Joe's Note: Originally I was planning to have 'Separate Ways' serve as a chapter-and-a-half sized entry or maybe even a double chapter… and then I realized that given how compartmentalized the writing was, there was absolutely no reason I couldn't break it in half at the obvious point - one of the multiple scene changes - and present it as two individual chapters. I actually fleshed out some of the content to make each of the two resulting chapters long, so in reality you guys actually win from having me go with this option. Apart from that… nothing really important to note in this chapter apart from that it'll be the last time we see Huaihai and Victoriei for the foreseeable future. Last chapter being the same for Tverskaya, for that matter, since I won't be returning to Mandalore for some time. I was serious when I said that I intended to spin some of the clones off onto their own adventures to draw down the overall cast. We'll also be dealing with some of Secura's Sirens soon… some of whom still don't even have names or descriptions at this point, I just discovered.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

"Just out of curiosity, did you guys ever end up setting up the code phrase system that Sabé wanted? Because obviously it's impossible for Anakin to mistake me for you; there's the height difference, the significantly bigger bust, my superior fashion sense…"

"Much like a committee meeting, this doesn't seem to be going anywhere."

"…but while I don't have to worry about ending up as your NSFW stunt double, I was thinking of asking Sabé if she wanted to do dinner and a holodrama with me. Which in turn means that I'm understandably concerned about her safety in the workplace."

Even as Sabé snickered softly from her spot behind and to the right of the senator, where the handmaiden was casually perched atop an astromech's dome, Padmé let out an aggravated sigh and pointedly refused to look up from the datapad that she was working on. "In that case, let me assure you that Sabé's working conditions are… no longer a matter that should concern you."

Huaihai let out a sigh of relief at that, and then silence descended upon Padmé's office… for all of thirty seconds. "Well with that out of the way, let's move on to something fun. Not gonna lie, kinda upset that nobody's commented on my new look yet. And here I thought working in an all-female office was going to be like, girl talk all day every day. Damn. Should have offered to trade Moderation for Balance; I bet Kaya is having all sorts of fun introducing the Mandalorians to the concept of 'treat yo' self'."

Despite knowing intellectually that humoring the girl would only encourage her behavior, Padmé also realized that Huaihai's shuura fruit had fallen from the tree and splattered onto a root. Minor cosmetic differences aside, she was a hundred percent Cordelia… and Cordelia was capable of going off on some even more nonsensical - or even worse, hideously uncomfortable - tangents if one couldn't keep up their end of the conversation. And so Padmé looked up, arching an eyebrow at Huaihai. "You look very… familiar. That's a distinctly Moenian dress; I own a more ornate version in sunrise shades. Since when are you interested in Nabooian fashion?"

"Well, I'm going to be honest with you here… wait, why do I need to qualify a statement like that? When am I ever not honest with you?" Huaihai took a moment to ponder that, making Padmé roll her eyes; in her opinion, Cordelia and her clones could stand to be a little less bluntly honest sometimes. "Anyway, I wasn't really wild about the idea at first. Captain Panaka wanted me to find a way to blend in with the others in your office, but it felt kinda appropriative. You know, like how Mom got on you for the Alderaanian hairstyles?" Huaihai pirouetted gracefully, showing off a dress that bled from Cordelia's signature shade of purple down into pure black flecked with silver to simulate a starscape, before coming to a stop and shrugging. "Then I realized that I was cloned from a white-passing, upper class American teenager. We put the 'pro' in 'cultural appropriation'. That and I look good in anything, so why not?"

She wasn't appropriating Alderaanian culture, she was simply enjoying it like anyone else who indulged in something created somewhere other than their planet of birth. Padmé shot Huaihai a baleful look before deactivating her datapad and rising from her desk. "…just like your mother, the more you talk, the less I care to listen. Now if you're quite done fooling around, we're going to be late for a meeting of the Senate Interspecies Advisory Committee. Given that today we're supposed to be presenting the chancellor with several suggestions aimed at deescalating recent tensions between certain member species, it's imperative that-"

