Last time: They discovered that Oppie is still alive, somehow.

Now: They return to the scene of the crime.

Part 2- Chapter 1: Chikara

"Seems clear." Kyr said, checking the scope as they stealthily floated in towards Chikara. "Tac, you seeing anything?"

A disappointed, low whistle responded to him from the data terminal in the back of the cockpit. Viran was sitting in the co-pilot's seat, and Sasha was sitting behind him at the engineers console.

"That's a good thing beskar'ad." Kyr said back to the droid. "We wanted a chance to look around without enemy fire."

A warbling whistle responded back to him.

"I can't help but feel you might get your wish soon." Kyr responded. He powered on the engines and brought the systems out of stealth mode, running power back up to full and dove towards the planet. Viran had gotten him the planetary coordinates as well, and they made a pass over the ruins of the temple. A huge, blackened crater was evident, Kyr whistled upon seeing it during the low pass. "Yeah, I can see why you thought he died."

Tac let lose a chortling whistle and a binary raspberry.

"I can whistle if I want to, droid." He shook his head and brought them in towards the landing spot. "And I wasn't trying to say something rude, it just happened." He bit back.

Rifle slung in front of him, Kyr led the party down the ramp, scanning the site. His visor enhanced a few cues, especially the faint depressions left by craft that had recently used this same landing spot.

"This is where the Sith parked too?" He asked, back to Sasha and Viran.

"Yeah." Viran said. "I guess. We were unconscious last time we were here." He shared a look with Sasha as they both looked around tensely.

"Well they seem long gone now." Kyr said, they continued on foot up the trail to the temple. He scanned the horizon, but saw no signs of life at all. Just another desolate dustball. This area was strangely quiet, birds and bugs still chittered, but it had the feeling of a battlefield after the battle, as though the very atmosphere was heavy with the memories and respect of great and terrible events.

As they reached the temple, they paused for a moment to stare at the blackened crater in the ground. Sasha and Viran tensed as they stared at it. It had only been a month, but still only felt like it was yesterday. Exchanging a glance, Viran grabbed Sasha's hand and gave it a brief squeeze before releasing as a sign of comfort. Slowly, one by one, they each went to investigate a different part of the area. Kyr knelt down, inspecting the blackened surface that had the outline of bodies on it. It looked like troopers from the blast shadow, but the bodies were removed from the area. Or had simply been vaporized in the blast, leaving behind only silhouettes.

While Kyr looked at that, Viran was looking over the pillars. He noticed the scorch marks on them from the lightsabers during his duel with Kopesh and Sasha's duel with Cien. He ran his hand across the markings. As he did that, he could feel his saber pressed against him in his coat. Both he and Sasha grabbed their lightsabers just in case and hid them in their jackets. It was something Oppie had done a couple of times before to keep his Jedi identity a secret, but to have it handy at a moment's notice. As he continued to look at the marks, even his old wounds that were long since healed, stung at the memory of the fight that still sat fresh in his mind.

Sasha, on the other hand, had moved to the dias. She stood in the center of it, where the center of the explosion occurred. She could sense the remains of the holocrons energy as she looked around at the crater. The nightmare was playing fresh in her mind as she stood there. She then remembered what Oppie had told her about the fold. So she repositioned herself into the exact spot that Oppie had been in. She then looked across from her to where Dracul would have stood. With that, she moved forward toward that spot as if she were Oppie. Suddenly, she felt a strange rift in the force. She reached out to the rift as if it were before her. But there was nothing there anymore, it was just a leftover feeling.

Sighing to herself, Sasha continued to look around when she spotted something shining in the soot several feet away. Moving over to it, Sasha noticed that it had a golden tint to it. Kneeling down in front of it, Sasha brushed away the soot to reveal the shattered, useless remains of the holocron. Sasha picked it up and held it in her hand. She looked over it with furrowed brows as such a beautiful relic was now no more. Even the Force was gone from it. It was just useless junk. As she held it, she noticed a tint of red flicker through the holocron remains. Suddenly, the red flicker exited the remains as a sharp zap of leftover red lightning. Hissing through her teeth, Sasha dropped the remains back onto the soot covered ground as she grabbed her hand and looked it over. She noticed it was twitching and it was slowly turning red in the spot of the impact. It thankfully didn't do any damage.

