Chapter Text
Assi had been having a good day.
She’d traded her dessert cup for two extra dumplings, dodged a meditation session by pretending to be deep listening to the Force and had almost—almost—convinced Korin to walk into the archives with a sticker on his back that said “Property of Master Yoda.”
And then the Temple buzzed. Not just a buzz but a commotion. Whispers darted between initiates like gossip on hyperspeed. Stares followed anyone who looked like they might know something, wide-eyed and unblinking. A ripple of curiosity that spread like wildfire even through the creche.
“They brought in a new kid.”
“He’s already a Padawan!”
“He came from the Outer Rim. Like, really outer.”
“Master Qui-Gon vouched for him. Can you believe that?”
Assi froze mid-step, dumpling halfway to her mouth. Her brain short-circuited. Her soul screamed.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck—
She dropped the dumpling. Realized what was happening. Then lunged, arms flailing, reflexes kicking in just in time to catch it mid-drop, cradling it like a newborn porg. She wasn’t about to waste a dumpling, thank you very much.
It’s happening. The plot is plotting. The prophecy child is here. The timeline is accelerating. I haven’t even finished my sticker stash.
She wanted to run. Or hide. Or maybe throw herself into the ventilation shaft and live among the cleaning droids. But instead, she sat down cross-legged in the hallway and stared at the wall like it held answers.
Okay. Deep breaths. He’s still a kid. He’s not Vader yet. He probably still cries when he injures his knee. I can work with this.
She pressed her palms together, mock-serene.
Please, Anakin Skywalker, remain a child longer. I still haven’t pranked Korin back. I haven’t finished my “Jedi Life” holoreel. I haven’t even taught the younger initiates how to fake a Force vision to get out of chores. You’re early. You’re too early.
And then she saw him.
Small and wide-eyed, already wearing robes that didn’t quite fit, he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. Assi squinted.
Oh no, he’s adorable...
This is going to be a problem.
.
.
.
The Temple had gone quiet after the funeral. Assi hadn’t known Qui-Gon personally, but she’d felt the shift. The masters moved slower, their voices softer. The knights stopped laughing in the halls. Even the youngest initiates had picked up on it—somber moods trickling down into every corner of the creche.
A few months had passed. Enough time for the initiates to stop whispering about the “Chosen One” and start whispering about who was sneaking extra rations from the kitchen. Life moved on, the way it always did. Jedi were good at that.
But Assi kept noticing him and honestly? the kid looked like he just wanted to play. The kind of play that involved climbing furniture, sneaking extra snacks, and maybe throwing a training ball at someone’s head just to see what would happen. Assi could see it in the way he lingered near the younger initiates during mealtimes, watching their games with a quiet sort of longing. Like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to join.
And being the good person that she was—mostly good, depending on how you felt about hallway pranks and unauthorized holoreels—she would’ve loved to invite him. Just a simple, “Hey, wanna help me stick googly eyes on the meditation statues?”
But Knight Kenobi kept his schedule packed tighter than a ration crate.
Assi only caught glimpses of him during her day. Anakin darting between corridors, trailing behind a robe that moved too fast for his legs. Sometimes she’d see him in the courtyard, practicing alone while Knight Kenobi spoke with a Master nearby. Sometimes he’d pass her in the hallway, eyes down, braid swinging, expression locked in that determined frown he seemed to wear like armor.
She didn’t wave. Not yet. But she thought about it.
Then she saw her chance.
Being the amazing person that she is (which is definitely not stalking, thank you very much), Assi had noticed a pattern. Every time Anakin got a sliver of free time, he ended up in the old storage wing where half-functioning droids went to wait for parts.
She remembered something from her memories. Anakin was good with machines. Like, scary good. Maybe he wasn’t just fixing them.. maybe he was using them as company?
So she timed her escape with precision.
