Chapter Text
One second he was this close to strangling Thrawn for poking this week's new alien species with a stick and making them mad thus, they were now trying to eat them, and the next second he was falling.
Ezra didn't get the time to let out an unprofessional scream before he landed on his back. The air left his chest on impact, and everything hurt .
Ezra fought to breathe and choked on the dust in the air. And then stopped.
Thrawn and him had been in a mud ball of a planet. Not a dustball. Ezra officially had no clue where he was.
Blaster fire ripped him out of his moment as he threw himself behind the closet cover. No matter where he was at what part of his life, getting shot at seemed to be a constant.
He fell into a battlefield mindset with ease taking in his surroundings. An unknown planet with minimal cover and unknown terrain. Ezra chanced a look behind him at his opponent and just about laughed.
Droids. Ancient Separatists models if he was right. Last time Ezra had seen those, he'd still been a stupid padawan, and Kanan and Rex had both smacked some sense into him.
Now Ezra was smarter, and he knew his limits. And with ancient rickety droids, his limits were a lot.
Dropping his center of gravity low, he reached out and grasped ahold of the data processing in the nearest battle droid feeling the humm of data flow transmitting back to their Commander droid and eventually the processing center that controlled them. The wireless transfer hummed as he sank into battle meditation Kanan had taught him and listened to the data flow.
Kanan had taught him how to be a Jedi. Rex had taught him how to be a warrior. Maul had taught him how to be a powerful threat. And Thrawn had begrudgingly taught him how to be a master strategist. It was on that Ezra drew on.
He exhaled slowly and focused on the data streaming past him, and began logically deducting the probabilities of the security code. Spending three years with Thrawn had taught him patience and precision when it came to the strategic thinking process.
Now, deducting the correct security passcode of billions is nearly impossible. But finding the right data stream to the security hub and then corrupting it? Not so impossible.
Ezra tightened his grip on the transmission and carefully sorted through the lines before finding the security line. Tracing it over the desolate planet through the automated switchboard and up to the blockade ship above wasn't that hard. Ezra grinned as he yanked the line as hard as possible from the servers deep inside the ship.
The line shuddered and died. In his mind's eye, Ezra could see the server room erupt into flames setting off a cascade of reactions. The droid army stalled out and then sputtered and died.
Success.
Ezra stood looking over his handy work. The whole entire field was covered in motionless droids. Not a bad piece of work.
A flash of warning rang through the Force, and Ezra threw himself left in time to miss more blaster fire past his head. He huffed in irritation as spider-like droids with imitating ray shields skittered over their fallen allies, still shooting. Right those rolling balls of metal blaster fire and death. What had Rex called them?
Right. Droidieka.
Those kriffers.
Ezra bobbed, avoiding blaster fire as he raced forward. Rex and Ahsoka had both trained him on these types of shielded machines. You had to be going slow and low to get through the shield, but you had to be fast to get close enough to do so and not get shot. Ezra dove under the guns bolting hard and fast, and then froze directly under the droid's sensor.
The shield passed over him, and he quickly grabbed onto the bottom of the casing of the droid and hooked his feet under as well. Now hanging under the droid, Ezra pulled out his laser cutter and switched the setting down short to cut through the casing to the inner workings.
The many pieces of his Saber dug into his back and limb as he pulled out the tangle of cords from the chassis of the droid that was still skittering around with him under it. He was loath to use the weapon he'd created after leaving his green one behind with Sabine when he had no idea where he was. Few planets in the Unknown Regions had known of Jedi, and those that had had had severely inaccurate and old data. Getting heralded as a god when he showed up with it and wielding the Force got old real fast.
He yanked all the cords out with one quick yank prompting it to collapse almost on him. Scrambling so he can stick his head in the hole he made, Ezra took in the circuitry quickly.
These droids ran on the same programming style as the basic battle droids did but with internal processing instead of an outsourced transmission. Ezra quickly yanked the power for that particular droid and then hunted for the sync connection between the rest of the rolling death balls.
Blaster fire erupted outside his shell, and the humm of the shield made Ezra grateful he hadn't turned that part off. But he knew it wouldn't last forever.
Yanking the casing and obstacles out, he found the security pad and instinctively reached out and punched in the first code that came to him in the Force. The security cleared, giving him the inner workings again.
Blasterfire lit up the shield again, and the chassis groaned. Something hissed by his right shoulder.
Ezra tuned it out along with his growing unease and tried to whittle down which line synced all the droids together. A humm sputtered and died by his shoulder again, and then the whole droid shuttered.
Stang.
There went the shield.
Running out of options, Ezra went with the second-best one yanking the cognitive targeting line and the sync he'd cut and crossed them, made sure it was secured, and then booted the power back on before dropping out of the droid and bolting.
