The next morning Valour listened to the others as she sat down near the fire pit that the rest of the rebel cell here on Lothal were sitting around while discussing what their next moves should be. She offered to help them with their need to get off of the planet; she'd send them back to Rebel Command with Tac. The ship had a digital cloak so if they left the orbit from the lower portion of the hemisphere then they should be able to avoid detection since they were unlikely to be visually spotted before they headed toward the hyperspace lane.

"You're not coming with us?" Ezra asked intrigued. "I sort of figured that you would. I mean, you had to blow your cover back there at the temple and all..."

"Anyone who saw what I did back there is currently buried under a few tons of boulders and dirt." Kiara shook her head as she went on, "They won't be sharing anything that they saw. I've been spying on the Empire for nearly a decade and a Fulcrum Agent for five years. It's one thing that I'm good at. And the Rebellion can use every one of us that it can get."

"Five years?" Zeb snickered just a bit. "Kallus wasn't able to last one."

Kiara's interest was piqued at the mention of her friend. She glanced around and suddenly realized that this was the same crew that he'd told her about. And Zeb was the Lasat in question whom he'd spent time with on the ice moon which then sent Alex into a spiral to question everything about his life. She opened her mouth to say something when she stopped. Just outside of the camp she saw something that she swore that she'd never see in the flesh; Loth-wolves. Particularly the white wolf from her visions.

"What the hell?"

Kanan sensed what had drawn the crew's newest ally's attention as Ezra spoke up. "Hey, they're back."

"Back? They've been here before?" Valour asked as she looked back and forth between the wolves and those around her who didn't seem fazed by their presence at all.

"Yeah, they are..." Kanan paused to try to figure out the best word to describe them. "I'd say friends but it's a bit complicated."

The white Loth-wolf stepped forward and spoke just as it had during the visions. "Dume."

Kiara briefly stared in confusion before she muttered, "Can't you say anything else?"

Kanan heard the agitation in the woman's voice. "You've seen him before?"

Valour nearly glared at the wolf who had been the source of her lack of sleep recently. "You could say that. He has visited me in my dreams for nearly a week. He's why I was at the fuel depot the other night."

"Dreams?" Kanan's hadn't thought that any of the Fulcrum were Jedi.

"Before you bother asking, no, I'm neither a Jedi nor Sith." Kiara figured she'd stop that line of thought before it could really gain any traction. "Just someone who tinkers a bit with the force."

Hera then spoke up from her place beside Kanan as he, too, asked another question. "Why were you at the fuel depot?"

"So, it was you?" Kanan thought back to the vision that he'd had prior to the mission to rescue Hera. Events that Ezra had been able to see in the portal at the temple as well. "You were the reason we all got out of there alive?"

The white Loth-wolf spoke up again. "Dume. Together."

Kiara glowered at the wolf. "Why does he keep saying Dume?"

Kanan ran a hand over his hair and smoothed it down a bit awkwardly. "The Loth-wolves have a very deep connection to the force. They know things that most wouldn't know. Dume is my name. Or it was. Caleb Dume. After the end of the Clone Wars, I changed it."

Valour stared at the wolf as Kanan spoke. After a moment she spoke up. "So, he was making sure that I knew who he was sending me to help."

The Jedi shrugged, "I suppose so."

"Well, I, for one, am grateful that you were able to help," Hera said as she caught the unspoken words in the way Kanan had mentioned that everyone was alive thanks to the other woman. She'd have to ask him exactly what he meant by that later on.

Kiara turned her back to the wolves before she looked down at her chronometer. "If I'm going to get back to the complex and make it appear that I walked there from the temple, I need to get going. I'll give Tac the needed instructions to help you until you get to your ship. He'll have to let you onto the ship and fly since otherwise you'd need to have your bio-signature on file. I'll have Tac take me to where a patrol can find me, and he'll return so he can fly you out."

