"Okay, let's put out what we know," said Leia, automatically taking command of the small gathering. Cilghal, Kam, Streen, Kyp, Han and Mara were seated around her in the comm room of the Great Temple. Datapads littered the table before the small group, as well as cups of various stimteas – they needed it.

            In the room next door, the children played, under the careful supervision of the droids. Jacen, Jaina, Anakin – and Luke. The kids had taken their uncle's sudden age reversion a lot better than their parents had. Jacen and Jaina basically shrugged, gave the equivalent of saying "Okay, Uncle Luke's five, ho-hum…" and started to play with him. Anakin didn't even have that trouble. To him, who had always been closest to Luke, his beloved Lukie was still Lukie. In fact, Han had this sneaking suspicion that Anakin was a little happy with the fact that Luke was now nearer his own age….

            Han's musing on how his children were taking this quite well was cut out as the other adults around him began talking.

            Kyp was the first. "When we found Master Skywalker – " it was really a little incongruous to hear that title attributed to the small boy currently wrestling with Jacen – "he was lying in front of a Sith artifact we found in the jungle. We brought it here; it doesn't seem to respond to any stimuli, so we think that when Master Skywalker activated it, he shielded and the backlash nulled it."

            "Master Skywalker is perfectly healthy, I mean for a five-year-old boy," was Cilghal's report. "We weren't sure who he was when we found him – he was in the last place that Master Skywalker was, I mean, but you know the Force-signature…"

All the Force-sensitives in the room nodded grimly, and Han resisted the urge to ask what the hell he was missing. Apparently, as Leia put it, Luke's Force-signature was…slippery…now. It was subtly different from Luke's, but the strangest thing about it was that no one could hold onto it for more than a few seconds. Beyond that, and they suddenly lost the sense, and had to grope through the Force to find him again. And it was hard in the first place to find it. Not that any of this meant more than diddly-squat to him. But it had set his family to worrying, fearing for Luke, and up to now he knew they were a bit uneasy about the man-turned-little-boy.

Cilghal was speaking again. "We took him back to the Temple, and took a DNA sample; everything's the same as before. So we knew it was him. But when he woke up, he was asking for his Uncle Owen and his aunt Beru…and he didn't know where he was. Further, he has the marks of a child not long out of the Tatooine desert environment – tanned skin, white-blond hair bleached by sun, a lower amount of water in his body than normal - not that of a person who's been living on a jungle moon. In other words – what we're dealing with is not a Jedi Master in a five-year-old's body; it's more of we really have Luke Skywalker, complete and unabridged, and five years old. It's practically time-travel."

            "He doesn't know us," added Kam. "Nor knows anything of what happened to himself. But," he added, looking thoughtful, "He trusted us very quickly…"

            "That could just be the innate naïveté of the farmboy," Mara pointed out.

            "No," Leia disagreed, shaking her head. "I think…I think Luke was listening to the Force…and it's telling him to trust us."

***

            "Roooowr."

            "No, Chewie, I did not overload the sublight engines! I'm telling you, I kept an eye on them the whole trip here!"

            "Arooooan."
            "Who're you calling careless, fuzzbag?!"

            Han's emotional and touching reunion with his copilot, who had come back from Kashyyyk upon hearing that something had happened to 'the cub' (strange, how fitting both Chewbacca's and Han's nicknames for Luke were now) was almost drowned out by the sounds of four children playing Rebels and Imperials in the background.

            The New Republic High Council was nearly taken by collective apoplexy when they learned of the fate that had befallen the Jedi Master. Leia had had no trouble obtaining a leave-of-absence to investigate the phenomenon. She had been cloistered with the highest-ranking of the Jedi, trying to figure out the Sith artifact that had done this to Luke.

            Mara Jade, remembering that she had obtained a bunch of data crystals containing information on the Old Republic Jedi, went back to Coruscant on one of the Academy's shuttles to fetch them – she was going to give them to Leia to give to Luke, back before this whole thing started.

