I know, I know, there's not much happening in this chapter, don't hate...

But the next one should be uploaded really soon, like, ten minutes after this one soon. So don't worry about it too much.

Disclaimer: The billion-dollar franchise known as Star Wars belongs to the trillion-dollar company known as Disney. Not some random chic on a computer.


Even if Ezra's idea of infiltration had been a brilliant one, Kanan wished sorely there had been another way. The smell was killing him.

What once must have been a beautiful river and surrounding banks had been turned into a sluggish flow of brown, trashy, muddy water on the opposite side of the water processing unit. And that was because the machinery they saw acted as a water-processing unit and as a disposal unit. The clean water flowed in one end, where half was sent to the compound and half was allowed to flow through. On the opposite end, there was a grate that released all of the dirty, used water from the base, adding to the polluted state of the stream. Attached to the machine were two tunnels, one for the clean water going in, and one for the dirty water going out. Maybe five meters or so from the bank, they sloped down into the ground, and Kanan had no doubt they continued underground all the way to the actual compound for maximum stealthiness. Though the pollution of the river kind of gave away their presence, big time.

Currently, they were on the dirty side, where the smell was so intensive, Kanan had to make a conscious effort to not gag. Ezra, however, seem to be doing just fine. Remembering that he had probably gone through the sewers often as a youth, Kanan pieced together Ezra was probably immune to most of the smells the galaxy could throw at him.

"And there's the grate. You don't mind getting a little dirty, do you?" Ezra hopped over a sludgy pile of trash, heading over to the sewer opening. Kanan made a face as he passed a suspicious looking pile of mud, but he walked over to Ezra without contaminating his boots needlessly. Then he frowned. The grate was small. It was designed to accommodate waste, and nothing more. They would have to travel down the narrow tunnel while crouching, and due to the exact nature of the shaft they were going in, he doubted that would be fun.

"Can we not move down the cleaner side? We'd be moving with the current of clean water, instead of against... that." Kanan gestured to the fishy sludge all around them. Ezra smiled while raising an eyebrow.

"Well, we could... but we'd have to be about ten times smaller than we are right now. Imps generally purify their water further in these shafts, so there are grates and mesh sheets abundant in them. Not only that, but the entire tunnel is smaller than this one, which is built to accommodate any package they send down the disposal units. So, this is the only way we can go in if we want to remain sneaky. Sorry." Kanan just shook his head sadly. He'd have to keep his clothes inside the cleaners for days on end just to make sure they were thoroughly washed out. Not to mention spend half his remaining life in the 'fresher.

"Didn't your clothes ever get monstrously dirty? How'd you deal with that?" At this, Ezra turned a crafty face back to his Master, pulling out his lightsaber to cut away the meager restraints on their entrance point. He gestured to the pilots suit.

"This was made with dirt and grime in mind. It's slightly water repellent, and that gives a great advantage in cleaning. Even in conditions like-" he activated his lightsaber and cut away the mesh, releasing a huge glob of oily slime from the top of the tunnels, which fell and made a disgusting 'bloop' in the muddy pools of drainage below, "that."

Kanan sucked in a breath, almost immediately regretting it when he allowed the smell in through his mouth. For once, he was envious of his Padawan. No- the Jedi were not envious! But Ezra- and his clothes -sure were going to fare a lot better in the coming journey than he would.

Anything for another Jedi, he supposed.


Ezra hopped out of the ventilation once the door had closed shut behind the stormtrooper, silently transferring his mass from the ceiling to the floor.

Even if they had made it to the insides of the base without detection, the entire stinking trip through the sewers would have been for nothing if they managed to make it in, only to be discovered and reported to Vader instantaneously. And so, it was Ezra's job to disable the main off-world communication systems, so if the Imperials sounded the alarm, the only ones who would know would be the ones who actually inhabited the base.

He had left Kanan in the water-processing room, much to the Jedi's discomfort, but it had to be done. Ezra was still the only one of the crew who had enough experience and the correct body-type to go snooping through the ducts. Since the entire point of his venture was to remain sneaky and cover their tracks, it wouldn't really make sense to have Kanan walking around right underneath him. He had promised to come right back, though, once the alarms had disarmed. Kanan really didn't want him to sneak around the compound alone. While Ezra disagreed with the concept of this idea, he wouldn't disobey Kanan.