From there she went to where she'd left the Shadow Chaser and input her new orders into Tac's programing. While she still had a bit of time before she really needed to leave it gave her an excuse to leave the Loth-wolves behind. She also took a look at the damaged crystals from her now useless cloaking device. She'd hoped that they weren't as bad as the droid had indicated but she knew better. He rarely exaggerated things when it came to the ship. Still, it gave her something to do during the brief trip to the outskirts of Capital City.

Tac flew low to avoid detection from the planetary monitoring systems and when Kiara deemed it time, he lowered the ramp to allow her to jump out of the ship before she then began her trek toward the Imperial Complex. As she approached the patrol lanes, she went over in her head how best to appear as if she'd just witnessed and lived through the horrible collapse of the excavation of the Jedi Temple. As she saw a pair of troopers she geared up for her moment of hysterics.

"Oh, my gods!" Kiara screamed out as she intentionally stumbled as if she was exhausted. Not hard to pretend since she'd gone nearly two nights without rest minus the brief sleep that she'd gotten after she and the rest had gotten back to the caves on the other side of the planet in the early morning hours. She also started to hyperventilate as she spouted out partial sentences; almost as if her mind was still trying to make sense of what she'd seen. "They're gone! They- The ground- I can't- It just swallowed them all! I- They-"

"Hang on," one of the troopers insisted as he got off from his speeder bike and bent down to help lift Kiara up from where she'd collapsed onto the ground. "Who are you? What's your operating number?"

Kiara fumbled for her identification card. She pulled it out of her pocket as she continued to mutter nearly incoherently. By this time, her self-induced hyperventilation began to take its toll. She knew that she'd be unconscious before the troopers finished calling in their find of her back to the complex. She saw through her dimming vision as the second trooper left his bike and made his way to kneel down beside her along with the first.


Kallus sat in the navigator's chair alongside Rex as they both waited at the coordinates that they'd received from Hera. Firstly, he and Rex were astounded when she'd sent in a message for them to meet her. It was the first time that it had been confirmed that she had survived her crash onto Lothal during the attack on the factory on Lothal. Secondly, he'd been surprised to hear that Hera wanted to meet with them away from Command and had even asked that they withhold the knowledge that she had not only survived but had found a way off of the planet from the rest of the Rebellion for the moment. That piqued his interest and he had willingly boarded the Ghost with the clone captain to meet with the fighter pilot.

Kallus and Rex waited in a comfortable silence, both lost in their own thoughts. When the rendezvous time arrived, a ship came out of hyperspace right in front of the pair. Kallus was shocked to see that the ship that Hera Syndulla was piloting was the Shadow Chaser. That had to mean that Kiara was there, too, right?

The two ships docked together and Hera and Kanan boarded the Ghost along with the two droids, Chopper and Tac. When the techno-service droid spotted Kallus he happily floated forward to greet him.

"Master Kallus! I'm so pleased to see you again."

Rex snickered as he watched Kallus scowl at the droid's greeting. "Master Kallus?"

"Shut up," Kallus practically growled before he looked just behind the others expecting to see Valour. When he saw no one else would be coming through the airlock he asked Hera, "How did you come into possession of the Shadow Chaser?"

"It's a bit of a story." Hera said as she added, "Just as I'm sure you have one on how you know Tac and his owner."

Kallus nodded, "Valour was the Fulcrum Agent who recruited me." He paused before he added since that just didn't seem to cover his relationship with Kiara well enough, "And we've been friends since our academy days."

"Really?" Kanan sounded quite surprised since, before Kallus became a rebel agent, he'd actually pursued him and Ezra (along with the rest of the Ghost crew) pretty harshly. To think that he had a friend who was a force-sensitive was nearly unbelievable.

"Really," Kallus rolled his eyes as the Jedi seemed just a bit too amused. "Though I'm sure we didn't meet all the way out here to discuss who I am friends with. So why are we here? And why didn't you want to contact Command, just yet?"

