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rxbxlcaptain · 7 years

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RxbxlCaptain’s Official Rebel Rising Review:

Since this novel was released in May, I had heard plenty of opinions -- mainly negative -- about it, so I decided to check it out for myself. I’ll be completely honest: I came into the book bracing myself against a novel that would completely ruin Jyn’s characterization and the urge to throw the book against the wall. Maybe because I came in which such horrible expectations -- Well, I didn’t hate it.

Of course, of the three Rogue One-related novels I’ve read now (Rogue One Novelization by Alexander Freed, Catalyst by James Luceno, and Rebel Rising by Beth Revis), I would say that it’s my least favorite. There were some redeeming factors, some Imperials that were actually kind of intriguing, some moments that made me go “I’m sorry, are we talking about the same Jyn Erso?” and some moments that made me go “That’s my girl!” So if you’re interested in hearing some very spoiler-y opinions of the novel, click below the cut:

My first issue with the book: It’s genre

The decided to write a book about Jyn Erso -- a woman I’d understood to have been raised as a child soldier -- as a young adult novel. Now, I have nothing against the YA genre, there’s plenty of amazing things within that genre, but... I’m questioning if it was right for this.

This leads to a significantly less violent childhood than I thought Rogue One (either the movie or the novelization) implied. Jyn doesn’t go on missions with Saw Gerrera until she’s well into her teenage years, and most of those involve coding and not actual fighting. Most of Jyn’s time with Saw is spent on Wrea, the planet where Saw’s base for the Partisans is located, learning coding and splicing. She doesn’t even stay in barracks with the other Partisans but instead has a private room to herself. No one’s gunna all favoritism on that one, Saw. But, really, the first time in the novel when Jyn shares a room with someone is when she’s in prison, which just feels... weird to me?

Another thing I have against a YA novels: There always seems to be a forced romance and this one is no exception. I’ll go into more details below, but I do, at least in part, attribute this aspect of the plot back to the fact that it’s a YA novel.

But that’s a little bit broad, so let’s narrow it down into a few more things that I did/didn’t like:

Saw Gerrera:

Read all this with the disclaimer that I have not watched Clone Wars and so my knowledge of Saw outside of Rogue One is limited to Wookieepedia and what I was told in this novel!

We all know where this book picks up: Lyra Erso has just been murdered and Galen captured up the Imperials, leaving Jyn all alone waiting for -- someone. That someone turns out to be Saw Gerrera, who Jyn has met once before: when Gerrera offered to smuggle the Ersos off Coruscant and find a homestead for them on Lah’mu. Because of this, she trusts him already.

Saw refers to Jyn as “Kid” and “Darling” a lot of the time which is such a minor detail but it feels so... weird to me. (I can really only read “Kid” in Han Solo’s voice). And it’s just a small part of Saw’s dialogue that just feels way too out of character for him, things that I can never picture Forest Whitaker saying in general.

Adorable detail: Saw takes to referring to Jyn as his daughter throughout her time there. In fact, most of the Partisans take to calling Jyn “Jyn Gerrera” since the word “Erso” is never to be mentioned in context of Jyn, per Saw’s orders. (And, for good reason, which the characters learn the hard way later on)

Saw’s number one misstep, in my mind at least, was when he finds Galen Erso, realizes he’s cooperating with the Imperials now and promptly tells Jyn that Galen has, essentially abandoned her and she should think nothing of him again while I continue to spend most of my time attempting to discover what he’s doing

Which could lead to some reeeeally fun meta about how Jyn’s feeling about Galen during Rogue One

My anger of this is, of course, rooted in the fact that I really love Galen Erso and I cry every time I picture him working on the Death Star when he really just misses his girls and wishes they were safe and happy so it probably doesn’t make other people as angry.

So Saw’s running his little side of the rebellion, which has a strange focus on what Galen Erso is going for the Empire (Saw refers to his as their “normal mission”), but don’t worry -- he’s not opposed to blowing the occasional Imperial gathering or stealing their supply shipments or causing general chaos within their ranks.

Once, against orders, Jyn followed Saw into an Imperial celebration on a planet they’d recently conquered, only to find Saw blowing up the entire thing -- both the reps from the Empire and the natives of the planet -- which Jyn knows she is not okay with.

He also has some super sketchy mottoes about fighting -- “If we used the same tactics the Empire does and brought about the same kind of fear, we’d control the people and give them the peace you are so anxious to have” and “What we fail to protect, we leave in ruins” for example-- that aren’t out of character with what we see of his tactics in Rogue One but more an explanation of why his methods were wrong.

As implied in Rogue One, the Alliance doesn’t appreciate that. However, different than I pictured in Rogue One, Saw is never a formal part of the Alliance. Idryssa Barruck seems to be the only connection back to the Alliance since, after years of working with Gerrera, she decided to join the more organized forces.

Jyn will meet another member of the Alliance later on, once she’s on Tamsye Prime and the Alliance is trying to recruit her boyfriend as a pilot (more on that later)

After Saw abandons Jyn (which I’ll talk about in the next section), he still send a spy to follow her around the planet she’s settled on to make sure she’s doing okay. Which -- I don’t know, not necessarily out of character, but definitely a dick move. Saw, either you care enough about the girl to keep her with you, or you let her live her life. One or the other, bro, not some weird grey zone in between.

Saw’s abandonment of Jyn:

If you’re talking about Saw, you’ve got to mention the “big event.”

Saw’s abandonment was... Literally nothing like a pictured. Nothing. Not at all.

Saw appears to make a snap decision to leave Jyn in the middle of a very active war zone with literally no way to get off the planet. And what seemed even more out of character to me was that Jyn guessed Saw was leaving her behind -- and she still trotted off to the bunker and let him leave her there. (See, Draven, the reason why she doesn’t follow orders is because following them normally gets her bad things)

A quick summary of the operation that leads to this: Jyn and Saw were in charge of recon of a planet, had sneaked in under the guise of being a propaganda work crew, filming the laborers of the planet to make the Empire look good. What they didn’t know was Reece Tallent, a man salty at Saw Gerrera for a whole host of reasons and who suspected who Jyn really was (and really wanted the financial benefits of turning these two in), had set this whole thing up with the Imperials. This leads to an Imperial air attack, hoping to kill Saw and Jyn.

In the midst of the battle, Saw (who was dangerously close to bleeding out at the time) tells Jyn “Hey, go hide in the bunker over there and I’ll totally come back to this planet that will be totally destroyed in two hours to get you!” to which Jyn is like “That sounds really sketchy and you’re totally going to leave me here, but okay!”

Legitimate dialogue from this novel

Jyn manages to get off planet by stealing a ship with one of the workers on the planet. They sell the ship, split the money 50/50 and never see each other again. She then finds a woman looking for someone to repair her astromech (”I can do that!” Jyn lied, seeing how she’d never repaired a droid before in her life) and hops a ride off planet with her. Halfway through, however, Jyn forges some documents for the woman -- whose name is Akshaya Ponta -- and, in thanks for helping her avoid fines, she invites Jyn to stay with her.

Turns out Jyn reminds this woman of her dead daughter and she develops a super maternal protectiveness over Jyn (which Jyn finds both really nice and really smothering, considering, you know, her mother died when she was seven.)

