Somewhere along the line, Sakajin was sure her mental image of the mission had shifted.

Touring a post on the edge of Separatist-controlled space.

That had been what Grievous had described it originally. But Sakajin couldn't be sure, since the entirety of that day felt like a thick smoke after learning of her forced change in position. Despite her asking a time or two more afterwards, he never gave much more information beyond that.

She stopped after the second time, when he threatened to throw her over the catwalk. He sounded angry enough to mean it, though, he always sounded angry enough to mean most things to begin with.

Somewhere between the first day of being told and the third day of preparations, Sakajin had begun to imagine the base being on the edge of a battle, in the middle of some stalemate against a nearby Republic-held base. There would be canons, battalions, hordes of droids; there would even be weapons at the ready for any oncoming onslaught. It was a vibrant mental image, ripped straight from a holomovie (sound effects, cheesy action and all). It was exciting to think about at least, and kept her busy for the most part when Grievous was off talking to Dooku, and she was left in her old-workroom to tinker with scrap droid pieces.

Perhaps the mental shift came from boredom, or perhaps it was just the need to make the mission feel as though it was important. As if it was worth what she'd been through in even just the last few days.

As fantastical as Sakajin had made it sound to herself, it was nice to be proven so very inaccurate in the end. Going into combat was no longer an IF question, but WHEN, and finding out her first day on an actual battlefield was yet postponed felt like a breath of relief and a weight off of her shoulders.

But Grievous' presence was a weight all of its own, and one she could never really escape. As the two of them prepared to land, it was hard not to dwell on the silence that had fallen over the space around them. Cold and tense, leaving Sakajin with far too much room to think about a million unfinished thoughts.

"Stop that," Grievous' sharp words pull Sakajin's mind acutely into the moment.

"W-what?"

"That," he repeated, turning his head around to glare pointedly at her. "With your hands."

The young woman blinked, and realized only then that she had been wringing them over her lap for some unknown number of minutes-or perhaps for as long as they'd been in hyperspace. They quickly fall away and lay flat over her thighs again along with her eyes, though she could still feel the general's gaze upon her.

"Sorry," the word was instinctive, though all Grievous offered in reply was a low growl.

"You make too much noise even when you're trying to be silent."

Sakajin said nothing at first, but let her eyes finally travel towards one of the viewports. They were in the final moments before starting the landing sequence, and the moon's surface was visible beyond the mere smudges of color she had caught on the distant object just after they had fallen out of hyperspace. What had once been dull splotches had become somewhat more detailed landscapes, though from what she could see it seemed as if the moon was covered in a vast green ocean.

"Are those forests?"

She didn't mean for her curiosity to be heard. Even more surprisingly, Sakajin didn't expect to get an answer.

"Tall and dense enough to act as a natural shield against prying eyes and scanners alike," Grievous' words filled the shivering air as their ship slips into the planet's upper atmosphere. "I'm surprised it took you this long to realize as much."

Sakajin blinked. She leaned forward to try and get a better look at the landscape as they came lower. The occasional mountain peaked out from the vast sea of green, but she could find no actual ocean or rivers along the planet. The trees-or at least the treetops-seemed too dense for her to see any details of worth.

"Where is it?" she dared to ask a second question. "Not just the base, I mean ...everything."

"Stupid girl," Grievous growled, tapping a claw to a screen as their ship shook again. "It's beneath."

Beneath?

She blinked as another question lay upon her lips, but the ship descended fast enough that such a question suddenly became useless: it was only then, as the ship fell below the treeline, that Sakajin realized how big they actually were.

Absolutely gargantuan-even though several years had dulled the memory of the city-planet, Sakajin wondered in awe if some were even as tall as Coruscant's upper towers. The trunks seemed as thick around as a mountain, even from the distance of the landing drop ship. They were unmovable features of the landscape, vast in scope and endless in their age; Sakajin felt dwarfed by them in ways she could hardly describe.

And then, only then, did Grievous' words make sense. Everything lay beneath the treetops, hidden by an endless sea of sense leaves and branches that covered the planet over like a protective shroud.

Once the ship fell below the thicker, the land looked far more familiar. Sakajin could only guess how tall the cover lay from the ground, which seemed miniscule in comparison.

The trees themselves-or was there a more appropriate term for such enormous fauna-were spaced evenly enough that any number of features could yet run through the land, living off of the partially-filtered sunlight that fell upon it. Small rivers and streams, craigs and gentle hills-of which the trees seemed to grow through-and of course, as the ship grew closer, Sakajin saw the listening post itself.

Beyond what seemed to be a tactical placement in terms of both moon and environment shielding it from detection, there wasn't much to be impressed by.

