Disclaimer: All belongs to the great and powerful Disney.

So...Something weird happened to the reviews for the last chapter. They were delivered to my e-mail, and recorded as 'reviews' to the story, but as far as I can tell, I can't see them on the site anymore. Like the last review that I see on is Princess Escapism's last review of chapter 33, even though I know i got reviews from several of you. I guess the site ate you guys reviews! Hopefully they'll work better on this chapter, because it's a good one. Anyway, because I know what you guys wrote, I'll respond as usual.

Lord Darth Yoda - I enjoy putting the little touch of 'teenager' in our Jedi hero. And to be fair, he's pretty used to wearing nondescript Jedi robes, so anything outside of the norm is going to throw him for a loop.

Ralla has a role to play then just to be an amusing foil for Sascha, whether or not she'll give Itoma the old shiv to the back...we'll have to see. As for old Palpatine, he's probably working on putting the final touches on his plans for Naboo - I had included him tangentially in an earlier version of the story, but it didn't add anything, so it was removed. As I think I've stated, I'm against using important characters just so that they can be there - I use Obi-wan and Akakin very sparingly in book 2 (like 2 chapters) and Anakin again plays a bit of a role in book 4, but in general we focus Sascha and his friends.

thejoker122 - The Tevanteer is certainly ripe for some intrigue isn't it. You'll just have to see below for how it plays out.

nachtdemon - Thanks for the review! Glad you are enjoying!

7doom - Thank you for reviewing. I very much try to include humor, where appropriate, but in general I try to keep it to a minimum, because I don't think I'm particularly funny. Still, Ralla was a good opportunity for a little humor, and it was nice to write a character that isn't so serious.

A/N -

This chapter is long enough to not need author's notes. Thanks for putting up with the set-up chapters...now lets see what they set up!

Anyway, please enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter 35: The Night of the Tevanteer

Sascha Whitestar tapped his foot impatiently, waiting outside the front door of the estate house. He was awaiting Ralla Darst and Senator Kuat finally to emerge with their dresses and make-up prepared. Sascha wondered if the two women realized that they had a timeline that had been painstakingly pre-prepared for them, a timeline that they were now in danger of falling behind. He had heard of being fashionably late (as confusing a concept as that was), but could you be fashionably late when you were the guest of honor? He honestly didn't know.

Finally, after long minutes of waiting, Senator Itoma Kuat, and Ralla Darst emerged into the dying light of the evening. Itoma had been outfitted in a classic floor-length gown that left only a small part of her shoulders bare. The material of the dress was of a dark purple colour, but as the Senator moved and the fading light caught it, the material seemed to turn to a deep, pleasant maroon. Itoma's black hair was cropped into a bun and she wore a pair of magnificent, and Sascha assumed expensive, emerald earrings that completed the outfit.

Ralla was…stunning. He thought his teenaged heart might have skipped a beat when he laid eyes on her. Her tight black dress went to just above her knees, though the fine black material went all the way to her throat, so it was at least modest in that way. The dress didn't look like it offered too much mobility, but mobility wasn't exactly a necessity for tonight. Complementing her look was a gold pendant necklace that looked like it may have been worth an entire luxury starliner. Far from looking like an aide to Senator Kuat, Ralla Darst looked like she was the belle of the ball.

Snapping out of it, and realizing that his mouth was slightly agog, he blushed, but said nothing to the two women. Covering his embarrassment, he led the two women to the waiting speeder that would take them to Tevanteer House and the Tevanteer banquet. First up on the docket was the red carpet event for the media, which Sascha was sure was going to be an enthralling hour or two where he sat in the background, and tried to protect the Senator without coming off as overprotective. Such were the joys he was having on this mission.

As he approached the luxury speeder that was to take them to the Tevanteer banquet, he saw that there was a KSF agent obviously dressed up to be the driver. Sascha went over to the man and calmly explained that he would be driving. Though the KSF man protested his decision, he simply walked past the man, opened the door and sat in the driver's seat. Conflict resolution worthy of the Jedi tradition, Sascha thought to himself dryly.

