Not named George or Takahashi. Also think I have a better handle on what romance is than either.

As all my readers who also read Magic of the Force know, I had chosen to update this story since I wanted to take a step back from Magic in order to do some research/planning. So this is the November SW story.

Warning, this chapter has lemons. They are marked {} so you can avoid them if you want.

This chapter has been edited by Michael, and as such should contain far less in the way of small errors. Please send him your thanks, and now, enjoy!


Chapter 14: Time in the Light, Moves in the Dark

Having watched the destruction of the dreadnought-turned bounty hunters' hovel, the Wild Light and its inhabitants started back to Mandalore. Ranma was surprised to find, however, that they weren't able to take the same route out of the nebula as they had come in. "I thought that stars and stuff moved around slowly, not so chaotically on a day-to-day basis."

"Master, you of all people should never mention the chaotic nature of anything else," Tune retorted, his synthesized young boy's voice rather too sarcastic for the type.

"You really have been hanging out with HK too long, haven't you?" Ranma mused. "Still, why?"

"It's not just stars, master. Its planets, asteroids, and above all, black holes. Whenever you have more things affecting gravity in a single area, the more chaotic it is. There is no set hyperspace route through a nebula, master, there are simply too many stars, even stars dying and being born, for hyperspace routes to remain clear for very long. Trying to calculate how hyperspace routes will change is an astronomical endeavor. Luckily for us, this nebula is relatively well-known and the movement of its stars have been mapped out and hypothesized for centuries. I'll get us out within three jumps, but will have to calculate each in turn for several hours. From the edge of the nebula, we will be able to head towards Mandalore with only three very quick jumps."

"All right. Thanks for explaining, Tune. I'll leave you to it, unless, you need me here?" When the astromech droid replied in the negative, Ranma nodded and stood up, patting the droid's domed head for a moment. "HK, let's see what we can do about repairing you, okay? After that, I hear my bed calling me."

The next two days passed uneventfully on the Wild Light, much to Ranma's happiness, since he needed some time to internalize what he had done against the Crimson Nova bounty hunters. It wasn't so much that he had taking vengeance on them for Shaak's injury, but Ranma knew that he had lost control. Yes, fighting the Bounty Hunters' Guild as he did had been necessary, in a way. The Guild could not be allowed to get away with the idea of their members taking hostages to receive their bounties, could not be allowed to basically work with terrorist groups or to target Jedi who were given bounties. Jedi, hell, they shouldn't be allowed to target my friends, Ranma thought grimly. Hopefully they'll have learned that.

Despite that understanding, however, the number of people he had killed sat poorly with him. For those first few nights he woke up in sweat, the faces of those he had killed haunting him, mixed in with the faces of the dancers who had been so afraid of him during his first strike against the guild.

Added to this was the way he had started going about it and why: the fact he had fallen into the Soul of Ice. There was something terrifying about how he had fallen into the emotional control technique, coupled with how hard it had been to break back out. Having dealt with how and why he had fallen into it in the first place during the trip to the Crimson Nova's headquarters, Ranma now tried to figure out if the technique was salvageable at all, or if he should set it aside entirely.

After two days of meditation Ranma still felt the technique was just too dangerous. Even without his trying to reach out as he been to Shaak at the time, Ranma decided there was no way to safely use the technique, not with his inability to end it on his own. Ranma felt that he would have to entirely cut himself off from the chi of the universe around him, what the Jedi called the Unifying Force, to stop the emotional siphon effect which made it so incredibly dangerous. Of course the technique was so hard to break out of that Ranma couldn't exactly experiment with it, but that was his impression after nearly two days of thinking and meditation.

Almost immediately after exiting the nebula, however, Ranma's meditation was interrupted by Tune telling him that the ship was being hailed by a Hypercom transmission request. Frowning, Ranma powered up the Wild Light's Hypercom uplink that the Jedi Order had installed on the ship in order to communicate with him and Shaak. The encryption program activated immediately, and the hologram went fuzzy as the two systems exchanged electronic handshakes before the link fully opened, revealing the faces of Masters Yoda and Windu.

"Is this a social call, or were you calling for Shaak? She's not here right now. She's still back on Mandalore, as you lot should know," he said, knowing full well what this was about and wanting to put it off for a bit. After so long meditating, trading verbal jabs with someone other than Tune and HK sounded like a great idea.

To his dismay, neither Master rose to his challenge, simply staring through the pickup at Ranma placidly. "What have you been up to, Ranma?" Mace asked bluntly.

Ranma's eyes grew hard, and discarding his desire to put this off he leaned forward. "You wouldn't be calling me if you didn't already know what I've been up to, or at least the first half of it, and why I was doing it in the first place."

"Anger caused by the pain of a loved one, understandable it is," Yoda said slowly. "Targeting the Bounty Hunters' Guild as a whole, too far that would be. Powerful friends, the Guild has. Stand against them, alone you could not."

"I wasn't alone, and anyway, I might surprise you," Ranma said, his lip twitching upwards into a sneer. "And I didn't strike against the whole guild. I understand the bounty hunters sometimes do good work, like, one out of every fifteen bounties, say. And I wasn't about to go on a massive murder spree." Not really, anyway. "Instead I searched for answers; found the chapter that accepted the bounty as well as facilitated the operation on Mandalore."

Yoda closed his eyes, and somehow Ranma knew that the little frog was feeling out the truth of Ranma's words despite the monstrous amount of distance between the two of them. When he opened his eyes, he slowly nodded. "Did what you had to, yet what you should not have had to, you have," he said obliquely, though his meaning came across. "Survivors, did you leave?"

"They all fought me," Ranma said flatly. "I would have liked to, but they all fought me, and…" He looked over at HK. "HK, forward to the Jedi Temple that stuff I asked you to work on yesterday."

"Proud statement: Of course, master. I am certain the merely fleshy Jedi will be in awe as to the amount of information I was able to glean simply by going through our memories of the action," the droid replied from where it had been standing against the far bulkhead, out of the range of the Hypercom pickup.

"What are we going to be looking at?" Mace asked quizzically. Given that this conversation was happening via Hypercom, any information would come through the temple before it was then sent on to Kashyyyk, so he would see the information first.

"HK was bored the other day, and I asked him to analyze the bounty hunters defenses and weapons, mainly as make work, I'll admit," Ranma said with a light chuckle, looking over at the assassin droid. "However, he came up with some very interesting information when we put both our parts of the battle together."

"Aggrieved jibe: While my master's lackadaisical attitude toward after action reports is sometimes irritating, he was correct in giving me this task. The bounty hunters were ready for us," HK cut in, shaking his ancient, heavily modified head.

Mace was silent for a second, watching the information show up on his screen, but it didn't take long for him to see the point HK was making. "You mean they were ready for you specifically," he stated.

"Ready for me and possibly ready for a combat droid of some kind, though not one up to HK's tonnage, and I mean that affectionately, HK," Ranma said, smirking at HK. "The weapons they had: the portable turbolaser, the man-mounted concussion missile launcher; their tactics. All of it points to them both knowing we were coming, and the fact they might've had some help getting weapons from someone else, since heavy weapons like that are proscribed weapons save for legal militaries. Added to that, nothing in their system, which Tune busied himself with while the fight was going on, could tell me where the original bounty on me or Shaak came from. The bounty bitches were being used by someone," Ranma finished flatly.

"The use of such heavy weapons actually doesn't mean much, though the proliferation of them might, if they all were military grade designs rather than cobbled together," Mace prevaricated. "Out of the Core Worlds weapons are easy to come by if you know where to look, despite ostensibly being outlawed. The money might give us some more points to investigate at the very least. Thank you, Ranma."

"Don't mention it," Ranma said. "Seriously, don't mention it. Whoever this is has decided to target me and mine, after all."

"Shaak is one of ours," Mace replied with a slight downtick of his lips. "Surely this was a way to target the Jedi Order, possibly to set us against the Mandalorians in some fashion?"

"No," Yoda said simply, looking through the pickup at Ranma, his ancient eyes shrewd. "Worried someone you have personally, Ranma. On the lookout, you should be."

Ranma nodded grimly. "I know, and unfortunately if they use hostages like they did against Shaak there's very little we can do to stop them. I mean, it isn't as if Shaak or I won't do our best to protect any hostages they try to take, regardless of how predictable it makes us."

For a while the three of them were quiet at that, then Mace spoke up. "I think that whoever this is will have a hard time finding catspaws after your recent actions. I speak of not just your assault on this bounty hunters' chapter, but the campaign you fought on Yavin 4 and the death of two Hutt crime lords before that. Your willingness to retaliate or even escalate like that makes you a very dangerous individual to anger, and that will get around the underworld quickly."

Yoda, however, had fallen silent, his mind moving on to an entirely different problem. He was still trying to feel out Ranma's emotions, which from this distance, even with the mental tether of his actual image in front of them, was extremely difficult. In fact if he had been anyone else, it would've been impossible, and even Yoda couldn't get a lot of information this way.

"Come to Kashyyyk, you should," he said abruptly, interrupting Mace and Ranma's discussion. "Healing, we can offer if needed."

Ranma looked at him and shook his head. "Shaak should be fully healed by the time I get back to Mandalore. As for myself, I'm fine physically, so…"

"Healing Shaak, not what I was speaking of. Healing of the mind, important as well it is. Further, help with young Ahsoka, Shaak Ti will."

Ranma sat up abruptly, leaning forward and looking at Yoda in concern. While he personally thought she was a cute rugrat, he wasn't really close with Ahsoka beyond their shared appreciation of pranks. But he knew that Shaak was, so he felt obligated to ask, "Is she all right? What's going on?"

"Physically fine the youngling is, but a vision of Shaak Ti's death she saw. A strong image it was, especially for one so young, and with the Veil blocking all sight. A powerful Jedi in time, youngling Tano will be. But the vision, shaken her it has. Issues with controlling her emotions enough to interact with the Force, the youngling has developed. Lashing out at others she is at times."

Ranma nodded at that, making no comment. What he was reading between the lines there was that ever since this vision, Ahsoka might be dealing with a lot of anger and, more importantly, problems with feelings of fear when reaching out to the Force. And while the teachers would no doubt deal with that in time, Ranma couldn't imagine it was the first such example they had dealt with. After all, Shaak's presence would speed up that process. And given the normal Jedi bias… "I suppose that such an emotional response might have set some of her teachers against her?"

Yoda nodded slowly. "Even here on Kashyyyk, teachers who believe in suppressing rather than controlling emotions there are. Worse, in terms of Ahsoka's training, a dangerous time it is. Centering themselves in the Force, on sending thoughts out into it, the younglings are learning. A time when most vulnerable to setbacks, and to the Dark Side, this is. The Veil, a very large danger it is."

"Understood," Ranma said with a nod. "We'll be there. So long, that is, as Shaak doesn't feel we need to go elsewhere. That's the way you Jedi do it, right?"

"Not exactly. That's the way Master Fay does it," Mace cut in dryly. "Most Jedi are assigned missions, as you well know. Still, if Shaak can get an idea of where you two should go next, more power to her, but I don't think she will be able to. The Veil is too strong."

Ranma nodded, not mentioning his own thoughts on that point, then cocked an eyebrow. "Anything else?"

"We were asked by the Chancellor to inform you that going off like a vigilante like this would be frowned upon the next time you tried it," Mace said, his tone still dry. "However, I don't think that will be necessary against the Bounty Hunters' Guild, and there is no other legally organized group that would be involved in going after you or Shaak Ti. If another Chapter Master decides to take a bounty out on you or on Shaak, I believe the phrase 'evolutionary dead end' would spring to my mind almost immediately."

Ranma laughed at that, then cocked his head at the Jedi. "Will my wiping out those bounty bitches cause you issues with the Chancellor or the Senate?" His tone was academic; after all, he couldn't take his actions back, but it had also not been his intent to cause issues for the Jedi Order.

"No. They made their bed; they'll now sleep in it," Mace replied, shaking his bald head. "Especially if we bring the Chancellor and his new anti-corruption security division in on looking into this information you just sent us. He's put together a larger team of crack computer analysts and slicers, so it might prove to be a good idea if we can't find any physical thread."

The two Jedi exchanged a glance, but said no more on that score. The fact was, Mace and Dooku's mission to find any kind of hint as to where to look for the Sith that was still out there had turned up nothing. There was no longer any physical trail to follow, and every attempt to ask the Force for guidance led to nothing. They were at the point where they were thinking about bringing more people into the search, or going out of the Order to find more help.

And the Chancellor had impressed the Jedi who worked with the Senate with his anti-corruption stance and his willingness to listen. They weren't willing to ask him for help yet, but if a year or more went by without any new clues turning up, they might well have to take that step.

Ranma nodded. "In that case, Yoda, I will see you on Kashyyyk. Mace, good luck dealing with all the politicians." With that jab and a jaunty wave, Ranma shut down the link before either Jedi could respond.

As the hologram shut off, Ranma leaned back in the sofa, putting his feet up on the table as he thought. Yet despite the serious nature of the previous conversation, that wasn't what he was thinking about now. Now his thoughts had swiftly drifted back to Shaak, not for the first, or even the thousandth time in the last few days. It had been barely more than a year since he had come to this dimension, but for most of that time Shaak had been by his side. Looking back on it now, Ranma wondered when the idea of her being around had changed from simply normal to a central fixture in his life. Like breathing or practicing the Art.

He remembered the first time he saw Shaak. She had stood in front of him in those exercise togs the Jedi used, her red skin, beautiful face, and exotic looks grabbing his attention. He remembered her eagerness to learn, her willingness to joke around, and the way it had made Ranma rethink the idea that the majority of Jedi were simply robot-wannabes.

He remembered living with her on the Mon Calamari's homeworld of Dac. He remembered their discussions there, training with her, laughing with her. The philosophical discussions they had, the first such he had ever really had with anyone; growing together, not just in skill, but in understanding of ki and how the Force acted and existed here.

Ranma remembered her kisses, her body moving with his, how Shaak reacted to his touch. Ranma remembered her face when he gave Shaak his promise gift, how she wore it so proudly, and how he felt seeing her in it.

He remembered Shaak's understanding of him, his past, and even more importantly, of the Neko-ken. That, her understanding, Shaak's willingness to learn, to change somewhat for him, and the fact that Ranma knew that he too had changed for her, struck him now with added force.

We've both grown. We've both grown stronger, not just together, but as people, since we met. I think that makes me love her even more. The Jedi might have the Force, but I have the martial arts and Shaak Ti. The two pillars to my universe, Ranma thought, his lips quirking as the rather poetic words went through his head despite the fact that he would never think of even saying them aloud, or rather, knew that if he tried he would screw it up.

I want to marry this woman, Ranma thought. Blessed Buddha, I want her in my life. I want her as my wife! I want everyone else to know that we are together. I want her to know every day of the rest of our lives how much she means to me, even if I don't always say the words. I told her when I gave her that promise gift that we would make things official. Well, proposing after I nearly lost her might not be romantic in the classic sense, but I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense for us!

HK's metal finger pushed into Ranma's cheek as that thought hit him. "Bland question: Master, are you dead? If you are, does that mean that I may assume possession of the Wild Light? Or does its and my own ownership revert to Shaak Ti? I suppose being a droid to that particular Jedi wouldn't be so terrible, but it would also be so very much more boring than being yours."

"What are you on about, HK?" Ranma asked, shaking his head and looking up at the droid.

The droid's optics went out for a brief second in the droid equivalent of a blink. "Querulous rejoinder: Master, Tune has been calling you for the last three minutes. What were you thinking of so hard? Do we need to get you medical aid? I understand that fleshbags often hurt themselves when they try to perform actions they are not accustomed to."

"Meh, I'd give that a three out of five, HK. Nice allusion, but it took you too long to get to the punchline," Ranma said, wiggling one hand side to side.

HK tsked at that, but Ranma turned away before he could try again, directing his next words to the speaker set into the wall nearby. "Sorry about that, Tune. I wasn't ignoring you, just meditating. Listen, instead of taking us directly back to Mandalore, can you look for a planet that has a Togrutan presence? I want to stop and buy something."

OOOOOOO

At the same time that Ranma was enacting his own sense of justice on the bounty hunters' chapter which had been so self-destructive as to take a bounty on Shaak Ti, Bo-Katan Kryze was busy doing much the same, if not for such personal reasons, on another group that had decided to stick their noses where they didn't belong. She was busy leading the Reborn against the criminal gang which had supplied the grunts and the majority of the weapons used in the terrorist activities which had occurred to cover the assault.

The Reborn came out of hyperspace in the system of Hrything, a cloud of forty starfighters of various different types and abilities, with twelve large troop transports, each of them carrying upwards of a hundred Mandalorian troopers. Those transports were old; in fact they were relics of the New Sith Wars a thousand years ago. But they were tough and could take a beating, else they wouldn't still be around.

The planet had some space-based defenses: a few hundred simple weapons platforms with one or two centralized computer hubs to control them. Those were no real threat to any attacker, though. More the sort which could threaten unshielded civilian ships. The several dozen starfighters, of heavily modified and ancient design for the most part, led by a very new looking and heavily armed yacht of some kind, were a different story.

The yacht wasn't a variety Bo had ever seen before, but judging by what their sensors were telling them it was armed with six quad lasers and four turbo lasers. It also had decent shielding for its size. However, Tanner Kildreen, clan chief and a former Death Watch member who had defected with his men to the Reborn's side during the campaign on Yavin 4, scoffed loudly. When Bo looked at him he opined that with that heavy shielding and armament, the ship's actual armor was probably paper thin. "And in terms of maneuverability it will wallow like a bantha."

As the Reborn's reinforced flotilla moved forward,Tanner's prediction was proven correct. The yacht barely moved out from orbit, falling well behind the starfighters. Of course, that would possibly let it provide long range fire for its fellows, but despite its firepower it wouldn't be able to do so to a level where it would matter. "And once we get close, there's no way that ship will be able to dodge anything!" Tanner snorted. "In fact, I don't think that it even has hyperspace drives! They pulled the hyperspace drives and the generators for them for shield emplacements!"

"Good, that'll make it all the more easy to destroy, I suppose, and no one will be able to use it to run away," Bo replied, nodding her head grimly. That was always a danger when trying to crush a criminal organization: you had to be thorough lest it spring up somewhere else later on.

"But I'll leave that part of the operation in your capable hands, Tanner," Bo went on, rubbing her hands together. The crushgaunts she was wearing creaked and groaned as she did, her eyes alight with battle lust. "I have a date on the ground."

"Have fun!" the other clan chief said with a laugh.

Moments later Bo-Katan walked into the troop hold, her helmet connected to her suit, the Darksaber at her side, and the rest of her armaments in place. Five dozen Reborn troopers including her Night Owls stood with a clangor, their feet thumping down as they saluted in the Mandalorian way, their fists slamming hard into their chests.

Acknowledging that salute Bo did the same before marching to the far edge of the troop hold where her Bes'uliik stirred. It rose up, fully repaired, its weapons primed, its robotic intelligence restored to full connectivity, and now fully acclimatized to Bo as its master.

It warbled at the sight of her, its nose out and nudging into her front. Despite being comprised of heavy armor and numerous sensors as well as a few guns, it somehow was still able to act like a faithful animal, pushing its head at her. She scratched it metallic gun mount right where it met the rest of the Bes'uliik's head, her power fist making loud screeching noises against the metal while it rumbled in pleasure.

An instant later Bo pulled herself up into the saddle, looking down at the controls for a moment and nodding. The atmospheric entry shield was fully online just in case, the internal generator was fully powered, and all of the weapons were glowing green. With a final pat on its control and a whispered command of, "Up," the beast rose from its haunches to stand solidly on its four feet.

The Reborn troopers all around her looked on in awe. Though possibly every Mandalorian alive had heard the rumors about it, of those present only the Night Owls had ever seen the Bes'uliik before. She had chosen to lead as many newcomers to the Reborn faction in this action as she could, so as to block any idea she would be playing favorites immediately before it could gain momentum.

From her perch on the Bes'uliik's back Bo pulled out a blaster rifle that was heavily modified, with a longer snout and a larger gas container. It would allow her to fire at some of the same targets that the great Bes'uliik would be able to, and would last longer than a normal blaster rifle, its energy needs taken from the Bes'uliik's generator.

When she saw that the connection was good, she nodded around at her people. "We will wait for the signal, then we will attack," Bo said simply. "A full drop right on top of the original capital city, as we said in the briefings. Be ready for intense anti-air fire immediately upon entry. And if you can, keep behind myself and my Bes'uliik here. Let us take the brunt of the fire until you are within range of your own weapons."

The troopers all around her nodded seriously, and then they waited. The space battle was brief as far as they all could tell. Their accompanying starfighters first mousetrapped the too aggressive by far starfighters, losing several of their own, but the outcome there was never in doubt, really. Even when the small defense platforms came online, all it did was tell the attackers which were the control satellites. These platforms killed a few more of the Mandalorian's starfighters, more than had died under the guns of the defending starfighters, but not many.

After the starfighters were gone, the yacht proved just as immobile as Tanner had said and died from long range concussion missile fire. Its quad lasers killed a few of the incoming missiles, but the speed and range of the missiles allowed the starfighters firing them to get away before any of them died. The yacht, which must have been some high-ranking gangster's personal little toy, died without taking a single one of its attackers with it.

A few minutes after seeing that report, Bo felt the troop transport hit atmosphere, the impact rattling her troopers in their safety nets. A bare minute later they felt several more blows, a quick staccato burst which punched through the shields to impact the hulls. The captain of the ship's voice came over the intercom. "We have heavy incoming fire, so heavy I don't think we'll be getting down anytime soon. In fact…"

The communication broke off into static, and when it came back the prognosis was not good. "Our engines are out! We won't be able to land at all! If you're going to go, I suggest you go now!"

Bo glanced at one of the many bits of information playing over her helmet's internal heads-up display, scowling. "We're not close enough!"

"We're going to break up soon," the captain said bluntly. "There seem to have been micro-fractures in the shield generator we didn't catch, and we are defenseless right now. You need to go. I'm not even certain we'll be able to open the doors for you as it is!"

"Don't worry about that!" Bo said, pulling on the yoke of her Bes'uliik, twisting its head around. A second later one of its cannons fired, the bolt smashing into the interior door of the troop transport and blowing it off its hinges.

It growled then, a deep, heavy sound, as if it took pleasure in the fact that it had been able to use its weapons after so long. "Soon, my friend! Not very long at all now!" she shouted, her voice nearly inaudible against the roar of the wind echoing through the troop transport.

All around her the other Mandalorians disconnected from their safety harnesses. Once her HUD told her they were all standing and ready to go, she pushed the yoke of her controls forward, and the beast rumbled towards the sliver of sky visible through the shattered entranceway. "On the bounce, Mandos!" she shouted, gesturing with one hand.

Underneath her the Bes'uliik roared, the sound even louder than the wind and the sound of incoming blaster fire. Then, without any direction from her, it picked up speed, racing forward on surprisingly nimble legs before flying out into the air beyond, its thrusters activating and pushing it forward and down. As soon as they were out of the troop transport the metallic beast's shields flickered to life around both itself and its rider, so close that Bo could almost reach out and touch it.

If she hadn't been wearing Mandalorian armor like she was, Bo would swiftly have been in danger of radiation poisoning from staying this close to an active shield for too long. But she was, and the speed and power of the Bes'uliik under her was intoxicating. So intoxicating she yelled aloud in sheer delight as they raced down to the ground.

Anti-air fire was streaming up at the troop transports. Not just the one that had contained Bo and her personal troop, but also the other troop transports with their attack. One of them had even been forced to withdraw, and another had been shot so full of holes that it looked as if it was going to come apart. Mandalorians were disgorging from that transport as best they could, actually aided at this point by the incoming fire, which blew open its sides and shuttered its hull. Each of them activated their backpack rockets as they gained the air.

A moment after Bo had noticed this, that transport's engines were hit, and it went up in a large explosion, killing at least a dozen troopers as well as its crew. She gritted her teeth angrily, shaking her head and whispering a mantra. "They died in battle; they died well; they will be remembered."

