Chapter 35

Sabine POV

On the rebel base of Yavin 4, Sabine was painting in her room aboard the Ghost when suddenly she heard a number of loud bangs coming from across the hall, and then she heard Zeb's voice let out a yell before he was cut off by a sudden thump. She then heard him yelling, "That's it! I'm done with this! Just wait until I get my hands on you, because you're going to be-"

At that, Sabine cut him off by opening her door to find Zeb laying on the ground in the hall, tightly restrained by three whipcord lines and struggling to break free of his bonds. He looked up when he heard Sabine's door open and said, "Sabine! Help me out of this! I need to teach that new guy what happens when you mess with me!"

Trying to hold back a smile, Sabine just crossed her arms over her chest and called out, "Ezra!"

The door of Ezra and Zeb's room opened and Ezra leaned out the doorway, wearing only his flight suit and the lower half of his armor. Acting like there wasn't a rage-filled Lasat between them, Ezra just asked innocently, "Yes, beautiful?"

"Why is Zeb tied up outside your room?" she asked her boyfriend with a gesture towards Zeb.

Just then, the door to the cockpit opened, and Kanan, Hera, and Chopper came out of it. Hera gasped upon seeing Zeb bound on the floor and firmly ordered, "Ezra! Release him!"

"Yeah, let me go, and I'll pound you to a pulp!" Zeb encouraged him.

Hera glared at him and said, "Zeb, you're not helping! Now, Ezra, let him go, and Zeb, don't attack him. I want to hear what happened."

Ezra sighed and pressed a button on his belt, which loosened the auto-tightening cords holding Zeb. As soon as he was free, Zeb pulled the cords off of himself and stood up tall, leaning over Ezra and growling, "So, you think you're some tough guy, huh? How about we go a few rounds outside?"

"Zeb, enough!" Hera ordered. Zeb growled once more at Ezra, then stepped away from him, and Hera sighed before she said, "Alright, what happened?"

"The new guy jumped me in my sleep!" Zeb said. "I was just taking a nap when suddenly he tied me up and dragged me out into the hall!"

"What did you expect me to do?" Ezra questioned. "You snore like a rancor! I was trying to sleep as well, but it's impossible to fall asleep with this Lasat in the same room!"

Chopper said something in Binary, and Ezra argued, "No one cares if you can do it, Chopper. You're a droid! You can easily deactivate yourself anytime. But us organics have a little something called minds, and mine is ringing from Zeb's attack on my ears!"

Sabine shrugged and innocently suggested, "Well… Ezra could always sleep in my-"

"Absolutely not," Kanan cut her off. "Ezra tends to get… distracted by you. I doubt either of you would be getting any proper sleep, and we need you at peak performance, especially with Ezra's training still going on."

"No offense, Kanan, but that doesn't exactly check out," Ezra defended. "Me and Sabine have slept together one time, and I don't know that I've ever slept better."

"That's because I exhausted you with training to the brink of collapse," Kanan said.

"The decision that you two sleep separate stands," Hera said with finality. She then pointed between Ezra and Zeb and said, "And I would like to have these two sleep separate as well, but we don't have another bed here. And I don't want to send Ezra to his own ship. We're all a crew now, meaning we need to learn how to work together. Meaning Ezra and Zeb, you two need some alone time. I'm sending you both on a mission."

"With him?" both Ezra and Zeb protested with a gesture to one another.

"With each other," Hera answered. "Now, Yavin 4 only has so much variation in plant life, especially fruits, but I've had a hankering for a meiloorun fruit lately. So take the Phantom II and go to the most recent trade outpost recorded in its navicomputer, and don't come back without at least one meiloorun fruit. Got it?"

"This doesn't exactly sound like a particularly rebellious mission," Ezra grumbled to himself.

"I said got it?" Hera repeated more dangerously.

Both Ezra and Zeb sighed and said, "Yes, Hera."