There weren't any weapons that Sakajin could see, no gunships or cannons, no extraneous forms of combat or even the personnel to use them; as she and her master landed and quickly moved into the building, the apprentice quickly came to realize the few workers whom manned the post were only battle droids.

While the revalelation wasn't entirely surprising, given that it hasn't been the first time she's seen a droid-only post, it did cement the fact that the facility was no more than what she's already surmised as a listening post. It was hidden, equipped solely with the tools needed to observe enemy space to avoid any form of detection from wary eyes, and located beneath the natural cover of the moon's large and thick forest. A great tactical collection of variables, genius even when considering that the base could therefore operate with minimal requirements.

Genius, but terribly boring.

It had little in terms of amenities. Since the war-force of the Separatists didn't really have a living army that Sakajin was aware of, it meant that all the requirements of said standing, breathing army was unnecessary. No entertainment. No specific food services. Nothing. The post seemed as lifeless as the droids which manned it, built with no regard to the requirements or preferences of someone who was made of flesh and blood than durasteel and electricity.

Someone like Sakajin, of course.

The boredom was made all the worse almost immediately after they'd landed. In under an hour, Sakajin found herself trailing behind the shadows of both her master and one of the B1 units of the facility.

As they toured the halls, the droid seemed happy to spill an ocean of information which Grievous had interest in, but nothing that Sakajin could find enough context to even feign a sense of interest. It spoke with a level of knowledge and authority that gave the impression of importance or leadership, though it didn't much improve the fact that it yet spoke with the same monotone voice Sakajin was too familiar with from all the years of fixing and inspecting them.

As the words drawled on, Sakajin kept herself occupied with staring out the windows they passed in various hallways. The base, although small, seemed perfectly placed in the densest, most beautiful part of the never-ending forest. The treetops covered nearly everything in shadow, an oddly bright twilight that was otherwise supplemented by what little sunlight scattered through the leaves to hit the forest floor. It was far unlike the Black Halo, and even further unlike Coruscant.

And it looked so alive. How many months had it been since Sakajin had been planet-side? Years? Her mind bounced around with the question, trying desperately to stake a time when she'd felt soft soil beneath her feet as opposed to metal. Even the lack of sunlight filtering from the treetops seemed familiar and haunting in its own right; though it was a far cry from the ever-present twilight that fell upon her home planet, the Tarael woman felt some kinship in the shadows outside the base, so much easier on her eyes than even synthetic sunlight.

Slowly, Sakajin's mind drifted back to the conversation happening in front of her.

"...movement in the area of interest," the droid beeped to the general, who seemed less-than-pleased about the information. "Possibly indicating an attack to nearby planets recently taken into our control."

Grievous' impatient huff drew Sakajin's eyes and attention towards him, but only for a moment.

"Is there an estimate on their numbers?"

"No," the droid responded, either not noticing or not caring about the annoyance in Grievous' voice. "We suspect there might be something blocking more detailed observation."

"Something blocking it?"

Sakajin almost winced at the sudden, sharp tone of mocking in the general's voice. She'd been the victim of such a tone so many times that it was hard to not react, but the B1 unit merely tilted its head to the side and offered a reply.

"Either a nebula or other space-borne object, it's yet unclear. We will have to wait a few more days for the planet to cycle enough around its sun to get a better lo-"

The sound of metal clashing against metal was not surprising, but it did catch Sakajin's attention enough for her to catch the droid to fly across the hallway, landing in a sparking heap upon the floor. Grievous stood with his fist out, stilled from how he had lashed out and a growl spilling from deep in his chest.

"A few days," he snarled to himself. "I will not waste anymore of my time on this wretched moon then I already must."

He turned, and the motion makes Sakajin instinctively look up to meet his eyes.

"Go occupy yourself elsewhere, girl," the general pulls his arm back to his body, letting the cloak fall back around his shoulders before his form starts to continue down the hall in annoyed, heavy footfalls. "I have to locate a more competent droid so I can get Count Dooku the information he desires."

And with that, the tour had come to an abrupt end, leaving Sakajin blinking as her master's footsteps and growling faded off into the halls. It took her a few moments to fully filter through what had just happened, though it left her with no shortage of relief to finally have what little freedom came with being alone.

Especially since she still didn't have an answer for why she was with Grievous on the mission to begin with.

At first she had assumed it had been on an order from Count Dooku, though it made little sense for the woman to be there at all-what was there to gain from following the general like a lost puppy when she had little use or worth to the information gained by the post?

