Jango woke with a screaming migraine, he groaned holding his head in his hands, his neck was doing no better and ached where his neck met the base of his skull. Each and every move he made only made the migraine worse but he knew he had to get moving. He had no idea how long he'd been out for and he could only assume something awful happened in his unconsciousness.

He realized he was touching his own hair instead of his helmet and that he was seeing the world through his own eyes instead of through the visor. He took a moment to gather himself and let himself fully come back. He tried to remember the last thing he saw and he remembered looking at Kira's back while she had her lightsabers to the creature's neck, then it waved its hand. In the corner of his vision he remembered seeing Kal drop to his right and Mij drop to his left before he felt his knees grow weak before buckling himself.

The sky above him was bright blue with no hint of rain, the sun beat down on him making the beskar parts of his armor warm. He felt the grass beneath him as well as the dried mud that pressed against his back. He could smell the pollen from the flowers that were blooming in the sun.

Jango slowly began to move each part of his body to make sure nothing was broken, first, he moved his fingers, then rolled his wrists. His toes curled in his boots before he carefully brought his legs up to bend at the knee. When he was satisfied that nothing was damaged beyond the regular soreness he felt, he slowly pushed himself to sit up on his elbows. He swallowed hard, his throat was dry and begged for water. He surveyed the area and noticed his helmet was a few feet from him, likely falling off when he hit the ground.

Jango looked to his side and saw Kal still on the ground, then looked to his other side and saw Mij and Wad'e in the same state. Jango pushed himself to sit up fully and looked for his Jedi companion, who should have been no farther than a few feet in front of him. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut when all that was left of her were her two lightsabers laying on the ground instead.

Her absence seemed to awaken all his senses. Forgetting his aches and pains, he jumped to his feet. He looked around but everything was quiet and calm as if nothing had happened. He carefully gathered the black and silver hilts and inspected them before clipping them to his belt.

Jango scooped up his helmet, returning it to his head before activating the antenna and searched for any clues that might lead to where his Jedi was taken. Footprints lit up in red through his visor, the mud from the night before left perfect impressions of the creature's feet and where it had collected Kira before taking her.

Kal stirred behind him, finally regaining consciousness, the mandalorian's movements caught Jango's attention, he calmly walked to Skirata's aid and knelt beside him offering a hand to help sit him up.

"What the kriff happened?" Kal asked as he took Jango's hand, letting the younger Mandalorian help him sit up.

"It took her." Jango said, trying to hide whatever emotion he was feeling. He wasn't used to feeling much of anything after Galidraan but whether he admitted it or not, he cared for the Jedi's safety. She had saved him several times and her small acts of kindness were enough to make him feel some type of way about her that wasn't entirely negative.

Kal let out a sigh. "We have to do something. They've gotten the drop on us twice now. I have a feeling a third time won't be as pleasant." Kal rolled his shoulders before rubbing the forehead of his helmet. "God, my head is killing me. What did that thing do to us?" He asked.

"I don't know." Jango answered as he pointed towards the forest. "There's footprints leading off that way. I have no idea how much time has passed but the longer Kira and Jense are out there, the less likely we'll get either of them back alive."

Kal allowed Jango to pull him to his feet, he groaned slightly as his muscles ached. "I know." Kal said. He knew Jense was strong and he'd come out alive after worse happenings but it still didn't make him worry any less for his brother in arms. Once on his feet, he and Jango tended to Mij and Wad'e.

"Wake up, Vod." Kal said, giving Mij a light shake. The man groaned, putting a hand on his head. "Yeah, I know, it hurts. The girl is gone too. We have to find Kira and Jense and we can't do that if you're sleeping."

"I hardly consider that sleeping, Vod." Mij grumbled but allowed Kal to pull him to his feet.

They took a few moments to gather themselves and let them fully regain their consciousness. "How are we going to rescue them?" Wad'e asked, rubbing his upper arm. "We all got our shebs handed to us and that thing barely moved it's hand. It even got Kira and she's a Jedi."

"She is just an apprentice." Kal said. "She is not immune."

