uncle's speeder back to their homestead. After I finish my caff."
~~~
Darth Trauer did not know the names of most of the people in this meeting. Most of the time he didn't know the names of these piddly, squabling beauracrats, few of whom had done a single thing to earn their power. At this table, he knew only the names of two members - Admiral Aoyama, who had been his ship's Admiral during the Clone War, and Grand Moff Garaki, who was currently his superior officer and enjoying that fact far too much, in Trauer's personal opinion.
He hated these stupid meetings. Bah! He was a military commander, not a beauracrat. This meeting was stupid.
"Emperor Shigaraki has ordered the dissolution of the Imperial Senate," Grand Moff Garaki announced, "It's about time, in my personal opinion."
"Pardon me, sir," said a foolish man, "But won't that increase rebel sympathies, if the citizens of the Empire feel that they are not being represented in the government?"
"They will be too afraid of this station to rebel," Grand Moff Garaki said haughtily, "We needn't worry about it."
Trauer did not think that was how that was going to work, but he was not foolish enough to say as much to Garaki, because anything he said to Garaki was sure to end up heard by the Emperor, and to question this move was to question the Emperor, something that he had long ago learned that it was foolish to do.
He tuned out the rest of the meeting. He was sure that anything important would be repeated to him later by Garaki like he was still a stupid child.
...He wanted to talk to his Commander.
~~~
As they grew closer to home, Izuku began to have an awful feeling in his gut.
He didn't know why, exactly. He hadn't had that bad feeling before, when he'd chosen to leave, to go chasing after his sister with two droids and the old man whom his Aunt had banned from the property some years ago but had used to, when he was young, leave him treats and toys that he still held dear. He hadn't had that feeling when they set off, either, with the droids loaded into Aizawa's speeder rather than his own for ease later on.
But about halfway there, something changed.
It started small, just a faint sense of unease. Honestly, he thought that it might be guilt - guilt for leaving without saying anything, because no matter how mad he was at them for not telling him about his sisters, Inko and Toshinori were still his Aunt and Uncle. They were still the ones who had raised him. That's why he didn't want to talk to them about leaving - he knew that if he tried, he would say something that he would later regret, and he didn't want to do that.
Except that it kept getting worse, and worse, and worse... to the point that he was beginning to feel sick.
Something was wrong. He ended up increasing his speed.
A glance behind him told him that Aizawa had done the same. Was that because Izuku had and he was trying to keep up? Or did he percieve this awful feeling too?
And then he saw the smoke.
Curls of knowing dread twined in him, pushed him forward because he needed to see, needed to know -
But seeing only confirmed his worst fears. The homestead itself was still burning, and out front, not even three feet from the door, lay two charred corpses.
~~~
Katsuki had been stuck in this cell for what felt like days, and she absolutely hated it.
There was literally nothing to do here! They'd left her in her flimsy senate dress - probably because it didn't have pockets, something she'd always hated about it, but her parents refused to allow her to buck tradition too publicly - and her shoes, which was dumb because they were tall boots that she could absolutely hide things in!
And she had! Unfortunately, a vibroknife and ration bar neither one were going to be of much help to her at this point. Well, maybe the ration bar if they didn't bring her food soon, but what was she going to attack with a vibroknife at this juncture? She was already in a cell; it wasn't like she'd be able to stab somebody and get out.
...Maybe she should eat that ration bar. Just to have something to do.
Suddenly, the door opened, and Darth Trauer stood in the doorway, two stormtroopers flanking him behind. For a moment, Katsuki was tempted to lash out with her vibroknife, try to take down Trauer at close range - and then she remembered that he was wearing full-body armorweave. She wouldn't be able to put a scratch on him.
"Let's get this over with," Trauer said between heavy breaths, stepping into the cell, "I'm supposed to get you to give up the location of the rebel base. We both know that you won't give it up willingly, but whatever. Let's still try this."
A horrible, repulser-hover noise came closer, and behind Darth Trauer emerged a torture droid, needles protruding from all over its spherical body.
Well, fuck.
~~~
Izuku had been to Mos Eisley before. Not recently, because Anchorhead was closer and his Aunt and Uncle didn't really want him near the seat of power for a Hutt if they could help it - which he actually agreed with, Hutts were the worst - but he had been once or twice. When Mashirao was still here. It didn't really seem all that different, except for the stormtroopers who stopped them at the city's border.