Hera led the men toward the common area on the Ghost and began to tell them of how with the factory now out of commission that the crew had decided that they wouldn't get a better opportunity to rid Lothal of the Imperial forces once and for all. However, they also knew that the rebel leadership wouldn't see it that way. So, they were planning to go forward without them.

Kallus thought back to Mon Mothma's refusal to even send an extraction team for any survivors after Hera's squadron went down during the attack on Lothal. No, she nor the rest of the leadership would authorize the kind of bold operation that Hera was suggesting. But to be honest, maybe the bureaucracy would just get in the way. He looked over at the old clone at his side and saw that he was thinking the same thing.

"If we're going to do this, we'll need help. Contacts who could help us pull this off. What do you have in mind?"

Kanan smiled as he knew that the by-the-book officer wasn't going to exactly like what the rest of the crew had already come up with. "Figured we'd call in some of Ezra's friends."

"What kind of friends?" Kallus didn't like that look on the Jedi's face. He'd learned over his time on Yavin IV that when the other man got that look that he and the others were going to perform a mission with unorthodox methods.

"You'll see."


Kiara woke up in the infirmary but was careful not to reveal that she was awake right away. She wanted to first listen to what was going on around her.

"Is she awake?"

"Not yet. As hysterical as the troopers claimed she was when they found her, I thought it prudent to sedate her to give her more time to recover from the shock. From what the troopers who were sent out to the excavation site said, everything is indeed gone. It is as if the ground swallowed everything up."

"If that's true, then how is it that this individual survived?"

"I'm not sure. We won't have answers like that until we are able to interrogate her."

"Wake her up, then. Thrawn will be returning soon, and I need to have at least some answers by the time he arrives. As it is, he'll have more than enough to not be pleased with. I don't need to have yet one more unexplained mystery to hand over to him."

Kiara felt that was her cue unless she wanted even more drugs pumped into her. She made a slight movement, twitched her eyes, and groaned as she pretended to wake up.

"Mmm. Ouch," Kiara moved her hand to where she felt a bump on her head from where she'd fallen after she'd hyperventilated in front of the troopers in her act to convince them that she was hysterical.

"Oh good, she's awake." Governor Pryce looked down her pointy nose as she saw the younger woman stir. "See to it that she tells you everything. I'll be in my office."

Kiara barely controlled the urge to snicker. She supposed that interrogating an allegedly hysterical woman after the elimination of the rest of her Imperial colleagues disappeared out in the grasslands at the Jedi temple wasn't nearly as interesting as interrogating helpless rebels who are strapped to an interrogation table. If only the woman knew that she had a rebel before her, unbeknownst to her.

It was just as well. Kiara sat up and began to start her second act to convince the Empire that she was a hapless victim of the events of the night before. She explained that she'd gotten off of her double shift and had chosen to spend her off hours just outside of the dig site so that she could enjoy looking up at the stars; her favorite pastime when she was stationed on a planet that had clear enough skies to do so. She was lying out in the grasslands and had nearly gone to sleep when the ground had begun to shake beneath her. When she'd looked back toward the base for the excavation of the temple the ground had begun to undulate as if it were like the waves of an ocean.

Kiara went back to muttering in a near incoherent manner that the temple must have pushed back; tired of being defiled. She then curled up on her side and the interrogator in the form of a medical officer left her be; convinced that she'd need time to recover from the trauma that she'd endured. Kiara mentally grinned as the man excused himself. She told herself that if she ever needed another career, perhaps she ought to consider entering the dramatic arts.


After several transmissions and meetings scheduled for Hera to meet up with those needed, Kallus walked over toward the Shadow Chaser so that he could ask Tac in private about Kiara before he was to return to Lothal.

"Actually, Mistress Kiara programed me to remain with you until called for," Tac informed cheerfully. "She determined that I'd be more useful to you rather than having me hide the ship for the time that she may need an extraction."

"But if you are here, what if she needs to send out a Fulcrum message?"

The droid tilted its head, "The potential of such a message is unlikely in the foreseeable future. She will be transferred once more which means that for at least three months she will not be able to get out a message, anyway. So, she has instructed me to follow your orders."