He lifted the speeder off the ground without a hitch and disengaged the autopilot. The autopilot needed to go for two reasons, one was the obvious, that it could have been programmed to lead the speeder into an ambush, and the other was that he would have less fun driving the speeder if it was on autopilot. He had decided beforehand that he was going to extract the maximum amount of pleasure he could from this mission and that meant seizing any opportunity to pilot a vehicle. He would gain little enjoyment from this piloting session however, as Itoma's luxury speeder was designed more for comfort and luxury, not speed, so he found himself bored by the pedestrian capabilities of the vehicle.

Sascha reached the main security checkpoint and waved his credentials at the guard, who let the speeder into the compound itself. Through the windshield, he could now see his destination, Tevanteer House. He had thought that the estate that Itoma Kuat had been staying in the past few days had been large, by comparison, Tevanteer House made it almost seem like a small cottage.

Tevanteer House was lit in spectacular fashion, accentuating the white marble façade. The lavish red carpet leading up to it was already populated by famous Kuatis, and aristocrats, which was of course being broadcast by media outlets across Kuat so that the viewers back home could feel the spectacle. It almost made Sascha sick to see all the wealth on display, but he purged that thought as he exited the vehicle and held the door open for Itoma Kuat like the good aide he was dressed as.

When Senator Kuat emerged, she was immediately swarmed by journalists and other media types shouting questions at her and flat out begging for interviews. Itoma got out of the speeder, smiling and waving genially, as if she was the star of a holomovie. No wonder she had been so dead set on attending the Tevanteer Banquet, he thought.

The problem he was currently facing was that with all the media people surrounding the Senator, if any of them somehow had managed to smuggle a weapon through security, he very likely wasn't going to have a chance to react in time to defend her. Unfortunately as an 'aide' he couldn't simply just tell the Senator to move to a better location for him to protect her, without blowing his cover massively.

"Um, Sascha, a little help?" came a voice from behind him.

Belatedly, Sascha realized that he had left Ralla behind in the speeder and that the young Kuati was having difficulty extracting herself from the vehicle. He turned around and politely extended a hand to the young Kuati. Smiling gratefully, Ralla used the proffered hand to pull herself out of the speeder. "Thanks, these heels and this dress don't exactly promote mobility," Ralla then looked at the glamour of the scene that surrounded her, and now she was a part of, "Wow, it's so amazing here! Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"I haven't, but there is no time for gawking right now," he said reproachfully.

Ralla stared at the festivities for another second and then snapped back to a professional mien, "Right, I'm on it." Quietly and surprisingly surreptitiously for someone dressed like Ralla, she moved to Itoma's side, datapad in hand. Ralla's role for the night was to help Itoma Kuat take notes and remember whom she had spoken to.

With Itoma and Ralla in front, surrounded by a crowd of media beings, he was doing his best to stay close to the Senator without attracting any undue attention. Ralla, being distracted by her work as well as the media and the other famous Kuatis being mere metres from her, was mercifully quiet for the moment. This allowed him to focus all his attention on the safety of Itoma Kuat.

As Itoma made her way to the red carpet, the media beings kept themselves a polite distance from Itoma, but the sheer number of media beings that desperately wanted to talk to Itoma meant that beings were being jostled, and they were creeping ever closer to Itoma, which worried him. Also not helping matters were the blinding lights from the cameras that the videographers were carrying, which meant that he couldn't see past them into the large crowd that surrounded Itoma. It was, quite frankly, a security nightmare.

Yet, perhaps the Senator was too popular, or the KSF security was doing its job in making sure no one smuggled in any weapons, because Senator Kuat was gradually able to make her way down the red carpet, greeting old friends and conducting interviews all the while.

"You seem stressed out," said Ralla as she drifted over to his side during a quieter moment.

"You seem pre-naturally calm for someone on the first day of their job," Sascha countered, a bit harsher than he intended. He shook his head, "Sorry, this whole thing stresses me out. I just hate all of it, the pomp, and circumstance, it is all so unnecessary."

