Have Some Aunt Nebula

The Price of Peace - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I've just begun posting a new multi-chapter fic. It's based on the romance between Obi-Wan and Satine, but this time it's Shin and Sabine. I hope you'll enjoy it :) Here is the beginning and if you want to read the whole thing, the link will be at the end!

Shin could count how many times she’d left Coruscant on one hand. This would be her sixth times, officially calling for the use of a second hand to count. They were bound for Mandalore. She sat in the co-pilot seat, watching the stars flash around them, boxing their small ship into a tunnel of light. Baylan sat on the other side of the cockpit, his gaze not on the galaxy around them but on his padawan.

“What is the title given to the leader of Madalore?”

Shin had to tear her eyes away from the lights. She looked back at her master, then her gaze fell to the ground as she searched her memory. She’d been given a crash course on Mandalorian politics by the librarian before leaving, but it had been pretty late at night and she had fallen asleep on her desk four times in an hour.

“The Mandalore?”

“Mand’alor. It has been a long time since the Mandalorians have chosen a Mand’alor, hence yet another civil war.”

“Master, if this is the third civil war in as many generations, what can we truly do to help them?”

Baylan sighed. Shin knew her master wasn’t entirely thrill by their assignment, but it had been too long since he had been given any mission, and the Council knew that. Whatever the case may be, Shin was determined to make the most of the assignment.

“We will do what the Council has asked of us. We will protect the Countess Wren for as long as is required.”

The ship let out a beep, indicating they would soon exit hyperspace. Baylan turned his attention back to the controls and Shin imitated him. While her master wasn’t thrilled about joining a civil war, Shin wasn’t thrilled about their target. She imagined the Countess to be like all the politicians in Coruscant, probably old and full of ideas that would be impossible to execute even in the best of times. The kind of politicians who practiced their cordial smiles in the mirror every morning. This Countess was apparently the Mandalorians’ greatest chance at peace. Shin couldn’t quite believe that.

Full Story Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52296436/chapters/132292435

Where on Earth have I been?

(Not that I think anyone really cares, but I’ve been seeing a lot of new subscribers lately and I felt bad for not having posted anything in a while)

I have been extremely busy. First with college, and work on my thesis that was much longer than it should have been (me, writing too much? Shocker, I know) but the teachers agreed it was necessary so everything turned out pretty great. And then I just spent the past two months finally, finally writing a novel! All 105.134 words of it! It may lead to nothing, it may not even see the bottom of an agent’s trashcan or whatever but I’m still pretty proud.

That being said, I cannot confirm when I’ll be back with new fanfictions. I can’t even confirm which ships I’ll be writing about. Only that I need a little break and that I’ll be back to school mid-September which might give me plenty of opportunity to pass the time writing fanfictions!

Have a nice weekend everyone and hopefully see you soon with a new story!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1IXo5sxbem/?igsh=c3p2OGJmbWw5YW0w

Is this how we should imagine Sabine casually showing off for Shin at the stronghold? ⛸️😂

Loved the fic! ✨

🤣🤣 Thank you! And yes I can absolutely see it! Sabine is just doing the coolest stuff meanwhile Shin is looking like Bambi trying to keep up XD

I Feel So Unsure As I Take Your Hand - an Agatha All Along story

Happy @agathaallalongweek everyone! I'm kicking this week off with a witch school AU (part 1 of... you'll see ;) Here is the beginning and if you'd like to read the whole story, the link will be at the end! Enjoy!

Agatha wasn’t awakened by her teacher calling her name three times, but by Alice elbowing her in the side. She shot up and brushed the spit which had dribbled at the corner of her lips. Then, she realized that everyone in the small amphitheater was turned in their seat to stare at her.

“What?” she huffed.

“Your discipline for your final exam? Which one have you chosen?” her homeroom teacher, Miss Calderu, asked with obvious irritation.

Agatha stammered as her drowsy mind struggled to remember the choice she’d made. It wasn’t her fault Miss Calderu’s divination classes always put her to sleep.

“Song magic.”

Her teacher wrote down the answer and the whole room turned away from Agatha as the next young witch on the list was called.

“Jennifer?”

“Potion,” she replied from the first row of the class without missing a beat.

Agatha rolled her eyes. What a nerd. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Just one more month to drudge through, her final project to present, and then she would be free. She couldn’t wait to graduate from the Salem Academy for Witches.  Song magic was her specialty; there was no way she would fail her project. She knew she would get an excellent grade – which would compensate for those other classes, such as divination, where her grades weren’t so high – and then she was out of this place.

“Rio?” Miss Calderu continued to call.

Rio had been staring out of the window on the left side of the room, but she snapped back to reality quickly.

“Botany.”

Agatha sneered. Of course, miss perfect was taking botany, not that it mattered. Rio had such high grades in every class that she could have chosen anything for her final project.

“Alice?”

“Protection,” she replied, her voice echoing just enough in the quiet room to be heard.

Agatha gasped as she turned to her. Alice gave her a shrug then shrank under her gaze.

She only waited until they’d stepped into the hallway to shout:

“Protection?”