"Have you had those droids long?"
"My father built the protocol droid," he told the trooper, "And got the astromech around the same time." He didn't know if that second part was true, but it sounded nice and hopefully would get the stormtrooper to go away.
"May I see your identification?" Okay that didn't work.
"You don't need to see his identification," Aizawa cut in, sounding a little bit bored. For some reason, the trooper believed him.
"I don't need to see his identification."
"These aren't the droids you're looking for."
"These aren't the droids we're looking for."
"Move along."
"Move along!" the stormtrooper waved them on, "Move along!"
Izuku hit the gas, although he was confused by the sudden change in the trooper. Once they had come to a stop and parked, he asked Aizawa, "What was that?"
"A Jedi mind trick."
"Jedi?"
"Did I not tell you that part?" Aizawa looked over with a frown.
"No, you told me about my sister and droids, and then we left your place after you drank your caff."
"Hm," Aizawa wrinkled his nose, "The Jedi were a religious and political institution that was part of the Republic, composed of individuals who possessed the ability to manipulate the Force. I was a member, and your father was a member. It's illegal to be a Jedi now - all force sensitives are either hunted down or made to join the Inquisitorius."
"The Force?"
"An ominipresent energy field. Don't worry too much about it now, I can explain more once we are safely on our way to Alderaan."
Izuku nodded. That made sense. They didn't know how time-sensitive this whole thing was. "So, how are we going to get there? Go to the spaceport and look for a flight?"
"No, too slow," Aizawa shook his head, "We're going to look around in the city's underbelly for someone with a private ship and then make the Bakugous foot the bill."
"Oh. Will they... appriciate that?"
"Probably not, but they are rich. They can deal with it. This way!" Aizawa pointed towards a cantina and then made for it, leaving Izuku to trail behind.
The inside of the cantina was cramped and dark and noisy. There was a band playing jizz music, and, off in the wings, only barely visible, a blue-skinned twi'lek girl primping for a show of her own. There were people all around, many of them visibly carrying weapons. Bounty hunters, perhaps? Izuku did his best to stay close to Aizawa's side.
All of a sudden, Aizawa began to move with purpose. The only warning that Izuku had before this happened was a single sentence: "That knife looks like..." and then Aizawa was off, Izuku scrambling after him.
"Hey," Aizawa said, coming up to a large, hairy humanoid - a wookie - "You wouldn't happen to be Kojikoda, would you?"
The wookie said something in shyriwook that Izuku did not understand.
"Your knife," Aizawa pointed to a knife hanging from the wookie's bandoleer, the sheath painted with red-and-white geometic patterns, "Reminded me of my granddaughter's facial markings."
The wookie spoke again.
"Yes, Himiko. So you are Kojikoda then?"
Something else in shyriwook.
"Wonderful. Would you mind helping us then? My grandson and I need passage to Alderaan, along with two droids, quick as you can. We can pay 2000 credits now and 15000 on arrival. You need to speak with your partner? Very well, we'll wait a moment."
The wookie walked away.
"Since when are you my grandfather?" Izuku asked.
Aizawa fixed him with a deadpan glare. "I did not raise your father from the age of nine to not get the title of 'grandfather'. You will simply have to deal with it."
"I'm not complaining!" Izuku squeaked, "Just surprised, is all!"
A moment later, they were approached by the wookie again, and a young human man, or at least human hybrid, with wild-looking purple hair and large eyebags. "You're the ones needing passage to Alderaan?" the human asked, looking them both up and down, "I'm Hitoshi Shinsou. We'll be taking my ship out of Docking Bay 3 here. Do you need to do anything here before we leave?"
"Lead the way," Aizawa said, "The sooner we leave, the better."
~~~
Hitoshi couldn't believe this score. He'd been sure that he was screwed, that he'd gotten too close to a star and been burned for it, but this money could save him. A score like this, all because Koji knew the old guy's granddaughter once upon a time? He'd have to ask for the story later.
Later, because when they were loading up, a bunch of stormtroopers burst into the docking bay, one of them screaming about the droids. Dank Ferrick! What was this? Why were stormtroopers after a couple of droids?
