"We've got incoming fighters!"

Janna had expected as much even before her copilot informed her. "Where?"

"Kinda...kinda everywhere," Tom replied, counting the blips on the radar screen.

As the Raventalon broke through the uppermost clouds of Mewni's atmosphere, the trio could spot the closing TIE's ahead, six of them, racing to intercept the freighter. Three more raced toward them from both the port and starboard sides of the ship, the radar showing another three behind them, having given chase from the planet's surface. And ahead in the distance beyond the outermost reaches of the atmosphere idled a brand-new Imperial Star Destroyer.

"I got the shields up," Tom said, panic already in his voice. "But I think we're gonna need some offense, too."

Marco jumped up from his seat. "I'm on it! But there's an awful lot of them, we'd better be ready to jump to lightspeed quick!"

"We need a place to go for that!" Janna called after the Padawan as he bolted from the cockpit.

"Think of one!" Marco yelled back.

A few seconds later, the TIEs closed to within range of their canons and spat green lasers at the Raventalon. Janna juked the ship downward to avoid the first salvo as Marco hopped into the dorsal gunner's seat. He took aim at the nearest fighter and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. "Uh, guys? The canon isn't working!" There was no reply. "Guys?" He spotted the headset hanging off the control stalk. "Oh, right." Frantically, Marco strapped the headset on as another wave of enemy lasers streaked past the canopy of the turret. The Raventalon shuttered as several shots collided with the hull. "The canon isn't working, guys!"

"Sorry, my bad," Tom responded. "I forgot to bring the weapons system online."

A moment later, Marco noticed a red indicator light on the canon's targeting system change to green, accompanied by an alert ping. He targeted a TIE as it screamed past his bubble canopy and squeezed the trigger. This time, the canon fired and the fighter vanished in a fiery explosion.

Now under fire, the fighters broke formation. They buzzed around the Raventalon from all directions, swooping in close as they fired and then zooming past and turning around to line up for another shot. Marco could only aim at one TIE at a time, and there were quite a few of them. Locking onto a target was made even more difficult by Janna's best efforts to evade as many of the TIEs' lasers as she could. Even so, the ship was taking quite a few hits.

And all the while, the looming Star Destroyer in the viewscreen was growing closer and closer to being within range.

Tom grit his teeth together nervously as the the Raventalon violently jostled from another direct hit. He checked his diagnostic screen. "The shields are really taking a beating," he said, trying and failing to not sound panicked. "We'd better figure out where we're going, and fast!"

Janna hauled the control yoke over to port and the Raventalon banked hard left to avoid a few head-on shots from another TIE, her jaw clenched with concentration. "Little too busy to think about that at the moment!"

Tom turned his attention to the viewscreen. The Star Destroyer was growing uncomfortably close. "We've gotta be reeeeally close to being in range of that thing."

"And it's blocking the hyperspace lane, which means we have to go right past it!" Janna yelled, shoving the throttle against its stop. "Hang on! We're gonna get real friendly with that hunk of junk!"

Tom gave a nervous gulp as his fingers dig into the upholstery on the side of his seat, his three-eyed gaze affixed on the rapidly approaching Star Destroyer. "Oh, boy."

Admiral Keise observed through steely eyes as the small freighter raced toward the pointed prow of his Imperial Star Destroyer Engager, pursued by a swarm of thirteen remaining TIE fighters. The vastly superior fire power of his gleaming new capital ship would obliterate that puny vessel and its passengers who so cowardly fled from Mewni. The Admiral watched through the viewscreen of the of the Destroyer's bridge, patiently waiting for one of his subordinates to inform him that the moment was at hand.

"Sir," one of the officers behind him called loudly, breaking the relative silence on the bridge, "The target is in range."

Keise's lips curled back into an evil smile. "All batteries, lock onto that ship and open fire."

"Yes, sir!"

A hailstorm of green lasers ripped toward the Raventalon from every one of the Engager's forward canons. As they were tearing directly toward the Star Destroyer at full speed, Janna had known that the huge ship's guns would be in range any second and was prepared. She took appropriate evasive action, narrowing avoiding the initial spray of lasers. She wrestled with the control yoke, juking the ship to-and-fro as they drew ever closer to the Destroyer.

"Marco! Forget the TIEs! You gotta take out some of the canons on that Destroyer or we'll never make it!"

To Captain Ordonia's surprise, the response that came through the control panel speakers was not a confirmation from Marco that he understood, or a protest that fending off the TIE fighters was a bigger concern. In fact, it wasn't Marco's voice that replied at all.

