Chapter 12: Night pranks
The Cushing House settled into a deep, wooden silence. The day’s accumulated embarrassments and exertions had drained even the most energetic among them, pulling them one by one into heavy, dreamless sleep. In the largest bedroom, a sea of borrowed blankets and makeshift pallets covered the floor. Charlie lay on his stomach near the hearth, the residual warmth from the stones a gentle counterpoint to the deeper, throbbing memory in his backside. Beside him, Rey slept curled tightly, one hand tucked under her cheek. Across the room, Padmé and Mon Mothma shared a wide divan, the Senator’s breathing even and regal. Against the far wall, Bultar Swan snored softly, one arm thrown dramatically over her forehead, while Luminara Unduli maintained a posture of perfect serenity even in slumber, her hands folded on her stomach.
In the adjoining room, Ahsoka Tano stared at the ceiling. The events of the day played on a loop behind her eyes: the shocking cold of the wave, the indignity of scrambling for clothes, the frustrating lack of a clear culprit, and most galling, the sight of Charlie and Barriss returning together, moving with that specific, shared stiffness. They’d been punished. They’d been involved. And she had been left out.
A soft tap at the connecting door. It slid open a crack, revealing one pale green eye and a slice of Barriss Offee’s troubled face. Ahsoka sat up and waved her in.
Barriss padded silently across the floor, her bare feet making no sound on the worn rug. She sat on the edge of Ahsoka’s cot, her posture tight. The welts from the switch were a vivid, hidden lattice under her sleep tunic, a constant, aching reminder.
“Can’t sleep either?” Ahsoka whispered.
“I find repose… elusive,” Barriss admitted, her dry tone undercut by a slight wince as she adjusted her position.
“It’s not fair,” Ahsoka hissed, her montrals trembling with suppressed energy. “They got all the attention. The drama. We’re just… sleeping.”
“There is virtue in rest,” Barriss offered, but her eyes, usually so calm, glinted in the low light. They held a restless, conspiratorial spark. The humiliation in the grove had been searing, but it had also ignited something—a need to redirect the energy, to not be the only one carrying a secret sting.
Ahsoka saw it. She leaned closer. “They’re all dead asleep. Completely vulnerable.”
A slow, silent understanding passed between them. The competitive itch, the desire for camaraderie in mischief, the need to reassert some control—it coalesced into a single, clear intention.
“A reconnaissance mission,” Barriss murmured, the words a thin veil for their true purpose.
“Exactly. To assess security. And maybe… adjust it.”
They moved like shadows. The doors in the old house were well-oiled, opening without a sound. The hallway was a tunnel of darkness, lit only by the twin moons casting blue rectangles through the high windows. Their target was the main bedroom. Ahsoka reached for the handle, pausing to glance at Barriss, who gave a single, grave nod.
The room was a symphony of soft breathing. The air was warm, carrying the scent of clean linen and wood smoke. The chaos of the day was erased in the quiet anonymity of sleep.
Ahsoka pointed: a quick, efficient series of silent signals. Bultar. Charlie. Rey. Barriss’s fingers responded: Padmé. Luminara. They would work from the perimeter inward.
Barriss approached Bultar Swan first. The Jedi Knight lay on her back, mouth slightly open, one knee bent. The blanket had slid to her waist, revealing a simple gray sleep shirt. Barriss’s hands, skilled in surgical precision, moved with deft care. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of Bultar’s shorts and the underwear beneath. With a steady, gradual pull, she lifted Bultar’s hips just off the pallet and delivered a merciless, fabric-straining wedgie. The material, cotton and elastic, vanished into the deep cleft of Bultar’s rear. Bultar snorted in her sleep, her face scrunching in annoyance. She slapped a hand down vaguely at her backside, muttered “No flying, Dad…” and then settled again, now sleeping with a pronounced, tight discomfort.