Ralla stared at him as if he was a particularly disappointing student, "I know you are from Coruscant, but the Tevanteer Banquet is one of Kuat's oldest traditions. It kicks off a week of celebration across the planet; it's common for families across social strata to gather together and watch the banquet, it is one of the rare times that everyone can come together and celebrate without thinking of class boundaries."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know," he said honestly. He of course knew about the historical significance of the Tevanteer banquet, there had been plenty of material in his research that had noted that. Yet he had somehow missed its social significance. Another weakness of trying to figure out a planet by reading about it rather than experiencing it, he thought.

Ralla walked slowly back towards the Senator, and he followed, "So what's your favourite part of Coruscant? I'd love to go there one day, hopefully Senator Kuat will take me back with her when she returns to the Senate."

"Oh the Jedi Temple is my favourite place on Coruscant," he replied absentmindedly, eying a shady looking Rodian that was carrying a holorecorder that potentially could have concealed some sort of weapon. Suddenly he realized that he had just made a massive blunder. What normal citizen of Coruscant would say that his favourite place was the Jedi Temple, a place that only few non-Jedi had ever seen the inside of? He opened his mouth to try to correct his mistake, but he was unable to form the words, any words to correct his blunder.

"The Jedi Temple, isn't that where the Jedi take the children that they have kidnapped?" replied Ralla.

Was that a joke? Sascha wondered. If it was, it certainly was not a funny one. Undoubtedly, the idea that Jedi kidnapped their Initiates had been around for thousands of years. It was of course, patently untrue. On most Republic worlds, blood tests were performed at birth to record the amount of midi-chlorians in an infant's cells, so that parents were informed well in advance that their child would be selected by the Jedi. Some parents were more accepting than others, but legally, the Jedi Order had the right to take any Force-sensitive children within the Republic that were identified. Nonetheless, the rumor that Jedi kidnapped children had still survived, clearly.

"I don't know, I've never been inside," Sascha lied, "I just think it's a beautiful building."

Ralla made a dismissive wave, "Whatever, the Jedi are overrated anyway. I'm sure their 'powers' are just myths at this point. I mean, the whole idea of 'The Force' is just so illogical. I highly doubt that there is some 'Force' that only several thousand beings can sense out of a galactic population of hundreds of trillions. I mean how stupid could people be? Jedi are just well trained soldiers with laser swords, the Jedi Order just has the best propaganda campaign in the galaxy at this point," said Ralla Darst confidently.

"I don't know about that, all I know is the Temple itself is beautiful from the outside," Sascha hissed with essentially the last of his composure, not appreciating the slights against the Jedi Order. In front of him, Senator Kuat was smiling and Sascha could tell it wasn't from the interview she was currently giving. Sascha brought a hand to his suddenly pounding temple, wondering where Senator Kuat found Ralla, and if she had known of her…interesting views about the Jedi Order.

Mercifully, the conversation moved away from the Jedi, to restaurants and other places to see on Coruscant. Sascha, considering he had spent the vast majority of his life on Coruscant, hadn't actually seen a lot of the planet, but he knew enough to talk in vague platitudes about the various topics Ralla was interested in. Slowly, Senator Kuat was making her way towards the entrance of Tevanteer House, but the seemingly never ending stream of media personnel kept her from advancing too quickly. What did impress Sascha was that despite the reporters asking variations of essentially the same question over and over again, Itoma Kuat gave a reasoned, thoughtful, response to each question.

Finally, after more than an hour of interviews and other media obligations, Itoma Kuat entered the main ballroom of the Tevanteer estate. Sascha immediately noticed Luminara standing alone off to the side. The Miralian gave him a miniscule shake of her head, and he knew exactly what she was indicating, the two Jedi seemed grossly out of place in this opulent setting. However, Sascha had to admit seeing Luminara wearing some rather flamboyant jewellery attached to her traditional Miralian robes was a fairly amusing sight. He was sure that Aurine would have concurred, had she been here.