"You worry about the fighters, Marco," Star said over the comm from her seat down in the ventral gun turret. "I'll take out the canons."

The princess's companions were quite surprised to hear that she was prepared for battle, especially Marco, but they nonetheless were quite grateful to have both canon turrets operating as defense.

As Tom and Janna watched the Star Destroyer grow ever closer through the viewscreen, the capital ship's forward-most canons disappeared in a fiery explosion one by one with accuracy even greater than the targeting computer could manage amidst the Raventalon's rapid evasive maneuvers. This gave Marco the opportunity to dispose of four more of the pursuing TIE fighters.

"Great job, you guys!" Janna yelled as the ship approached the prow of the Destroyer. She looked up toward the top of the Engager's superstructure and spotted the large forward viewscreen of the bridge. Directly over the top of the Star Destroyer would put them in the path of the fewest canons and discourage the fighters from firing on them for fear of hitting their own ship. Captain Ordonia grinned with determination. "Hang on, we're gonna buzz the command deck!"

Admiral Keise watched in stunned disbelief as the tiny freighter systematically destroyed the canons of his mighty capital ship while also managing to dispose of several more of the pursuing TIE fighters, another of which exploded as the freighter passed over the ship's prow. "Idiots! Idiots!" he yelled angrily. "How hard is it to blast one little freighter?!"

"It's taking out all of our weapons, sir," said an officer somewhere behind him.

"I can see that! Why are you not-YAA!" the admiral screamed in surprise as the bottom side of the freighter's hull suddenly whipped past the window, mere centimeters from the glass, followed close behind by the now eight remaining TIEs.

Janna gave a snicker after skimming past the bridge of the Star Destroyer and over the top of the superstructure. "That oughta give those Imps something to think about."

Her enjoyment quickly faded as the Raventalon shuddered again, struck by another volley of lasers from one of the pursuing TIE fighters. "Okay, that's it. We're clear to clear to jump to hyperspace, we need somewhere to jump to."

PY-HD, who had been unusually quiet during the entire race off the planet's surface, suddenly spoke up, bleeping indignantly.

"You already programmed in coordinates?" Tom asked. "Where to?"

The ship shuttered again. The droid curtly whistled to "just jump already."

"Hey, anywhere has gotta he better than here!" Marco's voice yelled over the comm. "Just go!"

"Right you are, Diaz." Janna grasped the hyperdrive lever on her side of the control panel. "Come on, Lucy."

"I don't know about this. I'm not sure how much I trust Pony Head's decision making skills." The ship shook violently yet again. An alarm began to blare. "Okay, never mind." He put his hand to his respective hyperdrive control. "Three!"

"Two!" Janna yelled.

Together, they finished, "One!" and pushed the levers forward.

As the Raventalon jumped to lightspeed, Star watched through the window of the ventral canon turret as her homeworld in the distance behind disappeared, replaced by the swirls and streaks of blues and whites that made up hyperspace. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Goodbye, Mewni."

When the Mentis Mal dropped out of hyperspace, the inquisitor immediately caught sight of the Star Destroyer Engager trailing plumes of smoke from its ruined canon turrets.

"Morons," it growled. "They got away again."

Security Officer Rosado nervously cleared his throat. "Maybe not. It could just be damage sustained from battle with the Mewmans."

The inquisitor shook its head and pointed to the Engager as it passed outside the window. "The inhabitants of this planet don't have the weaponry or skills to destroy the canons firing back at them like that. Only a Force-user could have done that." A black-gloved hand curled into an angry fist. "I told them to wait for me to get here. But they didn't listen to me."

"Inquisitor?" The stormtrooper copilot was calling to his commanding officer.

"Yeah, what?"

"Admiral Keise is hailing us. He wishes to speak with you."

The inquisitor laughed. "HA! I bet he does! Well, you tell that walking pile of bantha fodder that I have absolutely no desire to speak with him. And then you can get me down to the planet's surface as fast as this bucket of bolts will go."

"Um...yes, inquisitor."

Rosado felt a chill run down his spine. He could practically feel the quiet fury the inquisitor was hiding beneath that mask.

The Jedi hunter crossed its arms as it stared at the approaching planet through the viewscreen. "I cannot wait to see what idiot is running this screw-up of a planetary invasion."

Marco slid down the ladder from the dorsal gun. "Wow, Star! You really saved our bacon back there!" he exclaimed, expecting Star to climb up and out from the ventral gun turret any second.

