Luke Skywalker fell to one knee, bowed his head with penitence, and raised a palm to the air. "Spare some coin?"

Travelers flowed around him like water, not seeing the shabby robe enough to avoid stepping on it. A shiny pair of shoes skidded to avoid crashing into the sudden obstacle. As the rich man began to step around, he turned to bark at his personal guard. "Get him outta here."

Luke looked up then, tucking back the hood just enough to reveal his intent eyes at the elder human. While one hand remained upturned with a beggar's plea, his other hand kept the hood pulled just enough over his forehead so that only this one traveler could see his face.

Ambassador Danje eyed him with a square jaw of disgust and stepped around Luke to resume his path. The man dismissed the whole thing with a gesture, "Throw him in an airlock," and proceeded down the busy travelway without another thought.

The mute bodyguard towered over Luke's kneeling frame and grabbed him by the shoulders. Luke pulled his hood deeply over his head and stumbled at the handling. Impatient, the guard shoved the clumsy beggar through the flow of fast moving pedestrians and into the nearest public emergency pod. The brown robe fumbled and whipped around the hunched frame as the beggar fell back against the inside wall. "This'll teach you a lesson." The guard cranked down a heavy door and clunked it shut, leaving the beggar harmlessly imprisoned until someone noticed and let him out again.

Luke gave it a moment before peaking sideways out the lifepod's window to the traffic beyond. Ambassador Danje and his bodyguard were long gone. Dozens strutted the travelway with bags, or droids with bags, or droids with kids, or kids with droids, or kids with bodyguards. Except for a chubby-cheeked baby staring in wide-eyed amazement trying to absorb all this madness, no one noticed Luke's face in the lifepod window.

His index finger motioned in the air and the external handle unlatched itself. Luke pushed open the hatch and stepped carefully out.

Two steps later, a protocol droid waddled up to him from the mass of pedestrians. The silver framed, red-trimmed droid handed Luke a datacard and waddled away again without a word.

As soon as the droid was gone, Luke slunk back into a narrow chink between station sections to take a good look at the datacard. It was a hotel room key.

Eyes shifting this way and that, Luke tucked the cardkey into the Jedi uniform hiding under his brown robe and stepped out to disappear amongst the rest of the pedestrian traffic.

An hour later, Luke helped himself into the hotel suite and found the same red-accented protocol droid greeting him in the foyer. The droid took back the cardkey and, politely, hung up Luke's shabby robe as well. Luke took a moment to straighten his tunic and smooth his slacks before strolling powerfully into the grand suite.

Ambassador Danje was waiting for him on a blood red couch, still in his suit of velvet and silk, drink in hand. "Well. I must say you inherited your father's balls."

Luke allowed himself a little grin as he came into the room. Danje was nearly thirty years his elder. Many of that generation remembered all too well the exploits of Kenobi and Skywalker. That Jedi partnership was all over the media during the Clone Wars, just as Lord Darth Vader was all over the media for two decades thereafter.

Ironically, the Empire's propaganda machine avoided making it known that Jedi Anakin Skywalker and Lord Darth Vader were the same man. Luke and Leia decided a long time ago there was no good reason to offer up that morsel to the general public.

Luke gave him a shallow bow. "Greetings, Senator Danje."

Danje waved that off. "I stopped being a Senator the minute Palpatine dissolved the Senate." He puffed out a frown to think on that with displeasure, then turned his attention back to his visitor with a playful warning. "Do you know how close you came to being Imperial Lunch Meat today?"

Luke's voice was easy and quiet. "Not as close as one may think." Luke stepped down into the seating area with ease. "You mentioned concerns about the Jedi Guild to the Minister of State. I'm surprised you weren't expecting me."

"Oh, I was expecting you," Danje corrected with audacity. "I just wasn't expecting you to approach me out in the open on an Imperial-controlled public space station." He eyed Luke like the kid was being a moron.

Luke sat down on the couch opposite of the loud politician. The Ambassador was a big-framed, white-haired human male with a gruff voice and propensity for cutting honesty. Luke made a mental note to tell Leia that describing Danje as 'kind of rough' was a powerful understatement.

And yet there was not one photon of deceit or disrespect emitting from this stalwart personality. Luke liked the man instantly.

Danje looked Luke directly in the eyes, afraid of nothing. "I told your sister I was concerned about the Jedi Guild only because I am. Not because I wanted you to come by and finish her sales pitch."

"No sales pitch." Luke shrugged his hand from his knee. "What are your concerns?"