Besides, it wasn't even if she could use the free time to train; Grievous had yet to bestow a weapon to her outside of the training rooms, and he had even taken the one she elected to bring along when boarding the transport ship. With the possibility of combat taken out of the picture, it left Sakajin with more questions than answers at how she proved to be an asset instead of a hindrance-though, she wouldn't be surprised if the only reason she was dragged along was to be a familiar punching bag for the good general's insults.

Still, General Grievous didn't seem to be coming back to drag her behind him, so Sakajin figured that his words were truthful enough in that she could figure out how else to be bored out of her skull.

Oh, what wonders awaited her.

Once assured that Grievous had meant what he said, Sakajin turned to start looking for a new direction to wander-one perhaps with one less overtly-aggressive cyborg prowling around-though her thoughts came to a crashing halt when her eyes turned to find another B1 unit standing before her. It must have approached sometime while she was in her own thoughts, the clicking footsteps quiet enough that she simply hadn't noticed. Sakajin could already hear Grievous' chiding in the back of her head for being caught so easily off her guard-but she didn't have to dwell on them for long before the droid finally spoke.

"Shall I show you to your room?"

"M...my room?" Sakajin blinked in confusion, the words not quite making sense.

Still, the droid beeped in confirmation.

"Affirmative."

After a few moments to catch her breath, Sakajin merely nodded her head in silent agreement. The droid whirred around, leading her in the direction she had been ready to walk but a moment before-but this time with a defined, yet vaguely confused purpose.

It took a while to get to her temporary quarters, a while which was filled only with silence enough to let Sakajin's mind start wandering again.

Grievous had a rough personality. That was hardly a difficult fact to state, something akin to saying space was cold and Wookies covered in fur. Sakajin doubted that anyone could truly get along with him-tolerating seemed to be the most even she could ask for at times. Regardless, even while being rough and merciless, the general was not without some honor in how he did things; sparring was one such thing.

He certainly had a constant advantage over her in both skill and experience, but there was never a time that Sakajin recalled being attacked without first being equipped with a weapon to defend herself. Though most were crappy and she with little understanding of how to use them properly, they were weapons

So, the fact that Sakajin had no weapon nor any way to obtain one seemed logical enough to leave her nerves soothed and caution numbed. There were a few things she could trust when it came to General Grievous: his merciless nature, his intelligence, and his enigmatic creed of war and battle.

Well, in addition to him being a complete asshole.

When the droid leading Sakajin through the halls finally stopped, it gestured to a small door on one side of the hallway, marked only by a few alien letters that looked identical to some from several other doors she'd seen previously; it looked organic enough, though she couldn't place the language itself.

But it didn't much matter what it said. She stepped inside without further instruction while her eyes took in the humble, organized attempt at a bedroom prepared for her.

It obviously wasn't originally a room meant for someone to sleep in. Everything was metal, and there were several odd, sharp corners in the walls, leaving the room itself in a completely odd shape. The bed itself had a single pillow and a thin comforter, laid over an equally thin-looking mat on the floor.

Her room in the Black Halo was a little more homely because it had been lived-in. A few more trinkets, self-made shelves, and even a thin carpet she'd managed to get from an ambassador who held some shallow fondness for her at some point in years past, a short-lived fancy for her less-than-common species. He'd left all the same once negotiations between him and Count Dooku were finished aboard the ship, but Sakajin still enjoyed the bit of warmth that the gift came with.

While she was not one to complain of pleasant surprises, the presence of a room even vaguely resembling a place of comfort and seclusion seemed strange- she had expected the droid to lead her to something more akin to a broom closet.

Turning her gaze back upon the b1 unit who had led her, Sakajin asked, "Why would this station have a room like this when there is no biological crew manning it?"

The droid stared silently at her for a few moments. Then, it beeped, and tilted its head slightly to one side in a facsimile of confusion.

"This room was prepared upon your arrival."

Eyes narrowed, Sakajin's attention fell wholly upon the mech. She didn't even try to hide the confusion in her words as she spoke.

"Did Lord Dooku send word for it?"

The droid stared at her as best as it could, given that it didn't exactly have eyes to do so with-or a face, for that matter. Sakajin's eyes narrowed slightly in confusion as she asked again, "Who requested this for me in the first place?"

"The General asked for the accommodations himself," the droid finally beeped. "He was very explicit in having it ready when he was done being debriefed on current information of the facility."

As Sakajin was struck dumb and silent in the reply, the droid decided it was no longer needed and quickly left, footsteps a soft clicking against the floor. She could hear them echo down into the hallway after finally collecting enough sense to speak, but the weight of the confusion in her mind was heavy enough to keep her from chasing after-the droid likely had little to give as answers for the questions that whirled around her mind.