"We should have killed that thing when we had the chance." Mij grumbled. "We might have been halfway back to Mandalore by now if we did."

"We are wasting time." Jango said, crossing his arms over his chest impatiently. "We have to go now… before we lose them forever. Who knows what those things are doing to them."

Kal nodded. "We'll follow your lead then, Mand'alor."

Jango nodded before following the tracks he'd found earlier. He had a knot in his stomach and he hated himself for feeling that way. It wasn't because of Jense as he barely knew the man but it was for Kira. He didn't even like the mouthy padawan very much but she was not a Jedi he hated and he preferred to keep her alive. If there was any Jedi in the Order that deserved to live, in his mind, it was her.

Kira had gone out of her way to save his life and he would make it his mission to save hers. He regretted how he spoke to her back on Mandalore. If he got her out of this alive, he would try to be kinder to her in the future.

They followed the tracks until they came to a wide river that lay below a waterfall at least fifty feet high. The tracks they'd been following faded into the water and no other tracks seemed to be picked up on the other side. In fact, there was no sign of anything that would lead them to their friends.

"Shab!" Jango cursed kicking dirt into the water. "Spread out and see if you can find anything!"

Kal hadn't seen Jango seem to have any concern about anything regarding the job or finding Jense. In fact, he was fairly certain Fett just wanted to get the job done so he could leave again but now that Kira was missing he was acting like the Mand'alor he should have been acting like the whole time. Kal found it very curious indeed, he wondered if it was more than a debt Fett felt towards the Jedi girl. Half of him decided it probably wasn't, Jango Fett was a selfish man and Kal couldn't really see him caring about anybody but himself but it also wouldn't surprise him if it was a woman who could soften the Mand'alor's heart, Skirata just never expected it to be a Jedi.

Wad'e and Mij spread out in search of any clues that could lead them to Jense and Kira. Jango's antenna lowered once again as he went about searching, Kal followed him fully intending on finding out exactly how the Mand'alor felt about their Jedi.

"We'll find them." Kal encouraged as he followed a step behind Jango.

"Hmm." Was the only response Jango gave.

"Kira is talented and wise for being a Jetii." He continued trying to elicit some reaction from his Mand'alor. He got none… but Jango's silence said more than what he could have with words. He was entirely focused on searching for Kira when the entire mission this far he had been little more than indifferent. "She will be fine, Vod."

"She will." Jango finally responded but did so distractedly. Kira was crafty and she was not one to give up, he'd seen it for himself back on Tooma. She lacked impulse control but her will to live made her driven enough to get herself out of situations others would fail at. He just hoped it wasn't her impulse that would seal her fate before he could get to her first.

"You care for her." He said it as more of a statement than a question. That finally caught all of Fett's attention.

"She's a Jedi."

"And she could be Mandalorian."

"I hardly know her." Jango growled, stopping to glare at the shorter man.

"So get to know her."

"She is a Jedi." He reminded him harshly. Even Kal Skirata was smart enough to know that any sort of involvement with a Jedi was a risky situation and the sort of involvement he was implying was simply impossible, even if Jango had thought of her in that light. He didn't want her dead but that didn't mean he felt what Kal was implying. "She is not someone I have any interest in getting to know."

"Then why do you seem so worried about finding her?" Kal asked. "If you don't care, why not walk away?"

"Did you forget about your second?" Jango asked. "You're so concerned about how I feel about the damn Jedi but you haven't once mentioned Jense. Maybe you should be more concerned about how you feel about those who are counting on you than my opinion of a Jedi, Skirata."

"I am concerned about Jense." Kal said. "I just find it strange you're so determined to find them only when Kira goes missing."

"Kira is a Jedi." Jango reminded him a third time. "If she goes missing and her mentor gets smart and traces her back to me, a Jedi killer, what do you think will happen? Galidraan is what will happen, Skirata. Her life is an insurance policy on whatever remains of the True Mandalorians. Once she is safely back on Coruscant she will be nothing more to me than an acquaintance who once saved my life."