Ahsoka had reached Charlie. He was the easiest target, already on his stomach. She smirked, seeing the faint outline of the day’s pink marks still visible on his skin below his loose shorts. She didn’t bother with a wedgie. Instead, she gripped the waistband at his hips and yanked downwards in one swift, forceful motion. The shorts and underwear came down to his knees, baring the full, moon-pale curves of his backside to the cool room air. He shuddered, a low groan escaping his lips. “M’ster… no more switch…” he mumbled into his pillow, but did not wake.
They crossed paths in the center of the room, a silent exchange of triumphant glances. Rey was next. She slept facing away, curled tightly. Ahsoka decided on a hybrid approach. She peeled the blanket back just enough, hooked a finger into the back of Rey’s practical trousers, and gave a sharp, vertical tug. The wedgie was profound, the seat of the trousers lifting Rey clean off the mattress by a centimeter. Rey’s eyes flew open for a second, glassy with sleep. “Wha… the compressor’s stuck…” she breathed, before her head lolled back and she was out, now unconsciously trying to wiggle against the intrusive pressure.
Barriss stood over Padmé. The Senator slept with an angelic grace, her dark hair fanned across the pillow. The blanket draped over her hip. This required finesse. Barriss used both hands, gently lifting the blanket’s edge, finding the waist of Padmé’s delicate silk shorts. She gathered a handful of fabric at the back and pulled, not with a jerk, but with a relentless, creeping tension that slowly, inexorably, drew the silk deep and tight. Padmé’s eyebrows drew together. She shifted, her royal posterior lifting slightly into the strain. A soft, sighing breath escaped her, almost a moan. “The trade bill… needs further… discussion…” she murmured, before sinking deeper.
Finally, Barriss turned to her own Master. Luminara Unduli looked untouchable, a statue of serenity. A flicker of daring, fueled by the memory of her own stripes, shot through Barriss. This was the ultimate transgression. She knelt. The blanket was tightly tucked. With painstaking slowness, she untucked it, slid her hand beneath, and found the sturdy fabric of Luminara’s sleeping trousers. The wedgie she delivered was a work of art—slow, deeply seated, and impossibly tight. It subtly altered Luminara’s perfect posture, tilting her pelvis upward. The Jedi Master’s serene expression didn’t change, but her lips pursed almost imperceptibly. A single, quiet exhale, a whisper of displaced air that sounded like “… meditation on discomfort…”
The deed was done. Five sleepers, now unconsciously nursing varying degrees of intimate, rising annoyance. Ahsoka and Barriss retreated, slipping back through the door, pulling it shut with a barely audible click.
In the dark hallway, their composure broke. They clamped hands over their own mouths, shaking with silent, hysterical laughter. Tears streamed from Ahsoka’s eyes. Barriss leaned against the wall, her shoulders quaking.
“Did you see her face? Bultar thought she was flying!” Ahsoka wheezed in a whisper.
“Master Unduli… she noted it,” Barriss gasped, equal parts terrified and exhilarated.
Their triumph was a glowing coal in the dark. They hurried back toward their own room, eager to collapse into their cots and revel in their secret.
They didn’t see the lines until it was too late.
In their focus on the sleeping targets, they had failed to notice the subtle, almost invisible strands of gleaming, translucent fiber stretched across the hallway at ankle and chest height near their doorway. It was a scavenger’s trap, laid not with malice, but with a habitual, unconscious need to secure a perimeter.
Rey, in her half-awake state after receiving her wedgie, had instinctively reached for the small pouch of useful junk she always kept at her bedside. Without truly waking, her hands had worked by muscle memory, deploying a leftover cluster of ultra-strong mono-filament cord, the kind used for repairing starfighter tow-lines, across the most logical approach path.
Ahsoka’s leading foot caught the ankle-level strand. The fiber, stronger than durasteel, didn’t break. It hooked, and with the momentum of her step, wound itself tightly around her ankle. She yelped, pitching forward.
The forward motion brought her torso into the chest-level strand. It looped around her, snagging the back of her tunic and undershirt with a faint snick. For a horrible, suspended second, nothing happened.