Itoma Kuat swept around the room, shaking hands with a collection of celebrities and aristocrats. Sascha recognized many of them from his research, and was surprised to see the varying reactions the Senator received. Some greeted her warmly, others greeted her perfunctorily and then made an excuse to move on at their earliest convenience. Certainly it was a clear difference from the near hero-worship that she had received with the media. Sascha continued to scan the crowd with the Force, there was something…off about the crowd, but he could not make it more specific than just a vague sense of disquiet in the Force.

While the crowd still milled about, soon it would be time for Senator Kuat to give the opening address at the banquet, which would kick off the festivities for the evening, officially speaking. Sascha assumed that if any attempt was going to be made on the Senator, it would probably be then. Accordingly, most of the security provisions had gone into protecting the Senator during that moment. The raised podium that Itoma would stand behind when delivering the speech had a small shield built into it that would appear invisible, unless it was struck by a blaster bolt or similar weapon. Sascha just hoped it would be enough protection.

As the Senator walked the steps to the raised platform, Sascha and Ralla followed at a discreet distance. He put just enough space between himself and the Senator so that he could move her out of harms way quickly, but without being seen as clinging to closely to her. He let his eyes rake over the crowd as if he was a predator, searching for any sort of clue if there was to be an attack or where it may come from. Nothing jumped out at him, it was just a crowd of mostly humans in their finest clothes. Still, the sense of disquiet in the Force remained.

Senator Kuat got to the platform without problems and after waiting for quiet from the guests, she began her speech, "Gentlebeings from across Kuat, thank you for joining me on this fine night to mark one of Kuat's oldest traditions, the Tevanteer banquet. As you know the Tevanteer celebrates…"

Sascha tuned out the speech. While he was pretty sure that Itoma Kuat was a reasonably good public speaker, his current priority was allowing the Senator to make many more speeches after this particular one.

Nonetheless, some parts of the speech caught his attention, "I look forward to ushering in a new era of our history, one where Kuat takes the lead in matters outside of its own sector. Many have asked me why I commanded the KSF to go after the notorious pirate Tu Dronos. Simply put he was a menace to the good people of the Republic and we had the resources in place to stop him, so as Kuati's we took the lead and rid the galaxy of one of its most heinous villains." Sascha almost rolled his eyes at that comment, what a total revision of history that was.

The Senator spoke for almost twenty minutes, which Sascha could tell bored some of the guests tremendously, however he was more interested in finding the people who wished to make a dramatic ending to the speech.

Finally, Itoma Kuat completed her speech, receiving a healthy amount of applause from the audience. As the applause started to dim, Itoma waved to the crowd one last time and moved away from the protected platform and back down the stairs towards the main floor of the banquet. When the Senator was a few steps down the stairs, Sascha heard a shout of "For Kuat!" in the crowd and in that split second he could see with clarity a man in the crowd withdraw a blaster from his clothes and aim it at the Senator.

"DOWN!" He shouted and dove at the Senator, tackling her heavily to the ground against the steps. The Senator groaned loudly in pain and confusion as blaster fire rang above him. Judging by the heat he felt from above him, he was very close to being hit. He struggled for a second to withdraw his lightsaber from its unusual place in his pants pocket, rather than his belt. Finally grasping it, he ignited it, stood and immediately had to parry a pair of bolts aimed in his direction with his teal blade.

It had only been a few seconds since the initial shots were fired, but already Tevanteer House was a scene of chaos. Aristocrats were rushing for the few exits, while KSF agents were pushing against them, trying to quell the assailants. Sascha saw Luminara out of the corner of his eye, her green lightsaber held high, subdue one of the attackers with a vicious side kick that looked like it may have stopped a charging Rancor. The man folded over in an almost comic fashion and stayed down. Luminara then looked to find another assailant, but the crush of bodies was preventing her from moving through the crowd.

The chaos of the scene was a distraction that Sascha was not used to dealing with. The sense of fear and panic from so many beings was so strong that it threatened to overwhelm his senses, or at very least distract him. He saw servants and aides of Kuati aristocrats literally throw their bodies in front of incoming fire to protect their employers. Sascha longed for the chance to leap down and subdue some of these…dissidents? Terrorists? But he had been told, repeatedly, that he was to protect the Senator, so that what he was going to do. It didn't make it any easier to just watch the chaos unfold though.