Kal frowned. "Are you sure she even told her master about you? She snuck away in the night to come to you for help. You gave her Jense's name, she could have found him herself but she came to you."

"Because she's not stupid," Jango said. "A Jedi asking around about Mandalorians would only raise eyebrows and it would probably take her weeks if not months to find him on her own. I have the contacts and she knew that. The only relationship we have is purely business."

"Still I doubt she told anyone what she was doing," Kal said. "Like she said, she is risking a lot by simply being here."

"And still, that's not a chance I'm willing to take." Jango said. "Surely, her master knows she is of Mandalore blood, it wouldn't take much to figure out she got smart and figured it out for herself. As you said she is smart and she is incredibly talented… and she's so incredibly talented at getting herself into trouble."

"Mand'alor!" Mij called, Jango and Kal looked over towards Mij and saw him standing near the waterfall, Jango was secretly thankful for the distraction, he was tired of trying to explain himself to the nosey Kal Skirata. "I think we found something!"

Jango glanced briefly at Kal before both made their way to the roaring waterfall. "What is it?" Jango asked as Mij pointed towards a small bush that had grown into the rock face. Jango raised an eyebrow not seeing anything at first but when he got close enough he saw a few strands of long, jet black hair dangling from the branch.

"It might be small but it's something." Wad'e said, trying to get a better look behind the waterfall, what he found was even better than a few strands of hair.

Kira struggled against her restraints, her frustration brewing its way out through her actions. The bindings rattled as she shook her hands aggressively, the cuffs clanking loudly as she did so. "These things are primitive enough for spears but advanced enough for metal bindings?" She asked more to herself than any of the men in the room.

The man Kira could only assume was Jense was still completely unconscious, his head still tipped to the side. Not that she could see his face with his helmet on. She cursed the Mandalorians, so many faces she'd wanted to see but the only Mandalorian face she'd seen belonged to Kal Skirata.

Pao'l had his eyes closed in an attempt at meditation but the rattling of Kira's chains made it hard to focus. "Calm yourself, Padawan," Pao'l said in a tone that reminded her of Mace. "You will need your strength when Nuenet decides to take you."

Kira's eyebrows furrowed, she was appalled that these Jedi had accepted their fate so easily and didn't even bother trying to find a way out. She never met any Jedi that just gave up, every Jedi she knew would rather die than submit. She couldn't imagine how anyone could do that. Kira was not ready to die and she certainly wasn't ready to lose her Force ability. In her mind, she was nothing without the Force. It was a part of her just as she would one day be a part of it. She couldn't imagine what it was like for those without the Force. There were those like Jango who were powerful without it but still she wouldn't know what to do with herself if she lost her connection. She would rather die than lose it. "He's not taking me anywhere and he's not taking anything from me." She said. "I am not sitting here waiting for the Force to be drained from me. I'm getting out of here one way or another, how can you both just give up? You are Jedi for crying out loud, Jedi do not give up."

"We've been here for weeks," Khane said, exhausted. His wrists were discolored from sores on his skin, the constant rubbing against the metal was doing him no favors "No one is coming, even if there were, no one is strong enough to defeat the Taavarians."

"You both are cowards and should be ashamed to call yourselves Jedi. My master taught me to never give up, especially when it seems like the odds are stacked against you," Kira said defiantly, she had never seen Mace submit to anything and she wouldn't either. "If no one is coming to save us then we save ourselves. I've escaped from more than one prison, I can do it again."

Khane's expression turned to concern. "You've been in prisons… like multiple?"

Kira made a disguised noise. "Not like that." She said. "Like I've been captured before by thuga-thugs before and held in their prisons, it's not like I've been in actual prison… plus if that happened my master would kill me."

Pao'l rose an eyebrow. "Why has your master allowed you to be captured so many times?" He seemed more concerned about her master's teaching ability than her actually being caught. "Who is your master?"