So Jyn moves in with this woman, doing some occasional splicing/forgery for her, but mainly she has a lot of free time which gives her time to explore my next topic...

The Romance:

I believe it’s no secret that I personally believe that Jyn Erso belongs with Cassian Andor for the rest of forever. (Guys, look around at the blog. Forget that -- look at its name)

That being said, I tried to keep an open mind with this romance.

Hadder Ponta, the boy in question (his mom is the one who took Jyn in, so they’re kinda living together?), was... fine. There was nothing wrong with him. And I don’t really have a problem with the idea of him and Jyn -- she was sixteen and had just been abandoned by Saw and he and his mother has been incredibly kind to her and he was nice (guys, he took her on real dates and bought her food and everything) and safe so I can’t really blame her for diving headfirst into a little romance -- but, as I mentioned before, it felt a little too much like a stereotypical YA romance

Fun fact about this kid: he ends up speaking to an Alliance recruiter about joining up at one point. He claims it’s because he wants to fly, but he’s also pretty certain that it’ll impress Jyn. (What doesn’t impress Jyn is the fact that the recruiter ends up being someone she knew from the Partisans and accidentally reveals more of her past to the kid than she was intending)

Their romance was a lot of “Hey, we’re about the same age! And you’re a girl and I’m a guy so therefore we’re in love, right?”

Basically, not my favorite kind of romance. (They got along but they didn’t really have chemistry)

But no worries about Hadder coming back -- he and his mother were both killed while attempting to escape the planet and they got trapped in a dogfight between Imperial and Rebellion forces.

However that leads to a whole new host of problems: Jyn keeps thinking about him for an awfully long time. Really, it’s implied she still thinks of Hadder and Akshaya Ponta when she gets her first glimpse of Cassian as the events of Rebel Rising clashes into the beginning of Rogue One.

I contribute it less to her feelings being strong enough to last the years and more to guilt. It was, in Jyn’s mind, her fault that Hadder and Akshaya ever died: if she hadn’t come to live with them, the Empire never would have come knocking on their door in the middle of the night and they wouldn’t have died in a fiery explosion. It does feed into Jyn’s resistance to becoming close to anyone ever again, that fear of hurting everyone she befriends, which could actually make great meta about Jyn’s behavior during the canon events of Rogue One.

Now, speaking of the Pontas, does that name sound familiar to you? It should!

Jyn Erso’s alias’s:

We end up seeing all of Jyn’s canon aliases throughout Rebel Rising which is, in a way, both really cool and kinda disappointing. Here’s what we learn about them...

Kestrel Dawn: Jyn dawns this one (haha, see what I did there? Shut up, I’m funny) while she’s still with Saw. In fact, she’s using this alias on the day that Saw abandons her. She ends up keeping “Dawn” for a last name (obviously “Erso” has proved to be a dangerous last name to have) but returns to “Jyn” by the time she meets the Pontas.

Tanith Ponta: See, I told you their last name would be important. Remember Akshaya’s daughter that I mentioned? Turns out her name was Tanith. When Jyn escaped off Skuhl (the Ponta’s home planet), she saw the ship Akshaya and Hadder were in crash, but out of some irrational bit of hope (see, Cassian, she does know what hope is) she tells the intergalactic customs agents that her name was Tanith Ponta in the hopes that if Akshaya and Hadder arrived, they would be able to find her.

Liana Hallik: The last alias we’re given in Rogue One (turns out the Alliance missed a few others like Lyra Rallik and Nari McVee, both references to earlier parts of Jyn’s life, being her mother and a droid the Ersos owned on Coruscant) doesn’t appear until late in the novel, when Jyn is bouncing from planet to planet simply surviving. It’s not even the alias she’s using when the Imperial arrest her, but rather the new scandocs she had just completed that the Imperials believed to be her real identity.

My favorite Jyn Erso details:

She’s smart. Saw, in the very beginning when he had no idea what to do with a child, handed her a code machine one day to allow her to play with it. Well, she did really well -- so well, in fact, that she became the main supply of forgery throughout the Partisans. If you needed a flight manifest or Imperial orders to get you through a blockade or a fake identity for Saw’s next mission: you went to Jyn and she’d fix you up. (She continues to use this skill to her advantage for the rest of the novel)

We get to see her first use of truncheons! That detail is so tiny I should not be excited by it but she was using them for the first time and I just went “Those will be very important in the future!” because I am a nerd and the scene where she uses them in Jedha City was the first moment I admitted I was completely in love with this woman.

She’s a good person. Like we’ve seen in Forces of Destiny and saving the tooka cat and in the movie itself when she’d run into the line of fire to save a child, Jyn risks her own freedom, and likely her own life, to set a group of female slaves and their children free from a smuggler. She literally overthrows an entire crew by drugging them (note: if you’ve made sexist remarks to get a woman to cook you dinner for an entire journey, she just may respond by poisoning you) and tells the slaves they’re free and gives them control of the ship, only wanting enough to make sure she can get off the next planet.

She’s knows how to survive, no matter if it’s off credits a day or from people attempting to blackmail her. She survives the a crippling doubt in the faith her mother raised her on in prison and the endless crushing blows of being orphaned again and again. In a way, you can see her grow to become the Jyn Erso we met in Rogue One... It’s just that her background is a little different than I expected.

IN CONCLUSION:

It was... fine.

Not what I pictured inside my head of what Jyn’s upbringing was like (I hesitate to say it portrays her as too sheltered, because she is still being raised in the midst of a war, but it’s a hell of a lot more sheltered than what I originally pictured when I thought of Jyn’s childhood)

The romance feels kinda forced and I think some parts are a little OOC but I didn’t hate it as much as I was expecting

If the book happens to land in your lap, it’s a quick and easy read but I wouldn’t suggest going out of your way to find it.

Now that I’ve gone on a long and rambling rant about Rebel Rising (leaving out a lot of details I’m certain I should talk about, like Jyn’s perception of her parents throughout the novel which I super fangirled over) I’d love to hear what anyone else who’s read the novel has thought about it! Feel free to drop by my inbox and discuss!

#kat reads #rebel rising #jyn erso #jynappreciationsquad #rogue one #galen erso #saw gerrera #lyra erso #cassian andor #The Partisans #the alliance #ive been in this queue since i was six years old #hold shit this is almost 3k words long #apparently i had a lot more thoughts about this book than I realized #but really #PLEASE DISCUSS #send me things about how rebel rising made you feel #also because i intend on writing a fic based on an AU of this...

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theabominableblogger · 7 years

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Rewatching “Rogue One”

Prepare for the pain. Lots of pain.

A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...

WHERE BE OPENING MUSIC?!?!?

That shot of the planet’s rings is so cool...

What planet is it called again?

MADS MIKKELSEN! DAT BOI!

God, Galen Erso is probably the best and most important side character in this movie. I will fight anyone that bad mouths him.

*Saw appears on Lyra’s ‘Skype’ cam* BOOGITY!

So, do I have this right: the Death Troopers are basically the Star Wars equivalent of the Super Soldiers from “Captain America: Civil War” except they’re part kinda zombie? Is that right?

