Jenny and Rey sped over the desert sands on Rey's speeder. Coarse winds assaulted Rey's skin, but she was accustomed to them by now. She worried how Jenny would handle the rough ride back to the ship. Turns out she needn't have: Jenny hooted and hollered into her ear every few minutes, plainly relishing the experience and unfazed by the bumpy ride or gritty air.

Jenny rode behind Rey on the speeder, her arms wrapped around Rey's waist. Jenny wore an extra pair of Rey's goggles. The heat of Jakku only became more sweltering with another body pressed closely to Rey's own, but Rey decided there were worse bodies to be pressed against than Jenny's light form.

Hope and excitement still buzzed and fluttered in Rey's gut, but now uneasiness nested there too. She simply didn't believe Jenny's wild claims. Traveling through time? Impossible. The strange offworlder obviously still suffered from the bump on the head she received during the crash. In all the grand tales Rey knew about, from the mystical Jedi who controlled the unseen Force, to the limitless military might of the old Galactic Empire, to the Krayt dragons in their sweltering caverns, no mention of time travel existed. Impossible, she thought again.

Yet Jenny insisted on retrieving her ship, and although Rey couldn't bring herself to believe in the idea of time travel, she also couldn't resist helping the bright-eyed girl out.

For Jenny was indeed bright-eyed, staring at the wastes of Jakku like they were comprised of priceless jewels instead of sand. She told Rey she traveled to other worlds, simply for the sake of traveling, and her delightful attitude about dry, blistering Jakku certainly reinforced her story.

Hence Rey's uneasiness: Jenny reminded Rey of her own deep desire to travel the stars and see other worlds, a desire only exceeded by the dream of being reunited with her long lost family someday. She couldn't leave until they returned for her. But every day that passed, each tally mark she scrawled on her wall, reminded her of her unfulfilled dreams and the lost time slipping away like Jakku sand through an ancient chronoglass.

Rey would help Jenny get her ship; it was the right thing to do. What would Rey do after? She wasn't sure.

"I think I see the ship!" Jenny cried happily over Rey's shoulder.

Rey spotted it too: The odd, ballistic-style fins stood out clearly in the distance.

"Yep!" Rey yelled to Jenny. "We should be there in a quarter standard hour!"

As each click passed, Rey's muscles tensed further and her fingers twitched more and more eagerly for the staff secured next to her feet. She knew the odds of encountering other scavengers at the crash site were high.

True to Rey's estimation, they arrived at the site in just under a quarter hour.

Also true to her fears, other scavengers had already arrived. But they posed no threat at all.

"Oh my..." Rey gaped in shock at the dead bodies strewn around the crashed rocket.

From her vantage point on the parked speeder, she counted five human bodies. Blood stained the sand under the corpses. Rey saw broken necks, crushed hands, and tens of blaster wounds among the dead.

"Some sort of fight must have broken out here among these people," Rey said. "They… all must really have wanted your ship."

"I'm sure a fight broke out, but I doubt it happened the way you're picturing," Jenny replied.

Her arms slipped behind Rey and she hopped off the speeder, raising her goggles. Rey watched her trudge past the bodies toward her ship, and noticed how her hand hovered close to the streamlined blaster tucked into the pocket of her shorts.

"What do you mean?" Rey called to her.

Rey jumped off the speeder. She snatched up her polearm and jogged after Jenny. She too moved her goggles to the top of her head, scanning her surroundings warily.

Jenny strode steadily toward the ship's aft, and in a moment she disappeared from Rey's view. Rey gripped her staff tighter and stepped around the bulky thrusters.

And saw the last thing she expected.

Jenny stood with her hands on her hips, smirking up at a droid unlike any Rey had ever seen. The droid's casing glinted the color of steel, and Rey moved slightly to her right to avoid the blinding flare of the sun off its shoulder. Shadows filled its simple eye sockets and horizontal speaker slit. Shallow grooves criss-crossed its face and body. Its makers had manufactured thick arms and legs for it. Rey thought it resembled a protocol droid, but taller, sturdier, and unsettling and imposing in a way no protocol droid could possibly manage.

"I knew I could count on you, Tinny!" Jenny said to it, grinning.

"Affirmative," the droid's voice warbled out in deep, layered, artificial tones. "Your craft remains secure. All attempted tampering has been neutralized."

Suddenly the droid's head twitched to stare at Rey.

"Is this another hostile?" questioned the droid. "Is termination requested?"

The droid's right arm jerked upward and a slim blaster barrel rose out of its wrist, aimed straight at Rey.

"Hey!" Rey cried.

"Woah! No, she's okay!" Jenny called.

"Confirmed," the droid replied.

Its wrist lowered, and so did Rey's pulse rate.

"You, you didn't tell me you owned a droid," Rey stammered, catching her breath.

"A droid..." Jenny began in a tone that struck Rey as odd. "Yeah...he's my...droid."

"Hang on..." Rey backed up several paces and surveyed the scene of carnage in front of the rocket again, then quickly returned. "Your droid caused all that?"Rey jabbed her finger in the direction of the dead bodies.