Behind him, the two rolling droids started shooting each other up. Rex had said they were simple pieces of machinery, but Ezra hadn't expected it to be that blazing easy.
"Hey, you!" A modulated voice yelled out, making Ezra whip around to find a white-clad humanoid trooper coming towards him, brandishing his rather bulky military blaster threateningly as he came towards him, "What are you going here?"
Ah, Kriff. Troopers.
Why'd it have to be so blazing hard?
Ezra put his hands up quickly, mentally trying to come up with a story for Imperial stormtroopers of how he'd dropped literally into one of their battles with ancient droids that wouldn't get him arrested.
The first trooper tapped his comm, "Commander, I found the anomaly."
So they knew about the whole Force spat me out here thing. Great.
Stang.
There were more of them.
A squad of troopers crested the rocky hill behind the single trooper coming towards them quickly- was that….PURPLE?
Ezra eyed the unique color patterns on the squad with concern. Only the best of the most dangerous companies in the Empire got color. And he'd never heard of purple on any of the known kill squads, which wasn't good.
"What's up with the color?" Ezra asked, playing dumb, "You guys, someone's entourage or something?"
"How'd you get here?" The one with a different helmet design demanded.
This probably meant he was the leader, which really wasn't good cause, as far as Ezra knew, rank was placed on pauldrons. The lack of response to his humor was also very bad. They weren't propaganda pushers spitting at him to stop talking or calling him names. They were all business. He was not liking this situation.
Reaching out with the Force, he added weight to his words, " I was already here when you started."
The leader jerked back like Ezra had slapped him, and his voice filled with accusation, anger, and alarm, "No, you weren't."
Kark .
There's no way he can salvage this, and he's not going to Mustafar or Inquisitoris to be tortured to death or executed. He'll go out fighting, or he'll survive.
Throwing the whole squad back with one huge push, he's calling his Saber to hand and clicking the pieces together without even thinking. It jumps to life in his hand. Kanan had been on to something when he'd housed his weapon in multiple pieces when on the run. It got flagged as a weapon less.
He throws out his senses, looking for a way out and for any incoming squads, only to run into a stone wall cold presence instead. He's got one moment to think, oh, Karabast and yank back before the presence is shifting to acknowledge him.
Slamming down his own shields, Ezra looks around, quickly relying on his own senses to get him out of this one. He's got a Dark User coming his way; he still has no clue where he is, and he's got at least one squad of elite troopers on his hand.
Because, of course, he does.
Spotting one of the squad reaching for their comm, he reaches out and crushes all of their comms, squelching them before turning, leaping up the embankment, and bolting.
Not even a minute later, blaster fire fills the air again. Ezra listens to the Force's warning, weaving and dodging and blocking the occasional bolt as he tries his best to figure his way out of the craggy dusty wasteland around him with no direction except for away .
He pauses a moment to try and figure out his directions and blocks a few more bolts before coming to a very chilling realization; they're stun blasts. These troopers aren't trying to kill him. They're trying to bring him in.
They must have recognized him, which is very bad for him and also super concerning. He's grown and changed a lot over the last three years. The wanted picture they recognized him from had to be at least that old or older. Which meant they were actually competent.
Ezra had about 2 seconds to worry about that concerning development when blaster fire erupted from behind him. He pivoted just in time, igniting the other side of his double-sided blade in time to save himself from a stun blast to the face. They'd blocked him in those smart kriffers.
Relying on the agility Ahsoka had taught him, he ducked and wove through the blaster fire from both sides as he searched for a way out. But he'd underestimated the troopers, and now he was paying for it as two more squads came to assist, blocking his other points of escape. He was trapped.
If he wanted to get out, he'd have to break out, which meant demolishing one of the sides of the enclosing circle while suppressing blaster fire. He'd done harder, but he knew if he didn't do it soon, he'd tire out from the day he'd had.
Keeping pace with their shots easily, he reached out and felt for the weak link in the circle, someone he could use to break out. But he ran into fumbling and imperfect but secure mental shields in all of them. Not Force user shields but those of someone who spent enough time around a Force user to naturally make shields. That was quite concerning.
Ezra looked over all of them, trying to deduce from their movements who would be best when the Force user he'd accidentally bumped into earlier crested the hill. He was a black man in surprisingly tan robes covered in dust from the battle and shockingly wielding a purple lightsaber.
Ezra met the man's eyes, and his brain short-circuited.
When Ahsoka had come to them when he had been much younger, she had brought training clips and taught him who each teacher was. And staring him in the face from across the way was Mace Windu.
Oh, KarBAS-
A stun bolt nailed him right in the back due to his moment of surprise, and he was out before he hit the dusty ground.