So if Grand Admiral Thrawn has the authority to have Death Troopers, how is Director Krennic able to?

Theory Time: is Lyra Force-Sensitive?

*Krennic appears* Hey, it’s me!

A little backstory for this: me and @theimpossiblescheme were talking about Krennic one day and I pointed out that I’m a lot like Krennic in that A) I would indeed put my feet up on my desk, sit back, and sip a martini (basically what he did in the Rogue One novelization) and B) we both freak out over anything and everything. Lo and behold, the association stuck with me.

Where did they film this opening scene because it’s fantastic.

“Oh look, it’s Lyra, back from the dead. It’s a miracle.”

What I find really interesting is that young Jyn has a toy Stormtrooper. It’s reminiscent to little kids have action figures of famous people and superheroes.

*whispers* Her lantern looks like a holocron...

I’m gonna be honest here and please don’t hate me for this but I think Jyn’s characterization is “Meh” compared to everyone else’s. The first time I saw this in theaters, I noted that she’s not really as interesting as the other characters. She’s kinda like Katniss in that matter.

*Cassian appears* Diego Luna!

So Cassian’s a Fulcrum agent? Are we gonna see him in Rebels?

“It’s the pilot... the detector.” You’re that one dude in the pre release pics for Rebels S4!

Wobani... is an anagram... of Obi-Wan...

“Congratulations, you are being rescued.” To quote CinemaSins: “TUDYKKK!!!!”

Wait, that’s Major Sholto from “Sherlock”!

Mon Mothma!

“What does this got to do with my father?” Honey, it’s Star Wars; everything is father-related. If you don’t have a problem with your dad or have a secret sibling, something’s seriously wrong.

The Force theme!

There’s the Ghost!

So what planet does Yavin 4 reside under?

Holy crap, that Geonosian sand really got to Saw...

In all honesty, if you could remove one character from this movie, it’s Saw. He was kind of an unnecessary addition in my opinion.

BOR GULLET! BOOGITY!

Something Gareth Edwards, the director, is amazing at is showing you the SIZE of things. He did the 2014 Godzilla movie and you can clearly see how HUGE it is and he did the same thing with the Death Star under construction.

So how old is Jyn when it comes to the Star Wars canon?

OK, looked it up on Wikipedia: she’s 21 at the events of this movie. That only makes her like 2 years older than Ezra in S3...

Is there really any point to this mind reading octopus thing that Saw has? No, no there isn’t.

Cassian: Stay on the ship.

K2: OK (follows them anyway out of sheer boredom)

OK, Chirrut just has to be Force-sensitive. Maybe that’s how he “sees;” he uses the Force or something.

Saw’s little band of guerilla attackers reminds me a lot of the extremists in al Qaeda. Maybe that was intentional, I dunno...

“I am taking them... to imprison them... in prison.”

I just realized that Chirrut is wearing a Stormtrooper belt. That’s badass.

God dang I love Donnie Yen as Chirrut.

K2: We have no fear.

*Baze points a BFG at him* One fear.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? I’M BLIND!

AP? Or a bot of a similar model?

It’s a physical game of dejarik!

“Are we not still friends?” Lemme check.... NO!

“It’s a trap, isn’t it?” Yes. Everything’s a trap. The entirety of Star Wars is a trap.

“You’re the pilot?” “I’m the pilot.” *sings* YOU ARE, HURRAH FOR BODHI ROOK! AND IT ‘TIS, IT ‘TIS A GLORIOUS THING TO BE SIR BODHI ROOK!

Galen...

God, this speech is so freaking good...

“Think of where you are...” *tearfully starts singing Hamilton lyrics*

I legit got upset in the theater when Galen died.

“My God, it’s beautiful.” This bit is fantastic.

“I’m not very optimistic about our odds.” NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

*Saw unplugs his emergency air and dies* Well at least there’s someone else who chews the scenery more than him.

Get it? It’s the planet. XD

“I will be taking control of the weapon that I first spoke of years ago, effective immediately.” *cue Kill Bill sirens*

“Now there’s a 35% chance [of survival].” “I don’t wanna know.” “OK.”

There needs to be more rainy scenes like this in Star Wars

*K2 presses some buttons in the background* Beep boop beep

OK, Chirrut definitely is Force-sensitive. I mean, c’mon.

*Cassian looks through the binoculars* Well there are two Banthas, but I don’t see any Sand People.

Cassian, if you’re trying to shoot someone via sniper gun, at least have a cover over yourself so that you won’t have to keep continually wiping rain off your vision scope.

*Jyn sends a Stormtrooper off the bridge* That was the quietest take down I’ve ever seen. Even quieter than the take downs in the Batman Arkham games

Why yes, I watch gameplays on YouTube.

“Star-Dust...” Nope. Gone. It’s gone. My heart has flown out of my chest cavity and has sailed out the window into the appropriately timed storm outside.

They killed off Mads Mikkelsen. You bastards.

AND THEY DON’T EVEN TAKE HIS BODY BACK FOR A PROPER BURIAL! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

MUSTAFAR!

No wonder in Rebels they say it’s where “the Jedi go to die.” Vader has a freaking castle there! It probably got built near the end of Season 1 but still.

Is that Julian Richings?

The interior freaking looks like a mix between the tower on Mortis and the Sith temple in “Twilight of the Apprentice.” So many triangles!

*cue me drawing references to the Illuminati via Snapchat*

“Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.” Oh my God.

Yes, Bail!

“The Death Star? This is nonsense!” Shut up, Anderson, you lower the IQ of the whole galaxy!

Who’s that lady in the gold hood?

C’mon, Mon Mothma!

“General Syndulla, please report to briefing.” HERA!!!

Please tell me we see her getting promoted to General in S4! Please Filoni!

“Rogue One.” Roll credits! *ding*

Wait, Mon Mothma knows that Obi-Wan’s alive?

“I would trust her with my life.” GAH!

Oh my gosh, we actually see Imperial faces in the original trilogy and this movie.

Well, Saw Gerrera was an asshole, Jyn.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, there was supposed be a happy ending where everyone survived but Gareth Edwards didn’t get the go ahead to do it so he went with the “everyone dies” ending and made it dark.

Fun Fact: the scene where they walk through the building on Scarif was filmed in a train station.

“Yeah, they rolled out the T-15s.” Haaa... and they talk about the T-16s in “A New Hope” and the T-17s in “The Force Awakens”

ARE WE BLIND?!?!? DEPLOY THE GARRISON!!!!

CHOPPER!

I love this music here when they realize that they have to deploy the Rebel fleet to Scarif.

Oh my God, 3PO...

Oh crap, walkers...

KARABAST!

THE GHOST!!!

Gold Leader!

I was gonna say “Where’s Phoenix Squadron?” but then I realized that there is no longer a Phoenix Squadron :(

I love how they envoked some of the Vietnam War during the beach battles

Oh Blue Squadron made it in!

The prosthetics on the Mon Calamari are great in this movie.

Haha, that little hair flip Cassian does before using the handles.

K2 takes out the Stormtrooper squadron* I’LL BEAT A MOTHEREFFA WITH ANOTHER MOTHEREFFA!

