I lounged on the couch back at home, sliding one hand along the grey cushions. I didn't have on my armor, mostly because I was too lazy to put it on. I still had my weapons belt, of course. I am a Mandalorian.

Ezra walked in, holding two mugs of steaming caf. I smiled, took my cup and nodded my thanks.

"You're welcome," Ezra said, turning on the holoscreen and flicking through the channels.

"How to build-"

"Wheel of-"

"He passes the ball-"

"Criminal Josh-"

"Wait, hang on," I said, sitting up and taking a sip of my caf. "Go back one channel."

"Why?"

"Humor me."

"Witnesses have identified the assailant as a male, named Josh Vanderbield. They say he was involved with the bombing, which killed twenty-four."

Over the next few seconds, I dropped my jaw to the floor, picked it back up, took out one of my pistols, loaded and cocked it, put it back in my holster, attempted and failed to put out a white hot flame of rage in my chest, loaded and cocked my other pistol, and made up my mind about what Ezra and I were going to do next.

"We're killing that slithering demagolka chakaar chaavla the next kriffing time we see him," I fumed. Ezra looked at me, both alarmed by my rage and unsurprised by it.

"Sabine, I understand your anger, but you need to control it, okay?" Ezra said carefully. I eyed him venomously.

"You don't know him like I do, Ezra. We need to put him in the ground."

"Sabine, you're right, and I'm not saying don't go after him. I'm saying calm down and think. We need to have a starting point. Let's check in with the police and see how we can help, okay? We need to make sure we have someone covering for us if things go haywire."

Haar'chak. He was right. "Fine."

"Let's go down to the police station for now, 'Bine. Okay?"

"Okay. But I think we'd be better just asking for Hera's help."

"Or, we could ask for Hera's help, as well as the entire police force backing us up."

"Well, are we gonna do anything?" I asked, not excited with the idea of laying around on Monday anymore.

"Yeah. Let's get our gear on. We're going to the crime scene."

I smiled and walked to our room, taking my armor off of it's stand. I took off my shirt, ignoring Ezra's glance as I put on my bodysuit and attached the armor to it, one piece at a time. Looking over the left breastplate, I noticed a large gash on the paint. Well, it was high time for a respray anyways. I noticed a similar cut on the shoulder piece. Already, ideas were forming inside my artist's mind: A midnight-blue starbird on the shoulder, and another one on the breastpiece, but with a orange-red flame around it…

Time for that later, Dutiful Me told Artistic Me. Right now you need to focus, Sabine Wren.

'Kay, fine, but we're totally doing this later, Artist Me retorted, sounding like a sixteen-year-old girl. I pulled on my helmet, re-calibrating several sensors as I did it. The Heads-Up-Display (HUD) of my helmet lit up, scanning the the surrounding area and analyzing for any threats. Truly amazing, what my helmet could do. Anyways, a small red highlight appeared around Ezra's body, marking him as an enemy. Admittedly, my first reaction was close to panic until I realized that it was a simple targeting error. I keyed a few buttons and marked him as a friendly. Although, if he got too annoying, I could revert that on a moment's notice. I told him as much.

"I'll try not to agitate you too much, my lady," he responded smoothly. I felt a myself blush slightly at the honorific. Wait, when did Ezra become a romantic?

I pushed the thought away for now as I entered the turbolift, Ezra standing right beside me as we shot down through ten floors. Many of the Lothal Defense Center additions had been removed when the LDC switched to a official headquarters closer to the city. However, there were still several floors of surplus military-grade equipment, like scanners and comms, that hadn't been taken. And there was the hangar.

Attention, idiot. The hangar! You remember the week you spent on repainting the kriffin' thing? Maybe you should show it to the guy you did it for?

I smirked at my own stupidity as I pushed the button for the hangar. The button lit up in the shape of an H. I think you can guess why. Anyways, Ezra saw me hit the button and raised an eyebrow, but when we descended to the subterranean area (Yes, we put the hangar underground. Think of it as an ambush pit, only instead of mounted machine blasters firing refined tibanna gas, it has mounted "gravity slings" [The name is self-explanatory: they use gravity to chuck stuff reeeeeally fast] throwing fighters and bombers.) and left the turbolift, I began to explain.

"So, about eleven years ago, I started to get really, really bored, because you weren't around to mess everything up. As usual, I painted, and I got bored with just walls and canvases, so I decided to try and… ah… expand my canvas, per se. So, Hera wouldn't let me paint the Ghost, so… consider this a gift."

I led Ezra over to the side of the hangar, where the Gauntlet sat, gleaming. Just under the cockpit, I had painted a toothy mouth that I had gotten from a couple of paintjobs in a ancient history museum on Haruun Kal. I think the exhibit name was about a fighter plane called the P-40 Warhawk, back when the planet was divided into countries. It was used by a group of people called the "Americans," during an era called "World War Two." I don't know much about it. Anyways, I had taken the mouth from those fighters and put it onto the Gauntlet, then painted two diagonal lines along the bottom and top of the wings. The blue streaks dissolved into small blocks as they reached the back of the Gauntlet. Next to them, I had painted an amber starbird with a orange flame motif around it. The ship was actually coated mostly in silver, as a primer of sorts. It really highlighted the new colors that I had put on, like on the wingtips, where there were now bird feathers, painted in a ocean blue. An orange line ran down the main area, leading to the rear of the craft, where I had painted some talons on the sides of the entryway. The landing gear had also been turned into bird claws.

