A/N: sorry for the delay! I've been refining my writing process; I hope the wait was worth it

Chapter Two

Toby's rise to consciousness was swift and painful. For a few moments, he lay completely still in the pitch blackness and listened to the shrill calls and shrieking of countless animal life from somewhere in the near distance and took stock of his physical state. Once again, he busted his bucket beyond repair. His visor must have shattered during impact. What scant light he could see was no longer filtered through his HUD, the dusty motes streaming in unfiltered through the viewport. Besides that, Toby could feel the tiny lacerations of the destroyed plasti all along his cheeks and forehead. He winced. His equipment damage stats were going to be terrible when his next review came due.

His ribs ached in a way that said at least some were likely cracked, but his arms and legs, though sore, moved freely enough. The problem was he was wedged under R6, the unbearably solid weight of the droid putting dangerous pressure on his already compromised armor. He huffed softly, got one of his boots planted against the bulkhead, and rocked up. R6 barely moved, and for long moments the only sounds to break the heavy silence of the dark cockpit were his pained, increasingly frustrated grunts as they rushed out of taxed lungs and the scraping of his armor against the durasteel floor.

The damned droid might as well have been a clanker he'd just shot, though at least with those, there was a little more maneuverability. It took more time and energy than he wanted, but Toby finally managed to roll R6 off of him, and he lay panting for a few moments. Now that he was free, he could give sufficient brainpower to the thought that had boosted some of his efforts.

Why was it so quiet?

This wasn't his first crash, far from it. You couldn't count yourself a veteran of the 501st Legion without at least three crash landings, engine failures, or Jetii-leapt-out-of-the-cockpit-and-now-it's-time-to-brace under your kama straps. But in all of those, there was always the same familiar sounds: the crackle and pop of arcing circuits, alarms going off, the whistle and beeping of droids, the whirring sounds of the engines, and beneath him, the vibration of them thrumming up through his boots and bones. And there would be the emergency lights, sometimes guttering, but always there, just like the emergency life support. But now, there was nothing. No alarms, no crackling circuits, no humming engines. He sat up slowly. R6 was heavy and silent on her side. A giant flimsyweight. The light he saw was coming through the viewport. No emergency lights, but the downward slanting shafts that broke through what appeared to be heavy leaf coverage allowed him to finally spot the booted leg draped over the pilot's seat.

Toby scrambled up and over R6 with a curse, his bucket discarded somewhere on the way, heedless of the way it embedded the tiny fragments of visor deeper into his skin. She was wedged much like he had been, upside down between the pilot's chair and the controls, unconscious. Or maybe dead. No, he thought with a harsh shake of his head, he could see the rise and fall of her chest, the fluttering of her pulse at the base of her neck. Don't get stupid, 4267.

He chanced a glance outside and saw that there was what appeared to be a small clearing directly in front of the nose of their ship. He worried the inside of his bottom lip with the tip of one canine. As far as he could see, their ship had no power. His Jetii was unconscious and probably injured, their ship was damaged, they likely didn't have comms, and he didn't know what kind of lifeforms he would be dealing with when he exited the craft.

Though the planet's lone sun was low in the sky, it was sweltering hot, and he was sweating much more than he should have been. He checked, or attempted to check, his armor's internal systems. They were offline. He swallowed. The crash shouldn't have affected them. But he couldn't think about that right now. He needed to get General Kaid somewhere more comfortable, and then he needed to secure the area.

Gently, he got his arms around her, one supporting her head and spine and one under her legs, and lifted her slowly. She made a slight noise of discomfort at the shift of position, and the relief he felt would have incapacitated a lesser man. She was alive. Thank Fett for that. He tucked her close to his chest and moved carefully out of the cramped cockpit, glad that the doors opened automatically when there was a loss of power. He found her quarters and laid her on her bed. It was too dark to see anything but the outline of her face and her hair, and he wished he dared do more at that moment but briefly feel around the back of her skull for soft spots or fractures. Finding none, he blew out a soft breath, brushed back some of the wild coils that had curled around his gloved fingers, and briskly exited the room.

His first order of business was heading to his quarters and grabbing his blasters and some light. Luckily, his room was only one door down from hers, and he slipped inside without any incident. He didn't want to be too far away from her if she woke up disoriented and needed his help. Though what he could do for her, he wasn't exactly sure. Toby knew he was no medic, even with his enhanced medical training as an ARC trooper. She had no apparent external wounds he could see, but at the very least, he could be there for her. And he could stop woolgathering and secure the site, he thought with a small snort as he finally found his 15s.