"I may be interested in Sabé but I'm still my mother's daughter. You had me at 'Interspecies'." Padmé let out a groan of disgust as Huaihai closed the distance between herself and the handmaiden in question, offering Sabé a hand. The brunette took it with a faint smile, giving the astromech that she'd been sitting on a farewell pat as she rose to her feet. The purple and gold droid was a new addition to her office that had arrived with Huaihai. Padmé still wasn't sure how the clone had gotten her hands on a R3 unit, given that ownership was restricted to militaries and a few other authorized members of the military-industrial complex, but she'd decided not to question it for the sake of her sanity. She also had no desire to know why Huaihai had truncated it's name from R3-YT to 'Yeet', or what that might possibly mean in the extensive lexicon of slang that the girl enjoyed throwing around. "Wait, you said we're meeting with the chancellor? Score! I can say hi to Vicki while we're there. I haven't seen her since we landed."

…that was right, Chancellor Palpatine had a clone of his own assigned to his protection. As if Cordelia was the end all and be all of martial ability, and was somehow capable of something that the best clonetrooper units and Jedi Knights were not. The chancellor seemed amenable enough to the arrangement, strangely enough… although given how his eyes had lingered on Huaihai when Padmé had first introduced the newest member of her entourage, it made her wonder if his reasons were less virtuous than others might have suspected. And given his age relative to hers… and Cordelia's for that matter… Padmé shuddered. Some things were best left unconsidered. Although wait. If she was bringing Huaihai, and 'Vicki' was already there… "Two of you in one room? I'm not sure I can handle that. On second thought, you'd better stay behind. Captain Panaka's forces can ensure my protection for the afternoon."

Huaihai let out a burble of laughter at that as she led the way out of Padmé's office and down the hallway toward the turbolift that would take them to the chancellor's suite. "No can do, boss lady. I'm supposed to stay with you as close to 24/7 as I can. Notable exceptions include whenever Anakin is in town because I'm pretty sure that one of us would stab the other in short order. Mom already cleared that one for me. But you not wanting to deal with me being beside myself isn't on the allowable exceptions list. Sorry."

Sighing, Padmé lengthened her strides and brushed past the annoying brunette as she stalked down the hallway. Just what she needed, to put up with two Cordelias at one time. Could her day get any worse? Then Padmé's eyes widened as something occurred to her. There were twelve 'perfect' clones of Cordelia, according to Huaihai. One was on Mandalore, as revealed by the clone's own rambling. One was assigned to Padmé herself. One was assigned to Palpatine. Where were the other nine? Would she potentially have to deal with three or more Cordelias in a single room at a committee meeting at some point? Cordelia didn't have a soft spot for any other senators… right?

The group stepped - or in Yeet's case, rolled - into the turbolift in relative silence and the car whisked them off toward their destination. As the lift hurtled along, Padmé watched out of the corner of her eye as Huaihai knocked on one particular section of her R3 unit's dome, the droid whistling softly before retracting the hatch to reveal… a void? Huaihai slipped her lightsaber into the compartment before wrapping her knuckles against the droid again, causing the droid to seal the compartment back up again. When Huaihai caught Padmé eyeing her, the brunette offered a shrug. "We're the Naboo delegation, right? Pacifists and all that? I'd better look the part and if I need it… well, Yeet and I have been practicing. He can launch that thing to me up to fifty feet away with pretty damn good accuracy. Hence the name."

Ah. How… thoughtful of her. When the turbolift door slide open on the correct floor, Padmé led the way out of the car and down the hall to the chancellor's office. She paused briefly in the antechamber to allow Dar Wac to verify her identity before passing between a pair of imposing Red Guard members and walking down a short hallway into Palpatine's public office. There, she found the other members of SIAC waiting for her… along with the last person that she wanted to see. Before she could offer some sort of cursory pleasantry, though, she found herself rudely shoved aside as Huaihai rushed into the office. Coming to a stop in front of her clone, she dropped to one knee and dramatically gestured to… the girl's footwear? "What are those?!"

"Wedges." The clone who Padmé could only presume was 'Vicki' lifted one foot off the floor, twisting her leg a bit so she could show off her boot. "It kinda got lost in the shuffle but when Mom first designed this armor, she wanted to add wedges to it. Not the most practical thing for most of us, but considering that I spend most of my day standing around trying to look official? It was a perfect way to deal with the fact that looking up at the Red Guard and the Coruscant Guard troopers got old after like, ten seconds."