Master Talkra was on hallway duty, which meant he’d be parked in a corner reading one of those ancient tomes thicker than a starship manual. Why he insisted on supervising younglings while deep-diving into “The Philosophical Implications of Force-Threaded Ethics” was beyond her.
Assi slipped past him with the grace of a seasoned prankster and made her way to the old storage.
Anakin Skywalker in the flesh.
Crouched beside a battered droid, hands deep in its wiring, voice low and steady as he talked to it like it was a friend.
The door clicked shut behind her. He startled—actually flinched—and turned toward her fast, eyes wide. Recognition flickered. The kind where you’ve passed someone enough times to register their existence but not their name.
Assi didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what he’d do. Was he confident? Shy? Secretly plotting to escape the Temple via droid army?
Silence. Awkward, echoing silence.
Okaaaaay, maybe let’s not wait that long.
“Hi!” she said, smiling like she hadn’t just staged a stealth mission to get here.
“Hi,” he said shyly.
Assi could tell he wasn’t sure what to do next. So she helped him out. “Are you helping the droid?” she asked, tilting her head toward the little metal creature beside him.
His face lit up like she’d handed him a hydrospanner and a compliment at the same time. “This is P2-29,” he said, grinning. “His camera was starting to blur, so I’m helping fix it for him.”
He gave the droid a gentle pat and stepped back. P2-29—a spider droid with long, spindly legs and a slightly judgmental posture—blinked twice, adjusted his lens, and bounced once in place like he’d just been given a new lease on life.
Assi raised an eyebrow. “How do you know if it’s fixed though?”
Anakin didn’t hesitate. “He stopped walking into walls.”
Fair enough.
A thought suddenly floated. Assi’s eyes sparkled with the kind of mischief that usually preceded a Temple-wide prank ban.
“Wait a minute,” she said, voice low and dramatic, like she was narrating her own villain origin story. “P2-29 is strong enough to carry a small bucket, right?”
Anakin blinked. “...Yes?” It came out more like a question than an answer. He’d just met her, and she was already smiling like she’d discovered a new use for the dark side.
Assi crouched beside the droid, inspecting its spindly legs like she was sizing up a co-conspirator. “Perfect,” she whispered. “We are going to weaponize cuteness.”
Anakin looked alarmed while P2-29 looked excited.
.
.
.
“Are you—”
Anakin paused mid-sentence, hands hovering over the bucket as he helped her scoop sticky mud from a planter outside the droid wing. He glanced around nervously, looking for potential witness.
“Are you sure it’s okay to do this?”
Assi didn’t even look up. “Of course it’s not okay.”
That earned her an alarmed wide-eyed stare. She met it with the calm of someone who had absolutely no intention of stopping. “But honestly,” she continued, casually patting his shoulder like they were discussing lunch options, “there’s no take-backsies. They’re stuck with us until we grow up, so just relax.”
Her hand lingered for a second too long. His face screaming that did not help him relax. Anakin looked at the bucket like it might explode. P2-29 chirped from the corner, clearly thrilled to be part of whatever this was.
Assi grinned. “Okay, deployment plan: P2 drops the bucket from the ceiling grid right as Korin walks into the archives. Bonus points if it lands on his boots. Extra bonus if he screams.”
Anakin blinked. “You do this often?”
“Define often.”
He didn’t. But he did help her load the bucket onto P2-29’s back, hands steady now, mouth twitching like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to smile.
After loading the bucket onto P2-29’s back, Assi pointed to the ceiling grid with a sharp whistle. The droid zipped upward, its little repulsors humming as it tucked itself into the rafters.
She crouched low in the high grass near the garden wall, tugging Anakin down beside her. The stalks brushed their shoulders, swaying just enough to hide them from view but not from consequence.
“The lesson should be over by now,” she whispered, eyes locked on the door across the courtyard. “Korin’s always the first one out. He always sprints like the monkey he is.”
Anakin nodded, but his posture was all nerves with knees drawn up, fingers twitching against his robes. “You’re sure this is—”
“Nope,” she said, grinning. “But it’s happening.”