Then the mechanics of the trap engaged. The strands, anchored to the heavy doorframe on one side and a central heating conduit on the other, were under extreme tension. Ahsoka’s stumble provided the trigger. The loops tightened instantly, then lifted.
With a muffled squeak from Ahsoka, she was hoisted into the air, hanging by the back of her clothing. The fabric of her tunic and shirt gathered brutally under her arms, biting into her skin, while the main force of the lift came from a cruel, central point: the seat of her trousers, which were now pulled upward with such violent force that the wedgie it created was beyond anything they had inflicted minutes before. It was a hanging, suspended wedgie of astronomical proportions, lifting her clean off the floor so that only her toes brushed the ground. She dangled, a prisoner of her own pants, squirming in silent agony.
“Ahsoka!” Barriss hissed, rushing forward.
Her outstretched hands encountered another, separate strand. This one was a snare. It wrapped around her wrist, yanked it upward, and in a complex tangle, somehow managed to catch the back of her own trousers as well. With a sickening lurch, she was elevated beside Ahsoka, held aloft by a catastrophic wedgie that felt like it was splitting her in two. The delicate, still-tender welts on her backside screamed in protest against the brutal upward pressure.
They hung there, side by side, in the moonlit hallway, legs kicking faintly, their only support the relentless, searing grip of their own underwear.
The initial shock gave way to a throbbing, inescapable reality. They were stuck. Thoroughly. The mono-filament was unbreakable without a tool.
“Oh no,” Barriss whispered, the full scope of their predicament dawning. “Oh, this is significantly worse than a switch.”
Ahsoka grunted, trying to twist, but any movement only intensified the excruciating pull. “Whose stuff is this? Rey’s? She set a trap in her sleep?”
“It would appear her survival instincts are profoundly inconvenient,” Barriss said through gritted teeth. She tried to reach for the strand at her wrist, but the angle was impossible.
Silence fell, broken only by their strained breathing. The house was quiet. The twins moons traced a slow arc across the high windows. The initial agony settled into a deep, unignorable ache.
“They’re going to find us like this,” Ahsoka said, her voice small in the vast dark.
“Indisputably.”
“When?”
“Approximately five hours from now, assuming a standard sunrise.”
Ahsoka groaned, letting her head hang. Her montrals brushed her shoulders. “What do we say?”
“The truth is untenable,” Barriss reasoned, her mind slipping into tactical analysis despite the predicament. “We were committing acts of sleepwear sabotage. We were apprehended by an automated security system of inexplicable origin.”
“We could say we heard a noise. Came to investigate. Got caught.”
“While wearing only our sleep clothes and giving no alarm? Unlikely to garner sympathy. More likely to garner… additional corrections.”
The word ‘corrections’ hung in the air, heavy with implication. They both thought of the grove. Of Padmé’s authoritative hand. Of Luminara’s disappointed gaze. Of Shaak Ti’s warm, mischievous smile. Of Mon Mothma’s auntly concern.
“What do you think they’ll do?” Ahsoka asked, a tremor of something that wasn’t quite fear in her voice.
Barriss was silent for a long moment. “Master Unduli will be displeased at the breach of peace. And the target. Her punishment will be… formal. Probably a bare-hand spanking. In front of everyone. For ‘disrespect’.”
Ahsoka winced, imagining it. “Padmé will make a speech. A long one. About diplomatic immunity and assaults on sovereign sleep.”
“She will. And then she’ll delegate the execution to someone. Probably Shaak Ti.”
“Charlie will laugh,” Ahsoka said, a flash of her old rivalry surfacing. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it.”
“He will be similarly compromised,” Barriss reminded her. “If he wakes to find himself pantsed, his mockery will be short-lived before his own consequences arrive.”
Another pause. The aching suspension was a constant reminder of their helplessness.
“Mon Mothma might… diaper us,” Ahsoka speculated, a blush heating her cheeks. “She mentioned it once to Charlie. As a theoretical.”
“A stark and regressive humiliation,” Barriss conceded. “Though perhaps preferable to Aayla Secura’s involvement. Her pranks involve centrifugal force and very public pantsings.”