“Black Saber?” What project is that?

Literally the main focus of the finale is to make sure the Internet connection is up and making sure the file is small enough to send.

K2, NOOOOOOO!!!!!

*K2 dies* I’m done. I’m done you guys.

What Imperial ships are those?

I’m one with the Force and the Force is with me...

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

EVERYBODY DIES AND I AM NOT HAPPY EVEN THOUGH I’VE SEEN THIS THREE TIMES NOW!

*The Ghost takes down a couple TIEs in front of the Mon Calamari ship* Oooh, that was nice.

“I’m on it, Gold Leader.” THAT WAS HERA!!! WE HEAR HER IN THIS!

I HEAR YOU, VANESSA MARSHALL!

Leia gave us the Hammerheads in Rebels!

[Bodhi dies] *slams head on floor*

Mood: Mads Mikkelsen opening a bottle of vodka during a “Rogue One” interview”

Baze looks like he has a air tank on his back.

*Baze dies* God... dammit...

*The Hammerhead takes out two Star Destroyers* Niiiiccceeeee......

Krennic, the entire Erso family is out to kick your ass throughout this entire movie.

Krennic also has a fancy Imperial pin in his lapel. The Empire is just full of fancy pens.

*Death Star emerges from hyperspace* Oh crap.

*Jyn and Cassian look at each other in the elevator* Oh just kiss already

*Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer emerges from hyperspace* Oh crap!

Oh God this music!

YAAASSS THIS END SCENE!!!!!

“Open fire!” Oh hey Sam Witwer!

Fun Fact: he threw that line in. Even when he’s not Maul, he’s still improvising in Star Wars

[the camera pans to see Leia] *sings* We celebrate a day of peace....

NO!

AND IT LEADS RIGHT UP TO “A NEW HOPE!”

“And Forrest Whitaker” BOOGITY!

#the blogger reacts #rogue one #star wars #jyn erso #galen erso #cassian andor #k2so #orson krennic #leia organa #grand moff tarkin #saw gerrera #chirrut imwe #mads mikkelsen #hera syndulla #KARABAST!#Darth Vader #the ghost

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marcuserrico · 8 years

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'Rogue One': Sneak Peek at Art for Marvel's Comic Book — and the Scenes It Adds In

Jyn Erso and Saw Gerrera in the comic-book adaptation of ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ (Image: Marvel)

Get ready for a Rogue One you haven’t seen before. As previously announced, Marvel is set to launch a six-issue adaptation of the intergalactic smash Star Wars story and the comic book will include material that didn’t make the final cut of the film.

Today, Marvel released initial interior artwork from the comic version, the first issue of which will hit newsstands on April 5. Here’s your first look at four pages worth of panels, illustrated by Emilio Laiso and Oscar Bazaldua, featuring familiar scenes from the film of Jyn Erso‘s escape from an Imperial penal colony, her meeting on Yavin 4 with Mon Mothma and Cassian Andor, her rendezvous with Saw Gerrera on Jedha, and her plea to Alliance leaders to go to Scarif to steal the Death Star plans — a scene that may be expanded from the film (more on that below).

(Image: Marvel)

Writer Jody Houser has been working with Lucasfilm‘s Story Group and movie director Gareth Edwards to flesh out the comics with additional scenes, some of which were included in the novelization.

Related: ‘I Rebel’ and Other Trailer Scenes That Didn’t Make Final Cut of ‘Rogue One’

As we’ve noted, the Rogue One book, written by Alexander Freed, included several sequences not in the theatrical release. Among them:

Immediately after Imperial Director Orson Krennic captures Galen Erso during the prologue, the two men exchange words aboard Krennic’s shuttle — with the corpse of Lyra Erso between them.

The destruction of Jedha City is depicted from the point of view of various characters on the ground, including a Stormtrooper detail that didn’t evacuate in time, as well as the family of the little girl Jyn rescued from the marketplace shootout, all of whom get obliterated in the Death Star blast.

After the Alliance attack on Eadu, there’s an interlude aboard Krennic’s shuttle where he is summoned to Mustafar to appear before Darth Vader.

The Yavin 4 briefing room scene at the end is much longer, featuring testimony by Bodhi and Jyn, and more Mon Mothma.

During the Rogue One team’s shuttle ride from Yavin 4 to Scarif, there’s more conversation among the crew, including an exchange in which Jyn Erso is conferred the rank of sergeant, which explains why she’s called “Sgt. Jyn Erso” in promotional materials and toys.

Between the sections of the novelization, there are “recovered” messages that include journal entries from Mon Mothma, correspondence between Krennic and Erso, and prayers from Guardians of the Whills.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to ‘Rogue One’ Easter Eggs and ‘Star Wars’ References

For now, the Marvel adaptation will be your only chance to see visuals of these missing moments. The home version of Rogue One, arriving March 24 on Digital HD and April 4 on Blu-ray/DVD, will not include any deleted or alternative scenes.

In addition to the interior artwork, Marvel also released some variant covers (below), including the “Star Wars 40th Anniversary Variant” designed by Mike Mayhew, and the “Movie Variant,” based on the theatrical poster.

‘Rogue One/Star Wars 40th Anniversary Variant’ (Image: Mike Mayhew)

‘Rogue One Movie Poster Variant’ cover (Image: Marvel)

The previously released ‘Action Figure Variant’ (Image: John Tyler Christopher/Marvel)

Here’s the official ‘Rogue One’ issue No. 1 cover (Image: Phil Noto/Marvel)

The latest from Yahoo Movies:

‘Logan’: Let’s Talk About THAT Final Scene (Spoilers!)

Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart Rave About Dafne Keen, Young Scene-Stealer in ‘Logan’

‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ Exclusive Deleted Scene: To Catch a Demiguise

#rogue one #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #_author:Marcus Errico #marvel comics #movie:star-wars-rogue-one #star wars #_uuid:fc255000-e2cf-37e1-96ea-6fcb6f7531ba #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

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azems-familiar · 7 years

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of all the truths i could not tell ch 3

Search #myfic on my blog to find the other 2 chapters of this.

sooo this feels really awful and choppy and idk but i'd really appreciate some like opinions that it's maybe not??? and that it's long enough??? because it feels really short and err yeah so this is me apologizing in advance in case it really does suck also have i mentioned i'm making this up as i go along because yeah i am and this wasn't exactly supposed to happen but *shrugs*

also a friend from over on nanowrimo.org made a cover for this fic and it's beautiful and if someone could help me figure out how the fuck to get it to show up on here that'd be great

Chapter 3

Jyn steps off the ship, carefully, hesitantly, staying just behind Lyra, blinking in the sudden light. Yavin 4 is, apparently, a jungle planet; the U-wing has landed on an open space between two massive ziggurats, ancient stone accented with trailing greenery and faded carvings. Predictably, Lyra is entranced by the crumbling monstrosities; however, all Jyn can see when she looks at the ziggurats is the tactical (dis)advantage of building a base beneath the giant equivalent of an ‘X marks the spot’.

Of course, who knows how long the base has been here--she certainly doesn’t, at least--and the Empire hasn’t found the Alliance yet, so maybe it’s a decent location after all.