Jenny folded her arms her pleased expression returned. "He's my contingency plan if I'm ever separated from my spaceship. I jettisoned him out of an escape pod the moment I saw the whopper I was about to crash into. I gave him standing orders in those situations to follow my ship's homing beacon and secure it until I come."

Rey gawked at the heavy-plated droid. "Well, he certainly kept it secure."

'Jakku's a harsh world,' Rey thought, 'why are you so sickened and shocked by this? It's nothing new on this planet.' But Rey instantly understood why: Without realizing, she'd already come to expect kinder, more civilized actions from Jenny. Her deeply buried fears about a cold, heartless galaxy stirred inside her emotions.

But then her eyes drank in Jenny's smug, beaming grin like precious water and she forgot her concerns, for the moment.

"You call him Tinny?" Rey asked. "What's his designation?"

"I am Cyber unit three-" the droid began.

"Tinny will do," Jenny interrupted, rolling her eyes. "I'm saving you a half an hour by cutting him off, trust me."

"Okay..." said Rey.

Jenny held her arms behind her back and traced the toe of her boot through the sand. "And if I'm being honest, I don't technically own him."

Rey smirked reservedly. "You mean you 'borrowed' him, like this ship?"

"Yeah," Jenny answered. "Let's just say his last owners weren't treating him very well, so I reprogrammed him."

"Hmm," Rey said, staring at the droid that stood a head taller than her, and even taller than Jenny. "You're good with droids then?"

"I'm good at fixing things," Jenny answered, moving her hands to her hips. "Comes… from my father."

Fondness and frustration seemed to mix on Jenny's face.

"You know I...I'm pretty good at fixing things too," Rey said, warmth much more pleasant than the blazing desert heat swelling in her chest. She smiled at Jenny.

Jenny beamed back at her. "Oh really? Do you get it from your father too?"

Instantly the warmth within Rey froze. "I...don't know," Rey answered hollowly.

Jenny stared at her, appearing concerned. "Didn't know your father very well, huh?"

Rey looked away, studying the broad, sandy, blistering expanse of Jakku. "I've been on my own for a long time."

It was the most information about herself she'd volunteered before, to anyone.

Suddenly she felt Jenny's hand on her arm. Her first instinct was to flinch away, but instead she relaxed into the touch and allowed herself a small moment of unguarded comfort. She looked into Jenny's bright eyes.

"I've an idea what you might be going through," Jenny said, voice quiet and tone tender. "You could say I still don't have the best relationship with my dad. And my mum...let's say complicated doesn't do it justice."

Another reserved smile spread over Rey's face. "Complicated isn't as much fun as it sounds, is it?'

Jenny chuckled. "No, not really."

Rey tugged her gaze away and surveyed the surrounding desert again. "We shouldn't stay here long," she said. "A ship like this will keep on being a prime target for other...people like me."

"Nothing to worry yourself over," Jenny said. She wrapped several times on her droid's metallic chest. "Tinny here'll make sure no one bothers us for long."

Once again, Rey paced backward and glanced uneasily at the dead bodies. "Yeah..."

"Anyway, need to sort out the damage," said Jenny.

She sprinted around past Rey and along the side of her spacecraft, on the same side providing such an arresting view of the carnage 'Tinny' left in his wake. Rey followed slowly.

Jenny hoisted herself into the open cockpit. She crouched on the pilot's chair and frowned at the decimated interior of the ship.

"You're quite fortunate you weren't skewered in half," Rey commented, also eyeing the numerous embedded pieces of shrapnel. "I think the First Order nailed you with a-"

"Some sort of ionic burst," Jenny finished for her. "Yeah, worked out that bit. But I'd already fired my only escape pod, so I was stuck going down with my ship."

Rey placed her staff in the ground, put a hand on her hip, and smirked weakly at Jenny. "I have a feeling you wouldn't be anywhere else. You're rather attached to this hunk of junk, aren't you?"

"Uh, yes," Jenny said. "I told you, Rey, it travels through time! So yeah, I'm 'rather attached.'"

Rey grimaced, uneasiness beginning to coat her emotions. "About that..."

Jenny's petite jaw dropped. "You don't believe me, do you?"

Rey opened her mouth to answer, but couldn't find the correct words, so she said nothing.

Jenny sighed, blowing air past her lips noisily. "Look, I'll prove it to you. I only hope the vortex manipulator is still working."

Jenny lifted up what looked like a toolbox of some sort from the alcove between the seat and the hull. Her head dropped out of sight as she buried her upper body beneath the ship's control panel. Rey soon heard sporadic clanking, banging, and mechanical whirring sounds emanating from beneath the panel.

"How's the damage?" Rey asked in a humoring tone, still nowhere close to believing Jenny's vessel could actually travel in time.

Jenny growled and didn't rise. "Secondary interface circuitry is loose and has some nasty electrical damage, but I think I can remedy that before long. Then I'll need to rewire the fusion-"

"Compressor?" Rey offered.

This time Jenny's head did pop up. She grinned at Rey.