Kira took it as a personal insult that he even questioned Mace's abilities and frowned. "You mean to tell me you've been a Jedi for a million years and you've never been captured before, Old Man?" Kira asked doubtfully. With all the missions Jedi did she was sure every Jedi in the Order had been captured by their enemy at one point or another in their lifetimes. It was the way of things, sometimes you capture them and sometimes they capture you. "And my master is Mace Windu and he's a great mentor, in case you were wondering. Plus, it's not like he just lets me get captured… I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself, obviously. Mace is a thousand lightyears away."

Pao'l was surprised at the ranking of her master, everyone in the Order knew of the great Mace Windu. If they hadn't met him personally, they certainly would have heard the stories about him. "I didn't realize Master Windu took on an apprentice."

Kira pulled herself up in a near pull up trying to hook her feet on a tree root that hung from the ceiling. "Yep," She said as her foot missed the root by an inch. "Been his little protege for a couple years now. I was supposed to be doing my trials… well today actually but yahknow, here I am… on Mes Cresta… chained to a dirt wall… trillions of miles away from Coruscant waiting to get the Force sucked out of me like noodle soup.``

Khane and Pao'l glanced at each other with a mixture of confusion and concern, she seemed to have lacked the discipline and poise one would expect from a learner of one as great and highly respected as the mighty Mace Windu. "And why are you here?" Khane asked, knowing Pao'l had already asked but she had given a vague answer before.

Kira brought her foot back up at another attempt to catch the root with her foot, this time she was successful. She cheered a little to herself before the position she had put herself in had caused pain in her wrists. She let herself drop back down in defeat. "I told you, it's a long story."

"We obviously have the time." Khane insisted, then looked over at the unconscious Mandalorian. "You mentioned mandalorians earlier. Does it have to do with him?"

Kira hesitated, she looked back at Jense. She tried not to look at him too long or think too much about him until he woke up and even then now was not the time for family reunions. Plus, she hadn't the slightest idea of what to say to him anyways. She hadn't thought about it much with everything that had happened in the last few days. She'd spent so much time traveling and fighting to get to Jense that she hadn't given a moment to think of what to say to him once she reached him. She also did not want to tell anyone from the Order that she was looking for her father or that she had any reason to look into mandalorians at all. She cursed herself for being so foolish to let that slip when she met them, sometimes her thinking out loud was her worst quality.

Then she thought back to when she was looking into Galidraan and had talked with Jocasta about mandalorians… If she had use of her hands she would have facepalmed. She did not want Mace finding out she was out looking into Mandalore but she just kept giving reason after reason for him to suspect she was. Afterall, she asks Jocasta about Galidraan then only a few days later she disappears right before her trials then to add insult to injury, she immediately tells other Jedi she's been in contact with Mandalorians… who if they managed to escape, would surely mention it to Mace… 'Well done, Kenvor'. She thought sourly to herself. She was going to have to get better at lying and keeping things to herself if she was going to continue having secrets.

For now, she had to spin a lie and hope Pao'l and Khane would believe it. "Uh…" She began. "No, I just ran into a couple mandalorians when I got here and they'd lost their friend… so I offered to help… then when they told me about only certain people being taken from the town and it made sense when they weren't taken when he was… because he's Force sensitive…" She said, motioning her head towards Jense. She didn't know anything about Jense Kenvor but him being Force Sensitive was something she was absolutely sure of now that he was just a few feet beside her. "and Taavarians steal the Force…"

If they believed that, they were stupid. As the words came out of her mouth she could just taste the lies and figured they would too.

"Mandalorians hate Jedi," Khane said unconvinced. "They didn't attack you on sight?"

"I didn't give them cause to attack on sight." She said, raising her eyebrow, she'd only known her Mandalorians a few days but she wasn't about to let some padawan talk about them like they were bloodthirsty thugs. They obviously weren't, especially Jango, who'd gone out of his way to bring her to Jense. He was a mercenary, sure, but he wasn't just going to kill on sight for no reason… or at least she was fairly certain he wouldn't.

"You're a Jedi, that wasn't enough?"

"That's why I hid my braid…," She said, nodding her head slowly, then tipped her head to the side. "It's in the bun. Now, I just look like a regular person… but even then they're not going to kill people without being paid to do so. They're warriors but they're not blood-thirsty savages."

