It took a lot of willpower for Sabine to not laugh at Ezra while the crew crept along the ground toward the outpost. For once in his life, he was completely silent and composed. Everyone knew why: he wanted to look good for Agent Skywalker, but Sabine had never seen him so determined to keep his mouth shut.

Kanan led the group with Hera and Zeb right behind him. Ezra and Sabine followed, with Skywalker bringing up the rear. It was about a five minute walk from their drop-zone to the edge of the outpost. Once Kanan reached the edge of the treeline, the motioned for the crew to halt and took a look around.

"Looks clear," he decided, turning back to the others. "There's a few guard to fight through, but nothing more than that. We'll give you a few minutes of a head start before we sneak in," he told the distraction team.

Ezra and Sabine looked to Skywalker, but he looked right back at them. "I'll follow you two."

The teenagers exchanged glances, then began moving their way toward their entry point. Skywalker kept close behind, his long legs easily able to keep pace.

Once they were out of earshot, Zeb leaned over to Kanan. "Any idea what he's got in mind?"

"He probably just wants to see how they fight," he suggested, watching the Jedi's silhouette disappear between the trees. "By letting them lead, he'll be able to see how they think, how they strategize."

"Why not do that with us?"

"Because he already knows that we know what we're doing," Hera explained, pulling out her blaster to check it. "They're kids. He probably just wants to make sure they won't get hurt."

The conversation dropped, but Kanan wasn't sure that was the whole story. There was probably some other reason he was observing them, but they wouldn't figure it out anytime soon, so he forgot about it.

~

When the three of them had split off, Sabine was kind enough to let Ezra take the lead. It wasn't their normal setup, but just this once, to make him look better in front of his superior, she was willing to follow him. She fully expected a 'thank you' once this was over with, though.

Ezra felt like the other two were drilling holes into the back of his head with their eyes, more so Master Skywalker than Sabine. At least she kinda had his back, but Ezra couldn't help but feel like this was a test of some sort. He wasn't sure that was a good thing.

They made it as close to the entry point as they could without leaving the cover of the trees. This entrance had four stormtroopers guarding it in two groups. Ezra did the natural thing: split up the targets. "You can take two of them, right?" he asked Master Skywalker, looking back at him. When he nodded, Ezra turned back to the outpost. "We'll take the other two...if that's alright."

"Hey, as long as we distract the security from the others, we'll be fine," Sabine reminded him, pulling her blasters out of their holsters. "On your mark."

He looked back over where Kanan and the others were still hiding. Managin to make eye contact with his master, he saw Kanan give him a thumbs up. It wasn't much, but it felt like he was saying, 'you've got this, just give it a shot.' That was enough to give Ezra the courage he needed to call out, "Go!"

The three of them rushed the door and started shooting. Dropping their targets wasn't difficult: they all managed to shoot down the stormtroopers in less than a few seconds. It was the retaliation that made things a bit more difficult. Once the other guards saw that their comrades had fallen, they shifted to reinforce the entrance.

"Sabine, get the door!" Ezra shouted, activating his lightsaber and beginning to deflect the fire. True to his word, Master Skywalker stuck to his blaster, so Ezra was the only one on defence. That left Sabine to get them inside.

She was up for the task, though. "No problem!" she called back, pulling out a small explosive. She had packed extras once she had heard that she was on the distraction team.

While she got to work setting the bomb, Ezra and Master Skywalker worked together to keep the other stormtroopers occupied. They each took one side each, standing almost but not quite back-to-back.

Ezra had to focus in order to deflect, but he noticed that Master Skywalker was having no problem dodging the blaster fire. It was barely even dodging, actually. For how tall he was, he was a really hard target to hit. Then again, when did stormtroopers ever hit anything? Still, Skywalker moved out of the way with ease, usually not having to move more than a foot or two, if he moved his feet at all. Sometimes he just had to duck his head.

He was also pretty good with his blaster. None of the stormtroopers got close enough to him that he had to use melee combat. When Sabine blew the door open, the nearest soldiers were still several meters away on both sides. Ezra was secretly pleased that he hadn't struggled in his deflection. The lessons from Master Skywalker had really helped.

The three of them retreated inside, moving quickly down the hallway. "The security desk should be on the other side of the outpost," Ezra remembered. "As long as we keep moving, we should be fine."

"Lead the way," Skywalker suggested. "We'll cover your six as you keep moving." As if to prove the point, he shot back toward the door right as a white helmet poked its way through the smoke. The bolt found its mark and dropped the stormtrooper, but more were coming.