Not because it felt wrong to disobey him or anything like that... though Ezra did harbor respect for his Master over the past two years, he also had a sort of... well, fatherly bond that made it hard to disobey his orders. Scratch that. Not hard, just sort of nagging. He could go against orders any time he wanted to. That was just who he was.

But what made Ezra need to keep his promise to Kanan was the fact he was... anxious about meeting another Padawan. While he was still excited, there was still just a little bit of nervousness that had taken root in him. Jedi were trained since the age of two. That meant they would most definitely be calm, precise, logical, emotionless, and whatever other words Kanan had thrown at him. Ezra, a student for a mere two years, was nothing of the sort.

So what if she thought he was a poor apprentice? She had actually been taught all her life, with the entire Jedi Council there to chaperone his actions. Would he seem just like an immature youngling to her, acting rashly on impulses, running blindly into situations, falling short of what a real Jedi Padawan would have been?

Usually, conforming to others' sense of what he should or should not be never bothered Ezra. But this was something different. Because what a trained apprentice of the Jedi saw in him would show whether or not he was actually learning what Kanan was teaching him, and if he actually had the ability to become a Jedi.

So, to say Ezra was nervous would be... accurate. He didn't think he'd want to meet Ahsoka on his own, without the comforting presence of his Master as the perfect support for this type of experience.

So Ezra had dutifully crawled through the ventilation, keeping as quiet as possible while suspended above the ground, tensing every time a soldier walked by below him. In the compound armed to the teeth, this was quite a lot. Once he had reached the main communication room, he had had to wait until the two visiting troopers had left before he'd deemed it safe to enter it.

Of course, there were still four other bucket-heads in the room.

Using the advantage of surprise and sound-proofed walls, Ezra connected with the Force and flung two of the four guards back to the far side of the room, their helmets connecting with the metal with a loud 'thud.' Then it was blaster time.
Ezra dived behind a comm-console right as the first few shots flew through the air. Whipping out his own lightsaber-blaster hybrid, Ezra charged up the shot and fired at the soldier to his left. Not ready for his sudden attack, the trooper fell down to the ground, twitching. His friend was momentarily shocked at Ezra's quick dispatch of the trooper, but he got over it within moments.

"There is no friendship in war..." The Imperial agent's words rang through his head, and Ezra's eyes narrowed as the memory replayed itself in his mind. The Empire really was the exact opposite of their crew.

Ezra didn't give the man the chance to communicate to his superiors about the breach in security. With another single charged shot, the soldier was down before his hand could reach over to his helmet.

Adrenaline still pumping through his system, Ezra stood up, surveying the damage caused to the room itself. Other than the burn marks where the bucket-heads had missed, there was nothing. Guess I'll have to do it by myself.

Ezra hopped over the console he had been hiding behind and reached down to the access panel in the front. When the metal covering had been removed, it exposed a knotted mess of blue and green and red wires, reaching all over the place. Not wasting any time trying to find the right wire to pluck, Ezra pulled out a wire-cutter from the mass of materials in his pack and simply cut them all. Better safe than sorry, right?

Quickly scanning the room for any other off-world communication devices, Ezra leapt back to the ventilation shafts when he confirmed there was none. Even if they set off every possible alarm in the compound, the Imperials wouldn't be able to call in back-up from any other world for a while. And that gave them more time away from Vader, something they desperately needed if they wanted to survive and get Ahsoka out of there.

Ezra was almost half-way back to Kanan when the red-lights started flashing and the sirens started to blare. He had a moment of nostalgia to when those exact same red-lights had come on when the crew of the Ghost had tried to rescue him the first time...

Would Ahsoka be filling with as much hope as he had been then?

Ezra hoped out of the vents once he had reached the waste-disposal room. Even in here, it smelled awful. It was only because of experience that he wasn't doubled over gagging. "Their comms are down, and we are a-okay for rescue."

"Thought those alarms meant something. Any trouble?" Kanan pulled himself up out of his kneeling pose, where he had been trying to scrap off the gunk that had accumulated on him from their trek through the tunnel. During their journey it had sloshed over his thighs and mid-riff, and Ezra knew he didn't look much better. Though the waste was only thigh-deep, the shafts were so low they'd both had had to crouch in order to move through them, putting them at much closer proximity to the filth than normally.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. You know the Imps can't keep up with me." He flashed Kanan a cocky grin as the Jedi just shook his head.