Grievous asked for the room? It seemed strange, especially since it seemed more characteristic of Count Dooku to think on her comfort in situations similar. As the closest thing the woman could call family-or even simply a benevolent employer-it was downright odd that the request of her comfort come from elsewhere, especially her master. All things considered, Sakajin had placed her assurance in having to fend for herself in terms of where to sleep.

Green eyes glanced back into the room, to the thin bed and blankets; the fact that the listening post had anything even remotely like a pillow or blanket was an utter wonder, and one that she was sure to spend plenty of time on if she had nothing better to do with it.

Luckily, the young woman had no plans on doing that.

There were still plenty of hours worth of daylight left on the moon before the sun would fade off into the horizon. She didn't intend to waste any of them being cooped up in a small, cramped room without anything to entertain her-if the silence of a short walk had twisted up her thoughts enough to consider the morals of her master, she didn't want to think what a full afternoon would do to her sanity.

Sakajin left the room to search for something more interesting; considering the scenery outside, she wondered if it was possible to walk outside for a bit. The mere idea of seeing an actual environment was enough to make her practically claw at the windows. She could see the forest outside, but didn't know the base's layout at all enough to know if there was a door or accessway that lead outside, though she knew with assurance that at least one had to exist-they'd entered through it, after all, though she couldn't recall the relative direction to travel to find it once more.

At first Sakajin wandered the halls, keeping to the outermost edge of the complex just so she could always see the windows over one shoulder. Eventually, as luck would have it, her wandering came to cross the path of another; a droid of the station, silently marching through the hallway. Sakajin quickly averted her course.

"B-1 Unit," she said, getting the droid's attention with her words and physical position alike as she stood before its pathway. "Is there any way out of the base?"

The droid tilted its head after a moment, comprehending her request to the complex AI system. "...Do you inquire about an exit?" It asked in turn.

Sakajin hummed, then finally said, "Yes. I'm hoping to see the forest around the base a bit better."

The droid processed her answer. For a few moments, she was afraid that it would state that she needed some permission from her master-a permission that she would not likely receive, especially given the temperament she'd last seen of him.

But it didn't, and she let out a silent sigh of relief as the droid pointed down one of the hallways leading in the direction she had a hunch on previously.

"...The southern bay is the closest approximate exit designed for biological and non-biological personnel to the perimeters. However, please take precautions of the wildlife and climate of the moon, as it can fall below the freezing temperature of water at night." If Sakajin didn't know any better, she almost would have thought it's answer was some sort of pre-recorded warning to anyone who wanted to venture out of the base's thick metal walls, though she could hardly figure out how that made sense (since the base was entirely run by droids)..

"I've been in worse," she muttered to herself, leaving the droid to continue on with whatever it's primary function was once more.

"Roger roger," it beeped in obedient understanding, then continued to walk in the path it had been going before Sakajin stopped it.

The apprentice didn't honestly care all that much about how cold it was outside; it could be freezing for all she cared. The opportunity to see a planet, an actual planet with trees and grass and everything green again, was a blessing she feared would never come again.

The exit was marked well. In fact, it actually looked like something fairly used. She had almost feared it would be hidden behind other locked doors requiring passwords or proper credentials to get past, like she might find on the Black Halo for some portions of the ship she wasn't allowed any access to.

But there it was, in plain sight, requiring only a scan of one of her eyes to open. She stood beside the door and leaned in enough for the scanner to get the image of one of her main eyes, since it was far easier to get an image of her iris. When it ran through the system without a hiccup, the door itself beeped, then opened without a hitch.

Sakajin practically ran out the door. The level of excitement that built up in her chest was beyond what her body was used to, a lack of experience in a situation she never even had a chance to be in before-she was actually on a planet. There was dirt, actual grass and dirt beneath her feet. And while it was cold, almost enough to cloud up her breath on every exhale, Sakajin could actually breathe clean, fresh air produced from the forest around her and the base.

It was more beautiful than any sunrise or sunset she'd seen on the Black Halo. But that was only the beginning, the first sensation of stepping out of the metal hull of the Ukiato moon base, where there was an entire forest surrounding it from every direction.

She didn't really have a sense of direction in where everything was. The way Sakajin saw it, the base itself had been situated in either a natural or artificially made circular clearing maybe a half-mile across at most. The base took up a lot of that space, leaving perhaps a dozen or so meters around the perimeter before the trees grew, depending on what entrance she emerged from.

It was easily within sprinting distance for the exuberant apprentice.

She dashed off in the direction of the thicket, plunging into the depths of a natural maze of plants-plants, of any sort, she couldn't recall sensing for years. Coruscant had barely a speck of green anywhere on the lower levels of the city where Sakajin had lived. What little did exist were almost always for decoration, and only in the richer, upper levels of the city.