Huaihai considered that for a few seconds before ultimately shrugging and rising back to her feet. "I'd be jealous but I don't have to wear a body bucket all day so I'm content enough with my lot in life. Now that that's out of the way, though… new weapon?"

Nodding, Vicki spun the long metal rod she was holding in a tight circle around her body, seemingly utterly uncaring of the fact that she came within inches of hitting Padmé with it. "Lightpike. I wanted something a bit more officious looking so I blended in a bit better around me. Sheev found the specifications for this thing… I'm not sure where to be honest. But I marathoned the construction process and finished it in a day. Neat, right?"

"Almost enough to make me want to build a new weapon. Well, a weapon period. Something other than the mass produced sabers that we were given. You know what I mean." Taking the lightpike from her sister, Huaihai pressed the ignition switch and let out a soft coo as the yellow blade extended from the end. It was far shorter than any lightsaber blade that Padmé had ever seen - perhaps save Yoda's - but it was also emerging from the longest hilt. Perhaps a concession to the fact that not everywhere she might need to swing her new weapon would have a ten foot ceiling? "So you didn't salvage your old crystal. I'll assume that Palpatine got it for you too…" Trailing off, Huaihai's brow furrowed in thought and then she made a choking noise. "Did you call him 'Sheev'?"

Vicki shrugged innocently. "What? It's his name. He calls me Victoriei instead of Chase. Possibly because of how many of us he deals with on a regular basis, but the point stands. If he can call me by my first name, it's completely normal that I call him by his. And yeah, he got the crystal from… I kinda zoned out during the story, to be honest. Some Jedi who liked him gave him the slagged hilt of his old lightsaber for safekeeping but the crystal was in perfect condition so he gave it to me to put back into service. I wish I'd paid attention; now I'm kinda curious who had a yellow lightsaber. Hiskari's is sort of a yellow-y white color but this is more of a-"

Bringing the lightsaber down closer to her face, Huaihai shook her head vehemently. "This isn't a yellow blade. The temple guards have yellow blades. This is definitely more of an amber."

"Amber is a shade of yellow."

"That's like saying teal is a shade of blue."

"It is a shade of blue."

"Yeah, but teal is teal. It's not just blue."

"Well sorry I wasn't exact enough for you. Gee, I wonder who owned an amber lightsaber before I inherited their crystal. That better?"

Before Huaihai could respond, Victoriei snatched her lightpike back from her sister and deactivated it before slipping around her dress-clad doppelgänger and extending a hand to… the space to the right of Padmé. "Victoriei Chase and believe me, the pleasure of meeting you is all mine. You must be one of Senator Amidala's infamous body double-slash-aides. How, I have no idea; her beauty pales in comparison to yours."

While she had absolutely no desire to have Cordelia's attention aimed her way - any version of Cordelia - Padmé irrationally found herself wondering what Sabé had that she lacked as the handmaiden blushed faintly and accepted the proffered hand, shaking it lightly. "Pleasure to meet you, Victoriei. I must say, red is a favorite color of mine and so I'm definitely a fan of what you've done with your armor."

Victoriei offered a dismissive wave at that, even as she smiled and ran her free hand along the arm holding her lightpike. "It's nothing really. Just the Coruscant Guard markings applied to my own armor. Between this and the lightsaber, I don't tend to get slowed down going many places in this building."

Before the conversation could go any further, Huaihai darted back over to wrap an arm around Sabé possessively, hissing at her sister. "Mine. Go get your own. There's like, three other handmaidens who are all prettier than Padmé if you really want one."

"Oh, calm down. If you can't handle someone offering me compliments in a professional setting, we might as well not even go out to dinner." Sabé shot Huaihai a chiding look that became a faint smirk as she turned her attention back to Victoriei. "Besides, haven't you ever heard of polyamory before?"

The answer came from both clones simultaneously. "We're not Carnaby."

"I have no idea what that means but I'll assume that's your way of saying 'not interested'. Pity."