Putting that small tragedy aside, Bo took in the rest of the battle at a glance, letting the Bes'uliik have its head. This was, after all, what the beast had been designed for, and it did so easily, diving down at a sharp angle, keeping its shield between the enemy and its nearby allies. At the same time it assessed the threats its sensors could detect and began to fire on them with deadly accuracy. The Bes'uliik was heavily armed, more heavily than any skimmer and even most starfighters, and its attacks were withering.

Bo wasn't really paying attention to that, however. Instead she was concentrating on the larger picture. The defenders could not be strong everywhere, but they had known this fight was coming, and they had a unique defensive strategy. They had lots and lots of mobile anti-air guns, odd ones which looked like they were cobbled together from starfighters and placed on speeder bikes, of all things. It allowed them to both gather and disperse their defenses and made them hard for incoming fire to lock onto.

They had concentrated these defenses, a good move to defend their so-called capital, but one which had allowed the other attacks to land almost unopposed. Bo had planned to use seventeen different drop-sites, each of them containing three to five transports like this assault. Fourteen of them were already down and disgorging their troops without a shot fired yet, much to the disgruntlement of the troopers inside them, of course. Each of those other assaults were being led by a clan chief or a Reborn officer that Bo trusted, and were targeted on a different settlement known to the Mandalorians from the time when this planet had fallen under their aegis. The other two had run into minimal resistance, but that was slowly changing as they pushed out from their beachhead.

The defenses here over the capital were heavier than anywhere else, of course, since Bo had assigned herself the assault on the original planetary capital. It had made sense to Bo and her advisers that the criminals would use the infrastructure already in place to control the planet. The center of that infrastructure was a large, if simply designed castle like structure that was really more of a bunker than anything else, and from which only scattered fire was coming.

It feels as if there were two minds at work in this defense, fighting one another, Bo mused, while her Bes'uliik smashed two speeder bikes in quick succession. One person planned for mobile defenses, possibly a full guerrilla war. In that case the bikes would have hit as many of our invasion points as possible before pulling back, possibly repurposing into long range arty. And the other mind decided to instead bunker down, throwing most of their defenses into protecting his personal ass! Maybe there's been a recent shakeup in the gang's leadership? Either way, it makes for an exploitable weakness.

Better, if we smash them here, and they will lose a lot of their fighting strength, she thought to herself, analyzing the palace and the incoming fire. The palace in question was made of heavy ferrocrete and reinforced steel, and it was massive, the same size as the ziggurat on Yavin 4. Yet for all of that, the bunker's offensive punch was nearly nothing, and the defenders' fire was rather flawed, leaving gaps here and there that she and her people could use to get close.

Twisting the controls of the Bes'uliik, Bo forced it ever lower, twisting it to the rightmost section of the battle, cutting down several of the AA bikes as they went. Behind her, her troopers began to follow, some of them breaking off here and there to rush down faster to the ground. Bo noticed two of them had cut their jump-jets entirely, falling like stones.

As she watched, however, they came back online barely four stories above the buildings of the city below, looping this way and that as they bled off inertia. At the same time they fired at the nearest defensive emplacements, including a few AA bikes in the streets below. Several of them exploded, and the first Mandalorians were down.

A second later, after a brief series of orders with the remaining troopers behind her, Bo twisted her Bes'uliik back to the left of the city and down. A lot of the AA fire began to concentrate on her as she barreled towards the bunker-like palace, but from this angle the AA bikes moving around couldn't get a range on her, and the bunker's own defenders could only bring a few guns to bear.

The Bes'uliik's shield shimmered from a few hammer blows, but then they were through, and just under the range of the guns which could bear on her. Another gun popped up, obviously designed to protect this blind spot, but too slowly, and Bo's modified rifle blew it apart. At the same time, the Bes'uliik concentrated its offensive firepower on the wall of the bunker, hammering it.

The palace/bunker didn't have shielding, not exactly unusual out here in the Outer Rim, but the building's armor held for a while. Not for very long, however, and then Bo and her beast were through, smashing into and through interior walls of the building.

Disconnecting her rifle and kicking out of the saddle, Bo rolled to the left even as the Bes'uliik's shield shut down. It roared, lashing out at a few mobsters that had raced for the hole from numerous directions, killing several. "Stay here and guard this place!" Bo shouted in Mandalorian. "I will return."

Behind Bo half of her troop landed, their jumpjets flaring out. "We're down to fumes, Alor'sa (boss-feminine form)!" shouted one of her Night Owls, cutting down a gangster who had been trying to use the rubble as cover.

"Fine. Judging from the layout we're seeing now we might not be able to use them anyway. Four of you stay here with my Bes'uliik, the rest of you with me," Bo ordered. And then, without waiting for the troopers to get themselves organized, she moved off, racing forward, her blaster held in one hand, her other hand flicking on the Darksaber.

The group of six troopers fought their way through the palace until they ran into a defensive position they couldn't bypass: a intersection of numerous corridors with heavy guns set into the ceiling and floor. The Mandalorians fell back save for Bo, who used her jump pack to leap up to the ceiling, where she cut into it with the Darksaber. Jetting straight back she avoided more fire before zooming up into the hole.

From above she then cut into the floor of the story above, racing on as the rubble fell down on the defensive positions below her. "I'm heading up; follow me when you can!" Bo shouted. First rule of warfare: keep the kriffing pressure on!

With that thought Bo raced on, now behind whatever defenses the locals had been able to prepare in the palace itself. Soon she reached the top floor and found what she had known she would, a control room cum throne room. What is it with planetary rulers and delusions of grandeur, regardless of wherever the hell they come from?

The room was large, about as large as the interior of the troop transport, its walls lined with furs and various gaudy statues. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to them, save for the fact they looked both expensive and gauche. A lot of computers and other things had been added to these, and there were at least fifteen or so people, nearly all of them working frantically at the computers, presumably communications gear. At the far end of the room from the entrance was a small raised dais, on which there was a throne.

The being on the throne was a Duros, wearing what looked like typical spacer's gear, albeit with a admittedly rakish hat complete with long feather in it. His green skin was noticeably pock-marked here and there with both some kind of skin disease along with numerous scars. Many of those scars, though, looked more like those which a druggy would have, rather than those gained through combat. His eyes, noticeably blood shot and even wider than was normal for a Duros, seemed to agree with that assessment. "Nice hat," Bo commented, pointing the Darksaber at the man. "Don't suppose I could get you to surrender?"

"Why thank you; I do like being fashionable. The man who made it and I couldn't agree to a price at first, but eventually I got it for a song!" the Duros said before smiling crazily. "The song of blood on the carpet, heheheh! But I see you have a lightsaber. I do too, you know."

He pulled out a long cylinder at his belt and activated it, revealing the cylinder to be a lightsaber, a bright blue in color. "I found this in Boss Lazlo's stash. Heheheh, he didn't want to part with it or the leadership of the gang, and we had a bit of an argument about it. By the end of which, well, he had just about lost his head!"

"Spare me the horrible jokes," Bo replied, rolling her shoulders and debating just shooting the kriffer. As if just having a lightsaber is enough to make you able to use one! "If you're going to fight, fight; don't try to talk me to death."

The Duros glared at her, the fingers of his free hand tapping out something on a small bit of machinery set onto his upper arm. As she watched, his body stiffened, and one of the lights on the machine dimmed noticeably.

Some kind of injector device, kriff! Realizing the man had just pumped his body full of some combat drugs, Bo opened fire, her high powered rifle using up all its internal power in a few shots, followed by her firing off some of her gauntlet's micro rockets. But she was a little too slow. The man blocked one of her bolts with a crazy swing with his lightsaber, more luck than skill if she was any judge, and lunged to the side, avoiding the others.

Behind Bo-Katan the rest of her team had finally arrived, and they and the com operators, bodyguards, sycophants, or fellow druggies began to open fire in turn. The Duros howled like a wild beast, racing forward to close with Bo, who had to move towards him in order to let more of her people enter behind her.

The two of them met with the snap, hiss, and crackling discharge of lightsaber combat. The drugged up gangster used his lightsaber like a club, smashing all around him, but his drug-induced speed was such that it took a few exchanges for Bo to notice the weakness in his actual style. When she did, she struck, dodging one blow instead of blocking it, her blade coming up in a short, economical slash to the man's outstretched arm.

The Duros, however, didn't even seem to feel the pain of his limb being seared off like that, instead charging her bodily. Whirling away, Bo brought her lightsaber back to cut the man's head off, then stood upright as the headless body continued walking forward a few steps before shuddering to a halt.

"Kriff, that was anticlimactic. Ke nu jurkad ti Mando'ade shabiir (don't cross swords with a Mando you screwup)!" Bo said, looking around as the rest of the thugs were put down by her own troopers. "Now, time to make sure the rest of this campaign goes as smoothly. And someone get an assayer in here. Those statues look valuable, even if they are ugly as kriff."

OOOOOOO

Sidious stared in shock at the computer screen in front of him, which was showing the news his agents had discovered about the fight between the Chaotic Locus and the Crimson Nova Chapter of the Bounty Hunters' Guild. This wasn't much, since there had been no survivors, and the dreadnought's central power had been destroyed halfway through the battle. But a virus his agent had sent along with the last message to the female Farghul who had led the Crimson Nova had infected the dreadnought, sending a copy of what its internal cameras recorded out until the power died. It had bounced around for a long while before reaching a secret receiver buried on an asteroid, and then deleted itself from the Hypernet System.

Now watching some of the videos, Sidious was impressed and furious in turn by the amount of damage that the Chaotic Locus had done in his rampage. To wipe out an entire bounty hunters' chapter, one warned and armed against his coming: this Chaotic Locus is even more dangerous in personal combat than I thought. A team of Jedi Guardians would've had trouble against that number of bounty hunters and would no doubt have lost at least one or two of their members during the attack! And this Chaotic Locus did it with just himself and a single combat droid.

At that thought the Sith Lord's fingers tapped out a note to himself and to his agents to look into information on this combat droid. It was evident that the thing was far more dangerous, and simply far more than Sidious had first thought. He had initially assumed that it was simply a guardian droid that the Chaotic Locus had commissioned on Corellia, but the droid was too deadly to be an entirely new droid, regardless of its programming. And there were a few reports that the droid's head came with the Chaotic Locus. That is interesting, and if so, my agents should be able to at least track down where it came from, given time. There are only so many planets the Chaotic Locus visited before Corellia, after all.

He also made a mental note to look into somehow creating a troop of his own attack droids to combat this one, as well as the Chaotic Locus itself. It was evident that he would slowly be running out of willing pawns to use against the Chaotic Locus. Yes, the bounty hunters' chapter's death was a nuisance, but more of a nuisance will be the fear that the Locus's actions will create in the criminal element that will make finding further pawns difficult. Or that of the Jedi he is involved with, the Dark Side flay her soul!

That relationship is a weakness, true, but not for the Chaotic Locus! I can weaken the Jedi politically, push the Senate into possibly demanding more control of the Order and creating more issues there. But that will not get rid of the Chaotic Locus! Sidious thought, leaning back in his throne room.

The darkness of the room, both physical and mental, acted like a balm to his nerves, allowing him more self-control than even he would have normally, especially in light of such a dangerous setback. It enveloped him, warmed him, empowered him as only a true Sith could ever understand.

And, he thought after letting the darkness work on his mind for a time, the relationship between them does make them somewhat predictable. They are mated, and will want to go through with the mating ritual at some point. Like all such weak creatures they will want to put their marks on one another in some fashion. And that will probably mean a trip to Shili, which I've already started to prepare for. The shape shifters will be in place there soon.

And my foolish apprentice has returned as well. Though using her against the Chaotic Locus would be both counterproductive and a waste. Pity, already she has proven that, like most females, she is an illogical being. She can still be used, however, just not against the Chaotic Locus lest I have to put down her rebellion in time. That means I must find some other means of combating him. For now I must step back from this issue.

With that Sidious stood up from his throne. It took him around forty minutes to make himself presentable, then he quickly touched a few buttons, and a small panel in the ceiling disengaged, allowing him to step up from his hidden throne room up into the Chancellor's private living quarters.

Yet even as he pulled his Palpatine persona around him, Sidious's thoughts were elsewhere. I've already put in place many traps for the Jedi should they attempt to follow up on the weapons sent to help the bounty hunters. It will lead them out into the Outer Rim, which is all to the good. They must never realize where my real power base is. And it will allow me to kill some of them, perhaps. Just like cockroaches, it is always good to cut down their numbers.

Yes, play the long game. Use pawns to continue to try and remove this Chaotic Locus while preparing the vergence to do it for me if they cannot. He has no idea of the power of the Dark Side. So long as I remain hidden and unknown, his ability to directly impact me is minimal.

At that thought, as Sidious sat down at his desk, he smiled sinisterly. But I know who does! Now, what kind of disease can I catch in order to distance myself from the public eye for a time, and how? I won't be able to put this task on my Vosa. But yes, the former apprentice of Darth Zannah will do magnificently, both to distract the Jedi further and to kill the Chaotic Locus in time. Of course, finding him will be difficult, but we will see.

OOOOOOO

Shaak Ti woke up, somewhat bemused to discover that she was, in fact, able to, but as a Jedi, that moment passed remarkably quickly. Others would have been, perhaps, feeling a moment of existential uncertainty or fear. After a life or death situation that would've been understandable. But as a Jedi, Shaak Ti had gone through more than a decade of meditation training to help her mental control. So, after taking a swift census of her body, she noted where she was still sore and began to reach out to the Force to aid the healing process.

Beside her Master Plo Koon watched in interest as the healing process begun by the bacta patch on Shaak's stomach was hastened along, so fast he could actually watch its progress. That was nothing unusual; many Jedi could heal themselves, and Jedi Healers could do so to others. But what was interesting was the speed with which it was occurring and the fact that he could feel Shaak's efforts, and they didn't match up with what he was seeing. The Jedi normally reached out to the Force around them to perform feats of this type.

But Shaak was only using a faint trickle of the Unifying Force, as it were. The rest was coming from her own stores of Living Force. I believe this must be an example of Ranma's training, Plo mused, before smiling behind his mask and standing up to go to the doorway and see if he could order some food to be brought up. In which case, she is going to be rather hungry when she wakes up.

About twenty minutes passed, by which time Plo had returned with a tray of local food. So as Shaak opened her eyes, looking around with her physical senses as well as her Force senses, Master Koon was standing by the bed, looking down at her. As she watched, the Kel Dor reached down, lifting a smoothie of some sort from the bedside table. "Hungry, my friend?"

"Very. Thank you, Master Plo," Shaak slurred, reaching out with a weak hand to grab at the smoothie. It took her a full minute to be happy with the strength of her grip before she took it from Plo's hands, bringing it to her lips swiftly. Slurping it down, she closed her eyes, letting the electrolyte and protein heavy smoothie work into her system.

For several minutes the room was quiet save for Plo's quiet chuckling as he helped convey food from the tray to Shaak's mouth. "I take it that there are some negative effects of using Ranma's method to heal," he said after the first sandwich had disappeared and Shaak was now sitting up, working on the heavy soup he had found for her.

"Somewhat, yes. Healing yourself like that it is somewhat easier when you pull from your own Living Force reserves then from the Force as a whole. Ranma has trained his body so that he can do so automatically to a certain degree without any conscious input on his part. I am not quite up to his level yet, but I will be," Shaak said simply, before her predator's pointed teeth flashed in a brief smiled.

"Although I would say if I had more body fat it probably wouldn't be that large an issue. Indeed, that would probably be an interesting diet plan. Get injured and then heal, and you could lose upwards of five pounds in under an hour," Shaak went on.

The joke elicited another chuckle from Plo Koon, the sound reverberating slightly from behind his mask. To many that sound would have seemed unusual or perhaps disconcerting; to Shaak and those who knew him, it did not.

"How do you feel?" the Kel Dor asked seriously, gesturing down to Shaak's stomach. "Gut wounds like that are tricky, after all."

"I am somewhat stiff and sore, but otherwise well enough," Shaak replied before polishing off the soup, stretching out her Force senses at the same time and then cocking her head in query. "Might I ask where Ranma is? Knowing his personality, I would've thought that he would be by the bed waiting for me to wake up. Unless there is still violence going on elsewhere, and the attack on me was just a prelude?"

"You have been out for several days, and the violence the attack on you was a part of calmed down almost immediately. We discovered quickly that it was caused by a mixture of malcontents, a criminal organization on the planet of Hrything, and two bounty hunters willing to use any and all means to claim your bounty," Master Plo said, answering a portion of that statement first. "As to where Ranma is, he is out avenging your injury. Apparently a chapter of the Bounty Hunters' Guild actually accepted the bounty on you as a formal, legally binding bounty offer. Needless to say, Ranma was very…displeased."

For a moment Plo debated with himself on whether or not he should share his observations of the pigtailed warrior before he left. The coldness the young human had given off had been rather disturbing at the time. As had the lack of any emotion or thought that Plo could discern in him as he left.

After a moment, however, he decided that it wasn't his place to do so. No doubt if it was something worrisome, Shaak would be able to get it out of Ranma easily enough, given their relationship. And that is still a bit…not a wrong, but certainly a disconcerting term to use in connection to a Jedi. Yet a good kind of disconcerting, I suppose, if not for the feeling itself, then for what their relationship represents.

Shaak frowned slightly in thought. "They actually took a bounty on a Jedi?" she asked slowly. "How could that work out for them?"

"I imagine the chapter in question buried their involvement in many different ways, but the Guild itself had records, and Ranma apparently attacked another chapter's headquarters and was able to find that information. Other than that, I have no knowledge of how it has gone. Though, given Ranma's abilities and those of his rather amusing yet equally deadly droid, I doubt it will have gone well for the Chapter Master and anyone who stood with him or her."

Plo allowed himself his people's version of a thin smile of amusement behind his mask. While others would have problems with Ranma taking such actions, he felt them right and proper. "We will discover more when the Jedi Temple gets in contact with us later today. We have been talking almost nonstop since the events here, mostly placating the Senate and the rest of the Jedi Order more than anything else, I'm afraid."

The two Jedi fell silent, Master Plo letting Shaak think for a moment. She knew that as a Jedi she should be somewhat ambivalent, or perhaps even worried that Ranma had decided to act out in something that could be called vengeance all too easily. Yet as a Togrutan, for some reason Shaak Ti found it rather endearing of him, a sign that he truly cared for her, which was an odd thought, really, to her Jedi analytical mind. "I see? And was I attacked at any point during my convalescence?"

"Ah, no. Obi-Wan, despite his own injuries, and I switched off guard duty every day, and there were a squad of Reborn in the building at all times. You made quite an impression on them." Master Plo chuckled once more. "But as you are seemingly almost ready to leave the hospital, can I call on you to lend your aid to certain ongoing matters here?"

"I take it by that statement that you would like my help in, what, controlling the transfer of power from the New Mandalorians to the Reborn?" When Plo nodded, she nodded back. "Very well. I suppose that without Ranma here I will have quite a bit of free time."

That portion of the discussion went on for about an hour before Master Plo left, allowing Shaak to dress herself. As she did so, Shaak's thoughts were not on her the tasks that Master Plo had asked her to take up. Rather, they were on Ranma and the fact that she had nearly died.

Shaak Ti had fallen into oblivion happily, having given her life to defend others. That was perhaps the best death a Jedi could wish for. For a Jedi, death was simply another aspect of life: not to be feared or searched for, simply accepted when it came. And she would have done the same, except for one thing. Leaving Ranma behind, that she would have mourned.

They had been together for a little under half a year now, or perhaps longer, depending on how you measure such things. Yet even so, there was so much they had yet to do together; so much they had yet to experience, to see; so far they could grow together.

Shaak Ti was not blind to how she had changed since meeting Ranma. Indeed, she doubted anyone who had known her previously could miss it. But Ranma too had changed, the two of them growing together, changing one another. For the better, she thought, though that could be, perhaps, a bit of pride speaking.

Above that, it was the times together they had shared that went through her mind now. The first time Ranma had given her a massage. The first kiss. When she had won a philosophical debate with him. The moment Ranma was forced to reveal what he thought of as his greatest shame, the Neko-ken. She remembered the kissing and the dates and above all, the warmth and the laughter and the feeling of being together, of sharing their days, their nights, their lives, their love.

I do not wish to wait any longer to tell the universe he is mine, to have our lives be truly bound together as one, And of course this would also keep people from flirting with either one of us, a not small issue for certain. Shaak thought to herself, almost giggling at that last thought. And as a married woman if someone flirts with me I can be far more direct in my disapproval. To say nothing of what I can do if someone flirts with him in front of me, or vice versa.

Exiting the room to find Plo Koon waiting for her, she smiled at the older Jedi. "Tell me, do we have time for me to make a stop before heading on to the palace? There is something I wish to purchase."

OOOOOOO

Around three days after Shaak had woke up found the Togrutan waiting with seeming serenity on a portion of tarmac of the capital bio-cube's landing area, looking up as the Wild Light descended. But this serenity was only on the surface. Inside she was anticipatory, eager, her pulse pounding in her chest with her eagerness to see Ranma. And judging by the speed of the Wild Light's descent, I imagine he is as eager to see me as I am to see him. That thought warmed her just as much as the idea of seeing Ranma in person, and she was already walking towards the Wild Light before the cooling jets finished their work on the ship's underbelly and landing gear.

She was met halfway by Ranma, who leaped out of the ship's landing ramp before it was fully open, and suddenly she was in his arms.

Ranma had no idea how he'd crossed the intervening space. Indeed, in later years he would continue to wonder how he went from point A to point B without crossing the distance between them. But at the moment he didn't care. Shaak Ti was in his arms again. She was real; she was alive and unharmed. Her mouth was moving on his, her pulse thundering in his ears. Pulling away from her mouth with difficulty, Ranma licked at the underside of her slightly thicker, slightly rougher than human tongue which she had thrust into his mouth. It had remained suspended in the air in the very slight space between their lips for a moment before she could retract it, her eyes half-closed in pleasure. "You, you cannot be injured like that ever again, Shaak! That was, that just about ripped my heart out!"

"I can't promise that," Shaak replied, gasping slightly. "I can only promise that I'll try not to." She leaned back slightly, taking in Ranma's features, one hand reaching up to trail down his face before pulling gently at his pigtail. There seemed to be something in Ranma's eyes, some hidden worry or concern. The origin of that she didn't know, and she could barely make it out, the love in that expression almost overwhelming the concern, but she felt it was something to do with his reaction to her injury. She resolved to bring it up later.

"I…I can understand that, at least. I know I wouldn't be able to promise the same," Ranma said reluctantly before leaning forward slightly, dipping to one side and kissing Shaak lightly on the lips, then moving back two steps, his hands reluctantly falling from where they had gripped her around the middle. "Still, that just makes me more determined to do this than ever."

Before Shaak could ask what he meant, Ranma had moved back somewhat, going down on both knees before bowing form the waist. Before she could comment Ranma launched into what was obviously a well-rehearsed speech, though at first she didn't really understand what he was doing. It was only when he pulled out a large torque made of white gold twined together with a small blue diamond set at one point that Shaak understood. Since the idea of tattooing had begun to go out of favor, such torques, placed on the back lek, were marks of being married among her people.

Ranma had looked through several dozen jewelry stores before he found one that had anything like a torque which could fit around a Togrutan's lekku. Then he had problems trying to find a design he liked and a metal and gem that would go with Shaak's colors. He ended up with what was called white gold, which was actually so common on the planet he was shopping on that he had to stop the saleswoman from trying to sell him something else. The blue diamond he had ordered set into the torque however had forced Ranma to hunt down a few illegal casinos and take the houses for all he (though at the time Ranma had been in his female form) could.

Her eyes widening in shock, Shaak looked up from the torque to Ranma's face, and he smiled at her softly, his voice somewhere between formal, scared, and loving. "Shaak Ti of Clan Jedi, I ask for the honor or joining our lives together. I have naught but my honor, my arm, and my mind, but I hope you find me worthy, for I have come to love you."