The Black Halo had no plants anywhere. The air was chemically created by means she herself didn't know, and she got food packets produced specifically for her-there was no need for large, needy greenery on the ship-it required too much water, too much sunlight.

So that meant the last time she saw anything similar to the moon's forests was more than a decade prior on her home planet of Ev'ren.

Ev'ren. It reminded her so much of her home planet, though it was unknown if most of that familiarity came from the fact that the woman had few other experiences to compare it to. Still, something about the moon's forests felt a little like home to her, enough that she felt nothing short of elation filling her lungs with every breath.

The thick trees, the fresh air, the scent of flowers and freshness and life. It was a surge of nostalgia that she couldn't have prepared for, all leading up to her dashing through the thick underbrush of grass and foliage, touching every tree, every leaf, every inch of earthen ground beneath her feet before she found a small patch of flattened grass to toss herself upon.

Sakajin was perhaps half a mild from the base at the end of her joyous frolicking, the exact distance unclear and unimportant to her when compared to the joy and excitement filling her heart.

It felt good.

When she had finally caught her breath and thoughts again, Sakajin couldn't help but peer upwards into the top of the trees; though she knew well enough how tall they were, she still couldn't help but reach her hand out-they appeared close enough as if to touch, the perspective both large and small in the same breath.

In the moment, she was no longer an apprentice. No longer a mechanic. No longer Sakajin Aditu Takio.

She just was. She existed. She breathed in, breathed out. Experienced the ground beneath her body and the trees above her eyes, relishing in the beautiful sense of newness of the world around her. The uncertainty of it.

She often thrived on that very sense of uncertainty, as if her life was on a half-functioning ship lost between systems, in the murky darkness of space. She didn't know where she was going, she didn't know if she'd get there-but she did well enough to survive one day after another as best she could while she tried to find answers. The death of her father, the disappearance of her enigmatic mother, the lack of stability in Sakajin's life were moments of turbulence that she managed to fly through with her ship yet intact, even though some days she thought it was one breath away from falling apart.

She learned to enjoy what could be enjoyed, and worry only when the situation lay right in her face, covering every inch of her view. There was no middle ground for the apprentice; it was her coping mechanism for life.

And so far, that coping mechanism included a soft, gentle grassy bed beneath her, body laying with limbs spread out on the cool ground. Though the air held a chill, the ground was surprisingly warm, as if the planet itself had sucked all the heat out of the air itself. Every sense of Sakajin's body felt comfortably stimulated by the natural flora surrounding her.

There was the sweet smell of grass and trees, the subtle sound of leaves shifting on a breeze. Even the ground felt as though it was vibrating, barely, in something akin to a heartbeat. Perhaps if she pressed her fronds to the ground and concentrated enough, Sakajin could have felt the soft, subtle footsteps of animals around her. But instead, all she could focus on was her own heartbeat at that point, and how it seemed to interweave with the sounds of small birds calling and echoes of mammals far away.

Sunlight trickled faintly down from the thick forest canopy. It was just enough to keep everything lit, a twilight of warmth that rained down onto the grassy earth below, as if the streams of light were vines hanging from the heavens above. Several fell upon Sakajin's body as she lay in her small, grassy bed, just so that combined with the warmth of the ground itself, she felt happy and lethargic.

Nothing could take away the beauty of her experience right then and there. Nothing could steal the wonder that fluttered deep in her chest nor the nostalgia of being in a forest. It made her blood sing, half of her heritage being born from the green, grassy earth.

It was sad, actually.

She was millions upon millions of miles from her real home. She was across an entire galaxy, not even knowing where Ev'ren even was on a map. And yet, despite the fact that she had been forced away and left without knowing where her isolated planet even was, somehow, this random moon off the edge of Separatist-forsaken space felt like home.

It was sad that she was that desperate. Sakajin ignored the needle in the back of her mind, the haunting feeling of truth that she knew anyone would use to counter her euphoric feelings of joy. In all honesty, it wasn't as if she'd ever get a chance to see Ev'ren again. Not on her current path through the universe.

She sighed as the thought started to trickle from an unconscious to a conscious worry. Considering the situation, Sakajin often tried not to put labels on sides, nor morals to war. Good guys, bad guys; those were factions that existed in story books. The real world didn't have either of them, surely. They had people who opposed one another with different worldviews, and sometimes someone had more people on their side.

Sometimes Sakajin wondered if that was her way of ignoring the fact that she probably wouldn't ever call Grievous, nor Count Dooku, 'good guys'. Because if she couldn't call them that ...then what was she?