He checked the battery charge on the first one and then the other. Once. Twice. A third time. No charge. He groped around, found his extra battery packs, deftly swapped them out, and checked again. No charge. Toby breathed in, held his breath for a long moment, slowly released it. Calmly, he set his blasters down, crouched down to where he knew he had set his pack, and dug around until he found the breakable chemlights. There were three packs of thirty-two tightly rolled inside. He worked one free and deftly snapped it. The little cylinder slowly began to emit soft blue light. He slung his pack over his shoulder, light held the chemlight in one hand and left his quarters.

Knight Kaid was still unconscious. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. She wasn't nearly as sweaty as he was, but she was still soaked. With no life support systems working and the worrying evidence of R6 and his blasters, Toby was increasingly certain that using the interior of their ship as shelter during the day would be a huge mistake. He knew they had food rations to last them for at least a month or two, but the water was his biggest concern, especially with how hot the scans and his scant experience said it would be. If her lightsaber was in the same condition his blasters were, that meant that between them, they only had a few knives for hunting and what hand to hand they knew to defend themselves. If it came to that. He hoped it didn't come to that.

"Kriff." He muttered into the oppressive dark, sparing one last glance at the woman on the bed before he dropped his pack beside her, unsheathed his knife, and made his way to the open cargo door. It would be a lie to say he wasn't on edge. From the moment he'd woken up with R6 using him as a pillow, his skin had been twitching. It wasn't as if he had never been in dicey situations before; that was par for the course. Getting shot at, blown up, stabbed, or shooting, blowing up, or stabbing someone was what he'd been bred for. It was the point of his existence. But this was weird, beyond anything he'd even come to expect from his experiences with Jetiise like Kenobi and Skywalker, for whom weirdness and nonsense seemed to follow like shadows. It was just, the more he thought about it, the more he looked around at the state of the ship itself and not just his, but Knight Kaid and R6's disheveled generally unharmed conditions, the more it looked like someone or something had landed the ship. Landed clumsily and landed roughly, which could account for how he had woken up, yes, but landed all the same. And he didn't like that. He didn't like that at all.

The ramp was down, and he paused just before he would be exposed, his ears pricked and eyes intently studying the dense jungle threatening to engulf them. Thick foliage hid the bottom half of the ramp. Large flowering shrubs and thick vines shrouded the entry, and in the dying afternoon light, Toby could just make out the tops of the trees, see some of the animals that made their home in the canopy jostling the branches. The air was wild with the sounds of animal calls and thick with nectar and ripe fruit, so much so that he had to suppress the urge to sneeze.

Swiftly, he jumped over the ramp support and over to the starboard side, knife at the ready, and scanned his surroundings. The knee-high grass and flowering shrubbery tapered off and widened out about a meter from the engine and followed the line of the wing. When it got to the nose of the ship, the clearing was half as wide, and the trees with their heavy branches and thick vines bowed inward. Toby was somehow not surprised to find that it was much the same on the left side of the ship, and when he looked behind, he saw no sign of crashing: no broken trees or overturned earth; no smell of charred wood or burnt carbon. For whatever reason (and if it didn't have its origins in the crumbling spire of the Temple ruins, he could just see glinting over the top of the canopy he'd eat his pauldron), they had been set down in this location.

"Kark it all," he said irritably, his knife sheathed with a brusque movement as he made his way back into the stifling ship interior, "too much to ask for a normal fucking mission, huh? What did I expect when Skywalker looked so kriffin' gleeful: a cakewalk? Idiot."

He snatched the chemlight up from where he'd left it and went about the serious business of consolidating their supplies. In the morning, he would inventory them so he had a better idea of their standing and how long they could last before he absolutely needed to attempt living off the land. For now, his main priority was setting up camp and caring for General Kaid until she either woke on her own or he needed to try and rouse her. Besides his training on Kamino, Toby didn't know much about Jetiise. Supplemented by what his reluctant observations had shown him, he knew they could take a lot more abuse than normal natborns, but he still didn't think it could be good for her to be unconscious for longer than a standard day, and that was all he was willing to give her.

So his first stop was the small medbay, where he gathered bacta, a few bandages, and water testing supplies. The next stop was the mess for the rations, including a small amount of water but not close to what they would need. He took all this out under the shelter of the starboard wing, which he had decided would be their camp. There was a nice breeze that counteracted the humidity even in his armor. Toby already knew he would have to shed his chest plate. It was cracked and dug into his bruised ribs uncomfortably when he moved. That's another piece to the equipment list, he thought ruefully when he paused in his quarters to shuck it off along with his torn upper blacks. He pulled his gauntlets and vambraces back on and went back to work. Their bedrolls were next, along with some netting.