For a moment Shaak simply looked down at where Ranma was kneeling, then began to laugh quietly. "…I will refrain from answering for just a moment. Because I too have a question for you."

Feeling an imp of mischief grow in her, Shaak smirked, her black eyes flashing in the white marks that surrounded her eyes. "However, since you have gone out of your way to ask your question in this manner, I think that I should do the same." So saying, Shaak swiftly pulled a small flask of water out of her expanded Force pocket, splashing it in Ranma's face before he could register what she was doing.

As the redhead sputtered and began to glare at her lover, she found Shaak suddenly kneeling in front of her, one knee on the tarmac as she held out a small box containing a simple, burnished steel ring with an intricate design of a fanged beast on it. "Ranma, I have come to love you. Will you do me the honor of taking me as your husband?"

Ranma and Shaak looked at one another for a moment, then the sheer silliness of the moment got to them both, and they fell together laughing, until Ranma's mouth again found Shaak's in a kiss. Her smaller mouth allowed Shaak to lead the kiss for a time, until Shaak pulled back, nibbling and licking down the redhead's neck. "In case you couldn't tell, that means yes, Ranma, I'll marry you."

"G, good!" Ranma moaned, before twisting her head slightly to the side and beginning to kiss Shaak's jugular, moving down one lek to where it started to fall below her chest. Then she stood up, hauling Shaak up with her, twirling around with Shaak in her arms as they both laughed.

Then the redhead stopped, wrinkling her nose at Shaak. "But I will say right now, I will be in my male form when we marry." Her eyes widened and then narrowed, considering, though Ranma's lips twitched, showing her true feelings. "Hmm, I wonder what you would look like in a dress…"

"Ugh, not white, please. While it goes well with my skin color if done well, it would clash with the blue and white of my lekku," Shaak replied with her own smirk. "And that is rather a pity Ranma. You certainly have the legs and waist to carry a dress off. And I could then wear the pants, physically as I would in terms of our relationship."

"Oi!" Ranma said, and they both broke out into laughter again before Ranma turned toward the Wild Light. Still carrying the taller woman, Ranma moved in that direction as they continued to trade jokes.

A few hours later Ranma and Shaak joined Duchess Satine, Master Plo Koon and Obi-Wan, sitting with them around a low slung table and listening as clan chief Clento explained the ongoing campaign on Hrything. The campaign was going well already, with the criminal group beheaded and most of the cities falling in line. However, putting in a longer term government there would be harder, and there was still fighting in two of the cities and sporadic raiding from outside them. Despite that, the criminal group under their new leader had paid for the temerity of trying to impact Mandalorian politics.

"This is sort of an example of being hoisted by their own petard, isn't it?" Ranma asked, leaning back, his arm wrapped around Shaak's shoulders and his hand gently stroking her lekku where it merged into her montrals. It wasn't quite proper to do so in public, but neither was in the mood to care right now. In fact, if the couple had had their druthers, they would have retired to the Wild Light and not be seen for a few days.

This was why Shaak was leaning against his shoulder, her right hand grasping his left on his upper thigh. The small smile on her face was incredibly warm as she leaned against him.

"I mean," Ranma continued, "these criminals tried to interfere with the conclave to stop the Reborn from going after them the moment they could in your push to stabilize the region. But all they did was call you all down on them even sooner. I don't get that at all. I mean, how could they think that could go?"

"It is a bit of…call it natural justice, I suppose. There seemed to have been a change of leadership recently. The older and far wiser leader was killed by a youngish upstart with delusions of intelligence and an ego the size of a small nova," Clento said, his lips twitching as he remembered the pithy way Bo-Katan Kryze had described the fool in question. "At any rate, that campaign is going well, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that it's going to be excessively thorough. While this gang did not go into outright slavery, they didn't really have to, because they had a homegrown population that they could use and manipulate without anyone truly challenging them. Some of the imagery she sent us is ugly, to say the least."

Shaak sighed looking over at Master Plo and Obi-Wan, who both nodded grim understanding. "Yes, that is unfortunately what happens in a power vacuum. The best and the worst are given a chance to rise to the top, and unfortunately, in this case it was the worst. We did a grave disservice to the worlds of this sector when we did not help them rebuild after the Excision."

The Clento faction leader did not comment on that, simply nodding his head. He knew that all three Jedi felt that the Excision itself had been a mistake, so saw no need to mention it further here. Instead he turned to Duchess Satine. "How goes the transfer of authority?" In another culture that might have been called the transfer of power, but the power already had pretty much changed hands at this point, from one social view to another. It was the authority, the governmental organization, that had yet to make the transition to follow that change.

"Slowly," the older Kryze sister replied tiredly. She seemed to have aged somewhat since Ranma had last seen her; the fact that her people had chosen what she saw as barbarism over the way of peace obviously wearing on her. Despite that and her ongoing disgust with Bo-Katan and the Reborn, she had been as good as her word, helping the peaceful transition along as much as she possibly could.

"It's not as if we had a set method for this kind of thing. Within my own faction we did, and the Mandalorians of old of course had their own way of choosing new leaders." She fought hard to keep an edge of disgust out of her voice at those words, and generally succeeded. "We also are trying to work out how to truly share political power within the bio-cube cities, which are the bedrock of my faction's power structure and the planet's economy. It's been a peaceful process, generally speaking, since that spate of violence, but it is a lengthy one."

"Will you need us here for this?" Ranma asked, gesturing with the hand which had been stroking Shaak's lekku at himself and Shaak before letting it fall back. "I mean, I know there's nothing I can add during this whole thing, but I imagine another Jedi's help would be a big thing?"

He looked over and down at Shaak, who smiled. "Actually, I have been helping out since I woke up from my coma. At this point I don't think there is enough work for three Jedi any longer."

"Truly. Indeed, at this point there are only two or at most three disputes I would like an outsider's perspective on, and even there using a Jedi would be overkill," Satine said. "As far as I'm concerned, the Jedi Order has performed its tasks here impeccably. Not as I or the Republic Senate would have liked them to, but by the letter and spirit of their Order and their mission." That bit came out slightly sourly, but she moved on quickly. "I would like you to leave a single observer until our new Sector Jedi arrives, but that is all."

She did not mention the fact that Shaak Ti and Ranma's relationship was a bit of a sore point for her. Satine was still somewhat sore about Obi-Wan's rebuffing her subtle interest in him, and it was hard for her to leave her girlhood crush on him behind. A problem exacerbated when she witnessed Ranma and Shaak's relationship like this.

Obi-Wan, of course, knew that, and had made a point of somewhat distancing himself from her. He had moved out of the palace, and was always formal, if friendly, when they were together, but no more than that.

"If that is the case, Obi-Wan will return to Coruscant, and I will remain here as an observer," Master Plo said smoothly. He too had noticed the tension between Duchess Satine and Obi-Wan. Shaak hadn't, since she had not spent much time around the duchess and Obi-Wan.

Clento said hesitantly, "I believe that Bo-Katan wanted you to remain until she returned, Ranma. She wanted you to be a part of the ceremony to install her as the Mandalore. Of course," he went on, now looking at Ranma through half lidded eyes, "there are significant numbers of our people pushing for you to claim the helmet and all that goes with it."

Ranma burst out laughing so loudly Shaak flinched away slightly. Ranma looked at her apologetically. "Er, sorry about that, Shaak, but come on! I'm no leader. I mean, maybe I could see myself as a squad leader; you know, point me at a target and let me go kind of thing; but I'm no strategist: I'm a tactician. On top of that, I certainly don't want to stay here; that was never part of my deal with Bo. Thirdly, I'd have to deal with politics, and I'd much sooner jump naked into a black hole." Then his eyes widened, and he pointed at the man dramatically. "Don't tell me that Bo herself is one of the people who might push for me to be Mandalore just so she can get out of dealing with politics!"

That brought a round of laughter from around the table, but Clento had been telling the truth. Yes, Ranma's points were all correct, but for the Mandalorian on the street, they didn't really care about all that stuff. They saw who was the strongest, who was the best fighter, and that was Ranma. Whether or not he would be a good leader they would discover in time.

"Bo-Katan also wanted to speak to you about something else, an idea to continue to train a small cadre your style and abilities from a young age," he said, changing the subject. "I understand that the younger you start, the easier it is?"

Ranma nodded at that, though he and Shaak exchanged a glance, speaking without words while the others watched, before Ranma turned back to them. "I suppose we can think about that when she returns. But…" He looked again at Shaak, who looked back. "You mentioned earlier having talked to Ahsoka? Were you able to help her over the Hypercom?"

"Not to any great degree," Shaak said softly, her face shifting into a thoughtful, indeed rather worried, frown. She had been informed of Ahsoka's issue the same day she had woken out of her coma and had talked with her over the Hypercom for a time. Yoda had spoken the truth when he said that this stage of her training was a very dangerous one in which to have such a negative reaction occur, and Shaak wanted to do all in her power to help the young Togrutan to get over it.

But without being physically present she could not use the Force to do so, and her face and voice over the Hypercom had not helped as much as she would have liked. The young of most species were very irrational and emotional, something the Order's training tried to mitigate and control, but in this case Ahsoka had fallen into fear. Not fear of failure, but fear of the Force itself and what it could show her, and of death. She had yet to lash out at the teachers, but she had withdrawn into herself, becoming almost unresponsive.

If this sort of thing had happened a few years ago, the Order might have already made the decision to send her to the farming collectives. Such was the danger of a youngling of Ahsoka's power possibly falling to the Dark Side, in this case due to fear mixed with anger at Shaak's apparent killers. But it wasn't a few years ago, and Yoda was on hand to stop any such move in its tracks. He was personally helping Ahsoka now, but while he could begin the process, it couldn't go very far without Shaak being there in person, thanks to the centrality of the vision about her in Ahsoka's current troubles.

"You have an ETA for Bo's return?" Ranma asked, looking back over at Clento.

"Bo herself should return in a day or so. I know she intends to leave a clan chief behind to head up the local government. I doubt I could ask her to expedite leaving, though," the other man said apologetically.

"Very well. We can wait a day, but no more," Shaak said firmly. "If she is not back by tomorrow night, I think Ranma and I will leave regardless of her wishes. I am sorry, but youngling Ahsoka's mental health is far more important to me than any ceremony could be. Indeed, if not for my wish to see this mission through I would rather we leave now."

Clento nodded his head at that, and the talk turned to other matters for a short while before the Jedi excused themselves. As they walked through the palace hallways, Obi-Wan looked at the martial artist and the Togrutan Jedi for a moment. "So when is the wedding?" he asked as they began their descent down a flight of stairs.

Ranma twitched, looking over at him as Shaak nearly missed a step, but Obi-Wan simply quirked an eyebrow at them, chuckling internally at the chance to tease the two of them. "I am well aware of human marriage rites, of course. The ring on Ranma's hand is somewhat obvious. And then I connected it to that ring of white gold on your lekku."

Shaak coughed, looking away, somewhat embarrassed. "I…we…haven't talked about the actual wedding as yet." She looked over at Ranma, smiling tenderly. "Of course it will be small ceremony. There's no need to make a big deal about it." She was a rather insular individual after all, despite her Togrutan nature and relationship with Ranma. On top of that was her wish to not rub their relationship in anyone's faces.

"Just so long as we have a single ceremony. I'm not big on ceremonies at all, so one small ceremony would do me just fine," Ranma replied.

"The first Jedi to marry in a little over a thousand years, the first Jedi to be allowed to remain within the Order and have a relationship in under a thousand years. And you don't think it's going to be a big deal, no matter how you try to hide it?" Obi-Wan said slowly, enunciating each word and giving the couple the driest look he could contrive.

"…Well, when you put it like that," Shaak muttered, looking away, now quite off-balance, a very unusual thing for her. "Though I think we have a better chance of hiding it for a time than you think. The universe is vast, after all. We could find a little out of the way Outer Rim planet and marry there."

"Yeah, but then if we do that we wouldn't be able to invite our friends to the ceremony, would we?" he asked, looking between the two of them. "Then again, these two, Dooku, and Kit're about the only people I could ask to be on my side of things. And I haven't heard anything from Kit since he was assigned as Master Fay's guard before we left Kashyyyk for Corellia."

Despite Ranma's personal history, the only wedding he had been involved in had been the wedding fiasco, and he had had very little to do with its organization for some obvious reasons at the time, and others that only became obvious in hindsight. But it seemed that in many cultures, including the Togrutan ones, it was normal for both the wife and husband-to-be to have several people in their corner, as it were. The names of those positions varied, but it was normal for each of them to have three or so each.

The two Jedi exchanged shocked glances at that, while Shaak Ti broke out into giggles, causing all three men to look at her quizzically. "Oh, just thinking. If we do go for a larger ceremony and try to create some kind of amalgamated ritual from the common human and Togrutan traditions, there might be a carrot I can use to help motivate Ahsoka's efforts to reclaim her internal equilibrium. I thought the online images of the, what did they call them, flower bearers? Something like that at any rate, were very cute."

Rolling his eyes playfully, Ranma turned back to the other Jedi, asking a few questions on what the normal Jedi response to the two of them marrying would really be. Neither were certain of how it would be taken, but they agreed that going small and finding an out of the way Outer Rim planet would probably be the way to go. At least for a while, since Shaak Ti had begun to be almost as famous in the Jedi Order as Ranma was. She had also begun to gain fame out of it, given that the recording of her surrendering to save the hostages had begun to spread via the Hypercom.

Eventually, however, the group exited the palace and broke up, and like Duchess Satine had said, Shaak and Ranma were allowed to have most of that day to themselves. They, of course, spent it together, simply traveling around the planet, taking a boat ride at one point, a train ride at another, just seeing the sights. And that night, Shaak and Ranma took the Wild Light up into space, setting it into orbit around the planet and leaving Tune in the cockpit there make certain the ship stayed where they wanted it to.

While Shaak was seeing to that, Ranma very deliberately left HK in the cockpit as well, ordering him to shut down. "Once bitten, twice shy, HK. At least this way, you won't be forced to see what you call our 'fleshbag mating ritual,' and I won't have to deal with a desire to kill you if you try to walking in on us again."

"Jaundiced reply: Truly, master, it is a win-win all around. Powering off."

With that Ranma watched as the light in the droid's eyes dimmed, and he nodded slightly before exiting the cockpit. He found Shaak already at work making dinner for the two of them and joined her quickly. The two of them worked around one another seamlessly, working quickly together to put together a decent meal. It was the local equivalent of a steak for Shaak, marinated in a local sauce Ranma had found, the smell of which caused her to smile in pleasure. The same meat had been cut up and placed onto a sandwich for Ranma. If they touched occasionally, hands rubbing down sides, fingers weaving into hair or trailing along necks, those touches only served to make the moment more enjoyable for the two of them.

With that done the two of them moved back into the sitting area, cuddling up on the sofa, Shaak sitting propped up against Ranma's side. For the most part, during the meal, they talked about nonsensical things, mainly about what they would like to do going forward so long as the Order had no mission for Shaak.

They eventually began a discussion on what types of planets Ranma would like to see and which ones Shaak had been to before. "We've already done jungle worlds, whatever the hell you'd call Coruscant, desert worlds, water worlds, forest worlds, and what I would call earth-like worlds. An ice planet sounds cool, no pun intended," Ranma said.

Just like when they met up on the tarmac, Shaak saw something in Ranma's eyes there that made her decide that now was as good a time as any to switch to a more serious topic. "So long as you wear the correct sort of protective gear, ice worlds can be amazing, though you have to be careful on a lot of them. Many ice planets are so cold that any skin that is left to the elements will be frostbitten within moments. And they have their own brand of predators, many of whom make up for size with durability and ferocity. However, that is a conversation for another day."

Turning around, she put her back against the edge of the sofa, reaching out to touch his chin and turning him slightly so that they were eye to eye. "Would you like to tell me what is bothering you?" she asked simply. Best to get such things spoken aloud where they could be discussed in the open, after all.

Ranma flinched slightly at that, but under her touch couldn't move, instead looking away for a moment.

When he looked back, Shaak added, "I will not judge you for whatever it is; you should know that. Simply tell me what is bothering you, and let us see if by talking about it we can help whatever it is."

At that Ranma sighed, but nodded. "When you were wounded, when I heard how bad your wounds were, I, I lost control. But I didn't do it like a berserker would, at least, not really. See, there's this technique back home called the Soul of Ice. It's really just an advanced way to control your emotions, or it was back there. I've told you about my ability to create tornadoes, right?"

Shaak nodded, having heard that story when they were on Dac. She had not actually believed him at the time, but after seeing everything else that Ranma could do she had become a believer. They had yet to be involved in any fight that would force Ranma to break that technique out, which, for some reason, she was truly thankful for, but she had no doubt it would be both fascinating and horrifying when she saw it. "Yes. I take it this was the technique you used to create your aura of cold?"

"That's it exactly. But the problem here was it didn't just lock them out, and I didn't reach out or activate the technique, not really, not like you would be able to use a meditation technique, right? I tried to use it to control my emotions when I saw you injured, but I fell into it. I didn't control it; it, it controlled me. And while I was under it I didn't feel any real emotions. And it wasn't just my emotions that went."

Shaak frowned for a moment, then looked down to where his hands were before reaching out with one of her own to the nearest one, feeling the strength of them. "Your self-control," she murmured, "Your willingness to hold back?"

"Yeah. I, I am so much stronger than most people, Shaak. Even now, even with all the training we've done, you can't really… I mean, you can probably understand, but, but I couldn't control it. Eventually, it only broke after I saw…" Ranma paused, then steeled himself and began to describe the battle against that first bounty hunter chapter headquarters, how he and HK had ripped them to pieces, sometimes literally. He covered the battle until he had rammed his fist straight through one of the bounty hunters, after which, covered in the man's blood, Ranma had seen the fearful expressions on the dancers' faces.

"After that I was able to break out of it, but it was, it was the strangest feeling. Back home I could end the technique with some mental maneuvering; here it was so incredibly difficult. And I couldn't control it," he said, again shaking his head.

Shaak nodded slowly, looking down at their joined hands for a moment, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand, then down his own thumb and back up slowly as she thought. "You will only use it as a last resort?" she asked.

Ranma nodded fervently, and then blinked as she leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Then nothing more needs to be said. I trust you, Ranma, and I can see how horrified you are now. Further, even when you were under the grip of this technique, you did not harm the innocent. You did not harm those dancers, merely scared them, which was enough for you to realize what you were doing. Never doubt that you are good man, Ranma, because I surely won't."

Staring down at her, Ranma was silent for a moment before a small, if exceptionally warm, smile appeared on his face, and he leaned down, kissing her hard on the lips and pulling her to him. After a moment he pulled away, murmuring "Thank you", then dipped down to kiss Shaak again and again.

{Warning Lime incoming!}

Soon, however, the tenderness of the moment gave way to passion. Their mouths opened, tongues pressing against and around one another, exploring one another's mouth as Shaak began to moan and Ranma breathed heavier. It was as if having been apart for so many days, or perhaps the moment they had shared earlier that day, had made their desire to continue to take things slow go out the window.

Shaak found herself on her back on the sofa, Ranma on top of her, the fur cloak he had given her splayed out underneath her back. Their hands began to explore, pulling at clothing as their mouths stayed fused together almost desperately. Shaak was able to undo Ranma's belt, and between the two of them they were able to discard everything but his underwear, while Shaak's clothing took a few more minutes, and like Ranma's shirt, forced them to stop kissing as they worked at it.

The moment her outer layer of clothing was gone, Ranma pulled off her bra, unlatching it with the experience he had gained since their relationship began. Then he leaned down quickly and found one of her chalk white nipples, taking it into his mouth and sucking first lightly, then more forcefully, nibbling at it with his teeth, almost biting down on it. One of his hands found her other breast and began to play with it while his other began to run up and down her lekku.

Moaning and now slowly thrusting her hips up against Ranma's, Shaak was not content to be a passive target for her lover's ministrations. Her hands quested between them, tugging his engorged shaft out of his boxers, both hands beginning to play along his length. One then began to rub along the bulbous tip, massaging it, feeling some pre-cum already beginning to appear. Then, just as Ranma had begun to do with her, the gentleness of her motions began to fade. She squeezed harder; her hands began to move faster.

Leaving off his work with her now pebble-hard nipples, Ranma moved up her body with both hands now, moving to play with her nipples as he trailed kisses up to her mouth. The kiss was once more ferocious, what little tenderness fading rapidly into a sort of animalistic fervor. Ranma's fingers on her nipples began to twist, adding some pain to the pleasure, heightening the sensation somehow.

One of Shaak's hands moved from grasping at Ranma's cock to pulling at her own underwear, trying to remove the silky little number she had decided to wear today. Then she yipped, actually biting at Ranma's lower lip with her sharp predator's teeth as one of his hands moved down and simply ripped her panties off, hurling them to the side. "Darn it, Ranma! I liked those!"

"I'll buy you new ones," Ranma said huskily, leaning down to bite at her neck, leaving dark hickies there and causing Shaak to hump her lower body up at Ranma.

Snarling, Shaak grabbed at his ponytail with one hand and his still boxer-clad rear, pulling him to one side and rolling with him. Once Ranma was pinned underneath her she pushed upright with her arms, thrusting her hips down, catching Ranma's shaft between her aching, drenched core, and his stomach. There she began to rock back and forth wildly, moaning continuously now and working her weeping slit along his shaft, which jumped and twitched underneath her. All she would have to do would be to pull back and sit up for just a second, and the two would be joined in the most ancient method known.

Lifting himself up with just his ab muscles, Ranma threw his arms around Shaak, kissing her so hard both of them felt some pain in their lips from it, their tongues flicking and dueling with one another in her mouth. One hand then moved to rest on her rear, moving slightly underneath and between her legs, finding the bottom of her slit past her other hole, which they had both decided was a no go zone.

Even as their hips began to thrust at one another wildly, Ranma retained just enough control to know that going all the way right now would be a bad idea. While the fact it wasn't the most romantic moment was one reason was true, that didn't register. No, the fact that the two of them were so needy, so almost desperate for one another at this point was what Ranma realized at that moment. He had read the books Tofu had given him and knew that a woman's first time was almost always painful, with the speed of the initial penetration usually adding to that. He didn't want his and Shaak's first time to be marred by that, however.

So when Shaak wildly tried to pull away just enough to raise herself up, just enough to let his shaft point up to her waiting flower, Ranma didn't let her. Instead he held her even closer and rocked his hips against hers even harder. She whined into their joined mouths, but the friction was doing its job for both of them.

Their movements quickly became even more frantic, and then Shaak broke their kiss to bite as hard as she could into Ranma's shoulder. Used to his lover's needs by now, Ranma had already weakened his natural ki toughness enough to let her teeth sink in, while his own hands clenched Shaak's rear hard enough to leave bruises as he too finished explosively, his cock spurting out rope after rope of cum that drenched both of their stomachs.

{End Lime section}

Slowly the two of them came back to themselves, exchanging languid, loving kisses, with Ranma falling back to lay on the sofa once more, Shaak following him. She broke off their latest kiss, nuzzling into the same shoulder she had just bitten, her montral gently tapping against the side of Ranma's head. Before their relationship had begun that might have freaked Ranma out. Now Shaak's nonhuman nature; her montrals; her skin color; her lekku, currently twitching spasmodically due to aftershocks from her orgasm; all of it simply served to make Shaak more exotic and desirable in his eyes.

Shaak smiled a truly pleased smile at the mark she had made there on her mate and at the feel of the marks he had left on her own throat. The marks she could feel stinging her rear now that her adrenaline was fading were a bit much, but she could deal with them with some Force assisted healing. Although I bet it has been a very, very long time since any Jedi has ever needed to use it for such! she thought, letting out a breathy little giggle that caused Ranma to chuckle along, even if he had no idea what she was thinking.

After a moment, however, she looked up at him, eyes shining with love, and kissed him tenderly. "Thank you," she said, making no mention of what she was thanking him for. Both of them knew it, knew she had lost control there, and that going all the way when they were in the grips of such a frenzied passion would not have been pleasant for her. Togrutans tended to actually feel more pain upon first penetration than humans did, even if they did not have the membrane that humans did inside them.