It had been so much easier as a mechanic; regardless of her ambiguous standing, she could simply point to someone else and say 'don't blame me, they told me to do it.' She had the luxury of being able to say 'I was just following orders.'

But she wasn't a mechanic anymore. She was an apprentice, a fighter-in-training. Whether she wanted to or not, Sakajin had staked a very active role in the conflict, forced to answer for her conscious decision to take Count Dooku's offer years before. She still didn't know if she made the right one. Her fate, had she remained on Coruscant, was hard to predict or guess at.

What if she had stayed on Coruscant? What if Count Dooku had simply passed her by on that crowded street-would she still be fed, still comfortable, still alive?

Maybe it was just because Sakajin never liked the idea of fighting other people. She didn't like the concept of conflict, nor the idea of taking someone's life. Sure, she had grown to enjoy the thrill of sparring with Grievous on some level, though she couldn't be sure how much of that enjoyment was unconsciously natural or forced purely by the fact that she had no choice in it.

She wouldn't know for a while. The apprentice wasn't even sure she would see combat, since rational thought had started to work it's way through her mind after taking in the initial shock of her occupation shift. Maybe he'd tire of her, find out that Sakajin just wasn't cut out in life to do anything more than examen droids and turn wrenches.

Oh, she could only hope.

She stared up at the sky, green eyes unblinking, and thoughts sluggishly shifting from one thing to the next. For a while, her mind was peaceful and silent, the only thing there being the nagging reminder that she should head back to the base. It was a smart move. She didn't know much about the wildlife, the climate, nor anything else; but Sakajin wanted to be selfish. She wanted to be greedy. She wanted to lay out in the grassy little clearing for as long as she wanted and feel the same sort of freedom she had only felt on Coruscant. Go where you please, do what you want, make your own way.

A feeling started to bloom in her mind. It wasn't really a thought, it didn't come with words or images; it was just a feeling. A feeling of dread and worry, and it came on so suddenly that Sakajin didn't know what to make of it, the emotions hitting her chest like a weight she couldn't shake off.

At first, she thought it was guilt from her decision to be selfish, consciously and actively. But it was too strong, too...deep. It settled inside of her mind like a rock, unmoving as she tried to figure out where it had come from. Dread, tinged with fear. Suddenly, she thought she could hear a sound. It was a sharp, loud alarm, so fast that it felt as if it had been a blip in her own mind, but strong enough to make her body shake, as if snapped clean out of a deep sleep.

When Sakajin sat up to listen, unsurprisingly, she heard nothing at all. No alarm. it was only an echo in her head. But the apprentice could have sworn she had heard it. But then, shortly after, the sharp feeling of dread and worry started to fade, and soon did her confusion with the sound of an alarm somewhere echoing through the forest.

In the end, she chalked it up to her own constant worry. Anxiety fueled by years of fear, making her paranoid to even the slightest sounds that could be perceived otherwise. It gave her even more of a reason to stay out of the base, enjoy herself and bask in the warmth of the sun and ground. When was the last time Sakajin had time to relax like that?

In the end, Sakajin didn't know how long she was laying there in the forest. At some point, she knew she had fallen asleep, because when her thoughts finally came too again, the light from above had dimmed considerably. There was still light in the sky, from what her eyes could tell, but it was fading rapidly.

She was starting to get back onto her feet when her sleep-dulled senses started to hear it. The sharp, consistent, blaring noises. It echoed through the forest like a knife, cutting through as a sound so entirely artificial, it put Sakajin on an instant high-alert. Her fronds pricked and her eyes widened as she realized that the noise, the alarm was coming from the base.

The direction back wasn't clear at first; if the woman hadn't been panicking so much, she could have found the path quicker, noting the slightly visible shape of her footsteps in the grass leading in the direction she'd came. But Sakajin wasn't calm. Her thoughts were going haywire. How long had the alarms been going off? What were they going off for?

Sakajin had only endured the similar sound once in her life aboard the Black Halo. It had been a simple drill, one of the few since the ship itself had been so new. All it consisted off was her taking off down the hall from her quarters and meeting in a designated area, being told that her time was good, and then resuming life as normally as she could.

But that noise wasn't a drill. Of course, it could have been, it could have been something to test the system, or it could have been something else, Sakajin didn't know. But it send her heart racing nevertheless, and she didn't want to be wrong if it was serious.

After a few minutes of mindless pacing and useless glancing through thicket, the apprentice found her way back to the base. She emerged from the thicket of tall grass and fauna to find chaos.

Not destructive chaos. There wasn't any smoke, the base wasn't blown open, and there weren't battle droids stampeding across every inch of open land like a hoard moving towards an enemy. Instead, the chaos was in the sky-or what of it she could see beyond the thick treetops.