As the amount of blaster fire coming his way slackened slightly, he grabbed Itoma Kuat, and dragged her to her feet using his one free hand. Itoma Kuat, Senator, a woman who had survived a couple of assassination attempts without seemingly being affected, appeared to have finally reached her mental limit. As Sascha brought her to her feet, she almost collapsed into him, though Itoma was unhurt, she seemed unable to stand under her own power, likely in shock. Great, Sascha thought to himself, he wasn't sure if he could drag the Senator around and deflect blaster fire at the same time.

"I've got her," said Ralla Darst from behind him.

"Stay behind me," Sascha said without turning, deflecting another laser bolt and sending it high into the roof of the building, narrowly avoiding one of the expensive looking chandeliers. Truth be told he'd forgotten about the young, statuesque Kuati, but was beyond grateful for her help as Ralla slung one of Itoma Kuat's arms around her shoulder and started to make her way slowly down the remaining stairs. He was now fully able to turn his attention to the situation at hand, confidently deflecting the incoming fire, taking the time to ensure that he was deflecting the bolts harmlessly away.

"Grenade!" came a cry from the crowd, somehow piercing through the panicked din.

Sascha's heart pounded in his chest, any sort of explosive device going off in such a crowded area would be nothing short of a disaster. He opened himself as widely as he could to the Force trying desperately to find a small object in the middle of a panicked crowd.

Seconds ticked by but he could not find it. At the last second he found the grenade but before he could pull it from the crowd with the Force, he felt someone jump on top of it and almost at that exact moment, the grenade went off, impact muffled by the brave soul who sacrificed himself to dull the explosion. Sascha cried out wordlessly, Force bless you brave sir, whoever you were.

He clawed his attention back to his current predicament, he had almost stewarded Ralla and the Senator down the stairs, where they could make their way to the back, and to the KSF command post that had been set up for the event.

By coincidence or by planning by the attackers, Sascha was facing down a young man wielding a blaster, trying to point it at Sentor Kuat. He positioned himself in front of Ralla and Itoma and called out, "You don't need to do this," to the young man.

He may as well have been talking to a wall, for all the reaction that his words elicited from attacker. The attacker fired four shots in quick succession, forcing him to whirl his blade around rapidly. He didn't have his usual luxury of not having to worry where the deflected bolts would end up, he needed to deflect the bolts into the walls or the ground and it was proving difficult to do so. The last bolt he managed to deflect downward, but at an awkward angle, it actually impacted on the stairs behind him, causing Ralla to slip as she carried the Senator down. Selflessly Ralla used her body to break the Senator's fall, but came off the worse for wear.

Sascha continued to stare down the young man, aware that he could not move to attack, lest he leave the Senator undefended. "Set down your weapon and you won't be hurt," he said to the Kuati, looking for a diplomatic solution to his problem.

The cold blue eyes of the young man registered no response to his plea and he fired again, this time taking the time to aim his shots more carefully. Sascha brought his hands in towards his body and angled the blade downward, deflecting the bolt back at his assailant, catching him in the leg and sending him spinning to the ground, moaning in pain. That was a bit lucky, Sascha thought to himself, but he was going to take any stroke of luck he could get.

With an opening to get the Senator to safety, Sascha turned to pick up Senator Kuat. He was pained by the idea of leaving Ralla, but the young Kuati girl was clutching at her ankle in distress and was in no shape to follow him. He cursed loudly, and then he decided that he was not going to leave her behind, even though it was not strictly following his mission.

While holding the scruff of Itoma Kuat's dress, he used the Force to levitate Ralla high enough so that she could wrap her arms around his neck and chest. "Grab a hold and hang on tight," he told Rallla. The Kuati woman complied, and he felt her grab two handfuls of his shirt. Then grunting with exertion, Sascha carried the two women into the secure corridor, thankful that for the moment there appeared to be no more people waiting to kill him or his charges.

For now at least.