Cassian leads the two of them across the landing pad and into the hangar, and it seems as though he took her words about trust to heart, since he not only lets them walk behind him but also left his droid on the U-wing. Or maybe she’s overthinking things. But the apparent lack of concern about her and her mother is more than a bit unnerving. Everything is so… open, almost--Cassian didn’t even bother with an alias or ask them many questions. Nothing like the Partisans.

Saw would never have given out real names so casually, nor would he have let them see so much of the base. There would be bags over both Jyn and Lyra’s heads, their wrists in binders behind their backs, searched and disarmed and kept completely harmless until they were in the very center of the base. Jyn has escorted more than her fair share of men and women to the center of Saw’s stronghold. Some of whom ended up facing Bor Gullet.

(she doesn’t want to think about bor gullet right now)

Well, if the Alliance is going to be lax about security, she might as well take advantage of it. Quickening her steps, Jyn comes up alongside Cassian. “Where are we going?”

Cassian’s stride never falters, his face still and blank. “I’m taking you to Senator Mon Mothma. She and General Draven want to talk to you and your mother, to get a feel for the two of you. I'll then be asking you a few questions to determine what kind of training you'll need.”

Training. Jyn takes a breath, keeps her steps even and smooth, trying not to show any emotions on her face. Right. Liana Hallick would need training.

Liana Hallick had not spent five years among the Partisans.

Jyn wonders, idly, what the Rebellion would do with the wife and daughter of an Imperial scientist. After all, there's not really much that the two of them could do for the Rebellion, on principle; Lyra is a diplomat and a historian, with some knowledge of guerrilla warfare tactics from their time with Saw Gerrera, and the fierceness of a fighter when she has little other choice, and Jyn is a warrior, hardened and powerful and strong, with fire in her veins and steel in her bones and blood in her shattered glass smile. There's no doubt the Rebel Alliance could use them.

The only question is, would they?

Could the Rebels trust that Jyn and Lyra Erso wouldn't even ever dream of selling out the Rebellion to the Empire that stole their third member?

Jyn rather thinks not.

It's not necesarrily against the Rebels, the generals and senators and politicians who make up the core of the leadership of this ill-fated Rebellion against the all-powerful Empire; it's more like the idea that no matter how much Jyn and Lyra could bring to the table, there's always a chance that somehow, the Empire could use Galen Erso against them, to the downfall of the Alliance.

(hence why the aliases. lyra believes that the less they tell the rebellion, the better. even the senators like mon mothma, who would more than likely lean towards trusting the erso women, even they must not know. must not be allowed to know.)

Jyn lets a soft breath huff out between her lips and watched Cassian for a moment, then sighs and, shrugging internally, breaks the silence. "What kind of training?"

Cassian hesitates before answering. "Basic weapons training, hand-to-hand combat, simple tactics. The kind of things one needs to know to be a member of the Alliance. Depending on what you show aptitude in, you could be rerouted to a pilot--for flight training--or placed underneath an Intelligence officer to be assigned to that department. I would hazard a guess that neither of you are particularly political..."

Lyra snorts. "I consider myself to be a fairly decent diplomat, actually," she explains with a sarcastic laugh. "You'd be surprised at the things I can do. I really rather prefer talking over just blowing everyone up or shooting everyone. Violence is not always the best way to solve a problem."

"When the problem is as large as the Empire, Aurae, I don't feel like we have much of a choice," the Intelligence agent answers.

Lyra presses her lips together in a thin line, but doesn’t speak.

Cassian waits for a moment, then increases his pace ever-so-slightly, the blank mask back on his face; even his eyes are shadowed, hidden, and although Jyn prides herself on her ability to read people, she cannot find any emotion in his eyes. The face of a spy.

(and a good one, at that; surprising with how young he must be, only a couple years older than she is)

If Cassian notices her attempt, he shows no sign. (There’s no if about it; he’s too good not to notice. He just chooses not to react, for some reason she cannot fathom.) And then there’s no more time for conversation, because he holds up a hand to stop them in front of a door. There’s not much about the door to set it aside from all the other doors they’ve passed, but he steps forward with the same calm confidence he’s carried with him since Alderaan and knocks. There’s a second of silence, and then a voice calls out, “Enter,” just as calm and composed as Cassian himself, and then he opens the door and Jyn lays eyes on Mon Mothma for the first time.

(Later, the only thing she will remember from this first meeting is Mothma’s appearance; regal and calm and composed, everything her voice sounded like, a bastion of peaceful diplomacy in the storm-tossed sea of the Rebellion’s cold war. One of the things Jyn remembers is the look on Cassian’s face--deference and yet something more , something intangible, born of respect but mixed with something like disdain. Later, she’ll wonder if it’s related to the fact that Cassian is a spy; he’s seen the worst the Empire has to offer and more, has been through and done unimaginable horrors in the name of the cause, and yet while Mon Mothma is a strong leader she also still refuses to give up on a peaceful solution.

But that comes later. And right then, the only thing that matters is that they stay safe, uncompromised, they’ve survived the first investigation, the first test, but now comes the second, more thorough one, and if they fail this…)

(Later, she will also wonder if her own certainty about the coming war influenced her opinion of Mon Mothma in some way.)

“Welcome, Aurae and Liana Hallick, to the Rebel Alliance,” Mon Mothma says courteously. (Jyn has a feeling Mon Mothma always speaks courteously.) “My name is Senator Mon Mothma. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard many good things from General Draven about you; he’s assured me that the two of you will fit in quite well here, and I want to pass along those assurances. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be here today to meet you.”

There’s a small pause, wherein Jyn shifts uncomfortably under the intense scrutiny of both Mon Mothma and Cassian, and Lyra struggles to come up with an appropriate answer. “Thank you, Senator,” she finally decides on. “Liana and I are in your debt for making this transition possible. I know it’s not usually your custom to expose yourself like this…”

Mothma smiles, warm and welcoming. “Only because we don’t usually have people reaching out to us. In the cold war--for lack of a better term--that we’re in right now, it’s considered more prudent by most people to remain neutral.”

The datapad lying on the table in front of the senator chirps an alert, and a flicker of irritation crosses her perfectly schooled expression. She glances down at the datapad’s screen and purses her lips. “I was hoping to have a little more time to speak with you, but it appears I have other matters to attend to. Forgive me. Sergeant Andor, would you find them temporary quarters and then begin their evaluations?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cassian-- Sergeant Cassian--responds with a crisp salute. Mothma acknowledges him with a quick nod, her eyes already drifting back to the datapad, and Cassian turns to Lyra and Jyn. “Ms. Hallick, Liana, if you would come with me, please…”

“Call me Aurae,” Lyra says back, then turns to follow him out the door. “Liana, are you coming?”

Jyn hesitates just inside the room, glancing back over her shoulder at the Senator, who is looking decidedly more upset with each passing second. As though she feels Jyn’s gaze, Mothma lifts her gaze from the datapad--

Their eyes meet.

There’s some strange, unspoken thing that flows between the two of them, in that moment; an acknowledgement, perhaps. (Of different views, of the futility of seeking peace, of the painful inevitability and hopelessness of war, and its cost)

And for a moment, Jyn almost begins to understand Mon Mothma.