Danje leaned forward on the couch. His blonde-gray brows hardened over his nose. "You're not getting me: Cagharten isn't splitting off from Empire no matter what you've got up your sleeve. They still have control of the Serra Arm. The first planet that tries to leave is going to get whacked, plain and simple. We're so close to the capital that the Empire can reach out and sting us like it was batting an eyelash. My job is to protect the people of Cagharten in the way they want to be protected. That means staying put. Whoever has Coruscant has the Serra Arm and whoever has the Serra Arm has our obedience."

Luke wasn't deterred. "Perhaps Cagharten should lead the way for all six key systems of the Serra Arm to switch sides at once?"

Danje threw up his hands in the air with a hoot, "Ah yes! The Mutiny Theory!" He shoved to his feet with a flash of a smile. "Your sister threw that one at me too. But that would require the 'six systems of the Serra Arm' to, y'know, get along."

As Danje moved to the bar beside the room and poured himself a refill, Luke let his eyes rest on the tabletop to think on a tactical plan to this conversation. When the droid tried to waddle over to help with the drink, Danje flapped his hand away to 'beat it'. Danje offered to make one for Luke, but Luke declined with a simple gesture.

The big voice boomed with conversational curiosity. "Have you ever been in jail?"

Luke fought a grin at the bright tone in his question. He was about to honestly say 'yes', already regretting the digression of relevance to the topic at hand, when Danje continued without his answer.

"I am in jail right now," Danje preached as he returned to the seating area, "because I can't go to my galactic neighbors to even talk about whether the Serra Arm should stay with the Empire or tuck tail and run to the Alliance." His voice yelled from his soapbox and waved an arm in the air. "I can't even invite them to a Table of Debate just to disagree about it."

Luke's gaze remained even, letting the man rant.

Danje's hands and expressions were as animated as his voice. "You see, the strength of a government is her freedom to argue. It takes all ideas—sound, insane, or just plain ludicrous—to come to the same table before an educated group can parse out what's best for the whole population."

So far, the Ambassador was talking himself into leaving the Empire, so Luke just kept his mouth shut.

Danje wagged a finger as he continued, "But the people don't like that, see. Kids don't like it when parents fight. I don't like it either when The Powers That Be argue in front of me. It's uncomfortable! It feels like the whole galaxy is going to hell in a hand basket when my leaders are bashing at each other over a decision that's going to affect my life. It's scary!"

Luke tucked a frowning grin with a shrug of agreement.

"When people see an argument within the ranks of government, they see weakness." Danje instructed, "But if I don't have the ability to decide who's standing at the table on my behalf? Much less walk up to it myself? That's not a government; that's a jail cell."

As entertained as Luke was, he felt a little lost. The ambassador boisterously argued with Luke as though they were in disagreement about something. Unsure, Luke squinted an eye at him. "I'm not here to speak for the Alliance, Senator. I'm here to address your concerns about the Jedi Guild."

Danje's irritation began to throb on the Force. "You don't think the standing of the Jedi Guild is a key factor in the strength of the Alliance?"

"On the contrary. I do. But the Jedi Guild is my only authority. I have no business negotiating the details of Cagharten's position."

Danje reached over to gather a handful of mipnuts from a bowl on the drink table. "You're not a one man army. I get that. But your parlor tricks come in pretty handy when you're trying to get something done."

"Which is why there is a Jedi Code to ensure those 'parlor tricks' aren't used inappropriately."

Danje's eye flared a grin of humor. "That worked well for your predecessors, didn't it?" He popped a mipnut in his mouth and talked as he chewed. "How's that workin' out for ya?"

Luke remained silent but amused.

Danje angled his head, eyeing him curiously. "To how much of the original Jedi Order do you subscribe?" He waggled his hand in the air. "Percentage wise. Give or take a few. How close are you to them?"

Luke crossed his legs as he thought about that. "Hard to say."

Danje flapped a hand away, dismissing any worries about his Imperial loyalty. "I'm not going to tell anybody—

"It's hard to say because I don't know." Luke admitted. "I have few records how they did it."

Danje arched a brow. "And yet you expect to rebuild it stronger than the old Jedi Order? They were the altruistic monks of the government, and they pulled it off for thousands of years!" Danje shouted at him, and leaned forward, holding up an index finger. "One chink in their armor made the whole thing collapse into greed and tyranny. How do you expect to resolve that chink without even knowing what it was?"

Luke didn't have an answer to that right away but he didn't let it show in his face. Whether it was a Force whisper or true poetry, the answer Luke began to spin fit better than anything he could have trudged up in some political think tank, "Corroboration."

Danje angled his chin. His eyes narrowed to ask for more.

"I'm not doing this alone," Luke pointed out.

"Yes. I hear you've taken on your first apprentice," Danje noted.