Ranma nodded, kissing her back just as lovingly before letting one hand start to play with her still spasming lekku, his other already wrapped around her. "We came a little close there. Um, I know I shouldn't blurt this out, but do you want to wait for our wedding? Sorry, but I haven't been able to find anything on the Hypernet I trust about whether or not that's important in your culture."

"That would be because it depends on a lot of other factors, and marriage is something that varies from clan to clan. As for myself…no, I don't think so. I want this, Ranma," Shaak said, her voice deepening as did the color of her eyes as she went on, reaching down to gently touch Ranma's still hard tip. "I want this inside of me. I want to feel you as close as physically possibly. I want to give you that final sign of my love for you. But I also want our first time to be special. If we had taken that final step here and now, it would not have been. Merely a reaction to having been apart, to my own near death experience. That would not have been right."

Ranma's own eyes had darkened with desire as Shaak spoke, and he leaned down kissing her again deeply. "I love you too, Shaak, and I swear, I'm willing to wait until it will be special, I promise."

"Thank you," Shaak replied, whispering the words against his mouth, her breath hot against his lips, before she smirked, beginning to move down his body and out of his hug. "That doesn't mean, however, that I'm done with you right now. Not just yet…"

OOOOOOO

The next day Bo came home victorious as Clento had said she would. She left behind Skirata and his clan, an honorable but not very aggressive clan who could be both the organizers of a new, real government for the planet and examples of the Mandalorian way of life.

Not fifty minutes after arriving back on Mandalore, Bo sent a message to Ranma and Shaak asking them to meet her in the clan conclave. They entered the building and found Bo standing as she had during the debates on the floor of the amphitheater, looking around and frowning in thought. "The old palace, the old home of the Mandalore, is gone," she said, not looking over at them. "This remained, or was rebuilt or something, after the Dral'hain; our records from that time are obviously very muddied. I'd like to think it was rebuilt, frankly, so that there's really no physical connection to the old ways except for the rest of Keldabe, of course, which I know for a fact was mostly rebuilt since then."

Bo-Katan turned to them at that point, smiling as she saw the torque that Shaak was wearing on one of her lekku and the ring on Ranma's hand. While she personally didn't know any other Togrutans, the meaning of the ring was clear enough, though Mandalorians very seldom used such. "I'm happy to see you two," she said simply, then looked away once more as she deliberately changed the subject back to what she had just been saying, as if those six words had never left her mouth at all. "I'm thinking of possibly building an adjoining building right next to this one, something utilitarian. It'll be the headquarters of the bureaucracy of government, but it won't be the soul of our people. That we will build as the years go on by various means, but not in the trappings of self-aggrandizement, like a palace or castle or anything so ostentatious."

"Oooh, shots fired!" Ranma said with a laugh, shaking his head. "What about the palace Satine and the New Mandos're using now?"

"It'll remain in use for another year or so in its current format as the organization of our takeover is finished. After that, I suppose I could turn it into a resort or something," Bo mused, smirking at the idea. "It depends on how much effort it would take to relocate the Hypercom.

"And what will you do with your sister? She remains a powerful symbol of both the peaceful unification of your people and the New Mandalorian faction," Shaak asked calmly, cocking her head as she looked at the human woman. She had been happy to hear Bo's blessing a moment ago, but was just as happy to move on as Bo obviously was. Their aborted rivalry for Ranma's affections would always be in the back of Bo's mind, that was obvious though for her part Shaak had moved beyond that jealousy by this point.

"She'll still be part of the government for a long while," Bo replied with a shake of her head. "I'll just have to learn to get along with her, I suppose. I doubt we'll ever see eye to eye, but the fact is Satine's honorable enough in her own way, even if she doesn't follow the Resol'nare, and she kept her word about helping to pass control of the planet to the Reborn peacefully if we won in the conclave. And you're right, I'll need her in the long term, I think."

"A lot of the New Mandalorians, though, are going to go," she went on firmly. "The industrial leaders they had involved with the conclave for one thing, the guild leaders and others. They did not impress me, and I don't want them around to tray and stall things as we start to move more and more of our industry onto a space-going footing."

"You mean making more ships, right?" Ranma translated. "Makes sense, but does that mean you already have plans for the rest of the sector?" This was a bit he was actually interested in, concerned that in her euphoria after this last campaign, Bo-Katan would decide to use similar methods against every planet, just because it worked once. Or at least it worked in giving them control of the planet. Making it stable is another story.

"We've had overtures from fifteen different planets since you left on your mission of justice, Ranma," Bo-Katan said simply. "All of them wish to open dialogs with us about joining us once more to make this a profitable and, above all, law abiding sector. Four of those planets had already sent representatives to the clan conclave, so they're the ones we'll reach out to first. Then we'll engage with the farming worlds, then the mining worlds, and once all the agreements with those fifteen are in place, the economy of the sector might slowly start to recover." She shrugged. "This is such if a huge project you can't really make specific plans, not beyond those first four planets, anyway."

"Hmm… Well, I doubt this is what you called us to talk to you about. Perhaps we should get to the point now," Shaak said, looking at Bo-Katan thoughtfully.

Bo-Katan nodded and gestured the two of them over to join her. Bo-Katan perched on the intervening wall between the amphitheater's floor and the sitting area. Shaak sat on one of the chairs, and Ranma lounged next to her, sticking his feet up on the wall next to Bo-Katan.

"Clento told you that I wanted to talk to you about being part of the ceremony tomorrow, and I do. Did you know that the helmet of the Mandalore, his symbol of office, was here on Mandalore this whole time? It was stuck in a museum, of all things. Everyone who has seen it has always thought that it was a replica. Hell, I thought it was when I was brought there as a child by my father. But it turned out that it was the real thing, hidden in plain sight."

Bo stopped for a moment, letting loose with a laugh that that was somewhat caustic in nature. "You have no idea how many clan leaders there've been over the centuries who would have leaped to possess the Mask, or how bad my former boss would have reacted if he knew. Hell, even the New Mandalorians didn't know, which I'm thankful for." She shuddered, thinking of her sister's reaction to such a relic. She'd have just had it melted down for scrap! "Anyway, the portion of the ceremony I want you involved in tomorrow, Ranma is an exhibition match."

Ranma's eyes narrowed. Then he slowly nodded. "That was the way leadership changed hands in the past, right? One-on-one challenges?"

"Exactly. There is no Mandalore left for me to challenge now, of course, but with how important your techniques proved to be in gathering support and with how your talks influenced my restructuring of the Resol'nare, it makes sense."

"You realize that if you fight me one-on-one, you're going to be beaten, right in front of everyone?" Ranma asked slowly. "I mean, I'm not going to go easy on you. Not unless you want it to be a farce, and there's a lot of people out there who probably know enough about my abilities to spot a rat if I throw the match."

"No, we won't have an outright fight. That would serve no purpose; you're right about that. Instead, this is going to be a bit more of a contest than an actual spar," Bo-Katan said. "Mandalore's Mask is still in the museum where it's been for one thousand years now, and that museum has a lot of security. The contest will be which of us can get the helmet and then get it out of the building."

"This doesn't sound like a spectator sport," Shaak said, chuckling as she imagined it before looking between the two of them. "I imagine you're going to have to do something about that?"

"Yes, we will. We'll be wearing Mandalorian helmets of our own, and they'll be fitted with video recorders. The entire place is also fitted with security cameras, of course, and both of those will be meshed into one by a group of operators. This signal will then be sent out across the entire planet. It will have a more party atmosphere than anything else, and I hope to pair it with both the fact that the Jedi are have pulled out, their job done, and that you, Ranma, have agreed to take on a few apprentices in your style."

Ranma and Shaak exchanged a glance. "How young are we talking about here?" Ranma asked. "And when do you think we'll be taking them on? The Wild Light sure as hell doesn't have enough room, and I'm not certain I'd want to even attempt to redesign the interior to change that."

"Not for a while yet; don't worry," Bo-Katan replied, shaking her head about that. "I want us to build a training ship they can move with you wherever you go. I also want to use it as a symbol of what the New Mandalorians and the Reborn can do when we work together. It'll be designed from the ground up and built by us, right here on Mandalore. That'll take years. And we've got enough training ideas and katas from you to get on with for a time."

"And let me guess, you'll start off teaching the younger set what I know, and then I'll come back when this ship is built and take on the best of them? The most I'd be willing to train at the time, by the way, is four or so," Ranma cautioned.

"That's fine," Bo-Katan said with a nod. "So you'll agree to it?"

"I am willing to help you with the ceremony, I guess," Ranma said slowly. "That sounds like it'll work given how weird this whole changeover thing is to your people anyway, what a symbol that helmet is, and the way the Resol'nare is seen by your people. As for taking on these students…"

Ranma looked over at Shaak, who looked back for a moment before nodding and turning back to Bo. "There is a youngling among the Jedi on Kashyyyk with whom I have already begun to form a padawan/master bond. That is a Force connection whereby the Force pairs a Jedi with a youngling above a certain age who he or she will teach until they are ready to become a Jedi Knight. It is an apprenticeship ranging from seven to fifteen years long. She will not be ready for that for at least another three years at a minimum. Once she is ready, she would then live with Ranma and I as we travel the galaxy, learning from us. At that point we might well need a new ship in any event. We could somehow connect the two needs, could we not?"

"Build not just a training ship, but something for the three of you to use as living quarter? And stay in touch with the two of you, so as to have your input?" Bo asked hopefully, smirking at them both. "That works."

Ranma snorted, rolling his eyes at her eagerness to keep in touch with them, but couldn't really hold it against her. As he had already seen, any warrior culture would love to learn what Ranma had to teach, and Bo would be a fool to let them cut their ties with her at this point.

"In that case," he said aloud, pointing at Bo, "you need to get in touch with the Mon Calamari from Dac. They're the ones who designed the Wild Light for us. There are a lot of things they built in that ship that I would want to see on any new ship we get: the redundant shielding, the redundant generators, and other things."

That made Bo-Katan frown, leaning back as she held onto the edge of the wall, her feet kicking out as if she were a little girl as she thought, not noticing, or rather, not caring about her two friends' amused looks. "I can bring in a few specialists if they are willing to come, but I couldn't bring in whole teams. That would defeat the point of using the project as a way to unite the two factions. Although I suppose I could come up with some other way of doing that. Hmmm… How much would a Mon Calamari design adviser run for?"

Shaak quickly prompted a figure, and Bo-Katan balked for a moment before frowning and eventually nodding. "The Wild Light has impressed me with its capabilities a few times, and the Mon Calamari I've heard like to build one-off designs, whereas most people mass produce things, my own being no exception to that. Okay, so let's toss out the idea of using the training ship as an example of unity. Replace it with, say, building a new space dock. And if I do that, you'll agree to take on these apprentices?"

Again Shaak and Ranma looked at one another, and Shaak spoke for them both. "We'll write up a list of requirements for the ship. If all of those are met, and if you are willing to wait until the ship is built, then we will agree. Realize, however, that the students of yours will not return here for a few years at best."

"How young are we talking about here, anyway?" Ranma asked.

"Sixteen to eighteen," Bo replied promptly. "Mixed gender, of course. In fact, I know for certain that one of the students is going to be the younger sister of one of my Night Owls. Janice impressed a lot of people during the recent campaign, and she'll only be turning fifteen in a few months."

"That'll work," Ranma said. While he, of course, had begun training at a very young age in his techniques, he wasn't willing to train beginners, and certainly wasn't willing to put any child through what he had been through.

"We will, of course, be able to screen these prospective students even if they win whatever contests you use to decide who is going to become a student," Shaak stated.

"You'd have to give us reasons for rejecting them, but yes, of course you'll have a voice on who you take," Bo replied.

Shaak and Ranma nodded, while Shaak breathed a faint sigh of relief internally at how easily Bo had given in on that point. Bo wasn't looking to use this learning opportunity as a way to garner support from her fellow Mandalorians; that was good. Also good was the fact that they would be able to determine their character before taking them on.

That point is especially important considering Ahsoka's age and the fact that she might be entering puberty when I take her as padawan, Shaak thought drolly. Hopefully Alice will be ready by the time puberty hits.

Puberty was one of the toughest points of Jedi training, and a lot of the training and, above all, meditation the Jedi went through during this point were among the things Shaak had begun to question since meeting Ranma, so hopefully her young apprentice would not need to go through it. Or else I might spend a few months just correcting the mistakes other people have made, she thought more seriously. Just as I will be needing to help her get over her current problems.

"Then we have an agreement," Shaak said aloud, holding out her hand. Bo-Katan hesitated, then shook it before doing the same with Ranma, grinning at them both. "You won't regret this!"

"We probably will," they said as one, looking at each other and laughing before Ranma went on. "We probably will, but only for a moment or two, so long as you and the Reborn continue to follow your new code," Ranma said, cocking an eyebrow at Bo-Katan, who nodded seriously.

Ranma would return to that point later today, but for now he allowed Shaak to carry the discussion as she asked some questions about Bo's plans going forward, while he leaned back, ostensibly listening in, but really his mind was on something else. He had a bit of a performance to plan for later today, after all, and he needed to get his mind around what he wanted to do…

OOOOOOO

Later that day Bo stood in front of a massive crowd with Ranma next to her, both of them dressed as Mandalorian warriors. They were also armed as Mandalorians, with jump-packs, wrist launchers, rifles, and handguns, along with long vibro-knives, but no lightsabers. Beside them stood several others: academics from several local universities and the museum curators. Ranma made that armor look very good, Bo noted, and she wasn't the only one in the crowd who did. Still a damn shame he met with the Jedi before he did us, she thought, even as she went into her prepared speech. She had prepared this the moment one of the curators, who had joined the Reborn faction, told them all about the real history of the so called 'fake' helmet of Mandalore held within the museum.

Bo-Katan first explained to the crowd and the watchers all over the planet why they were there, amused by the massive susurration of noise that went through the crowd at the fact that the helmet on display in the museum was the real one. Then she challenged any of them to step forward to challenge her for it. No one did, though Bo knew that that state of affairs wouldn't last for long.

After that she explained the contest Ranma and she would have in lieu of her challenging the previous Mandalore for the title, mentioning the traps and automated weapons that had been installed to aid the museum's own security. She ended with a nod towards the curators. "Don't worry. All of the other historical artifacts have been removed by this time, and we'll be careful not to bring the roof down on ourselves."

That caused some muted laughter, and Bo went on. "The two of us will enter from different entrances. The helmet has been set at the direct center of the museum. From there we will fight our way forward and through those defenses, and then against one another. The winner must be the first to get the helmet out of the museum. Other than death or crippling, anything goes."

Ranma chortled a bit at her word choice, though only Shaak Ti, watching from nearby, understood the reason behind that sound of amusement. His attention turned to the crowd, however, as someone asked, "But what if Ranma wins? Will he become Mandalore?" From the man's tone of voice, he felt that might have been a good idea, though if so he had never met Ranma himself.

Shaking her head, Bo explained that Ranma had no desire to take up the position (a manifest understatement, in Ranma's opinion) and that if she failed, they would set up further such contests until there was a winner. The crowd all muttered at that, many of them wondering if they should root for Ranma in that case, but the majority seemed to be behind Bo winning this thing. Those who knew about Ranma's abilities, those who had trained with him, however, were wondering if Bo was sneaky and adaptable enough to figure out a way through this.

Bo knew that, but she also knew that given her people's ancient rites there was no way she could simply claim the helm without fighting for it. It was either this or an all-out brawl, and in that event a lot of the upcoming and established leaders among the Reborn, specifically a lot of clan leaders and others, would die. There had to be a challenge; there had to be something for the people, all of them, not just those who knew her, to see and understand that she was the new Mandalore, regardless of her not having challenged the previous one.

She fielded a few more questions, after which the two of them were led to the entrances to the museum that they would use. They clicked on their helmets, and waited as the tech operators moved through all the different cameras that would be used, and then two announcers came on, chosen from the curators of the museum to explain the area the two of them would be moving through. There would be no further commentary beyond that. While this was meant to seem interesting, it was also somewhat serious, despite the tongue in cheek nature of it, so having commentary like it was some kind of sports game would be a step too far.

After a moment the two contestants received a signal, and the doors to the museum opened before them. "Good luck!" they both heard, then there was a gong in the distance, and they both raced forward. Ranma ran on his own two feet, conserving the jet fuel in his pack for now. Bo roared forward on a blast of jet fire, eager to get as much of a lead as possible. Can't beat him in a straight on race; have to outwit him, get ahead now, then use my knowledge of the interior to stay there.

Ranma tore into the museum, taking a brief glance around and realizing that he was in one of the newer sections, judging by the paintings and various historical pieces that had been left in place. Not a weapon or piece of armor around. Yep, has to be from the New Mandos rather than the old.

Getting his bearings quickly, he stared at the three different doorways leading further into the museum, then decided on the central one for now. If I'm wrong I can correct by going to either side and not lose any time. If I'm right I can go straight there. A moment later he entered the next wing of the museum, which was covered from floor to ceiling in what looked like local writing, quotes, if he was reading them correctly, bits and pieces of stories from during and directly after the Dral'hain.

That was all Ranma had time to recognize before he tripped an infrared alarm. Over the sound of the alarm's whoops Ranma heard several panels to either side open as the lights in this section of the museum switched to red.

Ducking forward into a roll, Ranma dodged what looked like a few darts of some sort, followed by jets of water from above, much like those which riot tanks used to disperse crowds. They missed but splashed onto the ground, and Ranma soon found himself somewhat drenched. Luckily for him, however, for some reason the water was hot, so did not yet activate the curse. And for some reason he didn't pretend to understand, the curse didn't activate by merely being damp. It was the actual touch of cold water that caused the change.

It didn't occur to Ranma that the stinging hot water would have been more than mildly irritating for someone else, but that also didn't really matter right now. What did was the blast doors closing at the end of the hallway. Instead of having to move slowly thanks to the now-slick tiles of the floor, Ranma started to hop off the walls as he raced forwards, dodging several more darts in midair as he made his way towards the closing blast door.

But Ranma was too fast to get caught that easily, and he leaped through the rapidly closing opening, allowing it to clang closed beyond him. "Next!"

Elsewhere, Bo-Katan had run into more serious defenses coming in and moving through an area labeled, 'An introduction to the Huang.' "Interesting, but I could do without the stun bolts coming my way!" she grunted inside her helmet, dodging this way and that. With her helmet on and her Mandalorian armor, the bolts would do little but slow her down and maybe make her woozy, but the accompanying blaring alarm and the taser blasts were another matter. The taser would conduct through her arm and hurt like a chakaar, which she knew from experience. Again, it wouldn't stop her, but it would slow her down.

Which, considering that just like Ranma she was facing a series of slowly closing blast doors, was a bad thing. However, unlike Ranma she knew which direction to go to find the center of the museum. She was able to dodge through all the fire coming her way and into the next hallway. From there she raced on, using her jetpack for a bit before slowing down as the hallway began to curve.

In the next areas the two entered they ran into more serious defenses even than that which Bo had faced, actual blasters flaring out with intent to kill whoever had invaded the museum from the corners of the next several rooms. Ranma was forced to tank a few hits, a lucky shot having caught him in the back and disabling his jetpack. However his ability to dodge by using the walls and other bits of cover stood him in good stead. His not knowing where the hell he was any longer, though, slowed him down. Bo, in contrast, took a few hits on her armor as she entered the room, but destroyed each installation with blasts from her gun before moving on.

Because of this Bo-Katan was the first to reach the room holding the helmet of the Mandalore. It was a wide, almost spherical room, with a tall domed ceiling and smooth sides. Portions of it were covered by old paintings of various Mandalores going back to the time of the Huang. There were spots here and there, as well as a few empty cases, to show where other pieces had been before they were removed for this contest.

But Bo had no eyes for any of that. Her concentration was all on the helmet. It sat in the center of the room on a plinth, a small light overhead lighting it up with normal yellow light, a stark contrast from the rest of the room.

The Mandalore's Mask, as it was called, looked old and weathered, yet somehow that simply added to its presence, as did its unique design. It had a vaguely T-shaped visor, unlike most modern helmets, and looked to have lines built up out of the surface radiating from the center of the visor, like rays from a sun. The metal of the helmet was a coppery color, which gleamed in the overhead light.

Looking around, Bo stopped in the doorway, lashing out towards it with a bit of her monowire, wrapping it around the top of the plinth. She wasn't surprised to see the crystal of the case remain in one piece, but loosening it, she was able to let the lasso of monowire fall further down the plinth before cutting into the base of it. This set the plinth collapsing towards her, the top of it, the crystal encasing the helmet, rolling off. "Yes!" she hissed, moving into the room towards the helmet slowly.

Before she made it halfway across the room, however, Ranma burst in from the other side. Ignoring the helmet entirely, he charged straight at her, leaping forward and crossing the intervening distance like a Jedi who had just done a Force Jump. Cursing, Bo-Katan ducked aside, raising her vibroblade only for Ranma to smack it aside with a hand, not even noticing the vibrating edge, though his gauntlets had been cut badly with that bit of impact. Then he was in under her guard, throwing a punch she barely dodged and grabbing her knife arm and pulling her close.

"Not gonna happen, Bo!" Ranma shouted, but not over the intercom of his helmets built in speaker. Instead he slammed his helmet into hers, so close she could hear him without use of the speaker, though she doubted any of the microphone pickups around them could. "Just sneaking in and sneaking out, that wouldn't show the courage of a real Mandalore, right?"

"Wouldn't have it any other way, Ranma!" Bo snarled back, bringing up a knee into the armor of his cup with as much strength as she could, lifting Ranma slightly off his feet. Thanks to the cup, however, she didn't do any damage, but a point blank blast from one of her micro-rockets smashed him away from her, letting her break the grip on her arm. A punch caught him in the side of the head a second later, but his helmet took it, and he returned fire with a kick that dented Bo's chest armor and caused warnings to flare up on her HUD.

The two of them continued to exchange blows, and Bo-Katan watched as her punches, empowered by her crushgaunts, began to damage Ranma's borrowed Mandalorian armor. Yet at the same time Ranma didn't seem to feel them at all, and the one time she tried to grapple him in turn, the armor of his shoulder armor buckled, but Ranma simply tore it off after punching her away. He wasn't bothering to try and dodge, certain in his ability to take anything she could dish out, which was right, after all.

By this point, while Ranma was apparently uninjured despite the damage to his wardrobe, Bo was sporting bruises galore and at least one rib broken along with a few fingers. Like I thought, any head to head contest just can't go any way but Ranma's. Luckily I figured that would be the case. Now, where were those pressure sensors?

With that thought, after the next exchange Bo-Katan deliberately went with a punch that staggered her backwards, smashing into one of the empty exhibition cases. Immediately the alarms, which had not in fact been going off in this room, went up, and several large portions of the walls and floor slid away. The ones in the walls began to hammer out quad blasters, while the ones on the floor released what looked like gas. The lights in the ceiling also began to strobe and flare the better to disorient anyone in the room.

It worked like a charm. With her helmet's programming ready for it, Bo was barely put off, and she was also on internal air supply already. Ranma was neither, and he began to hack and cough, grunting as blaster bolts slammed into him, firing back with his suit's micro rockets and pistol. A second later, however, Bo-Katan hammered out two blows into Ranma's helmet which shattered his visor and deformed it to such a degree he could barely see.

Then, knowing she had nothing that could finish him, she ran towards the helmet still encased in its crystal. At the same time she hurled her vibroknife at the last quad cannon, taking it out in a screech and fizzle of electronic fire.

As she straightened up from picking it up, however, Ranma's fist smashed into it, shattering the crystal with an ease that a portion of Bo's mind noted was rather terrifying. The same hand that had just shattered its protective crystal then grabbed the helmet, pulling it out of her startled grasp as a kick took Bo in the center of her chest, hurling her away.

