Chapter Text
Aayla’s story
Aayla sighed as she skillfully leapt down from a crowbar hanging from the ceiling. What was even a crowbar doing in the middle of the palace anyways?
She had asked Anakin to create an excuse for her and of course he had to come out with the most pathetic she had ever heard. Despite it all, he was still her friend and she was ready to forgive him for this, after a good planned prank, of course!
She had been briefed by the Council that the vault was safe guarded with intimidating droids that had their mechanical hands some of the most dangerous weapons the galaxy had ever known, or something like that without the adjectives.
Aayla gulped as she neared the locker room, in the distance she could hear….sounds?
It was clever though, any conversation could be obscured by the sound, she had to be very careful if she wanted to make this mission a success.
She came nearer and nearer, and with it the sound grew louder and louder until the door was right in front of her. Aayla took a deep breath, it was now or never, with her lightsaber ready in her hand she busted the door open and what she found inside, oh, it would put even the strongest man in the galaxy to cry..
Inside was a….dance party! Droids were waltzing with each other in a terrible manner and the hanging glass globe rotated with so many colours that it formed a rainbow, for lack of different words..different than what she had expected.
Aayla was overcome with a strong urge to laugh as she saw the once bulgy, beefy droids dancing tango with their guns. One of them had gone so far as to dress his gun with a red doll dress. She tiptoed further, hoping that she wouldn’t catch anyone’s or any droid's eye, this might just be easy.
And how fate hated her because just as she started crossing the room, one of the droids took notice of her and drew in closer and closer. The music stopped playing as everyone’s eyes were on her. The jedi reached for her lightsaber but didn’t ignite it, the Force was telling her that it was not meant to be that way.
“You there!”, the droid sayed, for a terse moment everything silenced down to a single heartbeat, until the droid made a content sound and grabbed Aayla’s hand and started dancing with her.
Aayla pinched herself very hard
“Ouch!”
She had to be dreaming, because there is now way that the once menacing droidekas were dancing samba with her at that moment. Nope, erase that. This was totally Anakin’s dream because there was no way her imagination was this unhinged.
The young Jedi groaned as she was again jostled around like an unfortunate toy that was caught in the middle of chaos. She was as graceful as Houk dancing in the middle of twi'leks, oh the irony. She bet her lightsaber that Anakin would laugh his ass off at her situation.
Well, what better way to handle this rather than playing along
“Enough!”, she shouted.
She began to demonstrate some basic steps for dancing, that ought to keep them occupied for a while, she finished it with a complicated double tuck with a mid air spin.
She felt like an idiot doing this but she dearly hoped that her plan would work, and it did. The droids were too focused trying to learn how to dance to bother paying attention to the intruder slowly inching away.
Somehow, with the blessing of the Force, Aayla managed to get to the other part of the room, she slammed the door shut and elicited a sigh.
In front of her bathed in gold was the vault, she gingerly bent down and got to work to unlock the lock.
The lock was a precise combination of numbers allowing the dialer up to three mistakes, now which digits would be the answer? Aayla combed through the important dates of the planet, its age, the king’s coronation day but none of them stuck out to her enough to take the risk.
After deciding on the best three after seeing every mathematical combination, Aayla set to work.
First was the total numbers of people that resided on the planet.
The locker buzzed as the digital clock on top of it began counting. She had exactly 2 minutes to figure out the right password or they would all be doomed
Second she tried the total width of the planet.
Again the locker buzzed, but this time red lights began to flare all around her as the clock ticked down to 30 seconds. If she didn’t get the last combination correct then the alarms in the palace would alert the king and their mission would be a total failure, yep, no pressure at all.
The only combination she had left was the total age of the king, for someone so self absorbed, that was sure to be the answer, right?
She kept one leg bent with the toe and the rest of her fingers taking all her weight as the other leg held her lightsaber to free her hands.
But before she could type it in, her foot slipped and both of her hands flew to find the immediate support she could find which turned out to be the locker’s pad.
“ No! ”
Aayla shouted in dread as she saw that her fingers had written the randomest of numbers. That was it, the mission was over.
But to her surprise the locker beeped and the heavy door cracked open, phew , the young girl stood up to see what number had been the right combination.
What she saw made her want to tear her hair out, if she had any, or maybe take a few deep breaths here and there so she wouldn’t accidently blow up the king.
The correct combination happened to be
123
“Ugh! Is it so hard to get some sensible company once in a while! What kind of a potato brain would keep his passwords such a simple thing!”
Her lekku twitched, she had to hold herself back from punching the stupid door, after all she was far more disciplined to do that.
Inside instead of the typical gold you would find stored in a corrupted king’s locker, Aayla found herself gazing at the most exotic animals that had ever been bred in this galaxy, but what truly drew her attention was the coffin in the middle of the room
“A coffin. Just what I needed to make this day better.”
She warily opened the lid of it, afterall, what poor soul had been murdered this time. Or was it some relative of the royal bloodline of Sene?
Aayla observed with curiosity as the wood had some fine holes that made it easier for the oxygen in the air to travel to the small space, puzzled, she undid the binding and before she could fully open the lid, the top was busted open and from inside of it emerged a man.