Republic dropships, at least half a dozen of them. The colors and shapes all matched what she'd seen in archives aboard the Black Halo, and with the realization came a distinct spark of fear that hummed deep and hollow in her chest. Sakajin turned her eyes back towards the facility, mind already running on a prayer that she wouldn't see a sight she already feared for.

The very ship that she had arrived in with Grievous was no longer docked. Even as her eyes turned upwards towards the blanket of dark emerald leaves, she could not make out the shape of what would have been her only salvation and escape.

The base was under attack, and the alarms had been going off for an untold number of minutes, loud and blaring and painful even from the distance Sakajin had from the facility itself. There's no telling what had happened in the time she'd been sleeping, stupidly dozing off when she should have been vigilant-and now she was paying the price for it.

Panic grew within her, a cold net that suffocated every thought from her mind until only questions remained in the place of logic. When did her master leave? Did he look for her first, or did he escape at the first sign of enemy forces? Were these the very soldiers that the droid had been talking about not even hours before,the information that Sakajin had been so happy to ignore?

What would she do now?

Sakajin didn't know.

She was by herself. She was, probably by the fault of her own, left abandoned while the Republic forces overtook the pitifully defenseless base without so much as a shoot of a blaster. There were some B1 units within, yes, but not nearly enough to make a push against what would be several dropships worth of clone troopers.

There was no time to feel angry or frustrated. No time to think. The ships were getting closer, their floodlights falling over the base and searching for opposition. They'd be overrunning the facility in less than a few minutes.

No time to think.

Left to instinct and what little training she had, Sakajin did what any level-headed young woman would do while her base was being overrun by the enemy:

She ran straight for the nearest entrance into the facility.

Honestly, logic only came as part of hindsight for the woman, having such little combat experience. The once-idyllic beauty of a forest that had welcomed her with open arms suddenly seemed as terrifying as the Republic forces themselves. It was dark, and getting cold, so much so that she could see each puff of her breath-and she had a feeling it would only get colder as the filtered sunlight continued to die away. With all things accounted for, Sakajin had a better chance of surviving a night if she was able to find a little closet to hide in.

She didn't have a weapon. She barely knew her way around the base itself without any aid, and she was without her master. Though in any other circumstances the lack of him would have been a relief, Sakajin felt anxious and unknown of what would happen to her, without his knowledge and experience to at the very least lead her into safety.

Panic didn't help her think all that rationally. Sakajin peered from left to right, sprinting down the hallway, searching for the most nondescript room that came into her vision first. She went deeper into the complex of metal halls, no longer able to see the windows that had let her gaze longingly towards the forest only a few hours before. Now, the outside seemed like a deathtrap, and her only hope of being able to get through a night undetected was as deep in the heart of the base as she could get.

There was a door that she missed her first time past a hallway. It was just past a corner, almost unnoticeable unless someone doubled back around and stared at the wall for a while. She debated the choice for a few moments, but when the echoing sounds of voices started to whisper down the hallways, the (ex?) apprentice decided that she didn't have the luxury of time to decide anymore. She punched in the same code she recalled seeing when the battle droid had opened her makeshift room several hours previously.

Nothing.

She punched it again, just to make sure, and still nothing.

The voices started to get a little louder, a bit clearer. She could start to pick up specific words vibrating on the air, harsh sounds and orders that only meant they were coming her way.

"Red Team 2, down south."

"Copy that Red Leader. Blue Team 1 is east."

"Looks like they left in a hurry."

"Stupid clankers don't even know how to hold down a base."

Sakajin didn't hang around the hallway for much longer.

Tears started to well up in her eyes as the terror became more than what she was able to handle. She was going to die. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that she was going to die, and it would be all her own fault. Her selfishness effectively killed her. If she had only been in the base when the alarm went off, only known what was going on, maybe she would have been on one of those ships and-

"Did you say the radar catch somethin', Scrap?"

"Yeah. Not droid."

Louder voices. Actually, from what Sakajin could tell, she was starting to run into a new set of voices. She was caught smack between two groups, and they both were coming her way, barring her in a hallway with no chance of escape.

The woman was about ready to shake and fall to her knees, maybe on the possibility that her emotional breakdown of fear might keep them from shooting on-sight, but when she pressed her back to the wall and felt a door, she was whipping around and trying every effort to make it open before she could take in another breath.

One random string of numbers, then another, over and over again as the voices got closer.

"Think they leave someone behind?"

"Maybe. Captive?" "Why the hell would they have a captive on this base? C'mon, think a little bit with that head a' yours." They were getting closer.