She landed where she had been when Ranma had first appeared, something she rather woozily noted, then her mind concentrated suddenly on one thing: the blaster pistol she had been carrying when he arrived. Her rifle was gone, destroyed somewhere along the way by one of the security gun posts. Twisting, she pulled it up, firing from the hip, then activating her jets, again zooming forward and hurling herself bodily into Ranma, trying to grab the helmet out of his hand.

But Ranma turned and, still hacking and half blind, snagged Bo-Katan's outstretched arms, pulling her into a classic judo throw. Instead of grabbing it out of his hand she found herself slammed pack first into the ground, her back creaking alarmingly in her armor. The helmet went flying up towards the ceiling end over end. Using her jetpack once again, Bo took Ranma's feet out from under him, dumping him sideways into one of the recesses in the floor as another round of gas began and the lights began to flare even more wildly.

With Ranma distracted and out of position, Bo aimed up at the ceiling with her last micro rocket. The rocket zoomed past the spinning helmet, smashing into the ceiling and shattering it, opening the room to the sky beyond.

Rolling and activating her jetpack, Bo almost paused as Ranma opened communications, helmet to helmet. "You go, Bo. And just remember, keep to the version of the Resol'nare you've created and not the older interpretation. If you don't, we're going to have…problems."

Before she could really understand what that implied in terms of their current fight, her jetpack activated, hurling her up into the air and towards the new 'exit' to the museum. On the way Bo-Katan's hand snapped out, snagging the helmet of Mandalore. Then she was out, flying up into the sky with a roar of triumph echoing out from her helmet's speaker to the cheers of the crowd.

Later that day, Bo-Katan stalked over the tarmac to the Wild Light, Mandalore's Mask perched on the back of her jetpack, having replaced her helmet. The rest of her armor still showed the scars: the cracks and dents from the battle. Despite that, she would have still been at the party her friends and chief aids had thrown for her, if not for word reaching her that the Wild Light, and more importantly, Ranma, were planning to leave. Even as she walked up to the closed ramp she could see the repulsors powering up along the ship's underside and the engines at the aft.

Ignoring that for a moment she bellowed, slamming her hand against the exterior speaker. "Ranma, open the kriff up! You chakaar, you think you can just whisper what you did in there and then run off without giving me an explanation!?"

She stepped back as the landing ramp opened, then stomped up it to find Ranma and Shaak both waiting for her at the top of it, right in front of the ship's main sitting area. Ranma cocked his head to one side innocently, and Bo growled, marching straight up and poking him in the sternum with a finger from a hand that was still wearing her crush gaunt. "You, you kriffing di'kut! Either you said that to rile me up, or you threw that match, which one is it!?"

"Can't it be both?" Ranma asked, his voice matching his face for a moment. When he saw Shaak rolling her eyes, he dropped the act, looking at Bo seriously. "Would you rather I have just steamrolled you, Bo? You know the minute we met up in there I could have." Bo scowled, but was forced to accede that. "Instead I fought you as close to even as I could and look like I was struggling to any of your people who have seen me in action. This way it's obvious to everyone I could have eventually overpowered ya, but you won through tactics."

Bo paused, thinking about that, and had to again agree. Everyone had been talking about it, about how Bo had used guile and cunning, and above all, knowledge, to offset Ranma's massive physical advantages. And a lot of people who had been somewhat leery about her leadership abilities seemed to have taken her ability to plan on the fly as a good sign, despite that being in the heat of battle and their being worried about her in the political arena. Still, that's the Mandalorian mindset for you. Even the NMs sometimes see skill in combat mattering in other areas, Bo thought, somewhat proud and somewhat amused by her people.

"Do not let your pride cloud your judgment, Bo-Katan. Beating Ranma was not your task, nor even truly claiming the Mandalore's Mask," Shaak said softly. "You needed to show you were worth the leadership of your people. The Reborn will be behind you now to a man, or woman. Even some of the New Mandalorians will have taken this as a good sign: no deaths, a true break from any old tradition on challenge, and a leader who is adaptable."

"I can see that, but damn it!" Bo whined, rolling her eyes moving away. "Why couldn't you at least have let me imagine I beat you fair and square?"

"Because I know your people's history, and I know how easy it is for a people to become so certain of their own ability no one else matters. It happened to my nation, and we paid for it, but not before tarnishing our honor for all time," Ranma said, his voice still serious, but now with a grim tone added to it.

He held up his hand, which began to glow blue, making Bo flinch lightly. "And I want to know that you Mandos won't go down that route again. I wanted you to know what would happen if you did."

"I promise, as long as I'm alive the Reborn will never fall back to the old ways of conquest by the sword. We will only expand peacefully; we will keep to the Code that we've talked about," Bo replied, actually holding a hand to her heart. Then she smirked, reaching out to thump Ranma on the chest before looking over at Shaak. "Farewell for now, you two. Just remember our deal, and I'll see you in a few years."

With that she turned, walking back down the ramp without another word. The two lovers watched as she walked out, waiting until she was beyond the ferrocrete barricade before turning to head up to the cockpit. When the two of them entered the cockpit, Shaak's lips twitched, and she nudged Ranma in the side. "And you say you're not a strategist?"

"Nah, that was tactics, Shaak. And knowing what I wanted to get out of this, not just what Bo wanted," Ranma replied with a grin. "Besides, ever hear of a bluff?"

Shaak turned to stare at Ranma, then laughed, her lekku flying as she shook her head, while Ranma smirked at her. "You, you mean you didn't throw the match?"

"Oh, I, um, I kind of intended to, but I wanted to make it really close, you know, without using my ki techniques, anyway." Ranma replied, pulling on his pigtail sheepishly. "But, um, I sort of forgot about that when we were fightin'. So I sort of blurted that out at the end, ta make her think I let her win."

"Only you, Ranma!" Shaak said, still giggling, the sound sending a thrill of pleasure down Ranma's back.

"Now, what say we blow this popsicle stand?"

Shaak stopped walking towards the pilots' chairs, staring at Ranma as he sat down in his chair, his fingers already moving on the controls. "What exactly does that mean?"

Ranma laughed, but didn't answer, simply gesturing her into the chair next to him before powering the repulsors up to full, lifting the Wild Light off the tarmac.

OOOOOOO

The next day after that bit of fun, the Wild Light came out of hyperspace, and as was usual in most civilized star systems it was hailed soon after, though in this case it was a very friendly hail as the Wookies knew this ship from the numerous times it had been to their planet before. Moments later they slid into orbit over Kashyyyk itself.

"Wild Light, this is Kashyyyk space control. Welcome back. We have a lane clear for you down to the surface. The normal guide lights will guide you in from there," said the Wookie on the other end of the communicator, smiling widely at Shaak through the transceiver.

Ranma leaned back in his copilot chair, intertwining his fingers behind his head as he sighed theatrically. "Can you ask them to wait a second? I want to savor this feeling."

"What feeling is that, Ranma?" Shaak asked, realizing only after she said that that she had just played the straight man for an incoming joke.

"We weren't attacked. This is only the second time since we left Tatooine that we haven't been attacked somewhere on a trip like this, and no, I ain't counting my mission against the Crimson Nova. I just want to savor this feeling. It probably won't ever happen again."

"Knowing your luck, perhaps not," Shaak said, her cheeks dimpling as she smiled for a moment. "Yet on the other hand, this could be the start of a new trend." She paused, waiting until Ranma turned to look at her before going on. "In that we'll only get in trouble planet-side rather than both there and in space."

"Now that's more like it," Ranma said with a laugh before the two of them turned back to the chuckling Wookie on the screen. As they did, Ranma took over the controls, while Shaak leaned back in her own chair, steepling her fingers as she began to concentrate on the Force. That little joke notwithstanding, it was time to get serious once more.

OOOOOOO

Ahsoka Tano was a very precocious youngling in many ways, though nowhere near as powerful or advanced as Anakin Skywalker was. She was well above the curve in anything dealing with the physical side of the Force, and somewhat below the curve on the mental side of things. She had little to no patience, far too much energy, and a significant amount of power in the Force. Ahsoka was also markedly stubborn and had a wild sort of spirit, clashing with the teachers on a nearly daily basis for being too rambunctious or being unable to sit still for very long.

For all of that, though, she was likable, outgoing, and hard-working. If she had not been all of those things, the teachers might well have washed their hands of her already and recommended that she be sent to the Farming Collectives even before her latest troubles began.

Those troubles were due to the fact that the youngling clan that she was a part of had started to learn meditation in order to center themselves in the Force and reach out to it four months ago. This was not an unusual thing, of course. It was simply a normal part of the younglings' training, and the teachers had, as usual, brought in several other teachers to help them work with the students, to make sure that they were not using emotions—good or bad—to reach out to the Force, rather doing so with a sense of serenity and control.

It was also during this time that the teachers truly began to hammer down on any of the differences and personality issues the younglings might have. To their shock, Ahsoka hadn't needed much help in that area. She had calmed down considerably, taking her studies much more seriously since Master Koon and Master Ti had talked to her the last time the two of them had been on Kashyyyk.

Because of this Ahsoka had not been watched as closely as she would otherwise have been given her headstrong nature as she meditated. And one such meditation fell into the same time frame during which Shaak was being attacked on distant Mandalore.

Even that would not have been an issue, if not for one other problem: Shaak and Ahsoka had begun to create a padawan and master bond in their interactions, though Ahsoka had no way of understanding what exactly that bond was. The bond had carried Ahsoka's Force senses well beyond what she would ever have been able to do at this point in her training herself. A few of the teachers also speculated that since it was a vision which could only harm Ahsoka, the Veil of the Dark Side had not hindered it at all.

Regardless of how it came to be, Ahsoka had seen the vision of Shaak being attacked and cut down in real-time, as it were. The shock and horror of that vision had reverberated down the budding bond, shattering it and filling Ahsoka with fear, anger, and hate. Given the vision those emotions were very natural, but ever since, every time Ahsoka reached out into the Force she saw flashes of the same image. She could not fight the fear of it or the growing hate and anger she felt towards Shaak's attackers.

Today was no different. She sat in the meditation pose, trying to center herself, trying to feel the Force around her. She wasn't even really sending out her senses, more trying to open herself to the rest of the Force. Yet still after only a few seconds Ahsoka flinched, fear radiating off her, breaking her meditation as she hugged herself, shivering in a cold that only she could feel.

In front of the youngling Yoda tapped his gimer stick on the ground, then tapped it against her palm for a moment to get Ahsoka's attention. "Fear, you feel," he said simply. "Understandable, it is. Let it control you, you cannot." He then chortled in his way, and reflexively Ahsoka found a smile replacing her teary scowl. "Easy to say, for one so old, hrhrhrm? Easy to do, it is not." With that he poked her in the chest, right over her heart. "Easy to feel within, it is not, hrhrhrm?"

After parsing what the ancient Grand Master had said, Ahsoka nodded slowly. "I can't… Every time I try to open myself to the Force… Master, I know she's alive!" Ahsoka suddenly wailed, not noticing the other younglings turning and looking at her, some of them frowning, as did a few of their teachers. "I know she's alive. I've talked to Master Ti on the Hypercom; I've seen her image there. But, but every time I look out into the Force, all I see is Shaak's death, and then…"

"Then your own death you see in her place. Fear you feel; hate and anger too," Yoda said simply, again tapping her with the end of his gimer stick, this time right between the eyes. She blinked, leaning back slightly, touching where the gimer stick had touched because that tap had felt a lot heavier than it should have.

As she was trying to cross her eyes to look at where Yoda had tapped her, Yoda turned his attention to the rest of the class. His ears cocked back slightly as one eyebrow rose. Suddenly all the other Jedi and younglings found themselves far too busy to notice what was going on between the ancient Grand Master and the Togrutan youngling. Harrumphing to himself, he turned back to her just as Ahsoka turned her attention back to him.

"Jedi, told death a part of life, we are. All things pass; nothing is endless save the Force. Again easy to say, not so easy to feel the reality of, yes?" Yoda said soothingly.

Some of that went over Ahsoka's head, but she nodded understanding with what she could from it. "I, I've heard something like that before from the other teachers. That we should not form bonds, because if we do, when a person passes, we feel the passing all the more."

"HRHUMPh!" Yoda said, shaking his head and moving closer, gesturing for her to stand up. When she did he leaped onto her tiny back, scrambling up onto her shoulders for a moment. The young girl ooofed at the surprisingly heavy Grand Master, but he simply pointed her out of the room. The other students tried to hold back snickers unsuccessfully, thinking that she was being punished in a rather funny manner, while the teachers simply looked on.

Yoda noted both attitudes and decided he would have another discussion with the teachers later on. He knew that at this point in the younglings' training individuality was discouraged, and for some good, solid reasons. But the teachers seemed to be willing to take that a little too far. On his way out, however Yoda noted that Master Rahhdool had also noted that, and had called the teachers together by the time the door closed behind the two of them. Good. Leave that in his hands, I will.

Alone in the corridor leading to the main hallway, he began to talk to Ahsoka again. "Hrhrhm, the age of Yoda you will guess."

"Older than dirt?" Ahsoka asked brashly, earning herself a light whack on the back of the head. She winced, then sighed in relief as Yoda leaped off of her, landing easily.

She watched in something like amused surprise as Yoda turned to her yet also continued to walk backwards as easily as if he was able to see in both directions at once. "Always such mouthy little creatures, younglings are," he mourned dramatically, then stopped and looked at Ahsoka, his eyes grabbing hers with such power she could not look away. "Think you, old I have always been? Think you, I do not understand? Your fear, understand it all too well, I do. Your hate, too. All things pass, all things go, all things healed, they can be. Healing now will begin."

"How master? How can I ever get over this when every time, every time I see first Master Ti's death, then, then my own, and this, this darkness and this fear…" Again Ahsoka began to tear up, her whole body shivering. "And then I feel so much anger, so much hate, and…"

"Healing, it will begin now," Yoda said, suddenly stepping aside and waving one hand. The doors to the Jedi Temple, which Ahsoka hadn't even noticed they had reached, opened behind him at that gesture. And there, as the door opened, stood Shaak Ti, with Ranma right next to her.

At the site of Master Ti, Ahsoka began to tear up, but before she could really start to cry, Shaak was there, kneeling in front of her and pulling her into a gentle hug. "There, there, daughter of clan Jedi. I am here. All will be well again. We will work through this, I promise."

Ranma smiled at the sight then looked down as Yoda moved over towards him, cocking his head to one side. It was a tender moment, but one Ranma just could not let pass without comment. "You just did that whole ancient inscrutable master shtick of yours, didn't you?"

"Hrhrhrm, few pleasures the post of Grand Master leaves me. Take them where I can get them, I do," Yoda replied with a bit of complacent smugness to him that caused Ranma to grin.

A few hours later Ranma and Yoda sat on the roof of the Jedi Temple, talking quietly as they stared out and through the forest of wroshyr trees, darkness bringing its change to the feeling of the planet as the more dangerous nighttime predators came out. Not that they were discussing the view at present.

Shaak had convinced Ranma to tell Yoda about the Soul of Ice, thinking that the older Jedi Master would have some insight as to what had happened. Yoda had in fact heard of somewhat similar meditation techniques, but despite that Yoda had no great insight into the technique. Those similar meditation practices had originally been created by a sect of Force users who eventually used it so often they simply stopped feeling emotions at all, which was enough to get them outlawed by the Jedi Order. Something which surprised Ranma, given how the current permutation of the Order felt about emotions before Ranma had come around and started to kick them in the rear.

When he gave voice to that thought, Yoda harrumphed and smacked him upside the head with his gimer stick, leaping up lightly to do so. Ranma didn't even try to dodge, figuring he deserved that one. "Difference there is between controlling, even abstaining from feeling emotions, and not having them at all. Already know the difference, you do. What a man with emotions will not do, a being without emotions, will."

"You don't hold back, is what you mean; you don't have any sense of inhibition," Ranma said grimly. "When I attacked that first group of bounty hunters, I didn't hold back my strength. I tore them to pieces; simply saw no point in holding back."

"Yes. Great danger there is in shutting down emotions to that extent. Difference between a sentient trooper and a simple robot, it is. Trooper, follow orders he could, to cut down the innocent. A robot, question the order or feel anything, it would not." So saying, Yoda looked at Ranma. "For you to be careful, ask I will not. Know you will, I do."

"I will," Ranma replied, then snorted, with a roll of his eyes. "And to think, I thought that the Soul of Ice was one of my least destructive techniques."

"Fills me with fear, that statement does," Yoda said dryly.

Elsewhere in the temple Shaak and Ahsoka had spent the rest of that day talking quietly. During this time Shaak always made a point to reach out and touch Ahsoka's hand or her budding montrals. Physically touching like that was not something that most Jedi would do, especially at this point in the training where the younglings were supposed to be started to be weaned away from such overt acts of affection. However, it was the way Togrutans reassured one another of their presence, and it was working to help Ahsoka find her sense of serenity once more.

By the end of a few hours Ahsoka was once more centered enough to reach out to the Force, and with Shaak guiding her senses, she did so. Again, however, she found the image of Shaak's death hanging there, waiting for her. But Shaak's physical presence beside her, the older Togrutan's hand clasped with one of her own, allowed her to break through, banishing some of the fear.

Not all of it, however, a fact that Shaak pointed out after they came out of their meditation, though in the same breath she praised Ahsoka for coming so far. The two of them talked for the rest of the day about some of the other issues that this had brought to the surface before Ahsoka finally fell asleep, sitting there.

That evening Ranma and Shaak stayed in the Wild Light. Shaak still had no desire to rub their relationship in anyone's faces, hence why she again wore a normal Jedi's robe and had even removed the torque Ranma had given her. Yet she had also gotten used to sleeping with Ranma beside her and had no wish to give that up.

Their talk, of course, centered around Ahsoka, how long they would stay here, and what Ranma would be doing while Shaak spent time with the younger Togrutan. "Yoda told me that some of those Nova Guard guys are here and want to talk to me. How much you want to bet that they want to make the same kind of agreement or something similar that the Mandalorians did?" Ranma asked.

Shaak chuckled. "No bet. I will admit to some interest myself in the long term effects of all this training. A lot of your training was able to carry over, helping those who you trained in becoming faster, stronger. But you haven't been able to train a group to the level that you would have to in order for them to use your universe's Force abilities."

"Aren't you worried about that? I mean, if I can, then some of the Jedi's monopoly on Force powers will disappear."

"Not as much as I probably should have, admittedly, although that so-called monopoly isn't as strong as you seem to think," Shaak replied, her lekku flicking slightly. "However, I don't think you will be able to. I don't think the Living Force inside them will be able to build up to the level where they can consciously use it. I think you'll find that anyone you train will eventually be able to heal themselves and heal faster in general, but actual energy attacks, no. Speed attacks are a gray area, I think."

"So you don't mind my talking to them and maybe making a long-term agreement with them like we did with the Mandos while you deal with Ahsoka? And how long do you think that will take?" Ranma asked.

"I'd like to spend at least a month with Ahsoka. Not only to deal with the issue facing her ability to use the Force, but to also to try and help her through a lot of questions about the Force which this has brought to the fore, as well as the Jedi Order and her place in it," Shaak answered, tapping her lekku thoughtfully.

Ranma looked at her quizzically, and Shaak chuckled wanly. "I have mentioned before that this was a very dangerous time for Ahsoka to face such a setback. I've already dealt with much of the fear; now I need to deal with some of the specific things she fears to finish that process. Then the anger, as well as why certain types of anger are to be avoided at all costs, and above all why a Jedi should never hate."

Ranma nodded. That was one aspect of the Jedi Order that he agreed with. He did not agree with how the Jedi put all sorts of anger under one label, of course, but he knew how destructive hate could be, as well as fear. Funny thing is, I think fear's a little more…sneaky, I suppose, in how it can effect ki users than hate or anger. Here I'll bet that problem's multiplied. "I'll leave you to it then, unless you need my help for something?"

"No, but since we're here, I don't suppose we could go on another hunting date?" she asked, batting her eyes at him playfully. Ranma nodded eagerly, and she laughed, pulling him into a deep kiss. When it became a little too heated, however, she pushed him away lightly. "Save that for the date, if you please," she said as primly as she could manage, only to whoop as Ranma began to tickle her.

After a bout of tickling, the two of them discussed what Ranma would tell the Nova Guard the next day. In terms of a plan, so long as they were right about what the Nova Guard were here for, Ranma would start training them in the mornings, while he would also train himself in the toughness training center in the basement of the Temple in the afternoon and talk to Yoda about that and other things.

Apparently Count Dooku had not only been able to redesign the speed technique, but had actually taught it to one of the other Jedi Masters, a Master Tholme, who Ranma had yet to meet in person, though he had seen him over the Hypercom. He also wanted to talk to the old frog about whether or not they had been able to find any new leads from the data HK had handed to them from their fight with the Crimson Nova chapter.

"Will you talk to Anakin as well?" Shaak asked quizzically. "I talked to the teachers after putting Ahsoka to bed, and Master Qui-Gon and several others were praising how far he has come. Apparently he is so advanced that within another month or two they will be looking for a Master to take him on full-time."

Ranma looked at her sharply. "Are you asking me to…"

"No," Shaak said just as quickly. "Unless you are feeling a connection to him?"

Ranma shook his head quickly. "No, nothing like that. I mean, he's an okay kid, and I'll talk to him, sure. It'll be interesting to see what he thinks about the training here, given the fact that he's a little older than most of the younglings they put him with. But beyond that, he's just one of many rug rats here to me, despite the fact that he stowed away on our mission to Naboo and we rescued him from Tatooine."

Shaak nodded at that, and then asked, "What will you train the Nova Guard on?"

Ranma frowned, leaning back and thinking hard. "That's what I'm going to talk to their leader about; can't remember what Yoda called him right now, though I got the impression he was a sergeant or something like that. I've got some ideas, but do you remember the fight on…? Well, of course you remember it, but do you remember how differently the Nova Guard and the Mandalorians fought on Yavin 4?"

Falling silent, Shaak narrowed her eyes as she went through her Force assisted memory for a moment before replying. "The Nova Guard were better at digging in and defending from positions of strength. They weren't slow, by any means, to move, but they weren't as maneuverable as the Mandalorians. They were good hit and run tacticians, but it didn't seem to be their normal operating procedure. And, they were much better at usage of heavy weapons and especially crew served weapons, I think."

"That's pretty much it, yeah. With them I think that I'm not going to emphasize speed so much as durability. The problem is that building up durability like that is slow as freaking hell!" Ranma said, shaking his head. "I'll have to figure out something else to do with them in order to keep them interested. That is…" he stopped, grinning "so long as they're able to match my ante. Just helping us out on Yavin 4 isn't enough to make me think of taking on a few of them as students permanently. I sort of saw that more as payment for helping that squad that had been betrayed by Gardulla. After all, they only sent a single squad, whereas the Reborn brought in hundreds of fighters over time."

"Mercenary!" Shaak said with a laugh.

"When it comes to martial arts, one should always be on the lookout for new things to add, no matter how you do so." Ranma said, mock arrogantly.

"Then you should ask them about their staff techniques. I believe the Nova Guard are as respected for them as the Echani were famous for hand-to-hand combat. Given your light staff, it would make a natural addition to your personal style."

Ranma nodded, but then blinked as Shaak leaned up, kissing him this time. "And that, I think, is enough talking about such matters for the night." She slowly pulled back so that Ranma was lying on top of her, their bodies flush against one another.

Before Ranma could reach up to her, however, Shaak stood up abruptly, pushing off him and to her feet, moving towards their shared room. "Good night, Ranma," she said, looking over her shoulder at him with a wink.

Ranma groaned, shaking his head. "Tease!"

OOOOOOO

The next morning Ahsoka woke up early, eager to head to breakfast and meet Master Ti. She found both Master Ti and Ranma waiting for her, with Ranma having already gotten some food. Anakin and a few of the other younglings had joined them, as Ranma was explaining a balance exercise with Head Teacher Rahhdool, who was nodding, scratching at his white-furred chin thoughtfully. "We will be able to make that work, I think," he said, looking around at the younglings, who, to an individual, began to cheer.