The old man and his grandson hurried the droids aboard, the protocol droid nearly tripping and falling as it went. Hitoshi grit his teeth and shouted, "Koji, fire up the engines!" as he pulled out his blaster pistol and fired it at the troopers, taking down one, two, and almost getting shot in the process. He stumbled up the ramp into the ship, keeping his blaster focused on the threat in case one of them tried to make a break for the ship.
One of them did. That one was dead now.
It was only when the ship began to rumble with energy and the ramp began to close that Hitoshi clambered all the way up inside, even as shots continued to be fired. Luckily, it took more time to set up the ordinance needed to take down a ship.
They'd make it off Tatooine, no problem.
~~~
"Grand Moff Garaki. I should've known you'd be here; I smelled your foul stench when I was brought onboard, but I wasn't certain that it wasn't... lingering."
"Princess Katsuki, as charming as ever," she couldn't see his expression for his mustache, but he sounded faintly amused. "I heard that you would not yet give us the location of the rebel base. That really is unfortunate. But I am sure that you can be persuaded."
"When have I ever given you the impression that I would do anything that I didn't want to?"
"Hm. Look out the window, Princess Katsuki," Grand Moff Garaki gestured for her, "Do you see? We've traveled all the way to your home planet of Alderaan. This station needs testing... would you like to offer us another target?"
Katsuki's eyes flew wide. "You can't be serious! There are two billion people on Alderaan! You cannot mean to kill them all!"
"Then provide us another target, Princess. Tell us the location of the rebel base."
Fuck, fuck. Maybe she could be clever about it, give them a planet where they used to have a base, but they had moved on from? She couldn't betray the rebellion, but she couldn't just let her whole planet die... "...Dantooine. The base is on Dantooine."
"Hm. I knew you could be reasonable," said Grand Moff Garaki. "Fire when ready!"
"What?"
"Don't be stupid, Princess. A weapon like this only works if people know about it to be scared of it. And Dantooine... an Outer Rim planet so insignificant that we don't even have proper numbers on its population? No-one would care. Ready the weapon!"
"No, no!" Katsuki attempted to surge forward, to attack Grand Moff Garaki, but two pairs of arms grabbed onto her and held her back. "That wasn't the deal!"
"I don't care," Garaki said, and turned back to the operators, ignoring her. There was some kind of countdown happening, but all she could hear was a low voice in her ear - the stormtrooper who had come in here with them all, the one who was holding her back with Darth Trauer.
"Bear with it, Princess," said the trooper, "Sometimes, all you can do is bear with it."
There was something heavy in the trooper's voice. Something in her realized that this trooper was... that accent meant that... wow, this guy was old. She hadn't realized that there were any clone troopers still around.
A thrumming sort of noise had her attention snapping back to the view window to see a great bolt of green, a sickly neon green unlike any blaster bolt or laser cannon she'd ever seen before, shoot from somewhere above them and strike Alderaan at once.
The effect was immediate.
Later, she'd be able to describe it, the process of it, in such great detail that people would think that it took much longer than it actually did. That there were more than a few able to make it off-planet because they'd already been readying to leave.
In reality, it was less than a minute. Less than a minute, and then Alderaan, Katsuki's home for her entire life... was just gone.
It was just gone, and she was surrounded by the assholes who had destroyed it.
~~~
Izuku was beginning to understand that Shouta - it had begun to feel strange to refer to his grandfather by his surname, but similiarly it would feel far too odd to refer to him by a familiar nickname - was maybe perhaps somewhat emotionally challenged. He had handed Izuku a sword - he called it a lightsaber - and said it used to belong to Izuku's father, with as much inflection as a normal person would have when talking about the weather! Seriously, it was kind of nonsensical... And now he was attempting to show Izuku how to use it! Izuku had no experience with melee weapons!
"The first thing that you want to do," Shouta said, holding his own lightsaber, "Is try to extend yourself out into the Force. More likely than not, you already do this unconsciously, so basically, I'm just saying that you need to trust your instincts."
"Is that what the Force is?" Izuku asked, "Instincts? I think most people have those, though..."
"It's a bit more than that," Shouta said, "Like a more enhanced version of it. Unnaturally fast reflexes, strangely accurate aim, premonitions of the future... those are the most common ways that untrained force sensitives end up expressing their powers."