Zeb began to walk dejectedly towards the Phantom II's dock and Ezra turned back into his room and collected his other armor pieces, then came back out and gave Sabine a kiss on the cheek before walking after Zeb and donning his helmet.

Kanan, Hera, and Chopper walked back into the cockpit, both Kanan and Hera shaking their heads and Chopper just laughing at Ezra and Zeb's misfortune.

After they were gone, Sabine walked across the hall and looked around at Ezra and Zeb's room. The walls were completely stark and clean, hardly a spot on them. She thought it looked horrible. Smiling to herself, she said, "Hmm. It needs a little something."

Line Break

Ezra POV

After the Phantom II landed on a trade station in the Lah'mu system, a small moon outpost called Faxro Station, Ezra immediately got off the ship, closely followed by Zeb, and spun around to tell him, "Look, let's just find the meiloorun and get out of here, alright? I don't want to be here any longer than I have to."

Zeb scowled at him and said, "Don't worry, new guy. I won't be the one to hold us up. I want this over with as much as you do."

Zeb shoved past him and walked into the trade complex, and Ezra quickly ran to catch up with him, asking, "Are you seriously gonna give me grief about being new to the crew? I've practically been one of you for seven years by now. I know you all better than you know yourselves."

Zeb just scoffed and said, "Oh, really?"

"Captain Garazeb Orrelios," Ezra began to recite. "Captain of the Royal High Honor Guard on Lasan until an Imperial invasion-"

"You think that because you know my history, you know me?" Zeb cut him off.

Ezra began to say that he did, but then he recalled his experience with Sabine. For everything he'd known about her before they met, he hadn't known her.

Zeb saw his hesitation and chuckled, saying, "Yeah, that's what I thought."

The Lasat walked on, still scanning the station for meilooruns, and Ezra sighed before saying, "Hera wouldn't make it that easy, big guy. She wanted us to spend time together, and she'll have visited this station who knows how many times. She would've known that meilooruns aren't easy to find out here, which is why she sent us on a wild goose chase. Honestly, with how big your species' muscles are, I sometimes forget that your brains are so much smaller."

Zeb growled at him and placed one giant hand on Ezra's helmeted head before pushing him, causing him to stumble back and collide with a crate, knocking the lid off. Ezra glared back at the Lasat and placed his hands on his pistols in apprehension for a fight, but then Zeb's shocked expression at something over his shoulder caused him to look behind himself.

When Ezra turned, he saw what Zeb had seen. Inside the crate that Ezra had just knocked the lid off of were piles of the very fruit they were looking for. "Meilooruns!" both Ezra and Zeb exclaimed at the same time.

Turning to the Rodian booth owner next to the crate of meilooruns, Zeb asked, "How much for the whole crate?"

"I'm sorry, but those are already sold," the Rodian responded apologetically.

"To whom?" Ezra asked, his famous armor immediately drawing an intimidated reaction from the Rodian. "Maybe we could buy one from-"

Just then, he was cut off by the sound of the crate's metal lid slamming down behind him, and both he and Zeb turned to see a stormtrooper picking up the crate and carrying it away.

"From the Empire?" the Rodian scoffed, returning to his work. "Good luck!"

Zeb scowled and asked, "Since when has the Empire been on Faxro? We'll have to tell Hera. The Rebellion's gonna have to find a new place to get their supplies for the base."

Ezra looked up into the sky, where a single Imperial Gozanti cruiser floated above the city, with two TIE Fighters docked beneath the wings. If he had to guess, the other two Fighters that the cruiser could carry were probably on a patrol right now.

Tilting his head to look back at Zeb, Ezra said, "Or… maybe we could clean the Imperials out of here."

Zeb looked up towards the Gozanti cruiser and his face and ears fell in worry, then he looked angrily back at Ezra and said, "No, no way! I've heard about your obsession with hijacking Imperial vehicles, but guess what, new guy? This time, you don't have an army to do it with. No droid to drive that thing! All you've got is me!"