Then Lyra calls out, “Liana?” and the moment shatters like spun glass, Mothma returning to her datapad as though nothing happened at all.

“Right behind you,” Jyn calls out, and leaves the room without looking back.

[=|=]

After what feels like days of questions (but is only three hours, according to the chrono on the wall), Cassian finally decides he’s gotten enough information from the two of them.

Jyn’s under no false pretenses--this was an interrogation, to see if they are worth the risk, to see if they’re who they pretend to be; she can only hope that his dismissal of them means they’ve passed. Not that his manner or tone could give her any clues. The entire time, he’s been cold and impersonal, asking questions with little regard for sentimentality or extraneous information, cutting to the quick, efficient and sharp.

She supposes that’s why he’s already an officer, at the tender young age of eighteen. (Or so she guesses; he looks around eighteen to her, and acts like it in rare moments--flashes of humor in his brown eyes when she cracks a joke raunchy enough to earn a reprimand from Lyra. There’s a hint of a smile flickering on his lips when she talks about her fierce desire to take down the Empire, and for some reason or another he doesn’t suppress the emotion in his eyes. Not that she can identify it, anyway. Everything about Cassian Andor is a mystery--not least, the reason why he runs around with that kriffing droid .)

“There you are, Cassian,” K-2 says, choosing that precise moment to shove his way inside the small room they’re in. “You have been gone for three hours and twenty-six minutes. This is an unreasonable amount of time. The ship needs repairs and I got wet and require an oil bath.”

“Hello to you too,” Jyn mutters under her breath, without thinking. She rolls her eyes at the droid’s antics, rising from the chair and stretching stiff muscles. “If we’re done here, are Mama and I free to leave?”

“Yes, of course,” Cassian answers quickly, following her example and standing. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a ship to take care of, and a droid who can most certainly take care of himself,” he adds when K-2 levels a vicious glare at him. (How a droid without a ‘face’ can glare is beyond Jyn, but she’ll be damned if he doesn’t somehow manage to make it happen.)

Lyra nods as though this is completely reasonable. “Of course, Sergeant Andor.”

“Which way is the mess hall?” Jyn interjects, deciding to ask the important questions now. And, besides, she’s hungry.

Cassian raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. “I’ll show you there myself,” he says after a moment of consideration. “My ship can wait a few more minutes.”

She hesitates, then nods. This will work, even if it’s not quite what she had in mind; she’s not entirely sure she’s ready to socialize with the man who was quite prepared to kill her the instant she acted suspicious. “Lead the way,” she says, then, unable to resist: “Does the droid have to come?”

K-2 straightens, stares at her with an air of affronted dignity (she still doesn’t quite know how he manages it). “I’ll have you know that I am used to going with Cassian wherever he goes,” he begins.

“K, leave it,” Cassian says with a sigh. “Go get your oil bath, alright? Then you can help me with the ship.”

K-2 makes a noise that somehow approximates a grumbling sigh before turning and clanking away. Jyn nearly makes a comment about stealth, but falls silent at the look Lyra gives her--a look that clearly says to stop antagonizing the man .

Reluctantly, she stops.

“Anyway, the mess hall?” Lyra asks, stepping around Jyn to walk towards the door. “I think both Jyn and I are ready for dinner. It’s been a long day.”

(a long day of sitting around doing nothing on a ship, she wants to retort. she doesn’t.)

(she thinks about it for a long time, though)

(possibly too long, by the look cassian gives her, as though he knows exactly what she’s thinking)

(and maybe he does. she still can’t read him)

Cassian nods. “Right, yes. This way.”

Jyn follows him down the hallway, almost painfully conscious of the stares of the soldiers they pass, and forces herself to walk with her head up and shoulders back. She will not let them intimidate her.

As though she hears the thought, Lyra turns and glances back over her shoulder, and when their eyes meet, she smiles.

[=|=]

The next few weeks are spent in endless rounds of training. Jyn only sees her mother at mealtimes and at night, and she sees Cassian even less often; maybe once or twice a week. Occasionally, he’s close enough to exchange a few words with; even though she doesn’t really like him, he’s one of the few people she knows at the base, and there’s something about him that almost dares her to find out everything she can about him. He seems to share that, at least, and she can only hope that she figures him out before he unearths her true identity.

(she’s beginning to like the rebellion. she really doesn’t want to leave it behind)

He disappears for a couple weeks, returns looking haggard and weary with K-2 quiet (for once) and almost dispirited at his side. A mission, she guesses, and one that didn’t go so well; or, maybe, success wasn’t as sweet or fulfilling as she’d thought it’d be. She could ask him, could go search the base during one of her breaks and corner him, but the thought has little appeal. She’s not even that curious. It’s just--

(what does it take to make that hard of a spy come home like that?)

Nothing.

It’s nothing.

(she doesn’t tell lyra about it, doesn’t want to see her mother’s eyes)

And then, nearly three months after arriving at Yavin 4, Cassian walks up to her one afternoon and says, “Come with me,” and the carefully constructed routine of the past weeks shatters.

[=|=]

“Where are we going?” Jyn asks, struggling to keep up with Cassian’s long strides. He glances over at her, alters his steps ever-so-slightly, matching them more to hers. “Cassian?”

(he never said she had to use his rank, and she does know his name, after all…)

“I have a mission,” he answers shortly, “and I’m allowed to take a few soldiers with me. I’ll need help. I’ve been keeping an eye on your training.”

And that, she thinks, might be the closest thing to a compliment she ever gets out of him.

“But where are we going ?” she persists in asking, giving him a meaningful look. “And what’s the point? What are we doing? I’m not ready to just leave--”

“I understand,” he responds. “Which is why I’m taking you to your room, first.” His voice drops. “I’ll give you more details when we’re someplace private. This is a confidential mission.”

Confidential. Right. “You’ll at least tell me what I need to pack, right?”

“You don’t need anything other than what you can carry on you.”

Jyn sighs, then nods. It’s not very specific, not at all, but at least she has a better idea of what to bring now. (Well, sort of. Not really.)

Lyra’s in their room when she steps inside, surprisingly. “Mama? What are you doing here?” she asks, frowning. “Shouldn’t you be out doing… whatever it is you do?”

(they don’t really talk about the daily routine too much. she’s not quite sure why )

“I heard you’ve been chosen for a mission,” Lyra answers, voice soft. “I wanted to come say goodbye. And to give you something.” She reaches up to her neck and unknots a plain cord, draws it out from beneath her shirt--a glimmering, roughly cut kyber crystal. “Trust the Force, Jyn, and everything will go as it should,” Lyra finishes, whispering Jyn’s real name almost inaudibly.

“You’re giving it to me?” Jyn feels her eyes widen with astonishment--the kyber crystal necklace had been a gift from Galen, and it was one of the only things Lyra still had to remember her husband by.