"Oh," Izuku blinked, "I guess I have always had fairly good aim..."
"Let me guess: it feels as though your blaster rifle is an extension of yourself?"
"I - yeah, how'd you know that?"
Shouta nodded. "Right, so that's the feeling that we want to emulate with your lightsaber. This is both complicated and eased by the kyber crystal that powers the saber - the crystal has a force signature of it's own, which means that you have to communicate with it, or else the saber might work against you. To assist with this, I am going to teach you the katas of the first lightsaber form, Shii-Cho. Then, I want you to run through them while focusing on the cystal in your father's saber. Alright?"
"Alright," Izuku nodded.
"Alright, so first..." and then Shouta led Izuku into a series of movements, demonstrating them first and then expecting Izuku to copy them. Which he did - once, twice, a third time, again and again until he fell into a rhythm.
And once he fell into a rhythm, he began to really feel the world around him - or the space around him, whatever. It was like - he closed his eyes. It was like he could feel every bit of the ship with his mind, every dent and scratch, every partical of sand beneath his feet. In his hands, the crystal inside the lightsaber began to sing, a somewhat sad melody that accepted him, made him feel... oddly whole, in a way that he'd never felt before.
"What is going on? Are those - don't swing those around in my ship, you might damage it!" Hitoshi's angry voice snapped Izuku out of his zen state.
"Oh! Um, sorry," Izuku powered down his saber.
"One misstep with that thing and you'll compromise the integrity of the hull!" Hitoshi snapped, "You should know better, old man."
"There was no danger," Shouta insisted, "But if it makes you feel better..."
"It does."
Shouta shrugged, and powered down his own saber. A moment after that, though, he flinched. Izuku felt a strange feeling in his gut at the same time, a feeling that something was terribly wrong.
"What is it?" Hitoshi asked, "You can't seriously be that upset that I asked you not to play with swords on my ship."
"It's not that," Shouta waved off the pilot, "It's... there's been a lot of death in the galaxy. So much, so simultaneously... What could've happened?"
"Well," Hitoshi said, wrinkling his nose, "It didn't happen to us. At any rate, we're coming up on Alderaan. Brace for the drop to sub-light speed if you want."
Then Hitoshi turned around and walked back to the cockpit. Despite the sinking feeling in his gut, or maybe because of it, Izuku hurried to follow him. Shouta wasn't far behind.
And something was indeed wrong.
"What the...? Koji, we did all our calculations correctly, didn't we?"
Koji said something in shyriwook and pointed at the ship readouts.
"Right, we're in the right place according to the ship. But then where's Alderaan? That doesn't make any sense. And what's with this meteor shower?"
"Oh," Shouta said, "That's what all that death was. Alderaan." His eyes were tracking one of the chunks of rock drifting by them as he said it, and it took Izuku only a moment to realize what he meant.
"How did this happen?" Izuku asked, looking out at all that remained of Alderaan for himself, "That doesn't just... happen, does it?"
"No, it doesn't," Shouta said, "Not unless the star is going supernova. But look - Alderaan's star still shines."
At that moment, a fighter screamed past them, the distinctive bow shape of an imperial tie-fighter.
"What the - where did that come from?" Hitoshi balked, "I'm guessing we should take it out before it can report us? Koji, follow that thing so we can destroy it!"
Koji responded in shyriwook.
"But where did it come from?" Izuku asked, "Tie-fighters don't have hyperdrives! They're not meant for prolonged combat!"
"That moon, maybe?" Hitoshi scoffed, gesturing to a sphere growing larger in the window as they chased the tie-fighter, "It's close enough."
"Moon?" Shouta cut in, "Alderaan doesn't have any moons. The only planet in this system with a moon is Avirandel, the fourth planet - and it only has one. That can't be a moon."
"Then what is that?" Hitoshi asked, "If it isn't a moon?"
"It must be a space station."
"But it's way too big to be a space station!"
"Um!" Izuku cut in, "Maybe we should run? Away from the probably imperial space station base?"
"Right," Hitoshi said, "Koji, get us out of here."
Some more shyriiwook - Izuku really needed to learn that.
"Oh, kark."