"We could tell you were Jedi right away." Khane said.

"Yeah…" Kira said as if it was an annoyance. "Jedi can sense other Jedi. Duh, that's like number one in the Jedi handbook."

"That still doesn't explain why you're here without your master's knowledge." Pao'l said trying to get back on track, he also wasn't believing a word she was saying, not that she was in the slightest convincing.

She was going to have to start lying better than that. "I had a vision," She said. That wasn't a lie, she did have a vision. She had multiple, actually. "I had a vision that someone was in trouble and I had to help them… and it turns out I found you two… who are indeed in need of help… look, I didn't have time to wake up Macey-poo and wait for him to take a hundred years to get ready so I just went on my own. I figured I'd be back by now if we're being perfectly honest."

"And you just decided to go to the farthest end of the galaxy with no map or any idea of where you were supposed to go and somehow you found us here… on Mes Cresta? By yourself…?" Khane wasn't falling for her lies anymore than Pao'l was.

Kira shrugged. "The Force is mysterious in many ways."

"You realize you can't lie yourself out of a paper bag… right?" Khane asked, his expression said that he was not impressed with her in the slightest and her pathetic attempts at lying only made him question her at all. He even began to question if she really was Mace Windu's apprentice. Everything she had said so far had been a flat out lie so he had every reason to believe she was lying about Windu. Surely, someone like him would have done a better job training some discipline into his student.

Kira let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Fine. I'm lying… kind of. Not everything I said was a total lie," She said, Khane was surprised she admitted to her lies so quickly. "But I'm also not going to tell you which part is a lie."

"Why lie at all?" Pao'l asked, he made a face that Kira could only explain as the 'exhausted mentor face'. The face that was meant to make you want to fess up everything because it made you feel bad, Mace did it well enough for her to spot it when she saw it.

"Like I said before. It's a long story and it's a story that I'd rather keep to myself." She said, her tone said all she needed to. She wasn't going to say anything more about it. "Now, are you both going to help get us out of here or are you ready to meet death so soon?" She needed to change the subject about the mandalorians, the more her mouth moved the more she would eventually fess up to.

Khane frowned and was about to say something when the rock door slid open, silencing all three. Kira could nearly smell the fear of the Jedi when Nuenet and two others walked through. She could only wonder what he had done to them to elicit a reaction like that out of Jedi. Both avoided eye contact and kept their heads down, hoping that he would not choose either one of them.

When he walked past them towards Kira, their eyes looked up to meet hers briefly before her eyes shifted to glared Nuenet down. "What's up, Ugly?" She asked, cocking her head to the side. "You ready to get sliced up like a nerf stake like your little buddies? You touch me or them and that's what'll happen to you." Her nose scrunched slightly as she made her threats looking at him as if he were beneath her.

Nuenet's eyes shifted for a fraction of a second, she knew that he was thinking of the three she and Jango had killed. He said nothing as he held his hand up ordering the two others to release her. The bindings were released, they gripped her arms, forcing them into a painful position behind her back. She growled and struggled against them but was powerless to do anything. Nuenet motioned his head towards the door. The two nodded their heads and pushed her through.

"You'll regret this, Neunet!" Kira shouted aggressively over her shoulder.

The Taavarians pushed her through a dark tunnel. The walls were red but moisture soaked through the ceiling, occasionally dripping water down the sides. She heard the roar of a waterfall the further down they went, Kira quickly came to the conclusion that they were in some sort of cave and the thought made her stomach sick. Camps were easy to find, caves tended to be harder and she desperately needed her Mandalorians to find the cave. The Taavarians pushed her as they came through an opening in the tunnel wall, what she saw then surprised her.

It was obviously a cave but larger than any she'd ever seen, they were easily fifty feet up from the cave floors. There were at least another three Taavarians waiting around a small peninsula that jutted out surrounded by the water that had pooled from the leaking walls above. Kira felt her heart quicken when she realized that whatever was going to happen to her, was likely going to be there. She prayed that Jango and the others had survived Nuenet's attack on them and were out searching for her. She hoped they would find her soon.