"Your news is old. I've finished training my first apprentice. I'm about to take on my second."

"Do you have someone already picked out?"

Luke nodded. "And my first apprentice will help me train my second, and so on and so forth. The Jedi Guild isn't trying to recreate the Order the same as it was. We're reinventing it. All of us. The more the better. That's how we intend to fix the 'chink in the armor'."

We. Luke really liked that part: in reference to the Jedi, he could now say, 'we'.

Danje scolded him with a look. "There are those who believe the Jedi were the key weakness of the Old Republic. With all that celibacy and panhandling for their survival, many think they were so strict with their own that it's no surprise one of them cracked." Danje spread his hands. "And it's probably better we don't know which one it was anyway, otherwise we'd end up picking apart what happened."

Luke inwardly blanched. You're damn right it's better you all don't know which one 'cracked' or I wouldn't get support for this Jedi Guild at all.

Cagharten continued his rant, "My vote is leave the rest of that history for the universities to write in the text books. But that makes it hard to ensure that you don't repeat their mistakes."

Luke nodded with his eyes.

"So I ask again: how close is your doctrine to theirs?" He shrugged his fingers at the kid. "You must know something."

Luke wasn't sure how to answer that in numerical terms. His mouth opened to think.

"Let me put the question another way."

Thank goodness, Luke thought.

Danje looked at him straight on and said it like he was throwing a pitch. "Are you banging your apprentice?"

Luke blinked big. His brows lifted into his forehead.

"Sorry, man." Danje flicked a smile at Luke's reaction. "You're personal life stopped being your own the moment you became a politician."

"I'm not a politician," Luke retorted quietly. "I'm a Jedi Knight."

"Still. You're in the public eye. So it matters. It doesn't matter to me (mind you) but it matters to the people of Cagharten. If we ever leave the Empire, I'm going to have to give them an answer to that question." Danje poked a pointing finger at him. "You should have one ready."

"Sorry," Luke's voice went cold. "Where I come from, the public doesn't care about the intimate lives of their political leaders."

"Where're you from?"

"Tatooine."

"Tatooine? . . . In the Arkanis sector?"

"Yes."

"Run by the Hutts?"

"Yes."

Danje dropped his chin and hiked his voice with humored disbelief. "And you can't figure out why the public doesn't want to know more about the sex lives of your political leaders?"

Laughter splashed across Luke's face, shattering his cool façade. His fingers rested on his brow to hide his eyes, trying to un-see the image of Hutt Sex now in his mind, and flushed pink as he chortled softly.

"Finally! A sign of humanity!" Danje laughed at Luke's reaction. The elder chuckled maturely at him. After a moment, his offer came out like the bullet from a gun. "You wanna drink now?"

Calming himself, Luke lowered his hand back to his knee. "Yes, please."

Danje motioned over his shoulder. "Yo! 44! Pour the man a trafula!" Then, to Luke. "You want some dinner?"

"No, thank you."

Danje leaned forward on the couch and rested his elbows on his knees to consider all this. "Let me ask it a different way…"

Thank the Force, Luke cussed in his mind.

Danje's pretended like he was going to be gentler about it, but voice only got louder. "Are you sexually frustrated, son?"

Despite the cherry hinting on his cheeks, Luke was starting to get used to this. He met the man's eyes like a hard handshake, his voice deep and clear, "No."

Danje slapped his one knee and spread his hands wide with a shout. "That's all I need to know!" He waved the kid off again. "How you resolve that is your own damn business. But it's important to the people of Cagharten to know that training the 'little woman' didn't put a chink in your armor, if you get my meaning."

"I get your meaning, Senator."

The droid brought Luke the drink and sat it on the table in front of him. Luke stared at the glass of clear brown broth that was sure to make his eyeballs spin. He debated on whether he should reach for it.

"I'm not a Senator," Danje corrected again, voice tight.

"No," Luke agreed, meeting the man's eye with a glowing grin, "But you should be."

Danje considered him anew.

Luke continued. "I've met many who feel the same way you do. Now that the Empire has no 'Table for Debate', as it were, the inability to argue on behalf of your system must feel like," Luke nodded at it, "being in jail."

Danje angled his head and listened.

"So," Luke shrugged his hands smugly, "We built a new table."

The elder dropped his eyes and grinned.

Luke pushed slowly to his feet, "If you don't like the way the Jedi Guild operates, or how it fits within the Alliance," he offered with a spread of his hands, "You are welcome to come to our table and argue with me about it."

Despite Danje's narrowed glare, the charm he felt was clear in the pinch of his mouth.

"Until then," Luke bowed respectfully at the Ambassador and turned for the door. "May the Force be with you."