Lyra just smiles and nods, tying the cord around Jyn’s neck then stepping back. “You should get ready,” she says instead. “Wouldn’t want to keep your commanding officer waiting,” and there’s a tightness in her smile, a strain in her eyes, but she refuses to show it in her voice. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

Before Lyra can leave, Jyn takes a step forward and hugs her tightly, pressing her face into her mother’s shoulder, drawing courage and comfort from the familiar pair of arms around her. Then, slowly, reluctantly, she steps back, gives Lyra a smile and a nod and then goes over to her bed to get what she came for--a pair of clothes less distinctive than the Alliance uniform she currently wears, her collapsible batons, and her blaster. She changes while her mother leaves and then quickly wraps a scarf around her neck before returning to the hallway where Cassian awaits.

He doesn’t waste time asking her if she’s ready to leave or not, instead simply walking back down the corridor towards the hangar.

(a part of her notices that he keeps his strides short for her)

It’s not until they step inside his U-wing, however, that he speaks.

“Recently, Draven received some new intel from one of our informants. He asked me to verify the information. You and I will be travelling to an Imperial-controlled planet and spending a few days undercover in an attempt to, for lack of a better term, slice our way into the Imperial network in search of proof.”

At the mention of slicing, Jyn straightened. “I can help you out with that,” she says, only to be met by the smallest of smiles.

“I know you can,” Cassian answers, the smile flickering around the corners of his eyes and teasing his lips. “That’s why I asked you to come.”

“So,” she asks, slowly, hesitant, “where exactly are we going?”

“It’s your basic intelligence mission,” he says, evading the question. “I’ll evaluate your performance and see if maybe you’d fit in intelligence.”

“Cassian,” she says, staring into his eyes. “Where are we going?”

He swallows, takes a breath.

“Coruscant.”

#rebelcaptain #rogue one #cassian x jyn #cassian andor #jyn erso #lyra erso #k-2so #work in progress #stuff is finally happening #myfic

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sanerontheinside · 8 years

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Saner’s Excessive Synopsis

@rusc-of-airgead here’s 45 - Share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet. from this post | come and ask me things

Considering how many fics I have, this is always a safe question. Whether I’ll stick to a synopsis, or instead plan out an entire story in one post, or even write bits of it as I go, however, is a toss-up. Here’s a Rogue fic, but I have barely written anything for this yet, so expect this to get out of hand:

Reincarnation is a bitch. (Or, waking up one day in your reality with memories of another is - highly inconvenient at best.) @oddlyexquisite, still blame you for this. :D pls enjoy. Also tagging @dr-fumbles-mcstupid, @meggory84, @godoflaundrybaskets, @obaewankenope, @lilyrose225writes, @kyberpunk, @meabhair, @maawi, @eclipsemidnight. Come yell at me when you read this.

Years ago, Galen Erso escaped the Empire with Saw Gerrera’s help. Instead of running and hiding with Saw’s rebels, though, Galen and Lyra make an early mistake and are picked up by the Alliance, long before Krennic could get a hold of them. Lucky for them, someone on the Alliance was familiar with Erso’s work, which means they actually had the option to defect. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Erso agrees to work for the Alliance instead.

Erso has been working on various odd projects through the years. He’s the sw equivalent of a theoretical physicist, let’s say, so most of his work is more related to weapons and shields.

Jyn grew up between hanging out with pilots and, occasionally, with Saw. The Alliance didn’t always consider him a radical. She’s a recruiter, one of the best the Alliance has. She knows what people want, she knows how to keep them from getting it. She hates it sometimes, luring a disenfranchised Imp out into giving up useful intel, getting them to do something for the Rebellion, knowing they probably won’t make it out alive and the Alliance doesn’t - can’t, doesn’t have the resources to - care about their fate. Not unless they have a mind like Galen Erso, and you can imagine how few of those there are. Number them between two Human hands, and that’s how many you’d still find who weren’t entrapped and closely guarded by the Empire. But if Jyn finds one, if she’s very lucky, she knows how to talk rings around them, too. (Perhaps she knows them best of all).

She works with Cassian, by the way, who taught her a great deal about recruiting. But she is small, and slight, and often overlooked. The first time she saw Cassian kill a contact who would have slowed them down, she didn’t speak to him for a day or more. She’s not an idealist, she’s a survivor, she learned enough in her early years on the run from her father and mother and Saw. She knows why, that’s not the problem.

Maybe the problem is that she does it too. She sends her recruits back into the jaws of death and none of them will make it out, and she will never save them. She’s just never the one to fire the shot. And maybe, with too many close shaves between them, too many deaths on her heart already, with the knowledge that the Imps are still people even if the Empire never gave a damn (especially because the Empire never gave a damn), it makes her feel a bit sick, feel a bit like she’s no better.

Cassian (bless the man) says nothing. Just gives her the time she needs. They’ve fought bitterly over this in the past, over how he can shove his guilt aside and fight for the Rebellion, fight for an ideal. But Jyn, the daughter of a man who chose to flee the Empire for better or for worse to keep his brilliant mind away from them, Jyn would sooner question an order that she thinks is wrong, would rather investigate on her own and not regret pulling the trigger later. Maybe she is naive still. She doesn’t care, it’s not something she ever wants to lose.

When the reports come in from Jedha, when the Empire begins its stripmining of kyber and theft from the Temple, when the rumours of it finally reach Galen, he is the first to realise what the Empire is using it for. He’s known for years that Empire wouldn’t need him to complete the project, known that they could figure it out without his mind, that he was completely replaceable. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have hopes they’d never figure it out.

It’s why his projects for the Alliance are shield designs. It’s the reason he still works on shields while Draven pressures him into designing weapons. The only problem is, he still doesn't know how to beat his own weapon. So he begs the Alliance to stop the mining process, to send word to Saw, stage some kind of battle, something, anything, sabotage the project. Buy him more time. Defend Jedha - the Alliance does not have the resources - just NiJedha then! Send Jyn, he’ll talk to her, Saw will talk to her!

They send Jyn, and they send Cassian and K2 to watch her back. Jedha’s a rough place, after all, and there’s no guarantee that Saw will talk to her, or that he’s even still alive. In NiJedha, they meet Chirrut and Baze, and Bodhi. Bodhi, who is watching the Empire destroy what was once his home, the place he was born, the Temple that, before they tried to raid it, was much as he remembers. He watched the troopers advance on the Temple that first time, only to find that a small force of Guardians - a mere handful! - could hold them off with few injuries, maybe no casualties.

When the Imps retreated, when the only people left near the Temple were the miners and the cargo pilots, Bodhi ventured out to the Temple, drawn to a familiar sense of it. Bodhi was one of the first to have odd flashes of awareness of some sort of past life, maybe because the Empire was busily burning out all of its pilots on stims, or maybe just because Bodhi was Bodhi. It’s hard to say. The first time he gets any sort of feeling of peace, though, is when he crouches down at the steps of the old Temple and sits there, for a time, with the remaining monks. Just breathing. Feeling the ground beneath him, basking in the sense of home, no matter how broken.

It’s not like, in the last few years, he hasn’t had niggling feelings of wrong. Feelings that are treason, that he, at first, tried to bury. He doesn’t bury them these days. He studies them, at first in a detached sort of way. He watches, maybe better than anyone else. He forgets nothing. But once he accepts those feelings, once he realises that to the Empire his life is nothing, and he is not nothing -

That certainty comes first, and this is important. It’s only after this that the Force starts dropping visions on his head, of a different life, of one where they had a few days to blaze a trail across the stars and bring hope to the Rebellion.