"I'll make do with destroying it instead of taking it, and I think you'll be more than enough help for that task," Ezra responded.

Zeb looked back up, still seeming hesitant, and Ezra prompted, "Come on, big guy. For the Rebellion? Besides, you can't tell me that you haven't wondered what it would be like to hit such a big target as this."

Zeb stayed silent for a moment longer, then sighed and said, "All right. But if I die in the effort, I'll kill you, understand?"

Ezra smirked and said, "Understood, Captain Orrelios."

"So, how are we going to get up there?" Zeb asked. "Are you gonna carry me up there?"

Ezra shook his head and began to drag Zeb down the street, saying, "Nope. No jetpacks. I'm gonna teach you how to fly, big guy."

Line Break

"I think I'd prefer to use the jetpack!" Zeb yelled over the wind as he and Ezra stood on top of the tallest building on Faxro Station, so tall that it was above the flight zone where the Gozanti cruiser currently was, though it was blocked from their view by the clouds.

Ezra just yelled back, "You are!"

Zeb looked at his back, where Ezra had taped his jetpack onto him, and said, "This isn't exactly what I meant. I meant that I would've preferred to just fly right onto the cruiser from the ground. Not jumping onto it from up here!"

Ezra shrugged and said, "My jetpack can barely carry two people at a time. I don't want to see what happens when I try carrying myself and someone of your size at once."

"How am I supposed to activate this thing before I go splat?" Zeb asked.

Ezra pointed to his vambrace and answered, "You won't have to! I'll have remote control, and I'll activate it before you hit the hull."

Zeb huffed and said, "So all I have to do is jump off a building and put my life in your hands. Terrific."

"Hey, at least you have a jetpack," Ezra argued. "I'm the one about to jump off without one."

Zeb just shook his head and grumbled, "You Mandalorians really are all crazy. Fine. Just do it."

Ezra nodded and took a few steps back to stand behind Zeb. He closed his eyes, drawing on the Force, and soon sensed that the cruiser was beneath them. Opening his eyes again, he thrust out a hand and used the Force to push Zeb off of the building, then ran forward to jump after him.

Beneath him, Zeb was spread-eagled in the air, flailing and yelling, and Ezra tucked himself in to fly right past him like an arrow. Even for a Mandalorian, this kind of stunt was absolutely insane, whether you had a jetpack or not. Luckily, though, Ezra was more than just a Mandalorian. He passed through the clouds and saw the cruiser floating by beneath them, and he tucked his limbs in even further to speed towards the surface.

Right before he hit the hull, he flipped in midair and used the Force to cushion his landing. He landed on the surface hard, somewhat jarring his legs, but it was still pretty good considering that the fall should've killed him. He immediately spun back around and looked into the air, holding one finger above a button on his vambrace. As soon as he saw Zeb pass through the clouds, he activated the jetpack.

Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to compensate for Zeb's current positioning, and he began to fly sideways rather than slowing to a hover. He flew towards the edge of the cruiser, trying to change his position to be more upright, but his weight continued to make him fall towards the edge.

Desperately, Ezra jumped towards the edge and held put a hand right before Zeb would've fallen off, and the large Lasat tensed in apprehension as he slowed to a stop in midair. His jetpack deactivated, but he remained frozen in the air, slowly floating back over to land on the top of the hull of the Gozanti.

Once Zeb was safe, Ezra ran over and kneeled next to him, asking, "Captain Orrelios! Are you alright?"

Zeb took a few deep breaths and responded, "Yeah, I- I'm alright. That was a close one. Thanks for the save, new guy. I owe you one."

Ezra smiled and stood back up before offering Zeb his hand, saying, "Call me Ezra."

Zeb looked at his hand for a moment before accepting it, allowing Ezra to pull him to his feet, and responded, "Call me Zeb."

He laid one of his large hands on Ezra's shoulder and looked down at the cruiser beneath them, saying, "Well, I've got to hand it to you, Ezra. This was a pretty good plan."