He arranged everything to his liking and then stood with his arms crossed, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, hesitant. He needed to bring his Jetii out here. There wasn't anything else to do but that, and the longer he stood out there waffling, the longer it would take. The light outside was beginning to wane, and he didn't want to blow through his chemlights when he didn't know how long they would be stranded.

"Just go get her, di'kut," he said, giving himself a hard pinch on the side as encouragement, "it's no big deal: she won't even remember. You want her to die of heatstroke? Go!" The sharp pain in his side and the admonishment were enough to get him moving, and he used that energy to carry him to the side of her bed. Carefully, he lifted her in his arms. She muttered and protested the shift in position, and he froze in his still mostly bent position, his breath caught in his throat as he waited to see if she would awaken, but she only tucked her head securely into between his neck and jaw and settled. Standing there in the dark, Toby imagined he could feel the minute brush of her eyelashes against his sweaty collarbone.

He pulled in a single breath, released it, and headed towards the makeshift camp.

She was hardly a burden to carry, but even so, when he'd shouldered his way through the insect netting and kneeled next to the spread bedrolls to lay her down, Toby found himself using the kind of care he would have employed when breaking down one of the heavy guns for cleaning. Her eyelids fluttered briefly, just as he was once again brushing her hair back from her face, and he froze. In the nearly burnt orange late afternoon light, the eyes that slowly blinked open and focused, dazed, on him were a liquid black.

"We've landed, sir, but are without power. I've set up camp and am keeping watch. Don't worry; just try and rest for now." He said lowly, having found his voice and wrangled it into working order. She nodded once, her face relaxing after his terse report. He made to leave.

"Mhn, Tohbee," she murmured, and once again, he found himself frozen, but when he worked up the nerve to look at her, she was under again, this time sleeping, and deeply at that. He pushed his fingers through his sweaty hair, wanting to shake off the odd feeling his name in her mouth gave him but reluctant, and silently left the circle of netting. There was an excellent vantage spot in a tree he'd spotted earlier perfect for keeping watch, and right now, he needed to acquaint himself with the natural rhythms of this place if he wanted to be of any use.

Better that than thinking about how good she felt in his arms.

—

Jotopa's rise to consciousness was slow, a study in patience for one who very much wanted to wake. Toby, that handsome, stalwart captain, was surely waiting for her. But the world was waiting to have a conversation with her. There was much to be learned if she had the temerity and endurance to sit awhile and listen.

There was much to hear. The planet was steeped in the Force, deep, pooling wells that Jotopa was in equal turns delighted and afraid to plunge her hands. Afraid? You? My little Mando'ad? Come, look and see! As always, there was only one way she could take such an invitation: as the challenge it was. It was exhilarating to take the leap. Like free-falling from the highest heights, she was buffeted by the harshest, gentlest winds. The Force engaged every sense, and she saw so. very. much.

What do you see, the Force teased, and it was as though she was that young Padawan again, sitting bundled in her Master's too large cloak, his sheltering arm curled around her as he showed her, slowly, patiently, the first layers of true meditation, of true sight and seeing. And she answered just as she would have answered D'Aleric then, her eyes wide with wonder and awe and delight, breathless and hushed throughout her every cell.

She saw the entirety of Cassios-7 in the palm of her hand. It was a bright jewel, not only because the planet itself sparkled bright to the human eye, but because, in the Unifying Force, it glimmered brighter than any other planet in the system. The Force was complex, twisting the fabric of time and space in ways that no Jedi was truly able to comprehend, but what Jotopa did know was that she - oh, she was meant to be here. The Force was alive with pleasure that she was, and she was caught up for a moment in the joy, in the near worshipful delight in knowing that she had done something right for once.

But it drew her attention again.

What else do you see? What else, Mando'ad?

The Force in these moments often took on the voice of D'Aleric, her former Master, a playful, teasing tone that hinted at some greater mystery that she would delight in if she worked hard enough, meditated long enough, reached out far enough. And was she not a Mandalorian foundling as much as she was a Jetiise trained and Knighted? She would think each time, affronted by the challenge, by the seeming doubt lingering around the edges of the Force's hushed inquiry. The Force's delighted response would ripple around her, bolstering and confounding her in equal turns.