He glanced at her, then at the bucket above, then back at her. There was something in his expression—hesitant but lit up. Like he wasn’t just nervous about the prank. Like he was nervous about being allowed to enjoy it.
She heard the distant clatter of boots.
Voices.
The door creaked.
“P2,” she whispered, tapping her comm, “start recording.”
The droid’s lens blinked red. Target acquired.
Anakin leaned closer, whispering, “What if it hits his head?”
Assi shrugged. “Then we get a reaction shot. You want to be in the thumbnail?”
He didn’t answer. But his smile, small, crooked, and entirely unguarded, was the most honest thing she’d seen all day.
The door creaked open.
Assi grinned. Timing was perfect. Korin always—
Nope.
Not Korin.
Master Yoda stepped into the courtyard, serene as ever, just in time for the bucket to drop with the precision of a war crime.
SPLAT.
Mud exploded across his robes. His ears twitched. His cane thudded against the stone. And for one glorious, horrifying second, no one moved.
It was the Spiderman meme, if the meme involved a 900-year-old Jedi covered in swamp goo, a frozen droid mid-hover, and two feral children in the grass staring like they’d just summoned a Sith Lord by accident.
Assi’s brain short-circuited. If she were thinking straight, she’d find this hilarious. Instead, she was locked in a three-way stare with Anakin and Master Yoda, no finger-pointing, just pure existential dread.
P2-29, the absolute traitor, was still recording. Its lens zoomed in and chirped like it had just won an award.
Master Yoda blinked slowly. Mud dripped from his ears.
Anakin whispered, “We’re going to die.”
Assi whispered back, “Not before I get that footage.”
Before Master Yoda could so much as twitch an ear, Assi snapped into motion.
“P2-29!”
The droid zipped down from the ceiling like a guilty balloon, still recording, still sparkling, still a menace.
Assi grabbed Anakin’s hand. “RUN!”
And run they did.
Two half-feral younglings bolting through the Temple halls, one trailing laughter, the other trailing existential dread. P2-29 bounced between them like a paparazzi drone, chirping gleefully, catching every angle of their panic.
They tore past stunned guards, confused archivists, and one Master who didn’t even look up from his datapad, clearly desensitized to whatever flavor of chaos this was
Behind them, Master Yoda emerged from the courtyard like a swamp-drenched cryptid. Mud dripped from his robes. His cane tapped rhythmically. He was not running. He didn’t need to. He was giving them a fighting chance.
Assi ducked under a tapestry while Anakin vaulted a bench. P2-29 adding dramatic music in the background. Assi grabbed Anakin’s sleeve mid-panic and yanked him down a narrow corridor behind the tapestry. He stumbled after her, half-running, half-trusting whatever feral instincts she was operating on.
“This way!” she hissed, dodging a statue of a contemplative Jedi Master and ducking into a low alcove. At the end of the corridor was a hatch—small, round, and clearly not meant for anyone over the age of twelve.
It was a well kept secret among the younglings, as the only the younglings fit.
Assi shoved it open, dragged Anakin inside, and slammed the hatch shut behind them. The tunnel was pitch black. No lights. No windows. Just the faint hum of Temple infrastructure and the sound of their ragged breathing.
She locked the hatch with a triumphant click.
“See?” she panted, grinning through the sweat. “We got away!”
Anakin leaned against the wall, wide-eyed and mud-speckled, looking like he couldn’t believe they’d actually escaped. P2-29 hovered between them, its lens casting a soft glow—the only light in the tunnel.
Silence settled.
Their heartbeats slowed.
Their shoulders relaxed.
Then, a noise.
A soft creak.
A shuffle.
A whisper of movement that didn’t belong.
They looked up.
And in the eerie glow of P2-29’s lens, Master Yoda’s face materialized from the shadows like a horror villain. His mud-slicked robes clung to him like swamp armor. His eyes gleamed. His ears twitched. P2-29’s lens caught the reflection perfectly.