"It's a tractor beam, isn't it?" Shouta asked. He just sounded deeply tired.
"Yeah."
"Right!" Shouta clapped his hands together, "You're a smuggler, aren't you, Hitoshi? Where do you hide your goods?"
~~~
The avoidance of the stormtroopers boarding was honestly too easy. Killing them, too, and taking their armor - easier than Izuku would've liked. Then Shouta said that he'd turn off the tractor beam and slipped away from the group, telling them to wait where they were relatively safe.
But when 1N-U1 learned that they were keeping Princess Katsuki on the station, and that she was scheduled for execution, well, that's when things got a little wonky.
"Please, Hitoshi," Izuku begged, "She's my sister. We have to save her."
Hitoshi sighed heavily. "Fine, kid. But I come up with the plan."
~~~
Shouta didn't like how familiar these halls were. He didn't like that, in some respects, being in halls like this felt like a homecoming.
His footfalls echoed the same way that they always had on the Negociator. The lighting in the halls looked the same. The walls were the same color, the halls the same dimensions, the doors opened and closed in the exact same way. It made it difficult, in a way, to handle - all he wanted to do was slide back into being General Aizawa, on his way to a breifing with the Jedi Council, Tenko and Himiko giggling at something or other that he didn't understand. Commander Oboro and Captain Spinner with their helmets off, Oboro bemused and Spinner actively partaking in whatever antics Tenko and Himiko had started.
His family. His home. It was so close-feeling, in this awful place, and he hated it.
He needed to focus.
A door opened in front of him, and a trooper stepped out. Shouta stilled, prepared himself to use a mind trick, or to pull his saber if the trooper opened fire. But when the trooper saw him, he pulled off his helmet.
"General Aizawa?"
No... Had Shouta summoned him by thinking about him? There was no way this was "Oboro?"
His hair had gone monotone grey with age, his once sharp and glinting eyes no longer shone in the light. His scars still stood out though, as prominent as ever.
"I didn't see you," Oboro said after a minute, "And no-one else will either, wherever you're going."
Ah. Well, it was Oboro. Shouta still trusted him. "The nearest power source for the tractor beam."
Oboro nodded. "I'll redirect the patrols." He put his helmet back on. "Force be with you, General Aizawa."
Shouta watched as his once-Commander vanished into another door, like a spector of a life long-gone, a time where he had truly been happy.
"May the Force be with you, Commander Oboro."
~~~
The thing about rescuing your sister who doesn't know that she's your sister is that she has no reason to believe that you are her brother - except when you tell her that that's what General Shouta Aizawa said, and for some reason then she believes you without question.
"I can't believe I have a brother," she said, "And I can't believe he's here with an idiot, and being an idiot, and going to get us all shot."
"Would you rather go back in your cell?" Hitoshi snarked.
"No," Katsuki told him, "I'd rather not die at all, although given your skill levels I'm not going to hold out that much hope."
Hitoshi turned to glare at her, but that was soon interrupted by, you know, the blaster fire from the stormtroopers who hadn't been put off by Hitoshi asking how their day was going.
"Oh, in the name of the Force!" Katsuki grabbed the blaster from Hitoshi's hands, fired it at a grate in the wall, and demanded, "Everybody into the garbage shoot! Now!"
Izuku thought that was a pretty good idea. It was a direction, at least, and not a dead end. His sister was pretty smart.
Anyway, they got in the garbage shoot. It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.
The garbage shoot was gross, and there was a layer of nasty water about knee-deep, but it seemed to be - judging from the piles of garbage jutting out of the nasty water on all sides - oddly enough, mostly mechanical waste? Piles of old droid parts and busted door control panels, that sort of thing. Very little food waste or sewage, which was weird considering that this was was a trash shoot down from a prison block - had there been no other prisoners? How new was this station?
"Ugh, my dress," Katsuki complained, "This is nasty!"
"Really?" Hitoshi snarked, "You're complaining about your dress?"
"Uh, yeah?" Katsuki scoffed, "Because I don't have a change of clothes and it's soaked in nasty sewage water that I can feel on my fucking skin, dipshit!"
Kojikoda said something in shyriiwook.
"Yeah, yeah, fine," Hitoshi said, "Okay, whatever."