But she didn't.

"Star?" Looking down the ladder, Marco could see that the access tube and the gunner's seat were both empty. Wow, she got out of there really fast. "Star? Where'd you go?" He hurried up to the cockpit, expecting his best friend to have already joined Tom and Janna. "Star? You up here?"

"We haven't seen her, Dude," Tom told him.

"Huh...where'd she go?"

Marco checked the galley, the crew lounge, and both bunks, but Star was nowhere to be found. With only one place left to check, he headed down to the cargo hold.

"Star? Are you down here?"

A tiny tremor in the Force told Marco that she was indeed nearby. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her back turned to him, dress wrinkled and blonde hair frizzy and disheveled from their dip in the castle drainage tunnel. And she was perfectly silent.

Considering that she was not sleeping or unconscious, that was very, very strange.

"Star? Are you alright?"

"Yeah...Yeah, I'm fine." Her words were but a loud whisper, dull, devoid of emotion.

Marco swallowed, trying to choose his words carefully. "Do you...want to come up to the cockpit with me?"

She shook her head. "Not really."

"Okay. Do you...do you want me to sit here with you?"

"I just want to be alone for a little while."

"Oh...okay. I can understand that, I guess." It pained Marco greatly to see the one he loved so dearly experiencing so much hurt. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, hold her, tell her everything would be alright. But if Star needed some space for a while, he could respect that. "I'll be up in the cockpit with Janna and Tom if you need anything."

"Okay."

Marco turned to walk away, but stopped. He unzipped his still slightly damp hoodie and shrugged out of it, draping it over Star's shoulders. Then he turned and walked away.

"Marco?"

He barely heard the voice calling out to him. "Yeah, Star?" Looking back, he was surprised to see that she was now looking at him. Her usually radiant face had lost its usual happy glow, but she managed the tiniest of smiles as she whispered, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, Star..."

The princess pulled Marco's hoodie around her more tightly as her best friend headed back up to the cockpit.

"Be careful! Be careful!" Galen Erso urged as six stormtroopers set down the piece of equipment a little bit too roughly for his taste. Personally, he didn't care if the components were damaged. After all, he didn't approve of this entire project to begin with. But, he reminded himself, his superiors would not be pleased if the construction of this prototype was delayed, and he was far more fearful of what the punishment for failure might be than he was of actually succeeding.

His build team was receiving assistance from a company of stormtroopers in moving several large pieces of equipment into the hanger of the Star DestroyerMoonshadow. All assembled, these components would make up the scaled-down prototype of the primary weapon of the vessel codenamed "Stardust." There were still several critical pieces of machinery being constructed, but since there was nothing remaining to be done in the design department, installation of the finished components could begin.

Galen often found himself considering sabotaging the project so that it would self-destruct upon firing and take out everyone aboard, but if the tampering were somehow traced back to him...

"That's the last of it, sir," said the voice of his young assistant. "Where shall we begin?"

Galen took a deep breath, stalling for every second he could. Then he slid the datapad out from under his arm and pulled up the schematic for the prototype.

What first? He pointed to a generator. "Let's move that one over there. To the rear corner of the hanger." Nothing left to do but to do it.

Marco made his way back up to the Raventalon's cockpit. His companions were surprised to see that he was alone.

"Where's Star?" Janna asked as Marco took a seat behind her.

"She just...needs a little alone time."

"Oh." Janna pursed her lips. "Well, I guess I can understand that."

Marco decided it would be best to quickly and tactfully change the subject. "So, um, where are we going?"

"Our old hideout," Tom told him. "On Orto Plutonia."

"Orto Plutonia? Isn't that the planet...?"

"Where we hid for a month and a half when a client was out to kill us?" Janna finished for him. "Sure is. Thankfully, we're much more well prepared this time." She reached over a flicked a switch on the control panel. "Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't think of going there. Thanks for that, Pony."

The astromech bleeped something along the lines of "What would you do without me?"

"I've never been to Orto Plutonia. What's it like?"

"Cold," Tom said mournfully. "Very, very cold." As a Demonicite, Tom was adapted to thrive in environments with extremely high temperatures. Frigid ice worlds were as far from his comfort zone as he could imagine.

"Mostly uninhabited," Janna explained further. "There is a somewhat primitive race called the Talz that live there, but otherwise it's just a bunch of ice and snow. Except for one abandoned Republic military outpost, which we turned into a hideout."