Kallus wasn't sure why, but he didn't like the idea of Valour sending her last line of defense, her only means of escape, to him. Hera did say that Valour intended to be ready to help in the planned attack on Lothal. He hoped that meant that he'd be able to speak with her and find out what she was thinking when she changed her droid's programming.


Ezra glanced around as he sat looking around the meadow. He'd come here to meditate. He knew that Kanan and Hera were working to gather the team that they needed to try to free Lothal and were due to return soon. Still, he was worried. He knew that Kanan always warned against taking force visions as being literal but at the same time, he was still alive because that Fulcrum Agent did just that. So clearly, they really could be visions of what was to happen exactly as events were to unfold, if not altered in some way.

Kanan must know that. After all, looking back to before Hera's rescue, Ezra could see that the various conversations that he'd had with Kanan were him trying to pass on last-minute lessons as he accepted the fact that he wouldn't be returning from the mission. He'd not done anything to alter his fate; he'd been willing to lay down his life for the rest of them. He had no idea that destiny was instead being tampered with by another. Was it because he had accepted his fate that the force had stepped in on his behalf?

Ezra shook his head. Even asking the question almost seemed forbidden.

After hearing a soft growl, he looked up to see the white Loth-wolf. He reached out a hand and placed it on the snout of the giant beast.

"You know what is going to happen, don't you?" Ezra leaned forward and placed his forehead against the animal. He stayed there for an undetermined amount of time, connecting with the wolf as he shared yet one more vision, and only looked up when he heard Sabine approaching. It was time. He signaled for Ryder to make the call. Everyone was in place.


Kallus waited for the Imperial forces to step in and attack the small rebel camp after Ryder called for Governor Pryce. She hadn't been able to get there fast enough when she thought that Ryder was betraying the rest of the cell. She'd gathered a relatively small force, believing that it would be enough for the meager resistance that the rebels would be able to mount. And for the most part, Kallus figured that she'd been right to assume that.

At first the small band including the smuggler Vizago and his crew seemed to be more than just a little outnumbered as he approached in the Shadow Chaser. But what she hadn't been expecting was that she was walking into a trap. One with not just the rebels and Jedi standing by when Ryder turned his blaster on the woman, but the large creatures that Kanan had told him about before they had returned to the planet.

He'd only heard about these wolves in some of the local legends. Legends that didn't do the creatures justice at all. They were massive and majestic at the same time. Kallus was glad that the wolves were on his side. Or was he on the wolves' side? The Jedi knew to fall back to the caves that the wolves lived in as soon as it appeared that they were too far outnumbered. When that happened, the wolves came out and began to work their way through the troopers as if they were small prey. When the wolves entered into the fray, the battle on the ground was all but won. That just left the one in the air.

Kallus shot down errant Imperial gunships as the Ghost took out the transport that the governor had arrived to the camp in. With both rebel ships it was really rather simple to overtake the small force that the Empire had brought to eliminate the rebel camp.

He set his ship down near where the Ghost had landed, as well. He left Tac to do the shutdown procedures as he strolled down the loading ramp and walked up to the woman who had wanted him to be shoved out of the airlock the last time that they'd seen one another. Blasters weren't required to keep her in line. The wolves were doing that nicely on their own. She looked downright terrified, but she hid her fear with her disdain for him.

"You disgust me, traitor."

"The day I betrayed your Empire, Governor, was the day I finally stopped betraying myself," Kallus told the woman as he and Ryder steered her toward where Ezra and Kanan were waiting. It was decided that Ezra would take the lead on the day's events. After all, this was his home, and it was for him that many who came to fight today showed up. Out of respect for the young teen.

Pryce rolled her eyes at the former ISB Agent. "You've given up years of service, a promising career, prestige, for what? To join a band of failures who don't stand a chance."

"I think we do," Ezra's voice could be heard as he, Kanan, and Hera stepped out of the Ghost. "Especially with your help."