Running forward with his lightsaber out, he began pushing his way through squads of troopers that came to meet them. Ezra would deflect fire, most of the time back at the shooter in question, until he was close enough that he could hit them with his lightsaber. Every once in a while when the hallway was getting crowded, Sabine would lob a grenade in front of them and give Ezra a bit of breathing room.

For the most part, though, she would focus on the advancing troopers behind them with Agent Skywalker. She took aim at the troopers closest to them, but Skywalker focused on ones further out. In fact, he seemed to know where stormtroopers were going to be before they were there.

"How are you doing that?" she asked, dropping two more bucketheads. "It's like you have a sixth sense for these guys!"

"I do," he called back, "but I usually call it the Force."

Sabine laughed under her helmet. "How could I forget?"

In his mind, Anakin was already taking notes on their strengths. Sabine was intuitively strategic, seeing where the biggest threat was in the moment and moving to counter it. Whether it was giving Ezra an advantage on the front end or reinforcing Anakin in the rear, she was pretty quick on the uptake. Ezra was doing just as well. In a hallway, all of his opponents were concentrated in one direction. It meant more people in a tighter space, but Ezra didn't seem to have a problem with that. Anakin wondered how it would translate onto a wider field of battle. It was just something to keep an eye on.

Ezra found the security center and used his lightsaber to shoot down the occupants. Sabine pulled more explosives out of her belt while Anakin watched the door. Behind him, he listened to the kids work.

"How many of those bombs have you got?"

"Enough to get the job done," Sabine assured him, tossing one up and catching it. "Pull out all the drives. We'll blow those as well as the consoles."

Popping his head out of the room, Anakin shot down another two troopers coming down the hallway. "How long are you planning to hold here?"

"Don't worry," Ezra told him. "This won't take longer than a minute."

Sabine wasn't kidding. Soon the room was covered in blinking bombs, waiting for detonation. Just as they were finishing up, their communicators crackled to life. "Spectre-6, we've got the data. We'll meet you at the rendezvous."

"Copy that, Spectre-1," Ezra replied, and all three of them left the room. Once they were far enough away, they hid around a corner and Sabine pressed a button on her gauntlet. The security center exploded in a cloud of bright color.

Anakin raised an eyebrow. "Do you put smoke bombs in your explosives?"

"Hey, it looks good, alright?"

"I'm not complaining, I'm impressed. Where do you get your chemicals?"

She smirked under her helmet. "I keep a secret stash on the ship. Seeing as the Empire only knows the colors black and white, someone has to spice it up."

"Come on, Chopper will meet us on the roof," Ezra urged them, and they ran for the elevators. Skywalker had taken out enough troopers that the hallways were relatively clear now. Sabine shot down both the guards standing in front of the lift and they filed in.

The situation on the roof was slightly more dire. Zeb, Kanan, and Hera were holding their position, but a couple squadrons of troopers were cornering them and making advancements. The other three got to work. Ezra covered Sabine and Skywalker while they picked off troopers from behind, sandwiching them. The stormtroopers couldn't fight on two fronts, not against the Ghost crew and Fulcrum.

Before long, the last troopers fell and the Ghost was coming into view. The six of them left as quietly as they came, leaving a smoking outpost behind them.

Once on board, Hera handed Skywalker a small drive. "Everything we could find in their system from the past month," she detailed as he turned it over in his fingers. "Hopefully it will give you the leads you're looking for."

"Nice work," Skywalker praised, pocketing it for the time being. "Any trouble on your end?"

"Nope," Kanan reported, crossing his arms. "We barely saw ten troopers until we got up on the roof. Whatever you three were doing, it was working."

Skywalker shrugged, deflecting the compliment to the teenagers. "Hey, all I did was shoot troopers and follow them. Don't look at me."

"Blah, you guys got to have all the fun," Zeb complained, crossing his arms. "I shoulda gone with you."

"Don't worry, Zeb," teased Ezra, "There'll be plenty of stormtroopers to bash in sooner or later."

Popping his knuckles, the Lasat grinned. "Now that's what I like to hear."

Once he and Skywalker were out of earshot, Kanan grinned at Ezra and Sabine. "Sounds like you two did alright out there."

"It actually did go really well. As far as missions go, it wasn't very complicated."

"I let him take the lead this one time," Sabine admitted, elbowing the Padawan. "Figured he could use a boost."

Ezra scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, uh, thanks for that. Appreciated it."

Laughing, Kanan shook his head. "Come on. Let's see if we can't get Master Skywalker to tell a few stories. You guys will love it."