Yoda’s face.
Dead center.
Like a cursed thumbnail.
They screamed.
Yoda blinked slowly. “Much to learn, you still have.”
.
.
.
They got assigned to cleaning the gardens for the next three days. Manual labor. Mud. Bugs. The irony was not lost on her.
Knight Kenobi stood at the edge of the courtyard, arms crossed, looking like he was debating whether to give Anakin a Very Serious Talk about boundaries, influence, and the dangers of associating with feral younglings who weaponize droids.
But then Anakin turned to wave goodbye to her. Brightly smiling with mud still in his hair. Like he’d just had the best day of his life.
Knight Kenobi sighed. A heavy, full-body sigh that came from the soul. He then looked at Assi with that quiet, exhausted judgment that said: I know whatever chaos you do will trickle down to him, and I am powerless to stop it.
Assi gave him a thumbs-up, utterly unrepentant. He closed his eyes like he was mentally composing a message to Master Qui-Gon, asking—not for the first time—why this was the padawan he’d been left with
.
.
.
Once the news spread, the Temple buzzed like a hive of gossiping initiates. Word spread fast. Two younglings. One mud bucket. Master Yoda. A scream. An unforgettable chase.
Suddenly, Anakin wasn’t just the Chosen One. He was the cool one. Younglings from other clans started lingering near the gardens, pretending to “accidentally” bump into him. Sparring partners got weirdly competitive. Someone even tried to nag Knight Kenobi in giving Anakin free pass for playtime.
It was chaos and it was hilarious.
And for Assi, watching Anakin laugh more in three days than he had since arriving? Yeah. That made it kinda worth it. Even if she really truly deeply hates muds.
.
.
.
Oh, and the footage?
Yeah, she uploaded it. As revenge. Petty? Maybe. Deserved? Absolutely. If Master Yoda was going to sentence her to mud-cleaning duty, then he could star in her next holo.
She titled it: [BREAKING NEWS] MASTER YODA SCARING YOUNGLINGS! NOTCLICKBAIT. Subtlety was for Jedi who hadn’t just spent three hours scrubbing moss off temple tiles.
And the edit? Chef’s kiss.
The bucket’s dramatic fall, slowed to 0.5x speed with ominous music.
Yoda’s mud-soaked reveal.
The beat of silence where the three of them just stared.
Then the chase, complete with shaky cam and zooms.
And the final shot: his face, backlit and looming, like he’d just crawled out of a swamp to haunt their dreams, with her and Anakin screaming in the background.
She watched it back three times before bed. It was art. It was vengeance. It was French kiss.
By morning, it was everywhere.
Turns out, the galaxy loved watching two pint-sized agents of chaos humble a Jedi legend with nothing but a mud bucket and poor impulse control. Comments flooded in “Youngling menace or comedic genius?” “Master Yoda’s horror debut!” “Temple security needs a raise.”
It was even showed at public holo news. Assi nearly choked on her ration bar.
Honestly? The Temple should hire her. She single-handedly boosted public engagement, softened the Jedi’s intimidating image, and gave the galaxy a reason to laugh. That’s PR gold. And all it cost her was a mop, three hours of scrubbing, and the eternal side-eye of Knight Kenobi.
Worth it.
.
.
.
After a few days, the gears in her head started to spin. She didn’t have the plot armor to change everything—no prophecy, no chosen status, no galaxy-shifting power. But maybe, just maybe, doing something like this could help?
She’d seen the effects: it was still stupid, still harmless, but it had sparked something.
A few laughs. A few smiles. A surprising amount of goodwill.
The Jedi hadn’t had a PR win like that in a long time. It was probably why her punishment didn’t escalate when the video went viral. Maybe they didn’t need to be rewritten. Maybe they just needed better lighting, better captions, and someone who knew how to make the galaxy care.
Hmm...something to think about.