(Hera pov)

"General Grievous, sir," I call, trying not to let my voice quake. Remember, this guy thinks you're on his side. Just relax and play your part. "We've exited hyperspace above Coruscant's atmosphere."

The general stalks up to me, wheezing in and out as he breathes, but in a different way from Darth Vader. "Good work, Commander. We–"

"Sir!" A young man, a human lieutenant, looks up sharply from his station. "We have incoming ships on the scanners!"

"What kind?" Grievous growls. "And how many?"

The man scans his panels and instruments, pressing buttons frantically. "Five Jedi Starfighters, sir. All directly inbound."

"No one was supposed to know of our attack," The cyborg muses angrily.

"Could be a routine patrol, sir," the lieutenant suggests warily.

"Perhaps." The General eyes the bridge window. Now I can see five tiny yellow dots in the distance, heading straight for us at very fast speeds. Their images grow distinctly larger with every passing second. "Or perhaps not."

He turns to me, coughing heavily, his cape swirling. "Destroy them. No survivors! My attack will not be hindered."

I swallow, suddenly feeling as though someone dumped a bucket of ice water over my lekku. "Sir yes sir."

I reluctantly eye the button that will activate all of the crew's comlinks aboard the Star Destroyer, hesitant to give the order to fire. My hand hovers over the button.

"Get on with it," Grevious scoffs, agitated.

My finger presses down on the button at the same time as all of the lights on the bridge turn off.

Panic immediately ensues.

"Emergency lights!" Grievous barks. "Where are those blasted Jedi Starfighters?"

"Out of range. Our scanners are being jammed!" Someone calls out.

"Sir! There's a breach in Corridor 311!" Another Separatist cries.

"Commander!" Grevious roars angrily.

"Yes sir?" I'm visibly shaking now. I'm terrified.

"Take a squadron of battle droids and investigate the breach! If it's any Republican, they are to be killed!" He shouts. "I want them to suffer!"

"Sir yes sir!" I stumble off of the darkened bridge as fast as I can, red emergency lights coming on as I scurry away.

A few minutes later, I'm holding my two blasters, accompanied by a squadron of standard battle droids, creeping down Corridor 311.

"The breach should be right around here...." The commanding battle droid reports. "My suggestion is that we–ack!"

A hooded figure tackles the droid, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Dressed in all black, he or she throws the droid into another one. Both droids collapse in a yelping heap at the front of the pack.

The figure's hand creeps into their robes and returns holding a long tube.

A beam of bright blue light extends from it.

I resist the urge to sigh in relief.

"Jedi!" A droid yells. "Fire!"

The blaster in my hand is the only one that doesn't move to fire. The battle droids are blasting away with horrible accurracy. The Jedi deflects every laser bolt back at the droids, sometimes springing forward to cut one's blaster off and then it's head. The fighting style is slightly clumsy, off-balance, as though this Jedi was never fully trained, but yet every droid falls, one by one, under the sky blue blade. The moves look familiar, but it's certainly not Kanan. He fights differently with his lightsaber, I've noticed. Every Jedi does.

I watch the hooded Jedi cut down the last droid, who falls to a ground in a pile of smoking metal, screaming a mechanical cry the entire time. He or she faces me, studying me. I drop my blasters, never having fired them, and raise my hands. He doesn't know that I'm not going to hurt him. I just have to hope that he doesn't hurt ME.

The figure deactivates his lightsaber. Shocked, I instictively take one step back. Maybe this isn't a real Jedi. Maybe it's a trick.... or even worse, a dark Jedi. I eye the blasters on the floor.

"It's okay," the figure says calmly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The voice is shockingly familiar.

And as the figure yanks his hood off, I'm whispering the name of a certain teenager.

"Ezra?"

"Hera!" He speaks quietly, but his voice is full of elation–and relief. "Finally, someone I know directly. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Are you?" I grab his shoulders worriedly.

"Fine. Listen, we need to get out of here," he says, reaching down to the floor and scooping up my blasters. Ezra hands them to me carefully, as they're set to kill. "So that we can find the others and get back to our own time. But first, I have to get some information for a friend aboard this Destroyer. It was part of the deal of me getting help to sneak onboard here in the first place, although I had no idea that you'd be–"

It's too late to cry a warning.

The laser bolt hits him straight in the back.

Ezra drops like a stone, eyes closing on the way down.

Revealed behind him is a somehow functioning battle droid, a mangled yet alive victim of Ezra's lightsaber skills.

"Ezra!" I cry as the teenager immediately slips into unconsciousness. Angrily, I whirl towards the battle droid.

"Traitor–"

Before it can say another word, I've blasted it's head off with one of my blasters.

"What's going on here?" Comes a rumbling voice. General Grevious stalks up to me, stopping before Ezra's limp form. "Who is this?"

"This is the intruder," I reply cautiously. I can't think of a way to prevent Ezra from being captured now that Grevious is here, but I can help protect his identity.

Grevious eyes Ezra's unfamiliar lightsaber on the ground, picking it up with a metal claw callously. "He's a Jedi."

Or maybe not.

"Yes," I swallow bitterly. "He took out the droids before I could stop him. Then I stunned him."

"Excellent work, Commander," Grevious studies Ezra intently. I resist the urge to cry at the fact that Ezra will now have to face this mechanical monster. "Before you is the great and troublesome Jedi Padawan, known as Ezra Bridger."

The corridor is silent for a long moment. I'm still with silent shock that Ezra is so greatly and widely known in this era, even though we just sort of appeared here a little while ago.

"Break off the attack," the General decides. "And set course for Mustafar immediately. Suddenly our fleet has.... Higher priorities of interest." He lumbers off, launching into another coughing fit as he goes, still holding Ezra's lightsaber. "Take him away."

Oh Ezra. What have you gotten yourself into this time?

I'n starting to wonder if any of us are going to make it back home–or if we'll even live to see it.