Ree goes home.

Everyone got back, everyone was fine, everything got straightened out. The Powers That Be were exceedingly happy with the crew's performance, to the tune of commendations and a parade.

But a couple of nights later, she woke up from a dark vision of a Force witch crawling around her planet in the midst of a neverending storm. After she tried to call her family and couldn't get a message through, she felt unsettled enough to head home and check on things. Her master told her to go ahead. She had a couple of weeks before the commendation ceremony, and it'd been ages since she'd seen her family. Everyone else was pretty much on enforced vacation ("Take some time off, dammit!"), and some of them decided they'd like to see where Ree came from.

The holovid star came along. She'd decided that Ree was the perfect person to learn from. Drove Ree crazy talking about how she'd play her in a movie.

They got to Ree's planet, and found out that the whole place is basically Kansas. Flat flat flat praerie land. A great deal of homestead farming, and very little else. There's one city on the whole planet, and the world is essentially owned by a few families who rent land to the other colonists.

On the landing pads, they ran into the ship-jacker, Jal'en. He had a rusty bucket of a YT-1300 (like the Millenium Falcon, but not working as well) that he needed some work done on. After everyone got over the fact that the starport charged as much as the ports on Coruscant, and the fact that there was a leaving fee (you have to pay to take off?!), Ree hooked him up with her uncle, who runs a repair shop in the city. He was happy to see her home, but realized she was there for more than a visit. He told her it'd been storming for a couple of months. The cattle were acting weird and belligerent, and the crops were failing. The storms had been making it tricky to get messages off the planet. He also told Ree about how she was a local hero, and there'd probably be a party for her when they realized she was there.

Lydia complained that the rain tasted foul. She licked Kedrihm'Val and said, "Like him."

Anyway, they headed out to Ree's home. On the way, they got chased by a few cattle. At her homestead, they found her family waiting for her. It was a large, boisterous, and sweet family reunion, with her mother insisting on feeding everyone till they burst. Not wanting to worry anyone, Ree didn't tell them why they were actually there. She just said she wanted to see everybody.

All the Force-users realized that the rain was tainted, and it was getting to the crops and the animals, but they couldn't figure out how it'd happened. They stayed overnight, and the next day, Ree's uncle phoned to let the family know there was going to be a meeting on the new water purification system that'd been installed a few months back. Most of the group headed back, except for Kedrihm'Val, Z, and Zan.

Kedrihm'Val poked around a bit, discovering that the water table was tainted and seemed to be stirring up the storms, while the cattle were trying to fight against the taint. He spoke with Zan about what he found. They both had a feeling that the water purification system sounded fishy, so they headed back into town after the others.

They found Ree and companions sitting in on a town meeting, listening to farmers rant. The ruling families announced they were raising taxes to pay for the water system. When Zan came in wearing his Jedi robes (which he really hates, insisting they're not comfortable, but sometimes they're effectively intimidating), they acted a bit unsettled and then tried to kiss up to the Jedi.

After the meeting, Ree and Zan wanted a tour of the water filtration facilities. Oola realized that the plans they were being shown of the facility didn't match up with what they were actually seeing. She figured out there was a secret door. Ree distracted the tour guides with some small talk while Oola got the door open. Door opens - Hey! Imperials everywhere!

Cue the fight! Erin announced that they were all under arrest. Techs in the secret room fled frantically while the Imperial officers in the hidden room tried to retreat in an orderly fashion, blasters blazing. The Force-users spotted a Force witch trying to hide herself. Ree took her on. Kedrihm'val used a nerve pinch to knock out the highest-ranking officer and take him captive, but then Oola was able to gas the rest of them, so that was a non-issue.

The characters outside the secret room had a fight on their hands, too. The two members of the ruling families who'd been giving them the tour hid in the corner. Lydia kept watch over them. But some of the techs out there were armed too, and started it up. Once the crew got the Imperials subdued, they went out to help Lydia and Oola. The techs started to run when they saw lightsabers, but Kedrihm'val got the outer door closed, so they were trapped. They surrendered after that.

Meanwhile, Ree paused in her fight with the Force witch long enough to ask her, "Why did you choose this planet?" The Force witch, quite confused, said it was out of the way, and they figured no one would ever notice them there. Then Ree cut her in half.

With all the bad guys taken care of, all that remained was for Zan and Oola to disarm the bombs they found in the installation. After that, they took a look around. The Imperials had been using the facility to build starship engines, but there was something weird about the engines. Lookig it over, they realized that there was Sith alchemy incorporated into the design. The pollutants created from building the engines were being run off into the water table, which was what had been creating the taint. The interplanetary comm interference was simply a jammer built into the installation. They turned that off and notified the Republic of the goings-on.

Then Zan and Ree marched into the town council hall and dealt with the rest of the ruling families, reaming them out and placing them in custody. They had basically sold out their planet to the Imperials because the price was good. Ree was shocked.

Master Durron showed up a couple of days later and was shocked when the port operator tried to charge him a leaving fee. Republic officials rounded up all the guys the crew had captured, and took the planet in hand to clean it up and deal with the abominable land situation.

Kyp asked Ree if she had any questions for him. She was puzzled. He prompted, "Any questions like why the Council's had a padawan traipsing across the galaxy on her own all this time..." She said "I figured the council knew what they were doing and you'd tell me when you were ready." He teased her about that, so she pointed out that that was precisely what had happened since he was, in fact, on the council, and was, in fact, telling her what they were up to. "Oh. Right," said he.

So he explained that she and Drath had been something of an experiment. Basically, the Council was aware that the old Jedi Order hadn't always made the smartest choices, so they were in the process of testing out different ways of training and teaching to see what worked the best--especially given how short they currently were on teachers compared to the number of students. They wanted to see if fostering more independence among the apprentices would be helpful, and how much training a Jedi actually needed before they were able to handle themselves. In Ree's case, it seemed to have gone swimmingly, though Drath was a bit worrisome. Kyp seemed to think it was rather clever, but Ree wasn't terribly amused. Still, when he asked her for any comments, she was too flustered to say anything.

Kyp then suggested that Ree build her lightsaber soon ("What better place to build it than at home?"), and indicated she'd be needing it as she'd soon be recognized as a Knight.