            Which, of course, left Han to baby-sit.

            He had nearly been at his wits' end, trying to keep an eye on four rambunctious children – on a jungle moon, no less. Han had never really liked jungles, and the ease they afforded children in slipping away from non-Force-talented parents made him hate them more.

            Today Chewie had arrived from Kashyyyk, to help Han look after the children. Instead, of course, they had begun arguing over the upkeep of the Falcon. So engrossed were they in arguing over whether or not the current inability of the sublight engines to function was Han's fault that they did notice what the children were up to.

***

            Luke and Anakin stood in front of the Falcon's landing ramp. "D'you think we should?" Anakin asked the now-younger boy. Indecision was clear on Luke's face as he stared at the starship in front of him. His fear of being caught vied with the fact that a starship – a real, actual, functioning spacecraft! – was right in front of him, and ready to be explored. He shifted nervously from foot to foot.

            "I dunno, Ani…"

            Anakin shrugged. After all, he'd already been on the Millennium Falcon. He just wanted to bring Lukie in…this Lukie couldn't remember starships, or being in one, it seemed, though he still liked them just as well.

            "Okay," and Anakin began to walk back to where Jasa and Jaya were.

            Luke chewed on his lip, and then made a decision. "No. Let's go in." He walked up the ramp, careful to keep his steps quiet, wincing when Anakin clattered up (noisily, Luke thought) behind him.

            They reached the door, and discovered that though the ramp was down, the door was locked. The two blue-eyed boys exchanged glances – and then slowly grinned. Anakin got out his multitool and took the cover off the key panel where one was supposed to punch in the entry code. When he was done, he criss-crossed the red wire to the blue, and then used his multitool again to scrape the tubing off the black wire. Luke then took out a datapad from his pocket, and extended a long apparatus from it that touched the exposed wiring. He frowned at the data now scrolling across his screen before touching a few commands.

            The door hissed open.

            Anakin and Luke exchanged grins. Anakin carefully untangled the wires and put back the panel as Luke tucked the datapad back into his pocket. When he had gotten the datapad from Tionne-kal's office, all he'd wanted was to tinker with it. By modifying it into an additional capability as a codebreaker, it seemed, he had gained himself a ticket into a starship.

            They entered the darkened Falcon, Luke peering around in amazement, Anakin walking with the calm assurance of someone who had been there many times before. In a clear voice, he called, "Lights on!" and the glowpanels came to life. Luke gaped at the technological wonderland revealed to his young eyes.

            Anakin showed him to the galley, to the sitting room, and to the bunks. He played the part of proud owner as Luke exclaimed and examined every aspect of the ship. He got himself and Luke drinks from the Falcon's freeze-unit; clambered over the bunks; and played a hologame with Luke on the holotable. And then they went down to the engine room.

            "Phew," Luke said, holding his nose. "What's that?"

            Anakin sniffed the air experimentally. "Smells like burnt wiring and circuitry. Lights on!"

            The lights illuminated an engine-block with tools scattered around it – proof of Han and Chewie's presence earlier that day. Luke and Anakin, who shared the same insatiable curiosity about all things mechanical as well as their blue eyes, approached the engine inquisitively.

            It wasn't long before both of them were under it, trying to see what was wrong.

            It wasn't long after that when Luke noticed what he thought was wrong, and Anakin agreed and they followed the thought to its logical end.

            It wasn't long after that when they were trying to see if they could fix it. They used the tools Han and Chewie left scattered around the sublight engines. They worked in silent unison, each taking one half of the engine to repair. Despite the lack of vocal communication, whenever one boy needed a tool beyond his reach, the other would hand it to him smoothly. Anakin, having hung around his father often, knew the functions of each complicated, professional-level tool. Luke, who was often involved in fixing broken-down machinery around the Lars farm (despite his young age) was not as familiar, but picked up quickly.

            An hour later, two oil-streaked, mussed-haired boys emerged from below a now-fully-repaired engine-block. They stood before it, dusting off their hands and regarding their handiwork with pride.