Kyr had wandered into the temple, keeping a watchful eye out for danger to the party, but not seeing a lot outside to be worth investigating. He made a mental note to look up more about Holocrons, if a little thing like that could make a crater like that, they would make some great ordinance to add to his armory. He looked around a corner and saw a column engraved with crude carvings and murals - a stone stela, he vaguely remembered the proper name for such an artifact. He almost continued, then did a double take. Stepping closer he stopped in front of the stela, one of the depictions caught his eye. He called out to Sasha and Viran; "Hey, guys? I found something you might want to take a look at."

Viran came around the corner with a curious look on his face. "What is it?" Viran asked Kyr as he came into view and stopped.

"Be right there," Sasha called back to them. Rising to her feet, Sasha dusted off her leggings before picking up the remains of the holocron with the force. She then turned back toward the others while the holocron hovered above her hand.

"Guys, look what I found," Sasha said as she approached them.

Viran was staring at the mural with a puzzled look and not paying attention. Kyr was also staring at it curiously despite the helmet. Sasha glanced from them to the mural. Her face also became puzzled as she stared at it. Slowly their jaws started to drop as they made the realization as to what they were staring at.

It was a stone carving, depicting the temple. It was crude, but it showed four figures standing around a cube with what looked like electrical tendrils shooting around it. One figure, a hulking figure, stood there. The other three figures hung as if suspended, struggle evident in their poses. One of them had a long ponytail, just like Sashas. And the depiction looked ancient, this wasn't something that had been carved this millennium, let alone the last month.

"Is that supposed to be…" Viran started almost skeptically.

"It's us…" Sasha finished.

Without taking her eyes off the image before them, Sasha opened the small bag she wore and stuffed the busted holocron into it. She then reached up with her hand and brushed the mural gently.

"Okay, I am officially freaked out," Viran commented as he stared at it in disbelief. "Was this even here last time?"

"I think we were too preoccupied to notice," Sasha stated with a hint of sarcasm. She continued to run her hand over the drawings. "This must be thousands of years old."

"And yet it depicts something that happened a month ago," Viran said. "What kind of freaking prophecy is this?"

"A pretty accurate one." Kyr answered.

All three continued inspecting the stone column. The other sections held similar carvings. One, an earlier one at the top of the column depicted a swordsman overlooking another from the high ground, looking down at an opponent that was missing his lower legs and left arm over a river of some sort. Another one, at the very bottom, depicted a gigantic ball exploding? They made no sense, though probably with context they depicted other events that may have happened. Or were yet to happen.

Another one, the next one from the one depicting the recent scene at the temple, showed a helmeted figure with a cape and a blaster rifle, facing down a valley with a distinct ridge line in the distance, with two wedge shaped arrowheads bearing down on him from the sky.

"Think that's you, Kyr?" Viran asked, pointing at that one.

"I hope so, if that's me I look pretty awesome." Kyr answered, inspecting it closely.

Below the caped figure the scene also showed three figures underground - in a cavern? One facing off against another, both with lightsabers. The third stood in a strange pose before a circular portal. And a fourth figure was appearing from that same portal in front of the third figure.

"That kind of looks like us, too." Sasha said, worriedly. "Who built this place? I know some Jedi can have visions of the future, but this… this is so strange."

"Are those four suns?" Kyr asked, looking closely at the sky between the two wedges.

"Yeah? Maybe?" Sasha said, all of them crowding around the scene that spoke to them.

"Most quaternary systems don't have habitable planets, the barycenter is unstable so they don't last long enough for a habitable planet to form and develop." Kyr observed.

Both Sasha and Viran looked up at him with questioning looks on their faces. Kyr noticed and looked down at them. "What? I read stuff."

"Uh… nothing." Viran answered. "Well, if this is something that's yet to be, something that's in our future, then that might help us narrow down where it is."

"And if that figure is Oppie, maybe that means this is how we get him back." She said with a smile, pointing at the figure emerging from the round portal, then a puzzled look appeared on her face. "This feels weird, getting guidance on where we have to go because we see a depiction of our future telling us we've already been there."

"About as weird as moving stuff with your mind or reading other people's thoughts." Kyr observed wryly. "At least it looks like we succeed."

"Yeah." Viran agreed.