FULL STORY HERE

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

Knocking on Death's Door - an Agathario fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I have a drabble for this final day of @agathaallalongweek ! Today is a bonus day and I picked "Celestial Agatha" as my prompt. Here is the beginning and the link to the full story will be at the end. Enjoy!

Someone was knocking at Death’s door. Rio knew it was impossible, that nothing in the universe was strong enough to open that door aside from her, and yet, she felt it rattle. The lock held, but not by much, as whatever was on the other side banged against the planks, fingernails scraping on the wood until it left deep grooves behind. When the assault ended, Rio was both relieved and worried. She wasn’t sure the door would hold another assault, and whatever had tried would certainly try again. The only thing she could do was stop them before they did.

She followed the trail of magic, because magic this powerful left a trace, until she found herself in Hollywood where she melted out of the shadows inside a sound stage. Every available surface had been painted with circles and runes and symbols while candles floated in the air for a ritual that Rio didn’t know, but could comprehend. Her culprit was here, alright. Then, once she saw the crumpled shape in the center, she felt foolish. She should have known Agatha Harkness was behind it all.

Agatha was on her knees, visibly shaking in the dark sound stage. At first, Rio wasn’t sure whether she was shaking from anger that her ritual had failed or from sadness, but then she heard a strangled sob. She approached her carefully, without making a sound, as one would creep on a lion. In the past, this would have worked, but now, even without looking at her, Agatha could sense her.

“Come to gloat?” she snarled.

She sat back, brushed the tears out of her eyes, and in the blink of an eye she composed herself to the charismatic and unshakable witch Rio knew her to be. It might have fooled some, but never her.

“I felt you calling.”

“Is that what I was doing? Because I thought I was about to bring my son back.”

FULL STORY HERE

Hell is a Thanksgiving Dinner - A Fear Street fanfiction

A/N: Hey guys! Here is an extract from my new short multi-chapter fanfiction centered around Cindy and Ziggy going home for Thanksgiving, so you can obviously expect a lot of family drama! If you want to read the whole story, the link is at the end! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Ziggy woke up to the sound of her alarm clock, followed by the yapping of Major Tom. He'd yet to understand that there wasn't some evil elf hidden in the black box ringing an electronic bell every morning. She didn't think he ever would. Instead, she switched off the alarm and padded her bed, prompting Major to jump back on the covers and nuzzle his nose under her hand, asking to be petted. She patted his head as she stared at the weak sunlight bouncing off her ceiling. She sighed. She didn't feel ready for the day, but she knew it was too late to back down. Although she didn't want to, she slipped out of bed.

Soon enough, she had changed into her tracksuit and was putting on her trainers. Major Tom was waiting for her by the door, his tail wagging happily at the prospect of going out. Ziggy put on her sweater, picked up her earbuds, strapped his retractable leash on Major Tom, and was ready to go.

She ran until she couldn't feel her legs, then let Major drag her for another mile until they were home. They followed their usual route. Down the street, past the wall with a thick layer of band posters, turning right on Elm Street, past the line of suit-wearing businessmen and tired teenagers waiting for their coffee, through the front gate, and into the park, up the main gravel path which traversed the park, along the small gentle stream and over the wooden bridge, past the children's playground, back out of the park, and around the block. Major was ready for another turn and Ziggy had to hold him back to bring him inside their building.

Major sprinted up the stairs while Ziggy took her time. He sat in front of the door, his tail brushing the floor of the hallway. Ziggy unlocked the front door and let Major inside. While he plopped down in front of his water bowl, she took a glass of water and drank.

She gave Major his breakfast and went to take a shower. This was the only way to make sure he was busy while she washed up. She knew he was only worried about her, but every once in a while she'd like to take a shower without him scratching and whining at the door.

Once dressed for the day, Ziggy took her breakfast. As the coffee machine was loudly brewing her a cup, she checked her phone. She had agreed to pick up Cindy at five today, but still, she felt the need to type 'Ready for today?' When halfway through breakfast she still hadn't received any reply, she suspected it was because her sister was still in bed. To be fair, it was still early. She knew Cindy would answer once she was up. She always did.

FULL STORY HERE!

Dream Markers and Memory Keepers - a Captain Marvel fanfiction

A/N: Hey guys! Here is an extract of the story I wrote for the winner of my bid for the MTH 2020 charity auction! It’s a lot of family fluff as Maria and Carol take Monica to Disneyworld for the first time. If you want to read the whole story the link is at the end!

Maria spotted the miraculously empty bench and Monica mustered all the energy she had left to run to it. Soon enough, her parents caught up. Carol was carrying a small collection of shopping bags. She tugged them between her feet as she sat down. Monica was sandwiched between her moms. Cinderella castle rose over them on the other side of the circular plaza. Now that the night had fallen, it was illuminated by powerful projectors, so that even the blue rooftops and golden spirals were visible as if it were the middle of the day.

The whole plaza was lit by streetlights. However, despite the intense lights around her, Monica yawned. She rubbed her eyes and rested her head against Maria's shoulder.

"Don't fall asleep before the fireworks, Lieutenant Trouble," Carol said.

"It's fine, we have plenty of time. She can take a little nap."

