#Bail Organa’s poker face is being given a run for its money

[corellianhounds]

Tatooine Sandstorm or Daredevil hallway fic?

sO

Tatooine Sandstorm is a series of vignettes about different characters weathering a sandstorm in different conditions. Mando and the kid are caught off guard in the middle of the desert, Cobb Vanth searches for two people missing in the mines, Boba battens down the hatches of the Palace, Fennec is caught in Mos Eisley, and it’s bookended with Mando and the kid again.

Here’s part from the opening scene I’m very satisfied with:

The Mandalorian turned, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

A wall of swirling sand blotted out the suns, the quickly approaching darkness rising like a tide. Rumbling wind started to shake the ground and grow louder as it bore down on the two of them. Mando’s eyes widened before he turned sharply and flicked the dial on the Amban rifle to prime. As it condensed energy into a single charge he swiftly flung out the tarp from the pack upwind of the bike and settled it over their gear, counting down from ten in his head as he hurriedly staked two diagonal eyelets into the dirt. He tacked the stakes down with sharp strike of his boot while fine silicate particles whipped around them, stinging like sparks.

He grabbed the kid, curled him away from the storm, and flicked his wrist for the command to ignite the jetpack: hovering mid-air, he struck the rifle prong-down into the ground and released the charge— An expanse of blue-green plasma rippled from the drop point in a circle of glass, held fast. Mando extinguished his jets, lashed the rope one-handed to the barrel of the rifle as close to the ground as he could, and threaded the closest corner of the tarp with the tail of the rope before sliding beneath it with the kid in tow.

The sand raining down on them before now approached in a rumbling wave, sweeping over an iron rifle held by glass in a raging desert storm.

__

NOW

The RSAU: Daredevil hallway fic takes place in the Role Swap universe where Anakin doesn’t fall to the Dark side and instead raises Leia on Tatooine. I don’t thiiiiiiink this particular scenario/character interaction is going to be part of the ‘canon’ for that universe (which is why I can just spill the beans about it in speculation), but here’s one of the what-if’s;

If Anakin is the hermitic Jedi living on Tatooine, what happens if Darth Maul shows up there in search of Kenobi a few years after Revenge of the Sith?

I thought at first about how realistically Anakin would probably kill him, but THEN I thought “okay but what if he didn’t” because this could be FUN

I don’t want to get lost in the weeds over-explaining things like I usually do, but Anakin manages to get through to Maul because both of their lives were destroyed by Sidious either taking/trying to take them as an apprentice. The two of them end up as weird tenuous allies, Anakin having convinced him that Sidious should be his real target, not Kenobi, and over the next few years they remain in sparse communication, Maul stopping on Tatooine from time to time. Leia knows her father’s friend and knows that, despite his appearance, he’s someone she can trust.

NOW. Like I said, it’s a few years after the end of Revenge of the Sith. The Emperor has been sending out Inquisitors and agents looking Force-sensitive people and children, and for a while Anakin has had no trouble killing or mind-wiping the ones that show up on Tatooine. It’s not just him he’s keeping safe, but his daughter.

But he’s also only one man, and he can’t be everywhere at once. When itty-bitty Leia is kidnapped Anakin is ready to go entirely scorched earth in his rage to get her back (because even though he didn’t fall to the Dark side in this universe, he’s still emotionally volatile and angry with a host of other issues), before he calms down a bit and thinks: Who do I know that is capable, powerful, and dubiously ethical enough they’d be willing to help me get my kid back and cut down anyone standing between us without remorse

WHICH BRINGS US TO: Anakin and Maul’s Awesome Roadtrip Rescue Mission

The Daredevil hallway fic is the story of Anakin and Maul’s search for Leia. Towards the end once they’ve infiltrated whatever stopover base or compound she’s being held in, they get split up, and the story ends with the equivalent of this fight scene from the first season of Daredevil, with Darth Maul absolutely wasting a barrage of enemies without letting up, still being bloodied by the end of it, but composing himself before going into the room where Leia’s being kept, crouching down to her level and beckoning for her to come out of hiding

And again, despite the blood, despite his appearance, Leia knows he’s someone she can trust.

WIP Ask Game