They lapsed into silence again, each lost in the vivid, terrifying, and curiously thrilling panorama of possible retributions. The pain in their rear ends was absolute, a central fact of their existence. Yet, within the embarrassment, a thread of giddy camaraderie remained.
“We did get them pretty good, though,” Ahsoka whispered, a smile in her voice.
“The wedgie on Bultar was acoustically satisfactory,” Barriss admitted, a dry chuckle escaping her. “And your work on Charlie was… comprehensive.”
“You got your own Master. That’s brave.”
“It was arguably foolish.”
“But brave.”
The twin moons began their descent. The deepest part of the night enveloped the house. The two friends hung in their intimate, painful bonds, talking in hushed tones about the coming dawn, their sentences punctuated by soft grunts and adjustments that never brought relief. They speculated, they worried, they even laughed a little at the sheer absurdity of their position.
Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the black outside the windows softened to indigo. A single bird chirped experimentally in the distance.
The first faint stripes of peach and gold touched the high clouds.
Ahsoka stopped mid-sentence about the potential for a group swirlie. She and Barriss looked at each other, their eyes wide in the growing light.
Footsteps. Soft, but unmistakable. Someone was stirring in the main bedroom.
A low, confused groan echoed through the door. Charlie’s voice, thick with sleep: “Why’re my pants… kriff, I’m cold…”
Another voice, Rey’s, sharper: “Ow! Something’s… something’s pinching!”
A rustle of blankets. A sharp, indignant gasp—Padmé’s. Then Bultar Swan’s voice, loud and furious: “WHAT IN THE BLAZES IS IN MY… WHO DID THIS?”
A calm, deadly serious voice cut through the rising commotion. Luminara Unduli. “There has been an incursion.”
The doorknob to the main bedroom began to turn.
Ahsoka and Barriss held their breath, their bodies suspended, utterly exposed, waiting for the door to open and the world to see them.
The door swung inward.
Morning light cut a brilliant wedge across the hallway floor, illuminating the dust motes dancing around two dangling, kicking figures. Silence, thick and disbelieving, poured from the bedroom.
Charlie stood in the doorway, one hand holding his loose trousers up, his hair a sleep-tousled mess. His eyes traveled slowly from the mono-filament anchors to the strained fabric of Ahsoka’s and Barriss’s clothing, to their flushed, horrified faces. His lips parted.
A slow, spreading grin erased his confusion.
“Well,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep but dripping with vindication. “Look what the tooka dragged in.”
Behind him, the others crowded into the doorway. Rey rubbed her lower back, her face puzzled. Padmé’s expression was one of frosty, comprehending clarity. Bultar Swan was actively plucking at the seat of her shorts with a fierce scowl. Luminara Unduli stood perfectly still, her serene gaze fixed on her suspended Padawan. The tight, impeccable wedgie Barriss had given her was now a forgotten memory, replaced by the vivid reality of Barriss’s own predicament.
“Explain this,” Luminara said. Her voice was calm, a flat lake surface hiding immeasurable depth.
Ahsoka squirmed, the movement sending a fresh wave of unbearable tension through the fabric digging into her. “We heard a noise! A suspicious… noise.”
“You investigated in your sleep clothes,” Depa Billaba stated, her arms crossed over her chest. “And became entangled in a defensive filament trap of unknown origin.”
“Yes!” Barriss breathed, seizing the lifeline. “Precisely!”
“The same unknown origin,” Padmé said, stepping forward, her bare feet silent on the wood, “that, concurrently, engineered a series of aggressive underwear malfunctions amongst the sleeping population of this room?” She raised one perfect eyebrow. “A remarkable coincidence.”
Rey’s eyes went wide. She looked from the dangling duo to the taut lines of her trap, then to the general readjustment of everyone’s sleepwear. Her scavenger’s mind connected the components instantly. “Oh. Oh, no. I’m so sorry! I think… I think I did this. In my sleep. Habit.”