Sakajin's heart was beating so fast that it was almost as if she couldn't hear the singular beats anymore; it was just a constant hum of noise rushing in her head, making her fingertips fumble as she finally got the door to accept an unknown code and open before practically tossing herself inside and shutting it behind her.

The room was small. Supply, perhaps, stacked with boxes and shelves of items that would have otherwise proven useless to her if she wasn't so desperate to hide behind something. Without much thought and working mostly on instinct at that point, the woman moved into the farthest corner of the room from the door, easily maneuvering around the darkened space after closing her main eyes and letting her secondary set, more easily attuned to darkness and heat, helped her enough to keep from tripping over anything. Though weak from a lack of use and reliance, it was enough to help the woman squeeze herself into a far corner of the room-a supply closet of some sort-surrounded by old metal bits and pieces of parts likely used somewhere in the facility.

It wasn't a fancy hiding spot. For the most part, Sakajin was hidden only by the shelves and a few boxes that were placed just right to block her from site from the doorway. She curled up tight, arms wrapped around her legs, her tail wrapped around her body, and her fronds pressed so tightly to the sides of her head that it even muffled what little she could hear.

At first, there was silence. Cold, dark silence. But it didn't last for very long; soon enough, the voices started getting close enough that she could start hearing their low rumbling even through the metal door. Not words, just voices.

The fear started to well up again, suffocating the woman as she clutched her legs and willed for the child-like fear to go away, because apparently Sakajin's only response to the possibility of being caught was to start crying. The tears felt heavy and hot as they rolled down her cheeks, stinging her eyes and skin and making everything hurt even more. She didn't want to die, oh god, she didn't want to die.

The first time ever she was technically in a combat situation, and the apprentice was bawling her eyes out like a youngling.

What a wonderful first experience. Her mother would be so proud.

Her crying, her hiccuping, all of it stopped when a noise broke through the stagnant air.

The door opened. At that point, Sakajin didn't know if she was supposed to chastise herself for not locking it behind her. She had been too afraid, too saturated in her own self-pity of the situation that something so obvious didn't actually come to her as obvious.

"I swear I heard somethin' in here," came a low, softly static-y voice from the doorway. A voice filtered through the com of a helmet. The accompanying heavy footsteps that the light, metallic clinking told Sakajin that he was armed and armored, though it wasn't as if that was ever in any doubt. The owner of the voice started to approach the opposite end of the room, stepping around the boxes and shelves.

"Could it just have been you?" Someone asked from the doorway. He huffed, then whispered, probably low enough so the soldier in the room couldn't hear, "I think he's gettin' a little paranoid with the promotion."

"You still can't call me deaf though," The searching voice replied tersely. "I'm blind in one eye, but I'm not deaf."

That seemed plenty enough to shut up everyone else. Sakajin held her breath, caring less for the banter than she did about where the man was going inside the room. Apparently, he had searched enough of one side of the room, and she could feel and hear his footsteps coming towards her side. It left her to make a decision.

She would either stay there and cower, or jump out and act like a hero, maybe even have a chance to defend herself to take one of them down with the weight of her body before….

Well. Her options were obvious. So what did she do?

She cowered. Sakajin was overwhelmed with emotions she never expected to get before-the fear alone was enough to paralyze her. She had training to fight, and the willpower to do so. But she had always been given a weapon, and had always had someone else to look at for orders. What a hypocrite she was; ready to stand firm under the scrutiny of Grievous, but ready to curl up when confronted by the enemy for the first time. She was a joke.

She was on an alien world, on an alien base, left abandoned to her own decisions that were already looking out to be pretty shitty.

Sakajin waited to get shot. She waited for death, fear petrifying her from looking up until the lack of a blaster shot to the head was instead substituted with the voice.

"Blue Team Leader, I got someone."

"Friendly?"

"Unknown."

With an obvious shaking in her movement, Sakajin pulled her head up. There was a light, bright and blinding, shining into her face. She covered it up by raising her hand, though it did little to help her see who was behind the light. God, the shadow looked tall from her vantage point. She didn't speak, didn't whimper, and (thankfully) didn't start pleading for her life. At least she could keep that much dignity. But the woman was still shaking, her tear streaks wet on her face, fear making her heart flutter like a bird in her chest.

Alone. Going to die. Trapped by the enemy. A complete shame to herself and her family name.

The silence between her and the unknown voice was finally broken when it-a man-finally spoke to her.

"Identify yourself," He commanded in a light, low voice, stepping closer to her with the light still blinding all of Sakajin's eyes. "Who are you?"

Heart hammering, mind whirling, breath cold.

What was Sakajin's response?

She fainted.