<p>Star Wars</p><p>Ahsoka</p><p>by E. K. Johnston</p>To the Royal Handmaiden Society.
We are brave, Your Highness.
MANDALORE BURNED.
Not all of it, of course, but enough that the smoke filled the air around her. Ahsoka Tano breathed it in. She knew what she had to do, but she wasn’t sure it would work. Worse, she wasn’t sure how long it would work, even if it did. But she was out of options, and this was the only chance she had left. She was there with an army and a mission, as she might have done when she was still Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan. It probably would have gone better if Anakin were with her.
“Be careful, Ahsoka,” he’d told her, before handing over her lightsabers and running off to save the Chancellor. “Maul is tricky. And he has no mercy in him at all.”
“I remember,” she’d replied, trying to scrape up some of the brashness that had earned her the nickname Snips the first time they’d met. She didn’t think the effort was tremendously successful, but he smiled anyway.
“I know.” He rolled his shoulders, already thinking of his own fight. “But you know how I worry.”
“What could happen?” Acting more like her old self was easier the second time, and then she found that she was smiling, too.
Now, the weight of her lightsabers in her hands was reassuring, but she would have traded them both for Anakin’s presence in a heartbeat.
She could see Maul, not far from her now. Smoke wreathed his black-and-red face, though it didn’t seem to bother him. He’d already put aside his cloak; battle-readiness oozing from his stance. He was in one of the plazas that wasn’t burning yet, pacing while he waited for her. If she hadn’t known that his legs were artificial, she never would have guessed they weren’t the limbs he’d been born with. The prosthetics didn’t slow him down at all. She walked toward him, determined. After all, she knew something she was pretty sure he didn’t.
“Where’s your army, Lady Tano?” he called as soon as she was within earshot.
“Busy defeating yours,” she replied, hoping it was true. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of seeing how much his calling her Lady Tano hurt. She wasn’t a commander anymore, even though the battalion still treated her with the same courtesy they always had, because of her reputation.
“It was so nice of your former masters to send you out alone and spare me the exertion of a proper fight,” Maul said. “You’re not even a real Jedi.”