All eyes turned to her. Rey shrank back slightly. “I set perimeter alerts. I didn’t mean to… ensnare anyone.”
“You didn’t ensnare anyone,” Shaak Ti’s warm, melodic voice corrected as she glided into view from further down the hall. She had been observing from the shadows, a knowing smile playing on her lips. “You ensnared the perpetrators. An elegant, if unconscious, piece of justice.” Her red-orange fingers reached out and plucked a mono-filament strand near Barriss’s shoulder. It hummed. “A self-regulating security system. Ingenious.”
“We’re not perpetrators!” Ahsoka insisted, her voice strained from hanging.
“Your Master’s posterior,” Luminara said quietly, her eyes still locked on Barriss, “would beg to differ. As would mine. The tension is distinctive. Deliberate.”
Barriss’s pale green skin flushed a deep, mortified emerald. She closed her eyes.
“Cut them down,” Bultar Swan snapped, still fidgeting. “This is undignified.”
“It is revealing,” Mon Mothma countered, her tone thoughtful. She studied the pair like a sociologist considering a fascinating specimen. “The suspension highlights the… mechanics of their transgression. There’s an educational clarity to it.”
“Please,” Ahsoka whispered, the word squeezed out from a place of genuine, aching distress.
Charlie, still grinning, leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t know. I’m learning a lot about structural integrity. And consequences.”
Padmé shot him a look that promised his own consequences were still pending, but she nodded. “They have been apprehended. Due process, even of the improvised variety, must be observed. Rey, can you release them?”
Rey hurried forward, pulling a small ceramic shard from her pocket. She carefully applied it to the strand at Barriss’s wrist. There was a soft ping as the tension released.
Barriss dropped, collapsing in a heap on the floor with a pained gasp. Her hands flew to her backside, fingers pressing against the fabric to soothe the deep, throbbing ache.
Rey moved to Ahsoka, severing the lines. Ahsoka fell forward, caught by Depa Billaba’s steadying hands. She immediately bent over, groaning, her own hands clasping her rear. “That was the worst wedgie in galactic history.”
“Self-inflicted, via proxy,” Luminara noted. She hadn’t moved. “You will both stand.”
Wincing, they pushed themselves upright, facing the assembled tribunal of their peers. Their sleep tunics were grotesquely rucked up under their arms, and the backs of their trousers were stretched and distorted. They stood with the bowed-leg stance of those trying to relieve a profound, intimate discomfort.
“You invaded the sleep of colleagues,” Luminara began, her voice filling the hallway. “You inflicted discomfort for your own amusement. You compromised the peace of this gathering. And you lied, clumsily, upon discovery.” She paused, letting each point land. “This is not the behavior of Jedi Knights. It is the behavior of unruly children.”
Ahsoka stared at the floor. Barriss’s jaw was tight.
“Therefore,” Luminara continued, “your correction will be fitting. It will be childlike. It will be simple. And it will be bare.”
Barriss’s head jerked up, a quiet whimper escaping her. “Master, no. Not… not here.”
“Here,” Luminara confirmed. “Now. Where your victims can witness the restoration of balance.” She looked at Padmé, then Shaak Ti, a silent question in her eyes.
Padmé gave a slow, judicial nod. Shaak Ti’s smile deepened.
“Ahsoka Tano,” Shaak Ti said, stepping forward. “Your master is not present. I shall stand in her stead. You will be dealt with as I would deal with my own wayward apprentice.” Her gaze flicked to Charlie, who suddenly stopped smiling. “A precedent you are familiar with.”
Luminara moved toward Barriss. “You will assume the position over the arm of that sofa,” she said, pointing back into the common room. Her voice held no anger, only inevitability. “Bare. And you will count.”
The walk from the hallway to the sunlit common room was a death march. The others filtered in, finding places to sit or stand. There was no gloating, only a quiet, solemn attention. Bultar Swan watched with crossed arms, her earlier fury softened into grim satisfaction. Rey looked guilty and fascinated. Mon Mothma settled into a wicker chair, her expression one of gentle, unavoidable duty. Satine and Riyo watched with wide eyes, the Duchess’s composure a mask over shared memory, the Pantoran’s curiosity innocent and acute.