Are you? Are you not?

Cassios-7 was as alive with the Living Force, as heavy and weighed down with it as some star systems Jotopa had traveled through were. Her forte was not in sensing the Living Force for all that she willingly followed its promptings. What could she, a child of stardust and void, know of the warmth and comfort of sun-warmed skin, life thrumming between bare toes, the earth freshly turned, so brown and green it burst like ripe fruit on newborn taste buds, each heavily jeweled flower blossom dancing to a beat and rhythm she could hear but not comprehend? That was the Living Force to her. She stood outside the joyous festival, an uninvited guest, a happy sentinel grateful to listen to the music when it drifted back on the breeze to her high citadel. But here she had been dragged out of her outpost, had fallen right in the middle of the wild storm, and where she would be blown, to heaven or the seven hells, was anyone's guess.

Early morning sunlight coaxed her eyelids open. Though she had no memory of leaving the ship or of anything past cracking her head on the roof of the cockpit, Jotopa was not surprised to find herself perfectly safe and sound. Faith in the Force notwithstanding, she knew Captain Toby was much too competent a trooper for anything less.

She sat up and smiled faintly to see all that the captain had done while she was unconscious. His industrious nature pleased her. Through the netting he had been so kind as to set up around the wing she woke beneath, she could see him sitting half-hidden among the leaves of a tree overlooking the ship. Jotopa thanked his foresight when she caught sight of several enormous insects stuck in the webbing that she would not have liked to have fished from under her mesh and spandex. When she gently reached out her senses towards him, she noted that he was exhausted but still wakeful. Curiously, he didn't have either his pistols or the longer rifle she knew he had been issued before they left the Resolute, and that was strange enough on its own that she silently slipped out of the netting and into their downed ship.

Jotopa would not be a Sentinel worthy of the name if she could not move unseen and unheard when she so desired. Nor would she be worthy of the name given her by her Covert if she couldn't slip by one highly capable ARC trooper. As she crept up the ramp and into the strangely dark and silent ship, her lips twisted in wry amusement to think of what both her Master and her Buir would have said to her had Captain Toby spotted her. Their meetings were purposefully brief and exceedingly terse; D'Aleric Rizzan and Asha Kaid were two sentients who could neither stand the other nor see eye to eye, but they were of a singular mind on that subject.

Her walkthrough of the dark ship confirmed her brewing suspicion: their electronics were not working for some reason. Whether that was due to an atmospheric quirk, the magnetosphere, or something else, Jotopa was unsure, but what was certain was that they were stranded. She sighed gustily, her thoughts turning rueful as she unsuccessfully tried to coax the communications system to life.

"I should have known any mission Anakin handed me would be anything but a walk in the Alderaani pleasure gardens. I told that man out there I'd have him home with his brothers in a week," she scoffed, turned from the comms system, and, with a twisting motion of her hand, lifted R6 from her prone position to a standing one. It mattered not one whit in the grand scheme of things whether or not the little astromech laid on her side or was on her feet until they figured out a way to restore power, but it mattered to Jotopa. It was the principle of the thing.

With one last look around the cramped space and a fond pat to R6's domed head, Jotopa left the cockpit. A quick stop in her quarters saw to the equipping of a set of fingerless mechanic's gloves (perfect for repairs as well as fighting) as well as the knife her ori'vod Broderick had sent her way as a name day present. The hilt was plain, wrapped leather over unidentified bone, and in the Force, it hummed with the long history of her Covert, the many hands that had wielded it. Sometimes, though the thought tickled and itched terribly, the quiet comfort that emanated from the handle soothed her more than even the loving hum of her kyber crystals in the still corner of her mind. Ah, but it was the blade that was truly special: pure beskar, wrought plainly but true.

Even Jetiise are caught unawares, vod'ika; always good to be carrying something unexpected, Broderick's audio message had said instead of the usual name-day greetings. Jotopa had laughed, turned over the blade in her hands, half because, of course, Broderick would send a message like that, half unable to believe he had given her such a gift. Now she clipped the knife onto her utility belt and made a note to thank her older brother for his foresight and practicality the next time she saw him.

That task done, and feeling more settled, more herself now that she was armed, Jotopa exited the ship and walked down the ramp. This time, she didn't make any effort to conceal herself, pausing midway down to take in the scenery around her.