Even Anakin, who normally these days had begun to act as if these kinds of effusive acts of happiness were beneath his dignity as a Jedi in training, joined in. Though he was also looking at Ranma closely, as if examining him, while to one side Master Jinn was doing the same.

Ahsoka wondered what she had missed, but put that to the side as Master Ti turned to her in welcome. Ranma too looked up as she came by, winking and gesturing to the plate of food between the two of them which was stacked high with the Order's special flatbread. "You lot should seriously think about selling this, by the way," he said, looking over at the Shistavian. "It's the best bread I've had in this universe."

Some of the younglings looked confused by the word choice there, but Rahhdool merely chuckled and replied easily. "We actually do. Many people and even large scale companies have tried to reverse engineer the recipe, as it were, in various ways, but none of them have ever succeeded."

Ranma chuckled, then looked back over at Ahsoka. "Hey, Rugrat," he said companionably, reaching over and rubbing her tiny montrals. "Shaak has a big day planned for you, so I suggest you take on some fuel now."

Ahsoka nodded, sliding into a chair next to Master Ti at the older Togrutan's invitation and reaching out for some of the bread. "Today you will work with me for the majority of the day. We will have a calisthenics exercise this morning with the rest of the younglings, and then you and I will go on a bit of an adventure. I believe that getting in touch with nature will help us, and in particular you, with a few of the lessons I wish to go over with you in the next few days." Shaak said.

"How long will you stay, Master Ti?" Ahsoka asked hesitantly. She was ecstatic that Master Ti was here, the older Togrutan's presence having solidified her own sense of self and banished some of the fear that she had been dealing with for more than a week now. But if she goes away again, won't the fear come back?

Looking closely at the young girl, Shaak smiled slightly before replying. "We will remain here for at least five months, possibly longer. Ranma?"

Ranma shrugged his shoulders. "That's fine, I guess. After that, though, I'd like to get exploring again. No offense to you, Ahsoka, but while I'm a friend of the Order, I'm not part of it, and I don't want to wear out my welcome or remain in one place when there's so much out there to see." He gestured over to a group of Jedi Knights and Masters who were looking at the table they were all sitting at rather nonplussed. Noticing that they had been seen, they all looked away, and Ranma shook his head at their backs. "Like that."

"Ignore him for now, youngling. Eat," Shaak ordered. "Ranma was right; you will need your energy."

Ahsoka nodded and quickly began to dig in. Around her the rest of the younglings and Rahhdool moved off, chattering to one another about whatever training idea Ranma had passed on to them. The two adults talked over Ahsoka's head for a few moments while she was too busy eating to listen in, then she and Shaak left to join the clan for its calisthenics exercise. Ranma did not go with them, something about how he would take too much pleasure in showing up the other Jedi, which Ahsoka sort of understood from the times she and the other younglings had been locked into a prank war with the pigtailed man.

After that Ahsoka was dressed in a youngling robe, a heavy brown and white affair, and then followed Master Ti out of the Jedi Temple. They made a stopover in the city, where the older Togrutan searched out a specific Wookie with russet-colored fur streaked with grey.

Here Shaak instructed the girl in how to use the Force to reach out to translate the Wookie's words. It was tough, first concentrating on reaching out like that, then concentrating on a single individual mind, that wasn't her master's, anyway. Once she was able to do that, she then had to try to understand the impressions she was getting and somehow link them to the meanings of the words. She only could get a few before she broke off, shaking her head as if she had a headache, which wasn't too far off the mark.

"That will be enough for now. It will come in time, don't worry," Shaak said with a chuckle, laying one hand on Ahsoka's shoulder. She turned back to the Wookie she had been talking to, explaining what had just occurred and then asking him a few questions about the forest around the city. Getting the information she needed, she bowed deeply to the Wookie, with Ahsoka emulating her swiftly. The Wookie chuffed in laughter and did the same before watching the two of them walk off, still chuffing in laughter.

As they walked Ahsoka tried to keep her curiosity under wraps as much as she could, before finally blurting, "Master Ti, what did you ask him?"

"I asked Showkierrrrnoo. That is his name, and you should use it," Shaak said, without any heat, but with a note of order in her tone. Ahsoka nodded quickly, and Shaak went on. "He is one of the Wookies in charge of the defense of the capital city against any encroaching animals. As such, he is what other planets would call a game keeper almost, but of course on this planet a lot of the game is deadly to the so-called gamekeepers."

"Really?" Ahsoka felt a mixture of emotions. Some of it was anticipation, but some of it was fear. She opened her mouth, uncertain which side of that emotional scale she was about to give voice to.

But Shaak stopped, kneeling down next to her and looking Ahsoka in the eyes before Ahsoka could speak. "The fear of the unknown is a powerful thing, but a Jedi should not take countenance of it. Prepare for everything, prepare for anything, trust in the Force, yourself, and your fellow Jedi, and do not be afraid," she said softly, yet earnestly.

Shaak held Ahsoka's eyes, and slowly Ahsoka nodded, her fear disappearing and anticipation building its place. Shaak felt that through the Force and smiled at her, predatory teeth glinting, eliciting an equal grin from the younger Togrutan. "Good. Now come."

Since she was a youngling, Ahsoka's ability to use Force Push and Force Jump were minuscule. She could barely move around the city without resorting to the trails and roads. Out of it, where the wroshyr trees grew wild, she could barely move at all. Despite that, she was very game now, almost eager, and feeling adventurous with Shaak beside her. Numerous times she jumped from one branch to another, her young muscles straining. She fell short several times, but a gentle Force Push from Shaak helped her along.

They did not, of course, go very far, and they did not in any way go down. No youngling could be taken below the fifth level of Kashyyyk's ecosystem, no matter who they were or who they were with. Rather, Shaak led them up above the fifth level where the Wookies made their home.

There they found some of the animals that Shaak had wanted the two of them to observe, and followed them as they cavorted through the canopy of the wroshyr trees. Here Shaak began to instruct Ahsoka in feeling out the life forces of those around her, feeling the Force of the trees. These were things that she had already begun to learn from the teachers, of course. Shaak was merely building on the already existing foundation.

She also talked about the cycle of life and how death was merely a part of it. "Living our lives, feeling the passage of others, even pain, both emotional and physical, all these have lessons to teach us," Shaak said as the two of them crouched on a limb, watching a pack of predators work together to drag off the carcass of a much larger predator that had attacked one of them, thinking it was alone. "A Jedi takes them all in, learns, and moves on. A Jedi acts as he or she must to defend life and the Light Side of the Force."

Ahsoka looked at her, nodding slowly. She had heard those words before, but out here, having watched what they had just watched and having seen Master Ti give her life, as she almost had, in her vision, they meant more. There was one thing she noticed there, though. Her teachers had always said to 'defend life and the Force.' Master Ti had said the Light Side of the Force. She wondered what the difference was there, or rather, why Master Ti had emphasized that, whereas when the teachers talked about the Light Side of the Force they usually just bundled it up into 'the Force' as a whole.

"That is our duty, our charge," Shaak went on, smiling at Ahsoka's attention. "With great power comes great responsibility. Politicians have it…" Or should feel it, at any rate, Shaak thought. "Leaders the universe over have it. We Jedi were born with the ability to use this mystical power, and we must use it for the betterment of others. It is a stern duty, but a fulfilling one."

Again, Ahsoka had heard that before, but now she felt brave enough to ask the question she always wanted to. "But where is our own happiness in that?"

"Ah!" Shaak said with a laugh, leaning back. Below them the animals looked up, but beyond chittering to one another in seeming amusement of their own, made no move to leave or attack. "Searching for and making your own happiness is yet another way to learn."

Ahsoka scowled at that, and Shaak leaned over, flicking one of her montrals. "I first found my happiness with a few friends in my clan. For me, too, there was meditation: feeling the first time I felt the life of the forest around me. There is happiness in a job well done at times. In painting. And then, then I met Ranma, and found a whole new level of happiness." As she said that, Shaak chuckled, wearing a small smile that for some reason made Ahsoka feel weird.

"Now," Shaak said, clapping her hands. "We will meditate once more, but not about the Force in general. Rather, about this tree." Shaak patted the branch the two of them were sitting on. It was so wide that Ahsoka's entire body could lay out flat lengthwise and still have room left over, and it wasn't the largest in sight. "And then we will talk about your other classes, not your Force related ones."

Ahsoka nodded at that. As younglings, there was a lot that the clan had to learn on a day-to-day basis, and half of it didn't even have to do with the Force. Reading, writing, some computer work, calisthenics, even some ethics and some Republic law. Later on would be added combat classes, piloting classes, and other things of that nature. It was a lot of work, as Shaak was all too aware.

By the time they started back to the temple, Ahsoka was tired and mentally exhausted, but somewhat happy with the amount of progress she had made today. She was still having flashes of the emotions she had felt from seeing the image of Shaak's death, and she was still too easily losing her center. Yet she had been able to reach out to the tree and feel its Living Force, and she was no longer seeing the actual vision. Without that reinforcing those feelings, it was only a matter of time before she could rebuild her focus and mental balance entirely. And the feel of the tree's Living Force had been absolutely amazing to the young girl.

Heading back was quite a bit slower because Ahsoka was so tired, forcing Shaak to use her Force powers to help her along more and more. Eventually Shaak simply lifted the girl onto her own back, flipping herself through the massive branches with an ease a Wookie would have approved of. However, just as they came within sight of the outskirts of the city, having moved somewhat around it from the temple, Shaak stopped, looking around.

"What is it, Master Ti?" Ahsoka asked sleepily, looking over the older Togrutan's shoulder.

"Hmm… I am beginning to think that either Ranma's so-called luck has rubbed off on me, or that his theory on the Force having a perverse sense of humor is accurate. Look around. Try to sense your surroundings, not just with the Force, but with your physical senses. Your montrals should help you in this." Shaak ordered.

Blinking at Master Ti's serious tone, Ahsoka did just that. Tired as she was, she couldn't gather the concentration necessary to use the Force, but her physical senses and her mind were still active enough. After a moment she understood, and she frowned. "A lot of the background noise isn't there anymore. The animal and bird noises, I mean. And…it feels almost still, like the forest is waiting?"

"Very good." Shaak approved, though she had slowed their passage through the trees, her Force senses flickering out around them while one hand flipped out her lightsaber, activating it with a snap hiss. "And there can only be one reason for that on a planet like Kashyyyk. No sentient moving around would cause that kind of reaction on a planet like this. Only predators from lower down the ecosystem would…"

Just then, ahead of them Shaak saw a flash of something shining in the light filtering down through the canopy of the wroshyr trees. A web? Glancing around, she noticed more and more tiny, weak seeming webs scattered everywhere, but she knew the weakness of the webbing would no doubt be deceptive.

She stayed put for a moment, glaring around her, her lightsaber moving from side to side as she used her hearing and Force senses to try and find the predators she knew were hunting the two of them now. And it was because of the enhanced hearing her montrals gave her that she was able to hear movement coming from directly below her and behind her at the same time.

"Hold on, Ahsoka!" Using a Force Jump, Shaak leaped about forty feet into the air just as there was a faint skittering from below them. Flipping herself in midair to Ahsoka's startled squeak, Shaak was first able to see the animals that were attacking them. Or arachnids, in this case, for they were indeed giant spiders. They had massive, rounded bodies, around the same size as a normal sentient, and large legs, which added to their height, each leg tipped here and there with serrated edges. Numerous intelligent looking eyes looked at the world from above a large maw fit to bite an adult Wookie in half, marked out by mandibles the size of Shaak's arms to either side, curved and lethal looking. They also seemed to be dripping with venom currently, too.

Latching onto the bottom of the wroshyr branch that had been directly above their previous position, Shaak Ti looked down, deliberately locking eyes with the giant spider creature, which she knew to be a Wyyyschokk, or giant weaver, one of the two or perhaps three most dangerous animals on the planet. And this is Kashyyyk, rather spoiled for choice in terms of dangerous animals. Best not to try and fight it, not with Ahsoka here, anyway.

Pushing out with a telepathic probe she spoke, her voice echoing into the spider's brain. "We are not prey; you will find no food here. Only a hard battle and injury. Even if you win, you will be too wounded to survive the scavengers. Do not push things."

The spider was intelligent, she could tell that almost immediately. Not up to the level of a sentient, but perhaps just below that, though its thought process was hindered greatly by the need to hunt and eat, and it enjoyed the pain it caused. The beast wasn't of the Dark Side—there was no taint to it—this was simply its normal thought process, which made it no less terrifying.

The spider barely paused, launching itself up at them, and Shaak cursed, lashing out with a Force Push to slow it down. The spider was much heavier than it looked, however, and its upward leap overpowered her push. Despite that the Force technique bought Shaak time, and she slid to the side faster than most eyes could track, her lightsaber lashing out in the speed technique she had learned from Ranma.

The lightsaber's green blade struck one of the Wyyyschokk's legs and then its body, searing it in places, but not cutting through its armor, as she had feared. The thing screamed, kicking out towards Shaak with several of its legs as it turned, lunging forward to try and bite her.

Shaak simply let the technique she had been using to latch onto the underside of the branch fade, falling past the creature's lunge. She then thrust up, her lightsaber stabbing into the Wyyyschokk's back. There it penetrated, but not much, as Shaak was falling away even as she thrust upwards. Still, that told her that the arachnid's back was vulnerable.

The Wyyyschokk screamed a chittering, maddened sound that caused both Togrutans to wince, but even that was a trick. Instead of retreating, it launched itself down at Shaak where she had landed on another wroshyr branch, mandibles quivering for her flesh. She was able to dodge its main lunge and the poisoned mandibles, but one of its legs crashed into her with all the impact of a punch from a Wookie. And for all her durability, Shaak Ti didn't actually weigh all that much more than a normal woman her size, nor had she been able to use the Force to latch onto the wroshyr branch.

So she didn't try. Taking another page from Ranma's training, she allowed the punch to hurl her backwards, redirecting the momentum in such a way that she again bounced off another wroshyr branch, coming back at the beast. The arachnid twisted around, opening its mouth with its mandibles twitching in eagerness, its front legs spread out wide. That eagerness halted abruptly when Shaak threw her lightsaber forward with a Force Push, aiming it into the Wyyyschokk's opened maw like a hurled spear from barely a foot away. However durable its skin was, the interior of the arachnid's body did not have the same properties. Her lightsaber plunged into the thing with ease, sizzling and burning the Wyyyschokk from the inside out.

Shaak skidded to a halt, dodging a reflexive grab from one of its legs before pushing off and away again. Huffing slightly from the exertion, she stared as the Wyyyschokk convulsed, it's legs folding in on itself as it rocked to and fro, the life, the almost hideous, sadistic life which had graced its eyes dissipating as she watched. When she was certain it was dead, she looked over at Ahsoka's frightened face. "Well, that was a bit more of an adventure than I had wanted us to see today. Are you all right? Any injuries?"

Ahsoka shook her head, still clinging to the older Togrutan's back. She had not been ordered to get off yet, and frankly after the fight Ahsoka wasn't certain her legs would have been able to hold her up, she had been so scared. The spider's speed and lethality had been beyond anything she had ever dreamed of, and for a moment there she was certain she would see a reprise of her vision of Shaak's death in real life, followed swiftly by her own. "I… Y,yes Master Ti. I'm fine."

"Good," Shaak replied, not turning away from looking at her young passenger over her shoulder. "Because I think we should be moving on. I think our battle will have drawn more predators, and I need to report this monster's presence in the area. From what little I know of them Wyyyschokk are only rarely seen at this level. The Wookies need to be warned. Thankfully they are solitary hunters, so it might be the only one who has come up here, but we need to make certain."

With a wave from one hand Shaak summoned her lightsaber back to her, catching it easily and powering it down. She spent a second to look at her lightsaber closely, making certain it hadn't been damaged, before clipping it to her belt. "Now, do you still have a good grip back there?" At Ahsoka's hesitant nod, Shaak smiled. "Good, because I think it is time for us to run."

With that she raced off through the trees, faster than Ahsoka had ever seen, let alone felt, someone move, racing back to the capital city.

OOOOOOO

While Shaak and Ahsoka were off having their adventure, Ranma had met with the Nova Guard on planet. Speaking to their leader, the Nova Guard was indeed very interested in learning what they could of his techniques, and had, in fact, been promised the opportunity to ask by Master Ranicsis. When he in turn asked what they had to offer, the two men spent several moments arguing about an equivalent exchange, but eventually they reached an agreement. The sergeant would teach Ranma all he could about his people's staff techniques in return for two months of training with Ranma.

The toughness training, however, was another matter, since that would be a long term thing. As such, an ongoing agreement was something he would have to push up the chain. Unlike with the Reborn and Bo-Katan, Ranma felt no obligation to share his techniques with the Nova Guard. In the Reborn's case he did, and also viewed it as a carrot: a way to make certain the Reborn couldn't fall back into the Mandalorian's old methodology before the new interpretation of the Resol'nare could really gain hold. And unlike the Mandos, the Nova Guard had never been an expansionistic threat.

Ranma was open to the idea, but the Nova Guard would have to have something to offer him in the long term. Or perhaps the Jedi Order, Ranma wasn't certain about which.

Despite training with the Nova Guard in an exercise area near their temporary house, Ranma was back at the temple by the time Shaak and Ahsoka returned, racing through the foliage and up to the temple. Cocking his head in surprise, he asked, "Why's the rugrat doing a koala impression?"

"That was an insult, wasn't it?" Ahsoka said, glaring at Ranma over Master Ti's shoulder.

"A mild one. Don't worry about it, Ahsoka. After all, I'd have to explain what a koala is to let anyone get the joke," Ranma said, waving that off, then blinking as Shaak smacked him lightly in the head. "What was that for?"

"For somehow infecting me with your brand of luck. It really is like you act like a lightning rod for everything unusual or strange. And now that aura has spread to me," Shaak said tartly.

"Meh, it was bound to happen eventually, and it isn't like you've been all that unhappy with the other aspects of being around me…" Ranma said, somewhat teasingly, and was delighted to see Shaak blush in the manner of her people before she lightly smacked him upside the head again. "Now come on, I feel the cafeteria calling me. You can tell me all about it over a meal."

OOOOOOO

A few days after their arrival, while Shaak was once more busy with Ahsoka, Ranma found himself talking to Anakin as he had said he would. Ranma had been busying himself at times with helping out with the younglings' physical exercises, and Anakin had buttonholed him after class today.

"So, Ranma, what is up with that training room in the basement?" Anakin said bluntly, looking up at the pigtailed martial artist. "I've seen a lot of Jedi heading into it, but when they come back out they're always wincing and walking slowly."

Ranma shrugged. "It's called toughness training, kid," he said, ruffling Anakin's hair, since he knew Anakin hated that. "It toughens their bodies up. It's painful, but necessary. I think Yoda was supposed to push for it to become mandatory training for all Jedi, but from what he told me he's only been able to get it to become mandatory for the Guardian sect, while the Consulars and Sentinels can choose to take it if they wish. It's one of the slowest training techniques I know in terms of seeing real results, but those results are king of cool."

"Oh, never mind then," Anakin said with a shake of his head. "Although, if it has anything to do with the Force I bet I could do it a lot faster than you might think." Anakin's voice was somewhat smug and a little arrogant as he said that, but not enough for Ranma to notice.

"If it did, you might. It doesn't though, not consciously anyway. It's training your body, just like calisthenics exercises, until the Living Force within you starts acting without your direction in a certain way."

Anakin scowled. While he could use the Force to heighten his speed and strength to a certain degree, which was quite a bit more than most of the younglings in his assigned clan could do, the teachers routinely made certain that he knew that there was still a long way to go there. And Ranma made the same fact abundantly clear without even trying, showing up even the teachers during exercises, in Anakin's mind, anyway. "Are you ever going to teach us more about your own techniques? I've been hearing stories about some of the stuff you can do."

"Those are advanced techniques, Anakin," Ranma said sternly, narrowing his eyes at the younger boy. "You might be advanced in terms of your clan, but that doesn't mean you're ready to learn my techniques." And that doesn't mean I'm ready to teach you, either.

That was one of the plus sides to teaching some of his skills and abilities to teenagers or late teens, though Ranma hadn't really realized that before he began. By that point the teens in question had already begun to form their personalities to a far greater degree than a child. This allowed Ranma and Shaak to form a clearer impression of them, of how trustworthy they were and how they would use their newfound abilities. While Ranma did not have any real concerns about Anakin's personality, he also wasn't about to favor him further with more training. The boy was already getting some preferential treatment from Master Qui-Gon and even a few of the other teachers.

It wasn't like he was being granted special privileges, but Anakin was being given advanced lessons from them on the side. If the class had to deal with the Force, one or another of the teachers would work with Anakin solo, simply because he was so advanced in controlling the Force, coupled with his pure brute strength. The boy had begun to show a bit of an ego because of that. Not much of one, in Ranma's opinion, but in any Jedi youngling that kind of thing was noticeable.

On top of that Anakin was allowed to remain in communication with his mother, something that the rest of the younglings were not allowed. Admittedly, that was because his mother actually lived elsewhere on Kashyyyk, something almost unheard of among the Jedi. Of course, Ranma didn't see a problem with that, bar the fact that the other students didn't have that kind of communication with their former parents. It was just another way to mark Anakin out as different, or special, which given Qui-Gon's belief in this Destined One crap was not a good thing.

On the other hand, Shmi seemed to do a good job of keeping Anakin grounded, from what the other teachers said, and they didn't talk all that often. Only once a week, from what Ranma could discover. Anakin also didn't approve of the fact that his mother apparently had begun to date the smuggler that had helped them escape from the desert planet, Booster Terrik. Hearing him complain about their relationship was kind of hilarious to Ranma the few times he'd overheard it.

As Ranma continued to walk towards the temple, Anakin kept up with him, and Ranma wondered what else the boy wanted to ask about. When Anakin did speak up, his voice was calm, almost lackadaisical, yet also very controlled. "I understand that you and Master Ti are…involved?"

"That's one way of putting it, kid," Ranma said with a nod, groaning internally as he knew where this was going now and had no idea how to handle it.

He was proven correct a moment later when Anakin went on. "…I thought Jedi weren't allowed to form attachments like that. That's what we've been told all along."

Trying to stave off more discussion on this point, Ranma said, "For the last thousand years that was right, but before that it wasn't. And I'm not the one to ask about this kind of question, Anakin. Remember, I'm not a member of the Order."

"But you're the only one I can ask about it!" Anakin said, shaking his head and reaching out to stop Ranma from walking on, his hand on Ranma's sleeve. "None of the other teachers want to answer that question at all. They all looked grumpy about it, or disapproving, maybe, and then pile on the work until I'm so tired I can't think straight, let alone about what I asked."

Ranma rolled his eyes with a laugh. "That's their problem, not mine. And yours, too, come to think of it."

Ignoring that dig, Anakin went on doggedly. "So how was Shaak able to get special dispensation? Or is it going to change that Jedi will be allowed to form attachments?"

"I don't know, Anakin!" Ranma said, emphasizing each word in turn. "Like I said, I'm not the one to ask." So saying Ranma decided to go on the attack, hopefully to throw Anakin off this topic. "But I thought we had already talked about obsession and attraction not being love anyway? Or is there someone in your clan that you find…interesting? It's not young Ahsoka, is it? 'Cause that would open up a whole can of worms."

"Eww, no! She's so flat and young!" Anakin said with a flush. "It's just I, I was just interested, that's all!"

With that he hurried away, and Ranma smiled, job well done. The next day, however, Anakin again buttonholed Ranma after a calisthenics exercise, which he joined that day because the Nova Guard troopers were still sore and battered from the previous afternoon's exercises. He began to press Ranma on helping him further with physical exercises, which Ranma agreed to, figuring it might help pop Anakin's ego a bit.

Halfway through, however, one of the as yet unassigned younglings of an age to become a padawan came up to them. Like young knights waiting to be assigned missions, padawans performed as messengers around the temple. "Youngling Skywalker, you have an incoming call from Chancellor Palpatine," he said, his voice devoid of any censure or interest. Catching Ranma's quizzical expression, he could only shrug.