"We're not done yet," Ezra responded as he extended the blade from his right vambrace to cut the tape off of Zeb and take his jetpack back before attaching it to his own back. He drew his lightsaber hilt from his belt and told Zeb, "If you're up for phase two, AKA 'the fun part', then follow my lead."

He then ran towards the front of the vehicle and jumped off, falling only a few yards before he activated his jetpack to stop himself in front of the Gozanti's viewport. Not giving the Imperials a moment to react, he slashed the glass and used the Force to pull the window out, just as he had done with the Chimaera.

However, this time, they were not in the vacuum of space, and so the Imperials inside were not sucked out as soon as the viewport was compromised. Luckily, the bridge of the cruiser was mostly manned by officers rather than soldiers, but Ezra still had to block incoming fire from the officers wielding pistols, and more stormtroopers were rushing onto the bridge to assist them with every passing moment.

Knowing that he could soon be overwhelmed by their numbers, Ezra held up his free hand and charged up a blast of compressed Force energy in his palm, then pushed it into the bridge. All of the Imperials were thrown off of their feet, but he couldn't count on them staying down for long.

Suddenly, he was broken from his thoughts by the sound of familiar yelling right above him, and he looked up just in time to see Zeb about to collide with him. He just barely managed to catch the big guy as he fell and flipped them both around before launching them into the bridge through the broken viewport.

As they hit the ground, Zeb rolled and knocked down two stormtroopers as they were trying to climb back to their feet. Zeb clutched his head as he tried to stand back up, but then he glared over as he noticed Ezra chuckling. "What are you laughing at?" he asked.

Ezra just looked back up at him and said, "You jumped off of the cruiser? You just jumped off the ship, hundreds of meters in the air, without even hesitating. And you call us Mandalorians crazy."

Zeb stood up and grabbed two more Imperials that were trying to get back to their feet before lifting them bodily off the ground and slamming their heads together, knocking them unconscious. He then drew his bo-rifle from his back and said, "Yeah, well… I figured, if you got us up here, I was willing to follow you a bit further without asking any questions."

Hearing a small noise behind himself, Ezra drew a pistol from his hip with his free hand and spun around to shoot an Imperial officer in the chest as he tried to draw his weapon. He then addressed Zeb again as he said, "I appreciate your faith in me. But technically, I got us up much higher than this, then got us down here."

Zeb just rolled his eyes and said, "Well, way to ruin the moment. Now, can we deal with this thing and get out of here?"

Letting his actions answer for him, Ezra went over to the cruiser's control panel and activated the engines, trying to fly the ship away from the outpost before they brought it down. He couldn't steer this thing without a droid or a crew of a few hundred, but he could make it go straight just fine.

While he worked, he could hear the yells and screams of Imperials as Zeb blasted them with his rifle or ragdolled them with his great strength behind him.

Finally, once their trajectory was set, Ezra turned back to face Zeb just in time to dodge a flying stormtrooper body, which landed on the console next to him and caused it to spark beneath him. The stormtrooper lifted his head and groaned, and Ezra relieved him of his pain by shooting him in the head, then turned his head to Zeb and yelled out, "Alright, we're clear! Phase three!"

Zeb immediately swung his bo-rifle around, knocking down three last Imperials with a yell, then turned to catch a bag full of thermal detonators that Ezra tossed him. Ezra then dived out of the open viewport, leaving Zeb behind, and flew down beneath the cruiser to grapple onto the ventral surface of one of the wings, next to the two docked TIE Fighters.

He threw a remote detonator onto one of them, then used his lightsaber to cut the docking clamps off of the other one. The Fighter detached from the cruiser and began to fall towards the ground, and Ezra climbed around the central pod to pull himself inside of it.