"Hey, does the door open?" Izuku asked, "Or do we need to contact the droids and get them to open it?" He walked a bit towards the door through the knee-deep nasty water.
Kojikoda tested the door, then turned back with a roar that Izuku did not actually need translated to know that it meant the door was locked.
"I'll contact them," Izuku said, and turned the communicator on. The moment he did, there was a great shuddering noise, and the walls began to close in.
"It's a compactor!" Katsuki shouted, "Shinsou, furball, help me prop something between the walls! Izuku, call those droids, get it shut down!"
"Got it!" Izuku turned back to the communicator.
"Who put you in charge?" Hitoshi asked.
"Me!" Katsuki demanded, "And I don't see you coming up with any better ideas!"
Kojikoda said something in shyriiwook, which was probably roughly equivalent in meaning to scolding Hitoshi, if the disgruntled noise he made after was any indication.
"11-D4!" Izuku yelled into the communicator, "Come in 11-D4! 11-D4!"
~~~
So, it would take a minute or three for 1N-U1 and 11-D4 to respond to Izuku's cries for help. Largely because they were presently hiding in a closet from a contingent of stormtroopers, looking for the interlopers who had breached the ship. If droids had hearts, they would be pounding.
The troopers weren't looking very hard. They were not doing more than the bare minimum, just enough to make their job technically be done. They didn't really care, and honestly it wasn't like anyone was going to yell at them - the intruders would be caught eventually, and most of them were must here for the pay, not because they really cared about the Empire's philosophy. So like, why should they really try that hard?
They stomped and tramped through the room were the droids were hidden, but they didn't stop to look in any hiding places, not even the closet. It wasn't their problem. They wanted to go to bed early tonight.
For the droids, it felt like an eternity. For the troopers, it was less than five minutes, and when asked later, they wouldn't even be able to say with certainty what rooms they had even been in.
When they were finally gone, the droids came back out of the closet - first 1N-U1 and then 11-D4, far more stiff in his movements than 1N-U1.
11-D4 turned back on the communicator that they had switched on while hiding to hear Izuku screaming.
"Turn off the trash compactors! Turn them off!"
"1N-U1!" 11-D4 cried, "Hurry! Hurry and turn off the trash compactors!"
"010010010010011101101101001000000110011101101111011010010110111001100111," said 1N-U1, "011000110110000101101100011011010010000001100100011011110111011101101110."
After a moment, Izuku sounded a good deal... not calmer, but happier. "They're off!" he said, "Haha! They're off! Can you open the door?"
1N-U1 said something very unflattering about Izuku's intelligence compared to that of his parents. 11-D4 politely pretended that nothing at all had been said.
~~~
The station was big, and that bigness was perhaps intimidating from the outside, but from within Izuku mostly thought that it was deeply annoying. They'd escaped the trash compactor with help from the droids, but there was an awful lot of space station between them and the hanger bay. That was kind of annoying.
"Do you at least know which way we're going?" Katsuki asked with a huff.
"There are maps," Hitoshi pointed out, "It's not that hard to navigate."
"Right," Katsuki gave a pained smile, "And our destination?"
"Hanger bay E," Izuku piped up, "Let's go."
Apparently, that was what Katsuki wanted to know, because she fell quiet for... honestly a rather short period of time. Were all sisters this annoying and fussy? She kept complaining about her dress, the Empire, that her parents hadn't told her she had a brother, Hitoshi's face, etc. How far away was the hanger bay again?
Izuku was doing his best to feel the world around him in the Force, like Shouta had taught him earlier. It was because of that that he knew which way they shouldn't go, even if the map said they should.
"Stop," he tried to halt the others, "That way is dangerous. We need to go around."
"How can you tell?" Hitoshi scoffed, "Your magic? That's bogus; this is the way the map says that we need to go, so we need to go this way." Then he charged on ahead - for a moment, then came running back with a wild look in his eyes. Blasterfire sounded behind him, and so Izuku turned to run as well.
"Oh, great," Katsuki grumbled, picking up her skirt to run after Izuku, "Let's ignore the Force Sensitive! I'm sure that's a good idea and not connected to how the Empire rose in the first place!"
Kojikoda said something in shyriiwook.