Ezra ran one hand along the ship's sleek lines. Along the bottom of the ship there were two grey lines, running from just under the nose of the ship to a spot near the landing gear, fading as they went along the hull. On either side of the cockpit, there were Alliance Starbirds. "Sabine… It's beautiful."

I smiled and leaned against the hull. "Thanks. This took me almost a week to paint."

"A well-spent week."

"Tn- Thn- Bleh, I can't speak. Thank you."

"You're welcome, cyar'ika."

I smiled. "Do you want to take it to the LDC?"

"LDC?"

"Lothal Defense Corps. It's the police, but it's also the military. Very useful for combating terrorists."

"Terrorists?!" Ezra exclaimed.

"Mostly Imperial extremists. Easy to deal with. Let's go."

Ezra still looked to be in shock over my "Terrorist" comment. In truth, we had only faced one terrorist problem, and they were dealt with in quick order (Just before they managed to pull off a major terror attack) in a Black Operation codenamed 'Hidden Guardian.'

The LAAT touched down with barely a sound. I stepped off first, waving my hit squad forward. They were all Mandalorians, friends of mine from Clan Wren. Their armor was all done in dark green, as black was too dark and created too deep a shadow. I had covered my own armor in dark green as well, though I had a solvent that could remove it quickly.

We ghosted across the wheat field towards a complex of buildings that we knew held many, many enemies. This was child's play. Davide Wren, our demo expert, held a satchel of explosives, slung over his back that we would use to detonate the munitions that they held within the largest building. Lika Wren, our point girl, motioned that she saw an enemy.

Immediately, we crouched, Lika signaling that she saw them at 1 o'clock. Miloia took out her knife. I looked over in that direction and smirked under my helmet as Dilloi readied his sniper. I pushed it down lightly, shaking my head. Then, I whispered over the team comms, "Dilloi, you're on overwatch. Davide, Lika, you're on explosive duty. Miloia, you're with me. We're sanitizing the area and making sure these extremists aren't going to sleep tonight. We've got exactly two hours until dawn, so let's make this quick. Tagger isn't going to wait around forever."

"No funny business, Davide, Lika," Dilloi teased. You could tell that both of them were glaring daggers at Dilloi. If looks could kill, we would have one K.I.A.

"Consider yourself lucky if you get through the next week alive," Davide threatened. Miloia chuckled. I waved us forward as we split into our groups, Davide and Lika sneaking off to the right, Dilloi taking up position on a convenient rock outcrop, Miloia and I making a very, very quiet beeline towards the guard we had seen earlier. It took fifteen minutes to sneak over, because we took no chances, assuming that each and every person in the camp knew exactly where we were going to go. I spotted him about five meters away from where he had been. Miloia took out her combat knife. It was big and mean and she wanted to use it bad. I knew why: just yesterday, her brother was strangled by an Imperial assassin. She had described the feeling as a white-hot rage.

I had felt similar rages to hers. Whenever I did, bad guys died.

I made the signal to kill the sentry. Miloa nodded, and I swear she was smiling crazily as she brought the knife across the sentries neck. She held back from eviscerating the poor sod, though. Kudos to her.

As Milioa dragged the body into the grass to hide it, I targeted another sentry. Coming up behind him, I stepped on a small twig and broke it.

Chit.

The sentry turned around, and I sprinted full-chat at him. He ducked and threw me. Kark, the little bugger knew judo. Once I realized that, I almost smiled: Judo versus Teras Kasi. Which would win?

Plasma would. I took one jai'galaar from it's holster and brought it up in one fluid movement, blasting the sentry in the head. I wasn't concerned about noise; my blaster had a silencer. His didn't.

And, of course, because his didn't, it went off as he dropped it. Go freaking figure.

Alarms started to blare all across the camp/base/compound/whatever. I got on team comms just before the alarms went off. "Plan B."

"You mean the one where we just blow up everything and wipe out every hostile in the area?" Dilloi asked.

"Do you know another?" Davide responded. I guess he was still shaken about the 'funny business' comment.

"Yes. It's called 'retreat.'"

"We do not 'retreat.' We 'attack in a different direction,'" I growled. "Now start shooting things."

"Yes, ma'am!" Davide, Lika, and Dilloi answered. Miloa nodded and clicked the release on her blaster's silencer. I did the same. Across the compound, I heard a string of explosions as Davide and Lika detonated several (no, several dozen) placed charges and set half of the compound on fire. That roused whoever was still asleep, and I swear I saw a couple nuclear detonators flying. In any case, I drew my blasters and ran into the middle of the camp, where several dozen former Imperials turned terrorists had E-11s in hand.