"You do know a thing or two about fixing spaceships, then?" Jenny asked.

"I don't know much about time machines," Rey said jokingly. "But I do know my way around a ship or two."

Jenny leaned closer. "Care to give a girl a hand, then?"

"Sure," Rey answered, smiling.

...

During their repairs, Tinny began marching in a steady, predictable, circular route along the rocket's perimeter. Rey was unsettled by this at first, but her work soon claimed her full attention.

The rudimentary nature of Jenny's spacecraft made the repair work both extremely simple and quite complex. Rey repeatedly had to rack her brain for an unorthodox solution to the challenges the outdated tech represented.

On top of that, working next to Jenny in the cramped space wasn't easy. Elbows and knees from the two women were constantly bumping together. Jenny, for her part, seemed entirely focused on her repairs. She focused nearly all her attention on the area beneath the control panel, where Rey assumed this vortex manipulator device she kept referring to was located.

They'd been working for nearly two standard hours when a sense of foreboding draped over Rey. She immediately snatched up her nearby quarterstaff and stared frantically in all directions.

She saw it a split-second before the droid signaled them.

"Attention, unidentified craft approaching," Tinny announced.

"Huh?" Jenny asked, head bobbing into view.

Beginning as a small pebble in the distance but already twice as big, a spherical aircraft raced toward their position. Rey could hear the rising pitch of the craft's telltale shrill whine:

A TIE fighter, starship of the First Order.

Rey's stomach felt tightened into several complex knots.

"Who's that?" Jenny asked.

Rey didn't take her eyes off the approaching Starfighter. "First Order," she answered simply.

"And they're trouble, right?" questioned Jenny.

Rey nodded. "Yes. They've only been to Jakku a handful of times, but things never ended well. And I've heard far worse things about them."

The TIE fighter's globular body and rectangular wing panels whipped past overhead. Then the TIE circled back, crossing above them a second and third time, slower than the first pass.

Rey's muscles tensed and she gripped her polearm intensely, but she was currently helpless and she knew it. No shelter, nowhere to run.

But the fighter craft didn't fire on them. Instead, it streaked off in the direction it came from, the trademark whine of its engines slowly dwindling out of earshot.

Rey should have felt relief, but the uncanny sense of impending danger only increased. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew: They needed to get far from this location, and fast.

"We've got to get out of here," she said to Jenny.

Rey currently stood with one foot on the edge of the cockpit wall and the other resting on the pilot's chair. Jenny's body remained strewn over the chair and down under the control panel, but at the moment she propped herself up by resting an elbow on the edge of the controls and grasping the end of the chair with her other hand. It was an odd pose, but Jenny didn't seem uncomfortable at all. She also didn't seem worried in the slightest.

"We'll be okay," Jenny said. "They didn't even take a shot."

"Jenny, trust me, we need to leave."

Jenny's mouth became a straight line. "I'm not leaving without my ship," she said. "Go if you want. I appreciate all the help."

'Yeah,' Rey thought. 'I should just go. Why am I still here? I've helped her find her ship. I even helped her make some repairs. She has her droid bodyguard to protect her. What point is there in me staying?'

But Rey couldn't take a single step toward her speeder; she simply couldn't. She decided she would figure out why later.

"How close are you to fixing this thing?" Rey asked. "Will it fly again?"

Jenny grinned confidently. "Oh it'll fly. I've made some fantastic progress thanks to your help. I can have it in the air in about an hour or so."

"Okay," Rey said apprehensively. "Hurry. Tell me how I can help."

#

Jenny said she needed a quarter-hour. She only got a fourth of that before more ships appeared.

When Rey spotted the shuttlecraft flanked by four TIE Starfighters closing in from the direction of the Outpost, dread seized her.

"Attention, five unidentified craft approaching. Four match form and design from previous encounter," Tinny the droid informed them.

Rey tossed her spanner aside and hefted her staff once more.

"We're out of time Jenny," she said clearly and loudly. "We need to go."

Jenny finished yanking the final shrapnel piece out of its place in the rear compartment and stumbled backward.

"I need more time," she protested.

"You don't have it," Rey said firmly. "None of us do."

All five craft settled down less than fifty meters from them, stirring a storm of sand into the air momentarily. Black-armored troopers filed out of the TIEs. The shuttle's door lowered open and a figure descended, followed by a squad of troopers in gleaming white armor.

The figure wore a dark robe over an equally dark combat suit of some kind, but his face was the most frightening, for it was covered by a mask. A single slot marked the mask's eyes, revealing only darkness, not too different from the eyes of Jenny's droid. A mouthless lower half added to the mask's unnerving design.

Every fiber in Rey's being shouted at her to run, run quickly, run now.

The figure stopped halfway between Jenny's rocket and the formation of First Order ships. The mask's black eye-slit stared across the space, directly at Rey.

"You will come with us," the figure said, voice altered to a slightly distorted, brass thrumming by his mask. "Immediately."

"Jenny," Rey said quietly, neck and shoulder muscles twitching.

"Right," Jenny said. "Time for me to work a miracle."