They ran, and ran, turning corners at random in an attempt to break away from where the troopers might look for them, but it wasn't long before they were separated - Izuku and Katsuki were now alone, with Hitoshi and Kojikoda nowhere in sight, but stormtroopers still right on their heels.
They darted through a door, and it closed behind them. Practically on instinct, Izuku used his blaster - or, the one he'd taken from a stormtrooper, anyway - to fry the door controls.
"You idiot!" Katsuki snapped, "Now we're stuck! We can't extend the bridge!" she pointed in front of them, which was in fact a large shaft with no real way across. Well, kark.
"Oh!" Izuku said after looking up, "Hold on, I have an idea!"
"It better not be to fall to our deaths."
"It's not!" Izuku unspooled a grapple from his belt, "Hold on - we can swing!"
He looked the grapple to something protruding from the top of the shaft - it looked a bit like an engine, but it was currently inert so they should be fine - and waited until he felt his sister holding onto him tight from behind.
"I've decided I hate having a brother," she said, "He is constantly coming up with the stupidest ideaaaaaaaaas!" her sentence turned to a warble as they swung, but they landed safely on the other side of the shaft, and Izuku was able to retrieve his grapple without too much hassle.
"Is it really stupid if it works?" he asked.
Oh, yes. No doubt."
~~~
Shouta was headed back to the hanger bay when he felt the presence of the one now known as Darth Trauer. Warbling, dark, but almost pitiful, and drawing closer every moment.
There was no way that this confrontation could be avoided.
"Shouta Aizawa..." Drath Trauer said, the inflection so familiar that it made Shouta's chest ache.
"Darth Trauer," Shouta said sharply.
"I cannot let you pass," Darth Trauer drew his lightsaber.
"Very well," Shouta drew his own weapon, "Then we fight."
Darth Trauer lashed out with Shii-Cho strikes, so different from the Djem So that Tenko had once favored. Shouta fell into defensive mode, blocking each strike but knowing that this time, he would not be able to walk away from this. He no longer possessed the resolve to injure Tenko - even if the man in front of him no longer used that name.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the children and droids run for the ship, and he knew what he would have to choose - he couldn't run for the ship. He would be followed. He couldn't win, because he couldn't live with himself after.
So he lifted his saber up in a salute, and then knew no more.
~~~
Neither of the twins was doing particularly well, although both of them were trying to hide it. Katsuki, with her political training, was doing better than Izuku, but that did not mean that she felt well. As a matter of fact, she felt rather terrible - her parents who had raised her, her home planet, nearly everyone she'd known... they were all dead in an instant.
She wouldn't let them have died for nothing. She led the way off the ship, to hand off the information, to the breifing where they talked about what they would need to do to blow up the Death Star. She heard her brother say that he wanted to go up to fight it, and she couldn't stop him - if she could fly, she would be right up there beside him.
Hitoshi left, saying that there was nothing in the fight for him now that he'd been paid. He took Kojikoda with him.
The Death Star appeared in the sky.
The fight was on.
~~~
Izuku was a good pilot. He had always been a good pilot - it was in his blood. He'd known that since he was a little boy, since he'd seen 'Tenko Shimura' listed among the past winners of the Boonta Eve Classic. He'd longed to fly for years and years - but his first flight in space was a battle.
He felt oddly calm, though, feeling the galaxy around him through the force like Shouta had shown him. Shouta, who was - he could think about that later.
The Force was a better map of his surroundings that the ship's onboard computers. More intuitive, too - he just knew with the Force, whereas he had to ask 1N-U1 to translate most of the computer readouts for the unfamiliar ship.
It was with the Force that he knew that his fellow pilots were being picked off, one by one. It was with the Force that he felt Darth Trauer closing in behind him, pinning him into the trench, ready to pick him off too. It was with the Force that he felt Hitoshi return, and was saved from the most immediate danger.
It was with the Force that he aimed, fired, and landed the shot that caused the Death Star's cascading failure. And that rippling change is what let him know that it was over - at least, it was over for now.
There would be more to come. Medal ceremonies, packing up, mourning. The Empire knew their base's location now, so they needed to move. The fight wasn't over, and wouldn't be over until the Empire was dismantled and the Emperor killed. But for now, they were alive, and everyone was alright, and that was enough.