"Tac." Kyr called over his buy'ce. "Look in the navicomputer for any planets in a quaternary system." He got an acknowledging whistle. Tac was looped into the feed from his helmet so he knew what they were looking at. They inspected the stela some more, looking at the events depicted but not seeing anything that caught their attention. Just more images missing context that could mean anything; an armored figure with a T-visor that looked like Kyr, so maybe him, maybe another Mandalorian, holding a small bundle protectively from some unknown danger. Wedges, star destroyers maybe? Emerging from the ground in a lightning filled sky.

After a time they started looking around the ruins for other interesting artifacts, but found little. The stones were arranged around the center of the site of the explosion, as if the builders knew where it would be. No other stela, no more clues as to who built this place. They ended up back at the site of the explosion, and Sasha looked to the spot where the echo of the fold remained.

A low whistle came back to Kyr, and he relayed the message to Sasha and Viran. "Tac couldn't find anything, no systems like that in the database."

"So where does that leave us?" Sasha asked.

"There must be another clue." Viran said, looking around. They had been here long enough the sun was starting to set, and from the center of the crater, the sun almost, but not quite, aligned with setting through one of the sets of stones. "Wait, what are these stones aligned to?" Viran asked.

"What?" Sasha asked.

"What are the stones aligned to?" He repeated. "Whoever built this place set these stones precisely, but according to what? Maybe it's a sign post. To where those scenes are, or to other temples?"

"Yeah, but where does that get us, Sport?" Kyr asked. "The planets spinning, it's in orbit around the sun, and this place has apparently been here long enough that even the system's movement through the galaxy could place it along countless vectors."

"What about from the… that night." She said, looking back at the blackened crater and feeling chills run up her spine from remembering that moment.

"What time did the explosion happen?" Kyr asked. "Tac could backtrack and then run back across the vectors from the stones and see if there are any systems along the way?"

"I don't know," Viran said, his own memory of that night such a horrible blur. He couldn't even remember how long he and Sasha had held each other at the ramp after the explosion. "But our ship would have the records for it." Viran suggested.

"Good enough. Let me get Tac over here, he can get some readings on these alignments, and then once we get the timing from you guys we can check the navicomputer and see if anything pops along those vectors?" Kyr suggested.

"That works." Viran said. Kyr spoke into his helmet to call the droid while Sasha and Viran looked around at the broken temple. As the sky darkened the temple fell into the shadow of night. It brought back horrible memories for both of them. Laying helpless and bound as Dracul towered over them, bringing the temple adherents back to life to try to terrify them into joining his cadre. The ensuing fight with the two acolytes that nearly killed them. Oppie's appearance, and his subsequent 'death'. Even though they knew he was still alive, they both shared a deep scar from that experience, not just Oppie's disappearance, but the entirety of the horrors of that night.

"I think I'd like to get back to the ship." Sasha said, uncomfortably.

"Yeah, me too." Viran said with a shudder, he moved to Sasha to give her hand a reassuring squeeze as they both turned to the trail that led back to the ship.

Kyr looked after them and shrugged. "Okay, I'll join up with you guys after Tac is done with the survey." He looked around the old temple with his light enhancement filter on, not seeing much of anything, except the first few stars overhead making their presence known. He moved over to the center of the crater and looked at where his brother had met his apparent end. The scene depicted on the stela his only image of what had happened that night. The three of them, held captive by some Sith Lord, an ancient enemy thought dead. He felt a hint of pride for what his brother had done, saving the two kids. He stood at the site where Op would have been, looking up at where the Sith would have stood.

"Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la." he said quietly. Not gone, merely marching far away. Usually a tribute to the fallen, but having such a different, but so perfect, meaning as he thought about his lost brother.

As they walked down the path toward the ship, Viran and Sasha trudged by Tac as he continued past them whistling to himself as he headed toward Kyr. The two of them watched him go before turning their attention back to the path in front of them. As they continued along, Viran noticed that Sasha was staring up at the stars as they started appearing in the sky as the sky darkened. She was so lost in thought as she stared up at the sky. She also didn't even notice that Viran had stopped walking and she slammed right into him.

"Ow, sorry," Sasha said as she stumbled back.

"No it's okay," Viran said, staring at her with a concerned gaze. "But are you? You seem distracted."

"With everything that has happened, can you blame me?" Sasha asked with a bluntness. "I mean our fate is practically drawn out on those stelas. It's a little crazy to believe that someone predicted the explosion and holocron and everything that happened to us recently. I mean is everything else that is sprawled out there going to happen? Or has it already happened? It's insane when you think about it, but…" She paused for a moment. "Do you believe in fate, Viran?"