"Oh, awesome!" Anakin said, hopping to his feet from where he had been doing push ups. He groaned a little, touching his arms and glaring up at Ranma. "Slave driver! I haven't hurt this bad since…since that time on Naboo, darn it!"

"You're the one that asked for more exercises, Anakin, then and now," Ranma said, smirking back at him. "Just because I gave you what you wanted isn't any reason to call me a slave driver. But why is the Chancellor calling you? Isn't that the name of the Republic's high muckety?" Ranma had deliberately not learned overmuch about politics, local or otherwise, figuring he would be personally happier that way, and not really caring over much in any event.

"Ohh, Chancellor Palpatine's talked to me a few times since the Battle of Naboo. He was really amazed about how good I was as a pilot, and has since been asking me questions about starfighters and other things like that. I think…" Anakin said, pausing, as he knew that sounded strange. "I think he talks to me because I don't really treat him like a Chancellor or anything like that. I just talk to him straight, you know? And Master Qui-Gon lets me talk to him; says that getting to know politics from the other side of things can only help me later."

Ranma shrugged. "That makes sense, I guess?" Though really, he didn't think it did. Surely what's his face, Palp-something or other, has people closer to home that he could talk to if he wanted to be treated like just a normal person? Still, he didn't think too much about it, and moved over towards a wall to grab a water, tossing it back to Anakin.

He caught it quickly then gestured with his head to the messenger. "Come on! Have you ever talked to the Chancellor? You'll like him."

"I doubt it, but whatever. I have nothing better to do for the next few hours until Shaak finishes up with Ahsoka." Normally in his free time Ranma would either meditate or talk to Yoda, but Yoda was busy with some large debate he had begun recently about some group called the Altisian Order and reconciling with them. Ranma didn't know what that was about. The training areas were all booked or under repair, he had read all the books he could, and Ranma didn't feel like meditating much, nor was he interested in trying to learn how to read Republic Standard without Shaak around to cajole, that is, teach, him. I suppose I could go get HK and spar with him, but ever since Shaak told Yoda about HK's past the Jedi around the temple get twitchy whenever they see him. Shaak had pointed that out to him a few days back, and he was willing to go along with things, for now anyway.

So it was more to stave off boredom than any actual interest in speaking to any kind of politician that found Ranma ensconced in a small communications room, looking into the pickup at the somewhat aged, aquiline, and austere features of the Republic Chancellor. At first the older man didn't address Ranma, simply looking in his direction once and nodding his head before smiling at Anakin. "Hello, Anakin. I'm sorry it's been a while since we last talked, but time and politics wait for no man. Were you able to finish up that report I asked you to do on the various starfighter designs I sent you?"

"I'm almost done, Chancellor," Anakin said. "I'm proofreading it now, and I'll send it to you this evening, if that's okay? Our training been stepped up a lot in the past few months, and I also wanted to ask for a few Jedi Masters' input on the report."

"That is fine. That's part of why I asked you to do it, after all," the Chancellor said with a shrug. "I could wish that I knew more about the Jedi Order's members so that I could pick out one or two of them to assign to this, but with the Senate's…irritation at the Jedi over Mandalore issue and various other clashes, I can't go through the normal channels for this. Especially since I hope to assign many of these starfighters to the Jedi themselves eventually."

"The new design coming out of Kuat is the one that I would say is the best for Jedi, sir," Anakin said respectfully. "And the others I've talked to agree with me." From there he went into a discussion about how the new Sprite class was too responsive and a little too flimsy for most starfighter pilots to handle. He then went on to explain what was wrong with the other designs, ending with a scoffing, "And don't get me start on the one from Tallaani Shipyards! It looks good, but the actual performance would be pure dung!"

The Chancellor nodded throughout, then turned his attention to Ranma when Anakin stopped to take a breath. "That sounds fascinating, Anakin, and I look forward to your report."

He really sounded like he did, Ranma reflected not that it mattered much given the man was a politician.

Then the Chancellor spoke up again. "However, we have been rather remiss in our manners. You would be Ranma, correct? I believe we saw each other in passing during the time directly after Naboo occupation was ended. Thank you for your part in that, by the way. I'm still not exactly clear about your relationship with the Order," Chancellor Palpatine said with a chuckle. "Indeed, the fact that you are not a Jedi yet are involved with the Order is possibly the only fact that I know about you for certain."

Ranma shrugged. "Yeah, that's me. As for more information about me, I guess you could say that I belong to an extinct Order of Force users, who decided to leave my planet to see the wider universe."

"Interesting," the Chancellor said. "However, as you are a Force User you fall under the purview of the Jedi Order, at least for the most part. But you see, your name has come to my attention recently. You might not quite be aware of it, but the Bounty Hunters' Guild is somewhat well thought of among the senator class, and has numerous high-ranking backers. It is simply the easiest way of making certain a criminal cannot escape justice from one jurisdiction to another. It makes sense to use them rather than try to completely impose a Republic wide judicial system for every little thing."

He shook his head ruefully. "Trust me, that would be the proverbial unending mission. I have enough going on just trying to clean up the bureaucratic corruption on the senatorial level, let alone trying to combat something on a sector or even system level."

"Ultimate power not all it's cracked up to be?" Ranma asked, grinning at the older man.

"Alas, the actual power of my position is not nearly as much as you would think upon first blush," the Chancellor replied dryly. "Something that I have discovered to my intense chagrin since taking this post. I like to think that I have done some good work here, but my efforts are constantly stymied by the entrenched bureaucracy and by other senatorial factions."

As Anakin seems to inflate himself with indignation at the idea that justice could be blocked like that, Ranma merely nodded. "Politics suck," he said commiseratingly. "But I doubt you want to talk to me about any of that. You brought up the bounty bitches for a reason, after all."

The Chancellor let loose a laugh. Not a guffaw, but a laugh, Ranma thought, though it seemed a spontaneous one at least, while Anakin stopped puffing himself up and looked at Ranma in shocked amusement.

"Indeed not," the Chancellor said after getting control of himself. "Your complete annihilation of the Crimson Nova chapter has been noticed, as was the fact that you did not have 'nearly enough evidence in terms of Republic law' to go after the guild as a whole like that." He shook his head in something like disgust as he parroted words he had heard recently before going on. "You are not going to get into any trouble over it, but your name is beginning to be known among the senatorial class, and if you take your feud with the bounty hunters further, I may be forced to take action. You do not, after all, have the protection against the law that Jedi have. And Jedi would have taken care to not to go as far as you did."

"If the bounty bitches stuck to this code they supposedly have, I wouldn't have had to attack them like I did," Ranma replied bluntly. "I'm fine with bounty hunters coming after me personally, but if they take hostages or use explosives where they could harm other people, the gloves come off, and I will start hunting them down in turn. I gave this same speech to the Bounty Hunters' Guild leader, some old Trandoshan, I think."

Chuckling, the Chancellor leaned back in the pickup slightly. "Cradock—that is his name—has canceled the bounty placed on you. One of the tenets the Guild keeps to, after all, is that no bounty is worth their own lives, and you have most decidedly shown that they will be taking their lives into their own hands if they come after you. I have tried to track down who placed the bounty on you and this redheaded girl, and why the bounty on a Jedi was allowed into the Guild's system at all, but have had no luck so far. I understand from rumors that she is your sister, Ranma, or something to that extent? Master Windu and others were not very forthcoming on the nature of your connection, but I hope you can get word to her about her being safe from the Guild now."

"Or something," Ranma and Anakin replied dryly, exchanging grins before Anakin went on. "You have to see it in person to believe it, Chancellor. I doubt even if we showed it to you over the Hypercom you'd really believe us. Just take it as a given that the redhead will learn about this conversation and move on."

"That is rather mysterious. I shall put it down to simply a Force thing, then," the Chancellor said.

Ranma noticed that the older man had seemingly loosened up a little as the conversation went on, and now agreed with Anakin. The old guy just wanted someone to talk to that had no personal agenda. He wondered how this odd friendship between Anakin and the Chancellor had begun, but it seemed genuine to him. Mind you, you really can't tell much about body language through a computer connection like this, but he was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

"But let me get back to the more serious topic," the Chancellor said, interrupting Ranma's thoughts. He then asked Ranma some questions about his own sense of honor, probing him shrewdly for whether or not he was willing to obey the laws of the Republic without coming right out and asking.

After a few questions Ranma figured this out and decided to simply cut to the chase. "Look, I understand why you're asking all this, so I'll tell you flat out. I'm not a great believer in laws. I'm more of a common sense kind of guy. However, as long as the laws of the Republic don't counteract or stop me from following my own Code of honor, you won't have any problems with me."

"I will take your word on that for now. But mark my words, my young friend, there is a limit to how far outside the law you can go without facing repercussions. I could wish it was otherwise, but I am clamping down as hard as I possibly can on illegal activity among the Senate and trying to do away with corruption as much as I can. I cannot do that and then turn a blind eye to a friend of the Jedi breaking the laws of the Republic. Not if he makes a point of doing so again in as grandiose manner as you did this time with the Bounty Hunters' Guild. Keep that in mind." So saying, the older man stared hard at Ranma, his face and bearing now every inch the Chancellor.

After a moment he let the look fade, seeing that it hadn't really had much impact on Ranma, and smiled at Anakin. "I look forward to that report on starfighters, Anakin, and more, I look forward to the time when you are able to pilot one as well, but unfortunately, as Chancellor I have other duties and have to end this call now. Until the next time."

Anakin said goodbye at that, and the Chancellor turned to Ranma. "It has been interesting talking to you, Ranma. I hope it will not be the last time. Indeed, I would like to talk to you in person, if at all possible."

"Doubt that's going to happen anytime soon," Ranma said with a laugh. "I hated Coruscant big time when I was there, so there's no chance of me willingly going there again. Still, if you're ever elsewhere, maybe we could at least chat again, Palpy."

The man on the other connection twitched at that and growled. "It's Palpatine, actually."

"Oh, sorry," Ranma said, smirking unrepentantly. "My memory for names isn't the best."

"It's…quite all right," Palpatine said slowly, obviously reining in his outrage. "But on that note, I think we're done here. Until the next time chance allows us to talk, farewell."

With that Palpatine cut the connection. Anakin looked up at Ranma and asked, "So what do you think?"

Ranma shrugged. "Seems a decent sort of politician for the breed. I'd have to meet him in person, though, to tell ya more, kid. He didn't seem ta like that joke I used on him there at the end.

"Do you poke fun at everyone in power you meet?" Anakin asked quizzically, having had to hold back a giggle at the name Ranma had used for the Chancellor.

"Hell, yes, whenever I can. You have to or else they can get a swelled head," Ranma said with a wink, before going on, laying one hand gently yet inexorably on Anakin's shoulder. "Now, speaking of swelled heads," said Ranma, "where were we just now…?"

OOOOOOO

Palpy!? PALPY!? Oh, if I wasn't certain you had to die before, I am now! Sidious snarled to himself, his Force powers roiling so badly he actually had to concentrate so his presence would not become visible to any Jedi nearby. Once he got his thoughts and anger under control, however, his thoughts turned cold. "I need to step up my efforts to get away to find my chosen tool for this task. If the Chaotic Locus interacts with Plagueis's artificially created vergence overmuch my long term plans there will be disrupted.

So thinking, he opened a communicator and called his Senatorial aide to him. Sate Pestage would need his marching orders when Sidious was finally able to get away.

OOOOOOO

A few weeks later Ranma had finished incorporating the staff techniques of the Nova Guard into his personal style and was once more keeping himself busy with little bits and pieces here and there. He did, of course keep up with his personal exercises, in particular putting himself through as much of the toughness training as he could. But that didn't take more than half the day, leaving him at loose ends, which in turn made him spend more time helping the youngsters.

Thus Ranma was happy to hear that Count Dooku had arrived. He spent the evening of his arrival with Master Yoda and then slept in the next day until around lunchtime, when another messenger asked Ranma to join Dooku and Yoda for a meal in Yoda's quarters.

Ranma looked at the two of them, then sat down across from the two Jedi Masters at a small table, looking around in interest. Despite being Yoda's personal living quarters, this area was as utilitarian as most, not showing any of the Jedi Grand Master's personality save for a few gimer sticks in each corner and several data chips kept in very small recesses in the wall of the wroshyr wood here and there. A crystal of some kind sat on a table, lighting the room with a pale, warm glow.

Finishing his perusal, Ranma turned his attention back to the Jedi Masters, then blinked and turned to the door an instant before it opened to reveal Shaak coming in. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, moving to sit next to him. Sitting like that, the two of them almost radiated a natural closeness that made both of the other Jedi Masters chuckle internally. Yoda thought, Glad I am, allowed Shaak to retake her oath in the old way, we did. Obvious, connection between them is. Relationship, will change the Order and galaxy, if flourish they can.

"How did your latest mission go, Master Dooku?" Shaak asked politely, while Yoda turned his attention to pouring each of them some tea. In terms of look or taste it was barely acceptable to Ranma being Japanese, but it seemed full of energy somehow. After a single sip, he looked quizzically at the old Grand Master, with Shaak following suit a second later.

Yoda chuckled, but did not rise to the bait, turning his attention to his former padawan, who began to talk. The mission Dooku had been on had been to his home planet of Serenno, to look into rumors of a connection between it and the Trade Federation. Given how restive Serenno was under Republican rule and how rich it was, any connection between it and the Trade Federation, especially if both parties were trying to hide it from the Republic, needed to be looked into for reasons of security. This was made all the more serious given how the Trade Federation was still under a cloud of suspicion after their invasion of Naboo.

Unfortunately, in this case there was some reality to that rumor. Dooku was able to head off any real trade or defense agreements between the planet of his birth and the Trade Federation, but it had taken him weeks to talk the Council of Counts down from that, and he had burned a lot of personal political capital there and elsewhere in the sector doing it. He had helped the council make other agreements which might be more profitable in the long term, and which would also help the Serennoans become more independent of the sector capital, which was something they dearly wanted.

But even so, he had been forced to tell the Sector Jedi to keep a much closer eye on the Council of Counts from here on. Dooku, as he dryly explained, was the last man to tell anyone that the Senate and the Republic as a whole should be seen as any paragon of virtue, and a part of him agreed that the Republic was simply too huge to really give planets enough say in how they were ruled. But the Counts did not seem any more careful about who they became friends with than the Senate. Further, he was hopeful that ten or fifteen years of Palpatine as Chancellor could possibly do away with a lot of the corruption and self-aggrandizement that made him so leery of the Senate.

"But that is not what I him here to discuss with you," Dooku said, shifting minutely from where he sat on a cushion. He often times enjoyed talking to his former Master, especially these days, since Yoda now treated him almost like an equal and had stopped teasing him by calling him 'my padawan.' One thing he had not missed about being in his Master's quarters, however, was the lack of any backs to the seats, because right now he would have liked to lean back and steeple his fingers to look over them commandingly at young Ranma. Sitting on a soft cushion, I just can't pull off enough gravitas for the moment. "Would you care to explain how since the last time I talked to you I have begun to feel younger than my years?"

Ranma and Shaak exchanged a glance, and Shaak sighed, speaking for them both. "Actually, Ranma and I have discussed this point. However, Masters, could we first make certain that we are not being overheard, not even by any other Jedi?"

Yoda chuckled dryly. "Secret this would have to be, I already knew. Beyond what we have seen so far, implications of this there are." He gestured to the crystal. "Generates white noise as well as light, this does. Electronic devices, the instant they come within range of it, short out they do. A Jedi within hearing range, there is not. Alone we are. Remain secret, this will."

Then his old eyes locked on Ranma's, easily exhibiting the serious and commanding air that Dooku had wished to. "Slow the aging process, your techniques can? The Living Force within the body, build up it can to that degree?"

"Yeah, basically," Ranma said with a nod, impressed at how fast the Jedi were to realize the cause of what Dooku was experiencing. He looked over at Dooku apologetically. "It can't reverse the effects of aging, but it can take your body to the upper limit and then beyond. It can also be used to give you the energy of a younger individual for short amounts of time, or at least it worked like that in my old universe. In my world there was an old Master named Happosai, who was able to sort of siphon what you guys call the Force from…"

Ranma blushed, looking over Shaak, whose lips twitched into a smile. "From women. Their, um, their bras and underwear..." he stammered. Saying that in front of these serious Jedi, or semi-serious in the case of Shaak, was just as embarrassing now as it had been talking with Shaak about it one-on-one.

"And whereas this Happosai creature had to use that method," Dooku said thoughtfully, "my Living Force reserves are constantly being filled up with my connection to the Unifying Force as a whole. So, how long will I live? Can you even guess, Ranma?" At first Dooku had hoped to reverse the aging process on his body with this technique, but apparently that was beyond Ranma's knowledge. If it was possible, then Dooku would discover it on his own in time. He was not going to worry about it now, not when the future had already been opened to him to such a degree.

"No idea, not in this dimension, considering I hadn't really made that connection," Ranma replied ruefully, internally wondering what that would mean for his and Shaak's lifespans. While he didn't automatically fill his 'Living Force' reserves from the what the Jedi called the Unifying Force, he could do so at need, just like Happosai had drained ki from women's underthings. "Happy was something like four hundred years old, and for a demented little troll he was still way sprier than anyone could believe, so there's that.

"Four hundred years, you said. A human living four hundred years?" Dooku asked carefully, his controlled features now showing far more surprise than he would normally let show.

Ranma nodded, then looked over at Yoda, wondering if the old guy would ask him to help Yoda in his training. Heh, of anyone here he's got the most Happy-like body, I suppose, though I don't know if he could really learn them. Heck, has Yoda even learned the toughness or speed techniques?

But Yoda caught his glance and laughed. "For me, this technique is not," he said definitively before going on and answering Ranma's other unasked questions. "Old I am. Already learning new tricks, this Jedi is. Your toughness training technique, punishment enough it is on this old body."

"Further," he said, shaking his head. "No wish to live beyond normal lifespan do I have. Before I go, a thousand or more solar cycles will I have seen. Enough, that will be."

Indeed, if Yoda thought that he could get away with it he would retire from his position as Grand Master and either become a teacher in the Temple or a recluse somewhere else in the galaxy. But Yoda knew he couldn't. The coming confrontation, which was still blinding the future to every Jedi in the galaxy, would be his to deal with. No one else could lead the Jedi through those troubled waters, not from the position of Grandmaster at any rate.

For a moment they fell silent, then Yoda looked over at Shaak. "This one too? Age, Master Ti will not?"

Ranma looked over at Shaak, and both of them shrugged their shoulders. "Master, right now neither of us are of an age where aging really is going to be visible enough for either of us to notice," Shaak said, her lips twitching again in a near-smile. "Ask me again in ten or fifteen years, and maybe we'll have a definitive answer."

Yoda chuckled, but nodded seriously. "Keep this to ourselves, we must. Humans, others of similar lifespan, always wishful to extend it, they are. Even among Jedi, issues this would cause. Dozens there are, Jedi who fell or Sith, interested in doing that, there have been."

"I was intending to keep it a secret anyway even before Shaak pointed the same thing out when we first talked about it," said Ranma. He looked over at Dooku, looking truly apologetic for the first time that Yoda and Dooku had seen. "Sorry about how you found out about it without being warned or anything. But I didn't honestly think you'd be able to take your inner Living Force to that level, given how we only had a few weeks training together, all told."

"True. But I was building upon my own training as a Jedi, and I had reverse engineered your speed technique already. More importantly, I had seen several of your other abilities in action, which told me there more I could learn through trying to manipulate my internal Living Force rather than the Unifying Force. Do not worry about it. I would, however, like to continue my training with you while I'm here."

"That's fine by me!" Ranma said eagerly. "That'll give me something else to do besides training, training the younglings, and meditation. Unfortunately, Shaak spends most of her time helping Ahsoka over some issues she's run into, and she says it makes the other Jedi wary if I spar with HK."

Dooku looked over at Yoda and Shaak quizzically. "Is there something wrong with his droid? Visually, I mean. From what I recall the droid's basic sanity is questionable at best, but that is not enough to make Jedi visibly wary about them."

"Ah!" Shaak said with a laugh. "That is a bit of a tale, Master Dooku."

OOOOOOO

Smirking evilly, Palpatine waited, hidden in the shadow and in the Dark, his Force Cloak and Stealth both up to a level which would have fooled anyone in the galaxy, let alone the half-trained, semi-mad fool who though himself a Sith that he was here to find. Still, as hiding places go this one is…adequate.

It had taken him nearly a full month to discover where his target was hiding. This task was made harder, given that he barely had anything to go on beyond a description and that he wanted to use the Veil sparingly on this, forcing him to use his spy network, and that even more frugally. The target, after all, was wary, continually hiding himself from the Jedi and the Republic, as well as all the physical tools of a Jedi and some of a Sith's. Indeed, given his age he might well have more such tools than Sidious knew.

Despite this, Sidious had found a starting point: a report of a drifter which matched the target's description walking out on a bar tab at a bar which was being tended to by a group of robots. The robots had reported it, and that had been caught by one of Sidious's agents. With that starting point, Sidious had been able to search out the mind of the individual in question, subtly tracking him via the Veil of the Dark Side.

When he sensed the man's intention to remain on a planet for a week, Sidious set a robotic spy on the man's ship. These were rather large droids, but they had the latest espionage and ECM available anywhere in known space. They could latch onto vessels, send out signals to reports their location, and spy with relative ease. They were expensive even for someone with Palpatine's shadowy resources, but worth it in this case.

After several weeks, Sidious had been able to isolate his target's home base. With that done, Sidious, in his Palpatine persona, caught a somewhat debilitating and very contagious disease, forcing the man to quarantine himself. The Jedi offered to send over a healer, but given the current attitude towards the Jedi, Palpatine had graciously declined, giving the Jedi the impression that while he was indeed ill, he was also going to use this opportunity to take a break from his massive workload.

Thus able to retreat from the public life for a few weeks, Sidious had left Coruscant with no one the wiser, leaving behind Pestage and several droids programmed with his voice to relay orders, just in case. And surprisingly, once he had arrived, the man's defenses were easy to bypass via the Force. Now he waited for his target's return, a sense of anticipation filling him.

Sidious watched as the small personal ship his target used came down, entering the equally small but very private landing bay here on Nal Hutta. Hmmf, I could have wished for more time to examine some of the relics he has found over the centuries, but I suppose I cannot have everything go my way just yet. And there is something to be said for your target being punctual, after all. And at least I was able to disable his emergency exit.

Sidious waited, his body entirely still, his beating heart slowed down to almost nothing, waiting, just waiting. Eventually the small ship, an ancient looking Corellian yacht, as Sidious had known it would be, powered down. The doors to the landing bay closed, shutting out the sight of the lowest level of Nal Hutta's green, gaseous atmosphere. The whole planet was dominated by the swamps which had given rise to the Hutts. Hiding here among the scum made a lot of sense for one like his target. Though getting out here and down unseen had been a trial even for Sidious in the Scimitar, the ship he had designed and had built to carry Darth Maul across the galaxy on his missions.

After that, the ship remained, as the individual Sidious was here to capture and turn to his purpose began a scan of the area. Only the most paranoid would have survived for this long without being found by the Jedi; I should know. Sidious thought, rather amused by the similarities between the Dark Jedi and the true Order of Two.

He continued to watch as the ship finally powered everything down, and the ramp lowered. The man he was here for strode down the ramp, scowling at something in his hands and shaking his head, actually talking to himself as he did. It was only as he came closer that Sidious could see that it was a data chip of some kind. "Insanity and madness! Madness and insanity! The very idea of experimenting with such, and for what, to try and awaken the Force in his victims, to control them? No wonder the whole planet has fallen into such pure Darkness. Nothing usable for me here, no, no. A wasted trip, bah. Yet still, at least I can hide you away."