A man stood up from the coffin, he was a pudgy short man with Hawaiian shorts. His beard was badly done and his pants were ripped in the behind showing off a bright red underwear.
“Boo! ”
“Ah!”Aayla couldn’t help the scream that teared from her throat as she backed away. Seconds later a heavy metal goblet hit the man point black making him pass out. Later, Aayla would always deny the fact that this mission ever happened for the sake of her sanity and of others too, but for her defense it’s not everyday that a supposedly dead man rises from his coffin.
The young jedi took a deep breath as she shakily rose from the floor, what the kriffing hell was happening today? As a Padawan of the infamous Quinlan Vos she was used to seeing weird things, but this really stole the ball.
“A coffin! That was the whole secret treasure? A coffin! Why, why, why me?”
The animals around her trumpeted and shrieked, as they stomped out to their liberty, before she could stop them, the man that she had hit followed them running, using a nearby chess board to cover himself up, shouting Liberty! At each step. She ran towards the corridor as she watched the animals throw open the gates to the main chamber and run away. Yep, she was in big trouble.
“Again, why me?”
— — — — — — — — —
Present time
Anakin watched in fascination as all kinds of weird animals poured out of the hallway. There was one of every kind.
A hippopotamus with the snout of an elephant, a swan with the mouth of a crocodile, a rat with the neck of a giraffe ( but seriously how did his tiny weight take up so much weight! Anakin sweatdropped at that.)
“Oh, lookie lookie. I’m coming cousins”
Anakin starred in fascination as Jar Jar sped up to catch some weird looking species that looked like a mixture of a gungan with a chewbacca.
His trance was soon broken by the shark shock that ran through his veins.
“Poodoo” cursing sharply, the boy took out his lightsaber and cut the offensive wire in half, unknown to him the singes from his weapons had started a small fire on the silk rug underneath his feet.
“Jar Jar, wait up!”Ankin and Aayla shouted as they rushed to catch up to the so-called Representative Binks.
“Were you dancing back there?”, Aayla asked with a mischievous smile.
Anakin felt his cheeks burn red hot
”Shut up!”
Behind him His Majesty of Sene huffed and puffed as he jogged behind the not so dead man.
“Liberty! Liberty!”
“Brother, wait up! Come back!”, the kind kneeled down slowly as the orchestra of the palace began playing a slow sentimental song.
Aaah Ahhh ohh Aaah Ohh hoho
“Shut up you fools!”, the senator shouted as he followed his king.
The whole party ran out of the palace, the animals had flown off to somewhere and the mysterious man had disappeared, now the rest of the court watched in horror as the once luxurious palace was reduced to a burning mess.
Beside then Aayla was almost unknowingly choking Jar Jar as they saw the scene in front of them.
Anakin smiled nervously at their hosts.
“Does anybody want grapes?”
Just as he said that, the door of the castle crumbled down with a loud crash!
“Get out! You! Never come back!”The king’s face oddly resembled a ripe tomato ready to blow up.
“Let’s go!”Anakin shouted as he grabbed both Aayla and Jar Jar’s hand as they made a mad dash towards their ship and readily took off.
“This is flight control of Sene, hope you’ve had an enjoyable trip AND NEVER COME BACK”, the padawan's winced as their eardrum blew.
“Chillax, we’ll send you a packet of black grapes later on.”
Anakin finished off with a cheeky smile as he programmed the ship to enter hyperspace
“That was a complete disaster” Aayla muttered
“No kidding”
All three of them looked at each other seriously
“This mission never happened.”
They exchanged glances, Anakin was the first one to break the silence by his laugh, his friends soon followed.
“Hey! It could have gone worse!”
“I don’t think this mission could have gone any worse, Skywalker”
“You’re such a pessimist, Aayla.”
“Mesa agree”
Prologue
“End of story. Do you understand now why I never take negotiating missions, Snips? Because unless you want another burning palace I suggest you force Obi Wan to come with you on this mission”
“It’s funny, Skyguy. You’re the padawan of the Negotiator and you’re so bad at negotiating!”, Ahsoka doubled over in laughter as her master rolled his eyes.
“That is truly something I also never understood, Padawan of mine”, A voice with a strong coruscanti accent spoke up.
“It’s talent, Master. Anyways, have fun! Here’s your mission briefing”
Anakin handed Ahsoka a paper as he walked away, as the young master turned the corridor he was soon accompanied by Aayla Secura.
“I remember the mission, it had been rather exciting.”, the twi’lek teased
“Exciting? the only thing I remember is us getting berated by the Council for accidentally melting the gold alongside most of the castle.”, Anakin rolled his eyes good naturedly
Aayla threw back a glance at the eager togruta padawan and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“She has no idea, does she?”
Anakin gave her a teasing smirk
“Oh, I’m looking forward to when she comes back.”
Few hours later in the Negotiator.
As Ahsoka settled down in her bunker, she started reading the sheet of paper her master had given her before she had left.
The words were written in bold words.
Hello Snips, I hope you and Obi Wan dearly enjoy the diplomatic mission to Sene.
PS: There’s a box of grapes on the bottom of your supplies bag
In the middle of the endless galaxy an outraged togruta screamed.
“Skyguy!”