Their first meeting is actually pretty similar [to the last time they did this]. Saw’s people interrupt a shipment of kyber. Chirrut picks a fight with the Imps. Baze grumbles, but follows him into the fray. Bodhi disables his own cargo ship and a few of the others. Cassian and Jyn pass off watching each other’s backs, and shoot one of Saw’s people.

They all end up in the same one place at the end of the fray. Bodhi doesn’t have plans to steal or to give to Saw, because he never was on Eadu, he never met the person designing the Death Star, there was never even a flaw engineered into it. Saw’s rag-tag group of rebels shows up takes all of them anyway.

Jyn spends precious time trying to talk Saw into helping them. It’s easier, and it’s harder. It’s still early days for the invasion, the resistance on Jedha is still strong. Planning a coordinated attack could still be possible, especially since Chirrut has half a mind to convince a few of the surviving Guardians to join in.

( “It won’t work,” Baze tells him.

“It will,” Chirrut insists. “They’re fighting for their home.”)

There’s a tense moment for Bodhi, when Saw has half a mind to throw him to the bor gullet all the same. Bodhi, who finds Saw just as scary as last time, if not worse. But Bodhi is rather like he was last time, too - scared, oh hells, terrified, but he’s never let that stop him before. Bodhi, who’s been watching, carefully, for the last several years, who knows where all the mining equipment is kept and how to sabotage it, and how to take over the weaponry.

Aren’t you just cargo pilot? someone asks, mildly incredulous, when he’s just laid out all the positions and the exact scale of the forces they would be facing.

Yeah, I’m the pilot, Bodhi says, deliberately dropping the ‘just’. But NiJedha is home - like Chirrut said.

Saw looks at him oddly, with something that might be respect. He may as well, they can’t plan an efficient attack without Bodhi Rook.

The resulting skirmish is... interesting. The monks, it seems, refused to join after all. Saw’s rebels cause a brilliant shiny distraction while Bodhi, Jyn, and Cassian disable the mining equipment and steal firepower. The weapons get passed on to Chirrut and Baze, presumably to be handed off to the rebels.

Some of that explosive power does make it to Saw, but not all. That’s when they realise, the monks actually did agree to join the fight. Just, not quite as actively. They lay several charges at key weak points, blow the entrance to the mines and the foundation of the Temple. They destroy it all, bury the kyber. It’ll take a long time to get it out from under that rock, and it was never easy to reach in the first place.

It’s after the skirmish that Jyn has her own vision. And Bodhi’s been keeping an eye on her and on Cassian, sometimes catching himself because he can’t say anything, can’t tell them how different they are, and how the same. Chirrut and Baze don’t mind that sort of familiarity, but he thinks it’s the familiarity they would have with another Jedhan. Or maybe because Chirrut is a Monk of the Whills, and always had the ability to see more than there was on the surface of you.

So when Jyn’s vision hits, he’s there when she wakes up disoriented and horrified because it’s real, they died, and it was real, why are they here? He’s there because he knows how waking up feels, and it isn’t good, and he definitely couldn’t hold down his dinner last time.

And it’s worse and it’s better, because it’s only a matter of time before the Empire gets the kyber, and outfitting Alliance worlds with the shield, if her father ever succeeds, might still take longer than they have, and they don’t know how to destroy the Death Star this time.

Oh, but it’s worse. It’s so much worse because there is a countermeasure. Jyn saw her father before she left, she saw him and she saw Draven with him, and they were arguing, and she knows, she knows what he did, it just took her this long to put it all together.

Because the Alliance doesn’t have the resources to fight, to build a superweapon - not like the Empire. Because the Alliance would needs something smaller, far more efficient, than a project of the Death Star’s scale.

Because, in a fantastic play on the project’s name, her father knows how to bring Death to the Stars, and he knows how to do this at a far enough distance to outrun the blast wave while the system burns. Because her father is no fool, and he knows how to do this, has known for the last ten years.

The only question is, if he didn’t want to give the Empire the Death Star, would he give the plans of the countermeasure to the Alliance?

Oh, but he didn’t. It wasn’t his choice. Cassian stole the plans from him. The last time around, Galen had given the plans to Bodhi. In this world Draven gives an order, and Cassian - Cassian, who’s learned the value of orders where Jyn learned the value of questioning them - he obeys.

Incidentally, Cassian is the only one without visions.

(K2 has... ghosts in his programming.)

[Author’s Note: I don’t bloody know, I’m working on it. I feel like, maybe odd quotes here and there that make no sense given the situation. Or - how does a robot describe déjà vu?]

Cassian and Jyn have never had so bitter an argument over what it means to fight for the Rebellion - and it doesn’t mean wiping out entire inhabited systems the way the Empire could destroy a planet or a city, Jyn shouts, not if the Alliance calls Saw’s rebels a group of radicals. They have never so disagreed on any of it, and the fight is virulent, and of course they say things that should not ever be said. Jyn yells that the Rebellion Cassian’s been fighting for since the age of six had trained him never to question orders and listen like the good meat clanker he is, setting both Bodhi and K2 off balance because that’s what the Empire does. Cassian shoots back that her father is the monster who made that weapon, but -

But, no. Her father is the theorist who dreamed things up, things that should have purpose other than to kill. He wasn’t fool enough to ignore the devastation his creations could cause, but what could he do if he’d dreamt them up anyway? His terrible children, for each theory, for every calculation, for ever forward step and every improvement to weaponry or shielding, he always knew how else it could be used.

He just never imagined it would be. Not until Jyn comes back to ask him, point blank, if he knows that the Alliance is building a weapon based on his designs.

He does. It paralyses him. He'd thought that the Alliance would not be like the Empire. He still harboured a fading hope that if he bought himself enough time with the shutdown of the Empire’s kyber mining, he’d have a chance to finish the shields and then they would never need the weapon. But Draven is more than willing to strike first and question later, and Jyn knows this. It takes her assurance that Draven had had those plans for ten years, he’d scrapped together enough funds and stolen enough Imperial scrap to repurpose it and cobble together a death ray that could destabilise a sun.

Galen prepares an open letter, makes an impassioned statement before the Alliance leaders, begging them not to use it.

Because Mutually Assured Destruction is only a deterrent if nobody wants to die. It would have worked with Krennic at the helm of the Death Star project, but it will not work with Tarkin.

And Draven... he’s more than willing to be the aggressor. More than willing to wipe out a system of Empire-occupied worlds.

Jyn is the one to say the words her father cannot, the words no one else in the room will acknowledge, though they hang on everyone’s mind: it would make us no better than them and this is not what we fought for.

The vote is devastating. After all, from a strategic point of view, if you have a countermeasure against the Death Star, and you beat the other side in the race to complete it - why not use it?

[AN: Take this as a given: if they destroy the beginnings of the Death Star structure, in another few years the Empire will build another.]

Jyn walks out of the meeting, disheartened, to find Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi waiting at the gate. “Didn’t work, did it?” Behind her, Cassian shakes his head.

After a few moments’ silence, Bodhi looks up and says, “So, anyone want to know what else they have on Scarif?”

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