Finn scrambled to his feet. How he ended up on the ground, he didn't know, but that was the least of his worries. He was surrounded by stormtroopers who hadn't been there two seconds before, and they all had their guns out and pointed at him. There was no way he could get his own gun out and pointed before they took him down.

Something was wrong.

Well, a lot of things were wrong, but the first was that they weren't shooting at him. Which, okay, maybe they wanted to take him prisoner, and he wasn't complaining! But it was still weird. But even if they wanted him alive, they should still be … reacting to him. These troops were quiet. Nobody was calling him a traitor, nobody was vibrating with barely controlled fury, and that was how it had gone every time he'd come up against troopers since defecting. These guys were calm. Professional, good coverage, obviously seasoned troops, but they were treating him like a random stranger who just happened to wander in to the middle of their formation.

It was very disconcerting.

Almost as much as the weird versions of the armor they wore. I mean, it was recognizably stormtrooper armor, but … different. There was a big bar coming out of the back of the helmet, for example. And … they were painted. There was color—blue. And each one was different, some in subtle ways and some in big, obvious ways. Why were they customized? Who let them? That was the whole point of the armor, to make all the troopers identical and interchangeable.

Nothing was happening. Just as he was opening his mouth to say something (he hadn't figured out what—"hey, guys, wanna put your blasters down?" maybe) there was a ripple through the troops as they parted for someone. Finn groaned. Officers were NEVER a good thing.

But this … wasn't an officer. No armor—not a chrometrooper—and not the cloth uniform of a naval officer, either. No uniform at all. Pants and a tunic and a … was that a lightsaber at her waist? Two of them? But she didn't look like a Knight of Ren. There was a lot less black for one thing, and no helmet. And she didn't feel like one, either. Finn hadn't spent a lot of time near Kylo, but he'd always felt a sort of oiliness that made his skin crawl when he did, combined with an almost painful static in his head. There was something there—this young Togruta had a presence that most people didn't—but it wasn't anything like Kylo Ren.

What in all the kriffing hells had happened?

"Who are you, and how did you get here?" she demanded.

"Finn," he said, to test the waters, but none of them reacted. "And I was going to ask you the same thing."

"Ahsoka Tano, Jedi and Commander in the Grand Army of the Republic," the Togruta replied. "And we've been here for the last week. You, however, just appeared out of nowhere."