In no time at all, Monica was asleep. People began to crowd the plaza in preparation for the light show and fireworks. Carol checked her phone. They still had a good hour to wait. Maria was holding onto her daughter. Carol slid just a bit closer, careful not to crush Monica between them, and placed one arm over the backrest of the bench. She could feel the warmth of Maria's arm against her hand.

"We're going to be eating nothing but potatoes for the rest of the year, but it would have been so worth it," Carol said with a smile.

Maria brushed a strand of curly hair away from Monica's face.

"She's going to run us ragged. We're here all week and I'm already tired."

"To be fair, the first's day is always the most exciting."

Maria glanced at her in disbelief and Carol shrugged.

"If you want to take a day off at the spa, I can handle her."

"Even if she wants to go on 'It's a small world' again?" Maria asked with a chuckle.

Carol shuddered.

"I'll do my best..."

More and more people settled on the sidewalk and in any available spot to wait. Many were families just like them, with one or more children either too excited to fall asleep or struggling to remain awake. Carol checked the time again on her phone and eventually, she decided to check the pictures she'd taken during the day. She almost had the wind knocked out of her by the number of pictures alone.

"Thank God I remembered to empty my phone before we left. It's just the first day and I already have over a hundred pictures!"

Maria leaned a bit closer, mindful of the sleeping eight-year-old against her.

"Let me see."

Carol selected the oldest picture she'd taken, one of Monica posing beside the huge statue of Ariel at their hotel.

"That's one a keeper alright."

Full story here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28875438

Show Me Family - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back at it again with a one-shot set in my Ahsoka season 2 universe. Here is the beginning, and if you want to read the whole story, the link will be at the end!

The sound of wooden swords clashing against each other filled the training room. Sabine dodged Shin’s lunge with a chuckle and struck back. Shin pivoted to counter, then took a step back.

“Maybe someday you’ll land a hit on me,” Shin bragged, the training sword twirling in her hand.

Sabine exhale, taking the short break to catch her breath.

“What would I get for touching you?”

“Moving on from training swords?” Shin suggested.

Sabine rolled her eyes.

“Oh sure, let’s fight with real lightsabers inside a ship. I’m sure Hera will be totally cool with that…”

Shin didn’t let Sabine finish her sentence. She lunged at her again, forcing Sabine to parry. Her defense was unsteady and Shin slid her foot beneath Sabine’s calf, sweeping her leg from under her. Sabine crashed to the floor with a huff.

“Maybe I should ask for something that will really annoy you,” Sabine contemplated from the floor before she pushed herself up.

“Like what?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Sabine let out another breath, pushing past her exhaustion. She charged with a vertical strike. Shin deflected the blow and retaliated. They traded blows, the room echoing with the sharp thwack of wood on wood and their tired breaths. Sabine aimed for Shin’s ribs and she would have gotten her if Shin hadn’t blocked the blade with the Force. Sabine stepped back.

“Cheating.”

“I know from experience bruised ribs take their time healing.”

“I was just going to give you a little tap, cheater.”

Full Story Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52252912

The Road Less Traveled - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back with another story from "The Life of the Wolf, the Wren, and their Cub." This one is about Uschi getting her own lightsaber. Here is the beginning and if you'd like to read more the link for the rest of the story will be at the end!

Sabine checked once more that Uschi’s jacket was zipped to the top and her scarf covered the skin of her neck left unprotected by the thick, fur-lined coat. Uschi tried to push her hand away, to no avail.

“I’ll be fine,” the girl assured.

Still, Sabine continued to fret over her. She picked up a woolen hat and forced it onto Uschi’s head, despite her protest.

“You have you comlink?”

“Yes.”

“And your emergency grappling line?”

“You know Ahsoka said it’s cheating.”

“Yeah, well, Ahsoka was raised by a religious cult who thought it was normal to send children alone on an ice-covered planet to gather a little crystal.”

“We didn’t go alone,” Ahsoka chimed in from the doorway to the T-6’s cockpit. “But unfortunately, Uschi doesn’t have any clan members to go with her.”

Sabine placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Be careful. And do not hesitate to call.”

Uschi nodded. She walked past Shin, who gave her an encouraging pad on the shoulder, then Huyang who was waiting for her by the door.

“Remember, young Uschi. You must trust your instinct. One crystal within the cave is awaiting you. Your task is only to retrieve it.”

Uschi gave him a serious nod, then stepped out of the ship, and into Ilum’s blizzard. Sabine watched her go with a sigh.

“She will be fine,” Ahsoka assured her. “You’ve prepared her well.”

“I’m allowed to worry, I’m the one who grew up on an ice planet.”

She sat down on the couch in the middle of the ship, and Shin went to sit beside her, wrapping one arm around her.

“You’re cute when you worry.”

“Don’t act like you aren’t worried too.”

Shin shrugged.

“I had to get my crystal in a sleeping volcano. I’d rather see her wondering about an ice cavern than a lava field.”

Sabine placed the comlink on the table in front of her, and leaned into Shin’s embrace. They had been training Uschi on Krownest for the past few weeks, specifically to make this journey to Ilum easier. They had done all they could. Now it was up to her.