"They're dead," I heard Lika say, just as I remembered she had 're-acquisition expert' (READ: Thief.) She had told me that she had gotten her hands on a machine blaster, and as I saw yellow plasma begin to tear apart troopers from one meter, I knew she wasn't lying. She already had seven kills as the remaining troopers scrambled for cover. I tagged two as they dove over my own cover. Idiots. Dilloi blasted three, their white armor making them terribly easy targets. I fired three times into a small building. Mark three kills for me.

Miloia threw one knife and took out another. Her first knife caught one trooper squarely in the crotch. I shot him as he lay writhing on the ground in pain, even if it was more to put him out of his misery more than anything else. Miloia's next knife stabbed a buckethead in the eye, killing him instantly, white armor rapidly turning red with blood. Quickly, Miloia retrieved her knife, just in time to kill the only remaining hostile. Whoops, sorry, that's Davide's kill.

"Everybody okay?" I asked, right as another freaking Inquisitor tried to murder me. I heard a lightsaber ignite and moved to the side just as it whistled past my head, just a wee bit too close for comfort. I fired at the Inquisitor, who blocked. Lika took aim at the Inquisitor and held down the trigger of her LMG, just as I shouted, "No, DON'T!"

All of her shots hit her. Thankfully, she dropped the gun after three of her shots got returned to their sender, but she was still nailed by fifteen rounds of superheated laser. Davide screamed, then tossed a smoke grenade, temporarily blinding the Inquisitor, but it was a temporary help. Miloia ran to my side and gave me a knife, which I graciously accepted because it would be a great help in attempting to separate this guy's life from his body. I pulled one pistol and fired, hitting the Big 'I' in the leg. Mister Sith kept coming, though, and I shoved Maloia out of the way just as a red blade attempted to split us in half, for the second time out of probably well over fifty. I dodged another swing as Dilloi tried to snipe the Inquisitor. No dice.

Davide slowly backed up towards Lika, no doubt to protect her. Mister Inquisitor raised his hand and Force-Choked him into unconsciousness, tossing him onto Lika unapologetically. A red blade scratched my arm, but I had too much adrenaline flowing through my veins to feel it. Maloia, however, was no so lucky. She yelped in pain as a lightsaber passed through her arm, cutting it, then screamed in pure agony as it cut deeper. I shuddered. Just over an hour and a half had passed, between us getting to the AO (Area of Operations) and setting the explosives, as well as wiping out the sentries. I just needed to survive for… seven minutes. Chit. Dilloi tossed a small smoke grenade and then a normal grenade, neither of which did anything to the Big I.

Dilloi tossed me a knife. I nodded my thanks and activated the 'laser blade' function, which made the blade able to withstand a lightsaber. Not a moment too soon, either, because I had to throw up the blade to block a lightsaber attack as Dilloi was knocked unconscious by a Force Push. The Inquisitor attacked again with a slash. I ducked. He Force Pushed. I let it push me into a wall, which I pushed off of, flipping over in the air and slashing down at the Inquisitor. He blocked. I ducked another slash and drove the blade upwards. He jumped back, then attempted to invade my mind. I pictured a giant 'KARK OFF!' sign. Mister Sith looked enraged at the fact that his mindspin attempt failed miserably, then tossed me upwards with the Force and tried to choke me. I kicked him in the crotch and the face. He doubled over, then looked back at me, his yellow eyes burning with rage. I smirked inwardly and threw one knife. He threw it back with the Force and stabbed we in the leg. I screamed. He walked towards me as black spots danced across my vision. I kept the blade in my leg so it would stop the bleeding. I groaned again as he walked towards me, then was tossed into the air by a large explosion.

Then, as I watched, starstruck, he had his arm torn off by another explosion. A LAAT touched down as another flew overhead, gunners keeping the Inquisitor busy. The doors on the LAAT opened and a constant stream of laser poured out.

I heard someone say, "You'll be alright, Sabine." It took me a moment to realize it was Tagger. Then, I felt a needle prick my neck, and I started to feel very, very sleepy.

"Davide, Lika… help them," I groaned. "Dilloi… and Maloia…"

Then, after giving my final orders for the night, I welcomed the onrushing darkness of unconsciousness. Last words I heard were, "Yes, Al'verde."

So, you might already know this, but just to make sure you do, Chapters 7 and 8 are NEW! I took down one chapter, so if you were confused, sorry. Anyways, Al'verde means commander in Mando'a. A "Black Operation" (or a Black Op) is basically just a super-classified, super-high-level operation. If you know what a "Black Site" is, think of it that way, only a military operation instead of a station.

Anyways, sorry for the late update. I've been taking a parkour camp and it hasn't given me much freetime. Anyways, there's one day left, so updates should be coming a bit easier. Also, the P-40 Warhawk that I mentioned is a real plane. Look it up. (Seriously. It looks pretty cool.)

Finally, I'm not sure if you guys will be totally fine with me occasionally flashing back to Sabine's life without Ezra, so tell me if I should or shouldn't.

Reviews are appreciated. -RebelliousWaffle