            "Do you think it'll run now?" Luke asked the older boy.

            Anakin smiled. "Only one way to find out."

***

            "Raroroaaaar?"

            "The kids are there in that corner," Han waved a hand vaguely in the right direction, "playing Rebs n' Imps or Jedi duels or something. Come on, what's your hand?"

            Sure enough, the clamor of human children at play drifted to Chewbacca's ears. He turned back to his sabaac partner. "Ahwoo-ar-ar-raag…" Chewie's offer to up the ante went unfinished as, quite suddenly, the Falcon came to life.

            The two erst-while smugglers turned in their chairs and gaped as the Falcon' s retro-jets lifted the ship off the ground. The landing struts tucked themselves into the Falcon's underbelly, the drive flared white, and then the Falcon took off into the sky.

            Han's mouth was hanging open in the most blatant display of shock he had ever given before snapping closed. Chewie gave a bellow of astonishment. "Well, guess this means that the sublight drive's not broken anymore…" he muttered to himself before bolting to his feet and running to the edge of the Temple shipbay, peering into the sky after the rapidly-diminishing shape of the Falcon. Chewbacca was beside him, using a pair of macrobinoculars to track the ship.

            Han shook his head in bemusement. What in all the Sith-hells had just happened? Oh sure, they were on Yavin IV, where people got possessed and random things happened because of Dark Jedi or the restless spirits thereof, but why would a Dark Jedi ghost want to hijack the Millennium Falcon?

            He heard small feet pattering up beside him, and turned to see his twins running to him. "Dad?" they called in unison. They skidded to a halt, Jacen trying to borrow the macrobinoculars from Chewie while Jaina looked  up at her father. "Dad, what happened?"

            Han absentmindedly ruffled his daughter's hair as he replied, "I don't know, honey, but…" He looked around, a thought suddenly striking him. "Where's Anakin and Luke? Weren't they with you?"

            Jaina shook her head. "They stopped playing with us when Jasa and I decided to have a pretend lightsaber battle instead of Rebels and Imperials. We haven't seen them since…ooooh," she breathed, as understanding dawned on her. Han and Chewie exchanged looks. They knew what had happened to the Falcon.

***

            "What happened?!"

            "I don't know! I don't know! We were just getting the sublight engines to rev, just to see if it would run…we didn't run the take-off sequence at all! …didn't we?"

            "Did you press anything?"

            "This, this and this – the Galactic Compendium of Starships said that's the way to get a Corellian YT-1300 to idle its engines…"

            "You have the Galactic Compendium?" Anakin asked, impressed. "That went out of print years ago, dad's been trying to find one…"

            "It's not mine, really, it's Biggs's cousin's…but he left it behind at my house and…aagh, Ani!"

            Anakin, who was in the pilot's seat, jerked the controller to one side, sharply, to avoid a looming Asakein tree. Luke, in the copilot's seat, began rapidly adjusting the Falcon's altitude to get out of the obstacle-course that was the top of the Yavin jungle. Both boys breathed a sigh of relief as the Falcon emerged into uncluttered sky.

            Anakin looked at the panel. "I think I know the problem. I was beginning to run the rev-sequence myself when the ship started…"

            Luke was confused. "But the controls for that are over on my side…"

            Anakin waved it away. "Aw, dad modified the controls so that each panel shares functions for most of the ship…that's why! You were doing it out of the book, you didn't know my dad modified the Falcon!"

            "Oops."

            "Uh-oh," Anakin agreed. Then he looked out of the viewport. "Lukie…we're heading out of the atmosphere!"

***

            Jacen and Jaina went running into the Great Temple to alert the Jedi of what had happened while Han and Chewie hurried to the traffic-control room, where the radar was. By the time they had calibrated the radar to search for the vanished starship, Jacen and Jaina had fetched their mother.

            Han felt himself wilt at the promise of a chewing-out that Leia gave him, in just one glimpse of her brown eyes.