She knew just from the preliminary scans done from orbit and the already muggy morning that had her leather vest heavy with condensation and her cotton kama clinging to her legs that Cassios-7 was a planet with a subtropical climate. Covered by a vast ocean, the few outcroppings of land gathered in loose island chains bristling with rain forests or floating above the surface and moving along the planet's magnetic currents. The Temple ruins housing their target was situated on a solitary floating isle that seemed caught in some love affair with either a small mountain or large hill on the largest of the islands that Jotopa had set a course. As she slowly spun around and took in the small clearing they were in, Jotopa couldn't help but think they were on that island.

"I didn't hear you wake up, sir." Jotopa's head tilted slightly at that, her lips quirked in mild amusement at the hint of affront underlying the otherwise polite if a bit gruff statement. Before she turned, she took care to smooth her smile into something Jotopa hoped he wouldn't take offense to and was glad she had taken the time to school her expression because the sight that greeted her was not something she wanted to go into bare-faced.

"W-Where's your shirt?" She asked, bewildered and hating herself for it. Captain Toby grimaced, and Jotopa was treated to the arresting play of his muscles under his gorgeous brown skin as he rubbed the back of his neck. His pectorals were amazing, well defined, and leading to long, strong arms and a torso that was entirely too distracting. She flushed, bit the inside of her lip, and forced herself to focus on his very handsome face and the utterly adorable way he was scrunching his nose up. The scar, she was quickly discovering, did absolutely nothing to detract from the beauty of his features. If anything, it somehow enhanced them. Tragic.

"I had to toss it. My chest and back plates got damaged during landing," Toby explained rather sheepishly, "and with the internals not working anyway, I figured I might as well, y'know, sir?"

"Call me Jotopa, and yes, I agree; that was the smart thing to do." She said faintly, a breathless interest she was studiously ignoring present in the way she watched the attractive flush of color darken his neck and face at her reply. Well, you are ogling him, Jotopa; the poor man is probably embarrassed enough as is without you staring at him like a Pantoran delicacy, she thought wryly before forcefully pulling her gaze to the clearing. At the landing, Toby cleared his throat.

"So then. Jotopa. What did you find in the ship?" He asked, and she convinced herself she imagined the pause before he said her name and the curious thing his voice did when he pronounced it, almost like he was savoring each syllable because she was a professional. He asked her a very pertinent question she needed to answer. Get a grip! He was not the first attractive man she had ever seen; she would do well to remember that, she thought with an irritable roll of the eyes. She was a Jedi Knight, not a delusional youngling with her first crush just because he was the sexiest man she'd ever seen. She would act like it if it killed her.

Jotopa considered what she had seen in the ship and weighed it against what the Force had shown her while she was unconscious. There was no doubt in her mind that their lack of electronics and the unique convergence of Force energies around this planet were related: it was too high a coincidence to be anything else. But would the Captain trust her Force abilities? Better, she thought, to stick with material realities and observable facts they could both see until she had a better grasp of him.

"The same thing I imagine you saw, Captain. Nothing is working: not the engines or the emergency power, or anything that uses any energy source. I tried the communications array anyway, but it was hopeless. R6 is in a similar state. It's almost like she's been drained of power. My lightsaber too, and I know it was ready to go. What about you? What do you think?" She asked.

He came around back into her field of view, his arms crossed over his chest and a pensive look on his face. Now that the initial shock was gone, she saw that he still had his gauntlets and bracers on, and around his hips was his utility belt though it looked as though he had done some modding of the contents while she was unconscious. He was still wearing his kama and all of the lower portions of his armor, his shin guards already streaked with nectar. The holsters for his blasters had been replaced, much like her lightsabers, by viroblades. When she followed the lines of his kama, her disobedient eyes ran right into a 501 tattoo along his hipbone. For Force's sake, stop gawking at him; the tone was mildly pleading now.

"The same, sir. All the power packs for my blasters are dead. I checked everything, same as you while you were out, and again this morning. S'cuse me for sayin' so," he said, shooting her a measuring look that she returned, "but I can't help but find it suspicious that as soon as we got within sighting distance of our target, everything went funny. Hell of a coincidence, I'd say, if they're not related."

Jotopa smiled, very much a fan of his reasoning and of speaking. "I was thinking the same thing, Captain. While we can't know for sure until we get there, I would place my bets with your theory. So!" She said with a clap of her hands and a leap down from the ramp, startling the young clone officer as she swiftly brushed by him and strode eagerly into the clearing their ship faced, "What do you say we make a proper camp and start figuring out just how we're going to get to that Temple, eh?"