While still in midair, he managed to turn it on and take the controls before flying it back up towards the cruiser, removing his helmet as he regained height. Now that he had this Fighter secured, he pressed a button on his vambrace to activate the explosive on the other Fighter. The explosion of the other TIE rocked the cruiser, which would serve as Zeb's cue to leave.

He opened the top hatch as he flew underneath the front of the flaming cruiser, and he slowed down his approach just enough to perfectly catch Zeb as he dove out of the viewport. "Punch it!" Zeb yelled as soon as he was inside, and Ezra pushed the controls forward to launch the TIE forward.

Once he'd determined that they were out of range, Zeb held up a small detonation switch in his hand and pressed the button, and Ezra turned the Fighter around so that they could see the explosions that went off inside the Gozanti before it began to lose altitude.

"I do so enjoy watching the Empire's stuff burn," Zeb said. "You know, Sabine would've loved this."

Ezra shrugged and said, "I prefer to hijack them rather than destroy them when possible. I'm trying to teach Savine to do the same."

"I don't know about that. We probably could've stolen this one if we really tried," Zeb said.

Ezra smirked and responded, "Well… Maybe Sabine is rubbing off on me a bit more than I realized, because I am perfectly fine with destroying that thing."

He turned the Fighter back around to leave the scene of the wreckage, and Zeb said, "Well, mission accomplished, right? We actually managed it. We wiped all Imperials out of this sector, and now the Rebellion can keep safely using this outpost for supplies."

Ezra was about to agree when his trained ears suddenly picked up several familiar howling sounds accompanying that of their own ship. Looking at their scanners, he saw two bogeys approaching them at high speed. "Not all of the Imperials," Ezra corrected Zeb, then stood up and ordered, "Take the controls."

Zeb quickly lunged forward to take the controls of the TIE from Ezra before they could start dipping and asked, "Wait, what? What's going-"

"The last two TIEs that weren't with the cruiser," Ezra explained quickly as he pulled his helmet back on. "They probably think that we're survivors of the cruiser's little 'accident,' but they'll start firing at us soon enough. I'm gonna shoot first."

And with that, he opened the hatch on their TIE's pod and rocketed out of the top of the vehicle, then deactivated his jets to fall back as the two pursuing TIEs flew past on either side of him. As they passed, he shot his grappling line to attach to the side of one of them, then dragged himself in to press his body against the bottom of it.

Unfortunately for him, that was the moment that the other TIE decided to lag behind just slightly, and the Fighter that Ezra was on turned in the air to show its ventral side to the other Imperial pilot. Ezra looked back and saw the other pilot do a double-take when he saw a colorful Mandalorian pressed against his wingman's underbelly, and Ezra just waved back at him.

The second pilot fell even further behind and took careful aim, then fired at Ezra repeatedly. Unfortunately for him, his unwillingness to possibly hit his wingman's ship meant that his shots never came very close to hitting Ezra, but that wasn't good enough for Ezra. He wanted the second pilot to hit the first one's ship.

Suddenly, the ship beneath Ezra rose higher into the air and began to spin around quickly, trying to throw him off. Not able to hold on but not willing to let go without some sort of victory, Ezra released his grappling line and fell behind the ship, but fired a small electric dart from his vambrace instead, which hit one of the engines on the Fighter and caused it to spark and began smoking as it lost power. The second engine, still firing at full thrust, began to make the ship spin around in circles, dangerously high in the air for such an issue, but Ezra was too occupied to watch its now-inevitable destruction.

The second Fighter flew up behind him, and Ezra had to use his jetpack to get out of the way of it before it crashed into him. After it had passed him and began to make a wide turn around for another pass, Ezra glared over at it and readied his jetpack's rocket launcher, prepared to finally use it after so long. The TIE flew back towards him at full speed, blasting its dual cannons repeatedly, and Ezra flew between each blast, approaching it just as fast, and was just about to fire his rocket when suddenly the Fighter was hit by a large green blast from the side, causing it to explode, and then Zeb flew their own TIE down through the fire to hover in front of him.

