To my beloved readers,

Hey there, guys!

Sorry about the delay between chapters. And I also apolgize if this chapter skips out on too much stuff with Nara and Rei! Unfortunately, I have absolutely no clue how to do romance stuff, and since I really wanted to advance the story along, I had to focus on other stuff. If that's disappointing, again I'm super sorry! There's an excellent chance that I may rewrite the beginning of chapter later on down the line, but until I learn how to write romance I'm gonna have to stick to what I know how to do. But anyways, Thanks again to all of you who've kept up, and please enjoy Part One my first two-parter in quite some time! Enjoy!

~DoctorPortal

Chapter 35: The Rumors, Part I

Naboo Capital City, many weeks later...

The Mukure family was in turmoil.

Nara had been missing for months. None of them had heard any word from her, and the King and Queen had gotten desperate. They'd hired a bounty hunter to go retrieve her, and had received no word back from him, either.

And then there were the rumors. The King and Queen were soon to step down for Auburn's coronation as ruler of the Naboo people, and rumors were circulating that a sinister plot was to unfold on the day of the coronation, which was just a few short weeks away.

Argos paced along the living room floor, the rest of his family gathered on couches surrounding him.

"Why, why has she done this to us?!" Argos said, anger made clear in his tone. "What could she possibly have to gain from betraying us like this?!"

Maylisa, Auburn, and Sala all sat quietly, allowing the King time to vent before they made any comment. But Argos didn't seem to calm down, and after several minutes, Sala snuck out of the room.

She tiptoed carefully down to her bedroom, quickly closing the door behind her as she entered. Walking over to her dresser, she pulled a long, hooded cloak over herself, then walked over to the large balcony. It was nighttime, and the moonlight shone brightly through the windows. Sala walked out onto the balcony and found the hidden notch in the side of the wall. She used it as a first handhold, following other notches until they led her down to the ground. She quickly ran across the palace grounds, careful so as not to draw any attention to herself. once she'd covered sufficient ground, she stopped and pulled out her small pocket holoterminal. She pulled the hood down off her face, pressed a button on her holoterminal, and began recording a message.

"Hey, Nara…," she began.

The past few months had been the best of Nara's life.

Firstly, she and her best friend had started dating (or at least, they'd gotten as close to dating as you can get when living aboard the same starship with a small, tight-knit group of people) after the encounter with the bounty hunter. And although they'd tried to keep it a secret at first, the rest of the crew caught on almost immediately, and were incredibly supportive, being careful to give the two of them plenty of space when there was downtime to be had.

Beyond that, however, not much had happened for her, except for the intense amount of training she'd been doing with Nova and Winson. Lightsaber techniques and object manipulation with Nova, mind training with Winson. And since then, she'd become fully at home with her Jedi powers, and was well on her way to becoming a fully-fledged Jedi Knight.

At the moment, she and Rei were in her room, just sitting on her bed and chatting.

After a moment of laughter subsided in their conversation, the intercom on the wall near the door chimed. Nova's voice came through the speaker.

"Hey, Nara, you in there?" he said.

"Yeah, I'm here!" she called back.

"Cool," Nova replied, before going on. "I've got an incoming transmission for you. I'm not sure who it's from, since whoever sent it would seem to be really good at encoding messages. All I could get out of it was that it was a private message for you, labeled as urgent. You want me to patch it through?"

"Yes, please," Nara replied. She stood up and walked over to the small holotable in the corner of the room. Rei followed.

"Do you want me to step out for a moment?" Rei asked. Nara shook her head.

"Nah, it's fine," Nara responded, "Whatever this is, I'd frankly rather not be alone to see it."

She pressed the "accept call" button on the display and the image of a young girl, only a few years older than Nara, was projected in front of them. The girl bore a striking resemblance to Nara, as if she were a relative of some sort. Nara's eyes widened with recognition when she saw her.

"Sala..?" Nara breathed quietly.

"Who?" Rei asked.

"It's… It's Sala, one of my older sisters.." Nara replied, still incredibly stunned.

The message began to play, making it apparent that it was prerecorded.

"Hey there, Nara…," Sala's hologram said. "It's been a while, huh?" She chuckled softly, then sighed, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. "Look, I'm sending this to you for a lot of reasons, and I'm not going to try to beg you to come back, it's just…," Sala paused for a moment. "I'm… I'm scared, Nara. I'm so scared." Sala's voice began to break. "Dad's spending every waking moment in a boiling rage, mom's sick with worry, The palace guards are keeping their distance, Auburn's freaking out about every little thing, and there are rumors going around that we're all going to be assassinated on the night of Auburn's coronation! Please, Nara, I know you're super busy in training. I know you are. Mom and Dad tried to keep the Force powers thing from us, and I still think Auburn doesn't know, but I do. I've known the whole time. And I think it's great! I think that you of all people deserve to be something better than just some lowly princess who'll probably never see the throne. So I know you're probably with some Jedi Master somewhere, deep in training, and I know that this family has betrayed you in ways indescribable with words, but we're still your family. And though Mom and Dad may never be willing to admit it, they need you. Please, we need your help. Yours and Winson's, and we need it soon. I'll try to keep sending one of these each night, but there's a great chance I'll be caught sometime soon. I've modified my holoterminal to algorithmically encode these so only you get the chance to see it, but I don't know if it'll work. Please, help us, Nara, You're our only hope…"

The message ended.

Silence passed between Nara and Rei for several moments, until Rei spoke up.

"Holy shit..." she said, cautiously. "So...What are you going to do?" she asked.

Nara said nothing, but a look of determination came across her face.

"Come on," she said, "We're gonna show the others."

"So, what exactly are you wanting us to do, Nara?" Nova asked, still left confused after being shown the recording. "Do you want us to go to Naboo?"

"No, I-I mean, Yes, I-" Nara stammered.

Winson interjected.

"Nara, are you sure you're ready to face your family again? It hasn't been very long, and you still have a lot of training to do…," WInson said.

"I…," Nara began, "I have to try."

"Very well, then…" Winson said. "Nova, are you up to this, it is your ship after all…"

Nova stood silent for a moment, arms crossed, his chin resting on his left hand. He nodded once, then spoke up.

"Yeah. I'm in." He looked up to the camera in the corner of the room.

"Kaz? What do you say we make a little detour to the Nubian System?"

Kaz's voice emanated from the overhead speakers. He was still plugged in to the main computer.

"Sounds like fun to me," he said, "I've already got the navicomputer all programmed and everything. Want me to make the jump?" he asked.

Nova leaned back in the chair behind him, raised his hand, and pointed loosely at the camera.

"Engage," he said.