Startled by the question, Viran glanced down for a moment and then stepped closer to her, filling the space between them. Did he believe in fate? Well maybe not, but he did believe in his feelings for her and his relationship that they built over the years between each other and Oppie. So her asking him that question made his nerves shudder for a moment as he made the bold move to step closer to her. Their bodies were closer, almost touching, but still with some mere centimeters of space between them. He looked her directly in her eyes. Viran felt the heat rushing to his cheeks as he realized how close they were.

"I mean I believe that things happen for a reason and that if you are patient enough the universe will give you what you ask for," Viran started. "But I also believe that in this day and age it's better to take the risk and go for what you want. So it is a little weird that someone was trying to predict our fate or destiny thousands of years ago, but even if it is still to happen no matter what we try to do to stop it, it's how we get there that is our choice." He then reached out and grabbed her hands in his. "And I choose to figure out fate with you by my side."

"Viran," She said, her voice barely over a whisper as she was taken aback by his kind words toward her.

He noticed her cheeks gleam bright red as he said what he just said. Viran couldn't believe it either. Was he actually planning to admit his feelings here? Or did he just admit them to her? And here of all places? Viran didn't care. He cared about Sasha and his feelings toward her and no ancient prophecy was going to control his destiny. Plus they had gotten so much closer over the last month that he was more sure of her feelings to him than he ever had been before. So right now here under the shining stars, alone for a moment, was a better time than never to tell her his feelings.

She was staring at him, not breaking his gaze. Viran stared deeply into her chocolate brown eyes. Somehow, this was causing him to lean closer to her, filling in the rest of the gap so their bodies were close to being pressed together. His body was on autopilot as he continued to stare into her beautiful eyes and beautiful face as he got closer to her. He felt her breath on his face as he was so close that it would just take a mere step and their lips would meet. As he grew closer to her face, Sasha looked ready to add on something when they heard the footsteps and motor sounds of Kyr and Tac returning. Viran cursed inwardly as Sasha put space between them. However, he was still holding her hands having not released them yet. Blushing, he dropped her hands and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Hey kids." Kyr said as he was moving down the trail. "Getting late, heading back to the ship for dinner or what?"

"Yeah, we were just um…' Viran said nervously and obviously embarrassed. "We were just talking."

Viran glanced at Sasha in the corner of his eye to see that she wasn't looking in his direction, so he couldn't see her reaction.

"Yeah, definitely got a lot to talk about." He said as he passed them on the trail with a sideways glance at both of them. "Tac thinks that one scene was showing a grenade exploding, but I'm betting it's a planet."

Tac sent him a raspberry and a few contrite whistles as he rolled past them.

"Well I guess we'll get to see who's right won't we?" Kyr bit back. "That's dumb though, they have all these awesome scenes, and you think it's just some stupid grenade." They both turned down the trail as Tac argued back at the copper Mando.

Viran and Sasha watched them go. Once they were out of ear shot, Viran looked back at Sasha. Her face was hidden by her bangs as she was still looking in their direction.

"Sash, about before…" Viran hesitated. "I'm sorry if I was too forward and doing something you weren't comfortable with. I guess I was just reading the energy wrong."

That got her attention. Sasha glanced at him with still red cheeks. She tucked her bangs behind her ear as she looked so shy and timid all the sudden. He hadn't seen her like that since she was a little girl and was nervous to meet new people. Viran couldn't quite gauge what this reaction meant.

"No, please don't apologize," Sasha said in a nervous tone. "I… um… just didn't expect it was all." There was a long pause between them before she broke it. "I… um… I'm going back to the ship."

Viran watched as she started her way back down the trail as she headed for the vessel. With a groan, Viran brought his hands to his head and pressed his palms to his forehead. He mentally slapped himself for thinking she would feel the same as he did. Or maybe for making a move too soon. Either way, Viran was pissed at himself.

"Hey Vir," he heard her voice call to him. Viran glanced down the path to see that Sasha had stopped to turn back to him. "I agree with what you said about fate." She said with the smallest of smiles on her lips before she turned and finished her way back to the ship.

A stupid grin came to his face as he felt a sense of joy and pride in that statement. It wasn't a full confession, but it was a start. Viran then realized that he was still alone out there. He turned on his heel and hustled down the path back toward the ship.

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