Jango, Kal, Mij and Wad'e had found a secluded entrance to a cave behind the waterfall, it was the perfect hiding place to keep prisoners where no one could find them. It also explained why the footprints disappeared, the creature likely walked into the water before entering the cave. Unless you searched everywhere or had heat sensors on your helmet, the waterfall cave would be easily missed by many.

They made their way through the cave, keeping their blasters raised with their fingers hovering over the triggers. The cave was humid for being underground and the sounds of the waterfall did well to mask any sounds made by them. They followed the tunnel until they heard voices on the other side of the wall. Jango held up his hand to stop the rest of them so he could listen in on the voices. He leaned his head closer to the wall.

"Why would she try to lie?" A younger male voice asked, his voice muffled through the walls.

"I don't know," an older male voice answered. "I doubt it will matter though. I don't see us getting out of here anytime soon."

Jango turned on his inter helmet comms and linked with the others'. "There must be other prisoners behind this wall." Jango said, motioning his head to the wall. "There's at least two that I can pick up on."

Kal nodded. "Our prisoners may be in there."

"Let's figure out how to get in there then." Mij said, pressing his hand against the wall feeling for anything that might give away to a way in.

They followed the tunnel for a few feet but the only indication they could even assume might have been a doorway was a slab of red rock that leaned against the wall. There were scrapes across the wall indicating that the rock slab had been moved frequently at some point. Jango tested the wall pushing on it slightly.

"Help me try to move this." Jango said, the other three mandalorians took their place at Jango's side bracing themselves on one side of the rock slab before all four pushed on it. It didn't even try to budge. The wall was easily over a ton if not more. It would take more than man power to move the slab.

"If Kira is in there, maybe she knows how to get in." Jango suggested and hesitated a moment before knocking on the wall to the rhythm of a song. He knew she was childish enough to know that if something like that came through she would knock the sounds back, knowing it was meant for her.

Nothing came.

He knocked again. Again, nothing but the voices previously heard behind the wall ceased. Jango switched his inter-helmet comm off. "Kenvor." He said in a loud whisper. "Are you in there?" He would have taken any response from anyone who wasn't one of those creatures.

Silence.

Jango hoped he hadn't just alerted the Taavarians that intruders were inside but he tried again despite his better judgment. "Kira." The longer the silence, the more he worried that she and Jense were already dead. She'd come all that way only to die just before reuniting with her father.

"Who's there?" The younger of the voices called out after a few minutes, he obviously knew that it wasn't the Taavarians and Kira did not sound like a man with an accent. "Are you the Mandalorians?" His voice had hope in it, it was clear as day.

Jango could only wonder how long they had been stuck in there but that didn't take his mind off of the fact that it wasn't Kira who responded, he knew if Kira was in there and conscious she would be already mouthing off for him to get her out of there. "Who's in there?" He asked. "How many?"

"There were four of us." He responded.

"Were?" Jango asked, his voice turning slightly aggressive.

"There was a girl but they took her."

"Where?"

"Probably to the main chamber. Hey, if you're friends of the girl you know she is a Jedi- those things, they can steal the Force out of a person. They're going to drain her of her connection to the Force and use it for themselves." The voice responded.

Jango's eyebrows knitted together with stress. "How is that even possible?" He mumbled.

"I don't know but there's a Mandalorian in with us… he's not looking too good. So, if you're here for the Jedi and him, you'd better hurry."

"Jense." Kal said to himself. At least he was still alive, Kal was sure he would make it but there was always the slight possibility that he wouldn't.

Jango nodded. "How do we get in?"

"The Force," The voice answered. "You can't open the door unless you can use the Force."

"Shab." Kal said.

Finding Kira was always on the priority list but now they had to find her and hope that she hadn't been Force bled, otherwise getting Jense out of there would be impossible without blowing the cave up and the likelihood of the tunnels caving in and crushing any who remained inside was high. Jango felt the pressure of time running out more than he had before. They had her now and he might already be too late to save her. He had to hurry.