Barriss reached the worn velvet sofa. She bent, without further prompting, laying her torso across its high, rolled arm. The position presented her draped tunic. With trembling fingers, she gathered the fabric and pulled it up to her waist, then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her trousers and underwear. She pushed them down to her knees, exposing the pale green skin of her buttocks to the morning sun streaming through the terrace windows.
A collective, subtle intake of breath moved through the room.
The evidence of Padmé’s switch was still there—a faint, pink lattice of crossing lines. But more immediately striking was the deep, furious red band where the mono-filament wedgie had held her aloft for hours, a severe, horizontal welt that looked painfully tender.
Luminara surveyed the canvas for a moment. “You will count ten. For each of the sleepers you disturbed.”
Her hand was not large, but it was strong, the palm callused from decades of lightsaber practice. It was not a playful hand. It rose and fell in a sharp, measured arc.
Crack!
The sound was flat, final, and shockingly loud in the quiet room. Barriss jerked, her whole body tensing.
“One,” she gasped into the velvet.
Crack!
“Two!”
The spanks were methodical, covering the already-marked skin. They were not about pain alone, but about erasure, about imprinting a new, authoritative memory over the rebellious one. Barriss’s counts grew strained, tears springing to her eyes. Her feet shifted against the floor.
Across the room, Shaak Ti guided Ahsoka to a sturdy wooden table. “Bend. Hold the other side.”
Ahsoka obeyed, leaning over the table, gripping the far edge. Shaak Ti did not ask her to disrobe. Instead, with a silent, telekinetic tug, she simply pulled Ahsoka’s trousers and underwear down to her ankles in one swift motion, baring the orange skin of her rear.
“You will not count,” Shaak Ti said softly, placing a warm hand on the small of Ahsoka’s back. “You will reflect. Silently.”
Her spanks were different—faster, a rhythmic, almost musical volley of crisp impacts. They were lessons in momentum and control. Ahsoka gritted her teeth, her knuckles white on the table edge, her montrals trembling with each stinging blow. She shoved her face into her arm to muffle her sounds.
The common room held the dual symphony: the slow, dreadful cadence of Barriss’s counted punishment, and the rapid, fiery percussion of Ahsoka’s silent one. The air grew warm with the scent of dust and effort and salt-skin.
Charlie watched, his earlier glee gone, replaced by a hollow feeling in his stomach. This was different from Padmé’s playful, possessive discipline. This was institutional, a public recalibration. He saw Rey watching, her hand absentmindedly rubbing her own backside where the wedgie had been. He saw Padmé’s analytical gaze, cataloging technique. He saw Mon Mothma’s slight, approving nod.
Barriss reached “Ten” in a choked sob, her body gone limp over the sofa arm, her exposed skin a uniform, glowing crimson. Luminara placed a hand on her back, not soothing, simply indicating the lesson’s end.
Shaak Ti delivered a final, resonant spank that made Ahsoka yelp, then ceased. The sudden silence was heavier than the noise.
For a long moment, no one moved. The two punished Jedi remained in place, breathing heavily, their humiliation complete and absolute.
Luminara spoke first. “You may cover yourselves. Then you will sit, quietly, and meditate upon the disruption you caused.”
As they slowly, painfully, pulled their clothing back up, wincing as fabric touched heated skin, Duchess Satine quietly rose and walked to the terrace doors. She looked out at the calm lake, her voice barely audible.
“It appears,” she said, “the wave was not the only force that could leave one exposed and tender on Naboo.”
Aayla Secura, who had slept through the initial chaos in another room, chose that moment to glide in, her blue skin refreshed, a bowl of moon berries in her hand. She took in the scene: the tear-streaked faces, the stiff, careful postures, the solemn atmosphere. Her piercing blue eyes sparkled.
“Did I miss a morning meditation?” she asked, popping a berry into her mouth. Her tone was all innocence.