"There was a little Separatist base there, too, remember?" Tom said.

"Oh, yeah, that's right. When we started running out of food the first time we took shelter there, we scouted for supplies and we found a little droid base not far from the Republic outpost. Of course, being inhabited only by droids there wasn't much there that did a couple of organics any good for staying alive."

PY-HD bleeped from where it was still plugged into its console. Marco didn't understand, but Janna translated.

"Pony Head found a couple new power cells for herself there, though."

"So if you guys ran out of food, how'd you stay alive?" Marco asked.

Janna kicked her feet up on the control panel and leaned back in the pilot's seat, lacing her fingers behind her head. "We bargained with the locals for some supplies. The Talz don't care much for off-worlders, but we came up with a good trade."

"What'd you trade them?"

The purplish skin of Tom's face suddenly turned bright red as he nervously laughed, "Aaaah, that's not important! Not important at all! Why don't we talk about, um, literally anything else, huh?"

Marco shot a questioning look at Janna, who simply grinned and waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively. PY-HD squealed something from the corner accompanied by a series of bleeps that sounded to Marco like laughter.

"Do not translate that!" Tom yelled at Janna, who merely chuckled in response.

Marco cringed. "Oooookay then." He stood, and left the cockpit. "Let me know when we get there," he called back. "I am going to dry my clothes."

The wreckage of the towering doors to Butterfly Castle launched away from the smoldering main entrance as the inquisitor roughly blasted the rubble away with the Force. Security Officer Rosado followed at a respectful (and hopefully safe) distance as his compatriot stormed inside.

"Alright! Who's running this catastrophe?" the Jedi hunter demanded as the pair entered the dining hall. The massive table was covered with Imperial monitoring and communication equipment, each being operated by a stormtrooper. "I told Vader not to attack without me, and he still-" The inquisitor abruptly fell silent as it's eyes landed on the leader of the invasion force smiling back at it with a smug grin from the head of the table. "Oh, great. This guy."

"Hello..." The Moff paused for dramatic effect. "...Inquisitor."

The inquisitor growled. "Well, Toffee, I hope you're pleased with yourself. I wanted to catch those stupid kids off guard, but you couldn't wait for me to get here and you let them get away again. How could you possibly manage to be so dense? You could have easily overwhelmed them!"

Toffee's smirk never wavered. "You inquisitors are so single-minded with your seek-and-destroy mission against the Jedi. Invading this world was not merely a means to your end, Inquisitor."

"What, you had means that needing ending, too?" it quipped.

The Moff's brow raised impressively. "Indeed. Eons ago, Mewni belonged to my people, before the Butterfly family arrived and drove us from our homes. The Emperor promised me that the Septarians would rule Mewni once again. I simply needed a legal reason to execute the nobility." His smirk became even wider. "Which I did. Treason. For assisting the Jedi."

"But you let the Jedi escape!"

"Oh, believe me, I had every intention of destroying those two," Toffee said as he took a seat in the queen's chair at the end of the table. "Especially the princess. But I was not about to divide my resources when that which rightfully belongs to me was within reach. It is a pity that they escaped, but fear not, I had planned for such an eventuality."

"Uh-huh. Which is?"

"The princess Padawan is now the last remaining member of the 'Royal Butterfly bloodline'. Being a princess and a Jedi, she will undoubtedly feel an obligation to return for 'her people,' and when she does, I will crush her, and her little friend, too."

"That's your plan?!" the inquisitor yelled. "Sit here and wait to see if Butterfly comes back?"

Toffee calmly folded his hands. "Oh, she will. I can assure you of that."

The inquisitor slammed its gloved fists down on the table. "Well, I'm glad you have all the free time in the galaxy to wait around, Moff, but the Emperor won't reassign me until those two Padawans are dead. So while you sit here, having failed to kill two teenagers with a planetary-wide invasion, I am going back to doing my job."

"Okay. You do that," Toffee replied uninterestedly. "Have fun."

The inquisitor growled and stormed off. "Come on, Rosado. We have even more work to do, thanks to this moron."

"Yes, sir!" Rosado followed quickly behind, hoping to get back on his superior's good side and stay there for as long as possible.

Toffee watched them leave. He could not explain the strange feeling in his gut, but somehow he had a feeling that he and this inquisitor would never again cross paths.

And he was perfectly fine with that.

Watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 1, episode 15 "Trespass" to see what Orto Plutonia, the Talz, and the Republic Outpost look like.