Cooling down his rocket launcher, Ezra yelled to him, "I had that under control!"

Zeb's voice responded over the TIE's speakers, saying, "I believe what you meant to say was 'Thank you', but I'll take it. Now, get in here."

Despite his unhappiness at not getting to use his rockets, Ezra nevertheless flew over and dropped into the cockpit of the TIE, which Zeb then began to fly back towards Faxro Station.

They flew in silence for a few minutes, and then Ezra had an idea. Turning to face Zeb, he said, "Hey, Zeb. Remember that crate of meilooruns we saw earlier? How easily do you think we could find it with a TIE Fighter on hand?"

Line Break

Back on Yavin 4 a few hours later, Ezra stood with his arms crossed facing Kanan and Hera as Zeb dropped a big crate of meilooruns on the ground between them.

"Easy enough mission," Ezra told them innocently. "Only took us… like, two minutes after arriving at Faxro to find some meilooruns."

"Really?" Hera asked disbelievingly. "Then why did you guys spend at least a few hours at the station itself?"

Ezra and Zeb shared a look, then Zeb awkwardly answered, "Finding them was easy. Acquiring them… got a bit more complicated. We had to get them from someone else who'd already bought them, and that was just a big deal, but we worked it all out."

Kanan looked back and forth between them, no doubt trying to sense lies from them, but then he just shrugged at Hera, who sighed in defeat and said, "Alright. Well, good job, you two. You accomplished your mission. And I hope you learned how to get along while you were away, at least well enough to share a room without trying to kill each other."

Ezra elbowed Zeb in a joking way and gave him a smile as he said, "Oh, I think we'll manage."

Zeb chuckled and punched him on the shoulder, knocking him forward with a grunt, then began to run further into the ship, with Ezra chasing right behind him, determined to tag him back, all in the spirit of the game.

They squared up right outside their own room, both smirking as they held up their fists, and once Ezra's back was to the door, Zeb tackled him and pushed him against it. Ezra broke free of his grip and tried to push him back, but the Lasat's strength was far greater, and Zeb managed to keep him held in place, and suddenly the door fell out from behind Ezra's back, causing him to fall onto the floor inside their room.

Hitting the ground wasn't fun, but what was worse was the next part, when Zeb's heavy body landed on top of his own, causing Ezra to heave forward as the air was knocked out of him. "Oh. Sorry, Ezra," Zeb said as he crawled off of him.

Ezra sat up and rubbed his ribs as he said, "Don't worry, Zeb. It's fine."

He then looked to the side and up at the wall, then froze as he saw the newest addition to their room. Standing in the room with them was Sabine, and she was just finishing packing up her painting tools as she finished her latest project. Seeing both Ezra and Zeb looking at her new work, Sabine said, "Hey, boys. What do you think of your new wall decoration?"

They were both speechless for a moment as they stared at it. On the left wall of their room, Sabine had painted a large image of what clearly a cartoon version of Zeb, tied up in black cords on the ground and yelling in rage. On top of him was a sleeping version of Ezra, who was just a bundle of blankets on top of Zeb with his sleeping face and a large, snoring mouth coming out the top and little "Z"s floating up from his face.

Looking distraught, Zeb complained, "I look like a fool." Equally upset, Ezra said, "We both do!"

Sabine just smiled at them and said, "I paint what I see!" She began to walk out, taking her art supplies with her, and leaned over to kiss Ezra on the cheek as she went. "Sleep good tonight, Ez'ika. I hope you had a great day."

And with that, she walked out of the room, leaving the two new friends frozen in dismay as they looked at Sabine's newest addition to her list of masterpieces.

A/N: Mostly Ezra's POV, I know, but I hope you all enjoyed it anyway! I'm sure you all probably caught on, but this was my story's version of the Season 1 episode entitled "Fighter Flight". I loved that episode, and I felt that I needed to establish a friendship between Ezra and Zeb, so here it is, kind of separate from the other events in this story so far. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!