The man currently speaking to himself was a tall, almost rail thin man of seeming middle age. He had pointed, almost gaunt features, with straight light blue hair down to his shoulders. He had two blasters on his hips. One of them was of normal configuration and the other a disruptor. As he turned, Sidious could see he also had a lightsaber strapped to the small of his back. It looked almost like a shoto, a short bladed lightsaber, but the length wasn't quite right.

The moment the man was far enough away from his ship, Sidious glided forward, covered by his Force Cloak and Stealth still, the Veil all around him, hiding him even from another Dark Side user. Soon he was standing right behind the man as he made his way towards a corridor leading away from the landing area. Once there, and not incidentally standing between his target and the ship he had arrived in, Sidious activated his lightsaber, pulling in his Force Cloak and Stealth at the same time. "Set Harth, the Order of the Sith requires your life."

Set Harth, Dark Jedi and one-time apprentice to Darth Zannah, apprentice of Darth Bane, turned, his hands flashing faster than any non-Force user would have been able to follow. One hand fell to his disruptor, the other used a Force grab to pull his lightsaber out, activating it at the same time. His blade, like that of Sidious, glowed red in the near darkness of the hidden mansion. "I think not!"

The disruptor bolt sizzled out, but Sidious batted it aside with his lightsaber. "You speak as if you have a choice!" A Force grab reached out, intending to disarm Harth, but Sidious was somewhat amused to find Harth able to block his power with his own.

Firing the disruptor rapidly, Harth charged forward, leaping up at the last second, his lightsaber flashing out and down to attack the other Sith. More, Harth wanted to gain the center of the landing area, to both put himself closer to his ship, and to also have more room to use his modified Ataru form against his enemy.

Sidious chuckled evilly, blocking all the disruptor bolts and then also the lightsaber strike, lashing out with numerous Force Grabs and Pushes—small, very focused ones. Still, Harth was able to block most of them, showing his skill and ability. Only one slipped through, grabbing at a metal bracelet on the other human's arm. Even as Harth flinched back and tried to lash out with his own Force Crush at Sidious, Sidious's assault destroyed the slave circuit, which might have let Harth start his ship by remote. "None of that, fool!"

"I'm older than you and more experienced! I have hundreds of relics of the Sith, learned from one of the original of your Order! How dare you call me a fool!?" Harth bellowed, seemingly incensed by Sidious's slight use of dun'mak. With a roar he charged, using Force Crush and telepathy to try and get into Sidious's mind, trying to fill it with illusions. Nothing extravagant, just minute changes, his lightsaber being an inch off to Sidious's senses in comparison to its actual position.

These attempts failed, Harth's telepathic attack disappearing into the vast dark shadow that protected Sidious's mind. So, too, did his attack. Sidious, powered by the Dark Side of the Veil, could feel Harth's attacks coming easily, Harth's Battle Precognition utterly swamped by Sidious's own. His Force attacks were somewhat more serious, but there, Sidious could still match them. All in all, however, Sidious was pleased with his tool's combat ability. It was just a very bad match up for him, since Harth's modified Ataru was far worse than Yoda's, and Sidious had trained to beat him and other master duelists of the Order.

Realizing this, Harth tried to fall back into a defensive stance, but it was obvious that he had not been practicing his lightsaber skills. He pulled out his blaster and tried to use it in conjunction with his lightsaber, but this style had never caught on among Sith or Jedi for a reason. Harth, however, did have a way to make it work for him.

Jumping over Sidious's, he hurled his lightsaber forward like a spear, causing Sidious to stumble backwards as he batted it upwards. Then, before Sidious could react, Harth had grabbed it out of the air and pulled it back, setting it to spin between the two of them as he opened fire on Sidious with blaster and disruptor.

Sidious snarled, batting aside the blaster bolts, unable to deflect them directly back to Harth's weapons or even Harth at all given the spinning lightsaber. His attempts to use his own Force telepathy were stymied by Harth as well. For a time they were at an impasse, with Sidious stopping Harth from retreating but unable to get through Harth's defenses, not without killing him at any rate, which wasn't what Sidious was here to do.

Yet this lasted only a few minutes, as Harth's attention and Force powers began to flag. He simply lacked the raw power of Sidious. An attempt to use Sith Lightning overextended Harth's mental powers for just a moment, his lightsaber pausing in midair. Sidious blocked the pitiful attempt with a simple raised hand, then lashed out with his own Sith Lightning, thinking it rather amusingly ironic as he did so.

"GAHHH!" Harth screamed, convulsing, his concentration broken as the Force Lightning send him skidding backwards. A second later his lightsaber flew to Sidious's hand as Sidious deactivated his own. Before Harth could overcome his agony, Sidious was in his mind, crushing his psyche, and Set Harth fell into unconsciousness.

Smiling widely now, Sidious laughed, looking down at the Dark Jedi who had once attempted to become a Sith and who had such interesting potential for his worth as a tool. Then there was this facility and what it held. Searching through it would take time, but Sidious had already claimed his greatest prize.

OOOOOOO

As they were walking down the Temple steps after that evening's meal and then from thence out towards where the Wild Light was waiting for them, Shaak turned to Ranma. "Ranma, you mentioned being wishful of having more to do now that the Nova Guard are gone?"

Thinking he knew where this was going, Ranma nodded, but replied quickly, "Yeah, but don't worry about it, Shaak. I know that your duties as a Jedi are important to you, and right now helping Ahsoka is part of that. I'm not about to complain about that. Heh, I ain't that needy."

Shaak laughed quietly, reaching out to touch Ranma's arm lightly, bringing him to a halt as they reached the tunnel leading through the main trunk of the tree which housed the temple's hidden entrance. "I was not going to ask if you were. I would not be comfortable apologizing for something like that in any event. Instead I will apologize for not thinking of something you could be working on during this time sooner. Though I'm leery of asking you to do so without me, so it is something that would take up more of the time we would otherwise spend sparring."

"What is it?" Ranma asked, taking her hand in his and running his thumb over her red skin gently.

"I think it's time that we start trying to cure your fear of felines," she said simply, smiling at his touch. "Give me a few days to think about how, and then I would like us to spend, say, ever other evening working on that." Shaak watched Ranma's face as he balked at the very idea, fear and shame crossing his face in a way that was so unusual for him that it was jarring, his eyes almost flinching away from her own.

But then he seemed to control it as Shaak reached out to touch him on the chest, forcing his eyes back to hers. Once they had locked eyes, she spoke again. "Ranma, this is not anything you need to be ashamed of. Rather, this is something your father should be damned for! I wish to help you through this fear. I am not making fun of you; I have never judged you. I think that with my help you can overcome this. That is all. The question is, do you trust me to help you in this?"

After a moment Ranma slowly nodded his head, and unmindful of the fact they were still technically within the Temple environs, pulled Shaak into a hug. "I do trust you. And, and thank you for this, love."

After letting him hug her, Shaak gently pushed Ranma away, looking around to make sure that they had not been observed. She still had no wish to flout her relationship with Ranma in front of the other Jedi. "It will be a lot of hard work," she cautioned. "And moreover it will be mostly meditation and control work, not physical. But we will get through this, Ranma, and you will be all the stronger for it, I promise."

"I believe you!" Ranma said with a laugh, looking at her with such love in his eyes that it almost overrode his still present fear at the idea of confronting his fear of cats.

Shaak was as good as her word, and a few days later the two of them, along with Master Yoda and Master Dooku, the only two other people in the Temple that Ranma wanted to know anything about his fear, who watched as Shaak and a small felinoid sat across from Ranma. Ranma's back was against the far wall, his eyes wide as he stared at the creature, but Shaak was there, holding the animal back, her eyes locked on Ranma as she spoke soothingly to him.

Shaak reached out to Ranma's mind with a Force probe, connecting them briefly but as deeply as she could, her own sense of serenity and peace flowing into Ranma, trying to combat the ocean of stark fear that had permeated his mind. She didn't have much luck that first time, and after only about forty minutes she sighed before turning around and handing the animal over to Master Dooku, who left the room quickly.

As Ranma began to come back to himself and blushed in embarrassment and self-loathing, Shaak moved over to him, hugging him tightly. "None of that! I said before, and I will continue to say it, possibly every night just to make sure the point gets across: this is nothing to be ashamed of! This is simply an obstacle to overcome, and we will do so together. We will take this mistake your father made and make it a strength!"

Ranma laughed weakly, hugging her back, only now noticing that both Dooku and Yoda had left to give the two of them some privacy. "Now that, that I can get behind."

OOOOOOO

Set Harth woke up and found himself floating in a bacta tank. The normally light blue or clear bacta was tinged red, which was not a good sign to anyone who knew the qualities of bacta, which Set did. The fact that he was waking up at all might have been considered a good sign by most sentients, but given his last memories, Set did not let himself feel such false hope.

Looking through the red tinted water and the glass, Set didn't recognize the surroundings, which was another bad sign. It was dark, almost pitch black, but with some small red lights here and there and a medical droid of some kind at the far end connected to a series of control panels. There was no one here.

With that thought, Set concentrated, bringing up his hate, anger, and fear, and began to reach out with the Force. Before he could finish, however, a door to one side slid open, and slowly the light level rose in the room. Not much, it was still dank and dark, but it was now enough to see by, at least.

Letting his hate and fear simmer at the back of his mind, Set watched as his captor moved towards him, his features still hidden by a cowl. Underneath the cowl Set could also see something like a mask, or a half mask, perhaps, further hiding the man's identity.

"The droid says you are nearly fully healed. That is good. Now, before we get to your training as well as telling you your mission, know that there are now several small pain devices emplaced in your brain. They can either kill or send extreme amounts of pain into your brain the instant I wish them to. They are not solely electronic in nature. Rather, they are a little bit of Sith Alchemy which my teacher developed, though he never used them often."

The voice was cold, yet conversational, almost courteous, yet commanding and filled with power and arrogance. "I also found all of your cloning cylinders and have taken the opportunity to move them to a place of my choosing. They are rigged to explode if anything happens to any of them that the droid I have watching them determines is a sign of life. So do not try to transfer your mind to someone else. You will only do so if I allow it."

"Who, who are you?" Set asked, his voice echoing over the tank's intercom from the mask he was wearing, which was in turn connected to an air pipe. The full depths of his predicament made his ever present anger and fear grow further so that Set was now straining to hold it back. "What do you want with me!?"

"The Sith Order has need of your services, Set Harth," the man said, his voice now containing a tone of cruel humor. "I told you that when we met. You will serve, willingly or no. As for what you will be doing, you will be my tool against possibly the greatest threat to the Great Plan that has ever existed."

"The Great Plan?" Set asked, narrowing his eyes, his emotions somewhat receding as they were replaced by an even more powerful emotion, the same that had driven him to break with the Order and his former Master so many decades ago: that of a obsessive need for knowledge. "You're from the Order of Two, then? You are a real Sith, not a pretender. That makes sense. But what, beyond my life, is it in for me?"

"Knowledge," the man replied. "And the opportunity to once more attempt to become a true Sith. My current apprentice is powerful, but also willful and has delusions of grandeur which has proven her to be unworthy for this task. This specific task, Set Harth, for which I have found you. You will be prepared as a weapon, a weapon against a very specific single target. Your worth to me, and thus your continued existence, are based upon how well you both prepare and then perform this task. Realize that, and you will be a much happier fellow going forward."

"You speak as if my happiness concerns you at all?" Set asked, scoffing as best he could with a mask on. Already he was getting a read on the man in front of him and was becoming somewhat more awed as he did so. It wasn't the power, or even the method the man had used to force his compliance. No, it was the control of the man in front of him that awed him. "Please don't bother attempting to be courteous!"

The man in the cowl and half-mask chortled. "We understand one another. Serve, and you will live. Turn against me, and you will die. Fail me, and you will die. Try to escape, and you will die."

"I understand the gist, yes," Set said dryly. A normal individual in Set's place might have been unable to find any humor in it, but that was not Set Harth's way. And the idea of more power and more knowledge was alluring to him, of course. After all, if it wasn't, he wouldn't have spent the last nine hundred plus years transferring his mind from one clone to another as he searched the galaxy for Sith artifacts.

That thought, however, brought jolt of fear to his mind, and his eyes flared red with anger, his Force power gathering in an instant. "My collection! What did you do with it!?"

"It is safe and being categorized by a few droids," the cloaked man said. "Some of the information you have gathered is actually useful, and I know the trick of opening some of the holocrons that you have found over the centuries, whereas you, obviously, did not."

Set flushed in anger at that. Anger, his old friend, just like fear, and he again reached for the Force. But then he felt his throat constricting, his Force powers snuffed out like a candle in the wind. Darkness pushed into his mind, into his very soul, so much that Set could only compare it to his duel with Darth Bane.

"Remember what I said!" the voice snapped out, even colder now, and if it had been possible Set would've shivered, but gripped entirely by the Force he couldn't. "Your life now belongs to me. Do you understand?"

The grip loosened just slightly, and Set found himself nodding his head so hard it moved his body up and down within the tank.

The grip loosened entirely, and the man turned to the droid, ordering it to release the glass, which would allow Set to exit the tank. As Set rubbed his throat moments later, which had already begun to bruise despite the attack having occurred in the bacta tank, he looked at his new Master. "You never told me your name, Master," he said, his voice now subservient, almost obsequious.

"I am Darth Sidious," the man said flatly, tossing him a robe. "Now come, we have much to do."

OOOOOOO

Three months passed on Kashyyyk with Ranma and Shaak training his mind to get over the fear every evening. During the afternoon, Shaak worked with Ahsoka to get over her issues. Shaak's own training, of course, proceeded apace in the morning, with Ranma replacing his time with the youngling clan with training with Shaak in brutal all-out spars that pushed Shaak physically and mentally to the limit. This was made worse, or better, depending who you asked, when Dooku joined them during his month long stay. The older Jedi proved himself time and time again one of the greatest dueling masters the Order had seen, pushing both Shaak and Ranma in different ways, while learning just as much from them as they did from him.

This new daily regimen was, of course, noticed by other people in the temple, and at one point Anakin, with Master Jinn's aid, asked Master Dooku for help in his own training. Dooku declined, but allowed the youth to start training his body further for lightsaber dueling, pushing forward the time that Anakin would become a padawan.

The debate on who that would be raged among the Jedi Council of Reassignment, as well as the High Council itself. The idea that the young padawan to be was the Chosen One had unfortunately begun to make headway among the Jedi, given the slowly rising strength of the Veil of the Dark Side, and the fact that several Jedi had been lost in various missions of late, combined with the sheer number of missions that ended in violence.

Yoda and others pushed to choose a Master who would not let Anakin fall to the hubris of arrogance, and one with a strong hand to curb his headstrong attitude. They also wanted to separate him from Jinn, who they all could see believed in the Chosen One prophecy. Thankfully, there seemed to be no bond between them as there was between Ahsoka and Shaak. So the forerunners at this point for that task were Master Giiett of the High Council and Master Jorus C'boath, a Consular well thought of as a diplomat and a Force user, a decent duelist who was also known as a disciplinarian.

Not that any of that really mattered much to Ranma, or even Shaak Ti. Shaak was too busy helping both Ahsoka and Ranma confront their very different fears, and was not high enough in the Jedi hierarchy, despite the amount of respect, even awe, she had earned exorcising Exar Kun's Force Ghost. And Ranma was not only an outsider, but uninterested in being more than a sometimes-there teacher figure.

Thanks to Shaak, Ranma began to feel less fear in the presence of the local feline-equivalents. He slowly began to see a time when he wouldn't have this fear at all, and that made him put even more effort into overcoming it.

Five months after they had arrived, Shaak was happy enough with Ahsoka's progress to allow her to rejoin her clan at last, though she would still like to stay another week to make certain that Ahsoka did not backslide. Ranma quickly came up with the idea to fill some of that time, as well as sort of celebrate her work with Ahsoka being so near completion.

"We haven't really had much us time since we arrived here. I know why that is, but other than snuggling at night we haven't gone on dates or even had many meals alone. So how about the two of us head out and have an adventure date?" Ranma asked, coming out of the bathroom, toweling at her wet hair.

Shaak's black eyes lit up with delight, and she leaned over, pulling the redhead into a one armed hug for a moment. Ranma's time in female form had caught up to him a few days ago, and the monthly monster had once more reared its ugly head. "That will be lovely. In fact, let us make an entire day of it." Then she cocked her head. "But why are you still in female form? I thought that your period had ended yesterday."

"It did, but I took the time to look up today's weather. There was our 'date' on Yavin 4 and that time on Mandalore, so I'm sort of worried that the water attraction part of my curse is coming back. So I thought I'd head it off at the pass, so to speak?" Ranma said, ending her last sentence in a questioning tone as she looked at Shaak.

Despite having gotten assurance numerous times in many different ways, some of them quite…emphatic, that Shaak didn't care about his curse, Ranma still sometimes needed assurance that such was still the case. This the aquatranssexual received now, a smile and a nod followed by a kiss that made her toes curl. "Just let me get my cloak."

For the rest of the day, the two of them moved through the wroshyr trees that covered Kashyyyk practically from pole to pole. They had simply chosen a straight line to go in, moving out and away from the capital city or any of the other settlements on the planet. They were in no rush, simply taking in the sights, sometimes playing tag, other times racing through the massive branches of the even more monstrous trees.

They were only attacked twice, and dealt with both easily. The first time was by two small predators of a size like the ones Ranma had hunted to make Shaak's fur cloak, which seemed to take offense at the two sentients moving through their territory. After defeating and killing them handily, Ranma cooked the duo a simple meal before they again set off. Now, however, the couple stopped more frequently to exchange kisses or touches, and they traveled far more closely together now, their bodies brushing against one another. Ranma in particular began a small game. She would randomly wait on a branch for Shaak to land beside her instead of forging ahead and then surprise the taller girl with a deep kiss, before leaping away, leaving Shaak panting until the Togrutan raced after her.

Occasionally they saw Wookies, sometimes hunting parties, sometimes single Wookies, moving through the forest. But after staring at the two offworlders for a moment, they would always move away the instant they spotted Shaak's lightsaber at her belt.

In the late afternoon they were attacked once more, as something a little below and to the left of their current track caught Ranma's eye. "What's that?"

Shaak landed beside the redhead, putting one arm around her, letting her hand trail down Ranma's back to the smaller girl's shapely rear, lightly kneading it even as she looked in the direction Ranma indicated. There was a patch of something there, shimmering in the light coming down through the numerous branches. "Hmm…some kind of still water pool? I understand that rainfall does often accumulate like that in the wroshyr trees. Did you know the leaves of the wroshyr trees actually serve as sluices to help send the rain down further? But many times the water will pool like that in a little grotto or furrow in the tree until it is absorbed. I understand that searching out those pools is a priority for some Wookie communities."

"Huh. Let's go see," Ranma said then leaned in to kiss Shaak for a second. Both of them forgot about the pool for a few moments until the need for air forced them apart. "Um, yeah, let, let's go," Ranma stuttered, her chest heaving as she gasped in air.

Licking her lips, Shaak nodded, reluctantly removing her hands from around Ranma's hips and watching as her lover leaped off. Shaking her head, she raced after Ranma, using her Force powers sparingly. At this point in her training Shaak had developed her physical skills to be able to nearly keep up with Ranma. When traveling through Kashyyyk's unique bio-system, anyway, not in a fight.

A few minutes later the two of them stood over an idyllic scene. There was indeed a pool there, one that was possibly more permanent than most of that type. It was situated on a thick lateral branch between two even larger branches growing upwards, both so large they looked like they could house entire clans of Wookies. The lateral branch connecting them seemingly had a hollowed out portion right in the middle between the two main branches. To one side another branch seemed to have sprouted about ten feet above the first lateral one, which was wide enough to almost, with its leaves added in, look like an awning.

There were moss and lichen of decent size around and within the pool. There were also several small branches the size of a normal tree coming up and out of the larger branch which housed the pool. There were dozens of heavy vines crawling up the main branch to one side, with numerous tiny, sparkling, pink and dark purple flowers.

"Wow," Ranma murmured, leaning her head against Shaak's shoulder, their arms around one another. "That is really cool."

"Yes," Shaak said simply, not having any wish to waste words in trying to explain the wild beauty of the scene in front of them.

Their moment, however, was interrupted by a loud growling, as a massive beast of some kind roared out of a nearby crevice in the wroshyr tree. It was taller than either of the two lovers, with an insect-like body held up by four massive, powerful looking legs. It was covered with dark grey-green fur, and had a somewhat small mouth lined with teeth that showed it was an omnivore. Its eyes were small and deep set, protected by thick ridges or muscle. To either side of its mouth it seemed to have little feelers swaying in the breeze of its passage. The thing roared, racing out at them from its hiding place, faster than a charging horse, its legs thumping powerfully against the branch below them.

"A walluga," Shaak shouted, as she and Ranma leaped forward, away from the thing. The two of them flew through the air, landing to one side of the pool, whirling around to face the thing which quickly scaled down the tree towards their present position, its limbs as dexterous at climbing as they obviously were at running. "It's a dangerous predator, but doesn't usually attack sentients. We must have roused it from its sleep."

"Is it impact or lightsaber proof like that snake or the spiders you ran into? If not, is it tasty?" Ranma quipped, rolling her shoulders and cracking her knuckles as she pulled out her Light-pike, activating the blade with a snap hiss.

"No, it's meat is utterly inedible, both because of poison and stringiness. I think the Wookies do something with their bones, but I do not know what exactly," Shaak said, activating her own lightsaber. Her focus and her Force powers were directed at something else, however, as the walluga found when it reached the branch holding the pool. "And we need not always end such interruptions in violence, Ranma. Remember that beast that attempted to interrupt us on Mandalore? There are other ways to deal with conflict."

So saying she reached out with the Force, her powers reaching out to touch the various vines the walluga was currently trampling through on its way down toward them. The vines moved almost as if they were alive, growing dramatically and latching onto and around the walluga's limbs, pulling it to a stop within seconds. "Plant Surge," Shaak explained to the cacophony of the beast's roars and snarls. "It allows a Jedi to control plants to a certain degree. And now, let me see if I can convince the beast to leave us be."

So saying Shaak performed much the same technique as she had used against Jabba's rancor, calming the walluga down. The walluga was a bit more intelligent than the rancor had been, and also not nearly as violent. It was but the work of a moment to banish its anger at their presence, and another to convince it to leave peacefully.

With Ranma standing by, the vines receded from around the beast. It finished its climb down to the branch the two lovers were standing on, then, after looking at them for a few moments, climbed out and then over the edge of the branch, heading down into the foliage below, its fur blending in swiftly with the surroundings.

"Huh," Ranma mused, looking at the vines in thought. "You used that technique against the giant snake too. I can understand its use on a planet like this against various predators, but is it really useful against another thinking being? Or on other planets at all?"

"While you are correct it is a somewhat esoteric power, I think you'll find it can be used against other sentients…" Shaak said, pushing the redhead lightly in the back, causing her to stumble as she had not expected it. Before Ranma could recover, she found her legs and arms wrapped up in vines. She struggled for a moment, straining as hard as she could, but without leverage she couldn't pull her limbs back out from the vines, which had the prehensile strength of steel cable.

"You see?" Shaak said, smiling impishly, as she leaned in to kiss the redhead hard, thrusting her tongue into the shorter girl's mouth.

Ranma moaned, her tongue battling with Shaak's for a moment as she strained forward, eager to deepen the kiss if she could, but finding she could not, thanks to being tied up. Eventually, however, Shaak stepped back, licking gently at Ranma's lip before pulling away entirely. Ranma simply stared at her for a moment, both of their gazes half-lidded with passion, before Ranma made another attempt to move, bringing back to her mind her current predicament. "Okay, I, hah, concede the point. Only, can you let me go now? Er, I'm having some flashbacks to some doujinshi a few acquaintances of mine in my old dimension told me about."

"What?" Shaak asked, not releasing Ranma just yet. "What is a doujinshi, and what in the world does it have to do with your current predicament?"

"Um…" Ranma paused, thinking how to explain hentai, and in particular tentacle porn. After a moment as Shaak stared at her, Ranma did so hesitantly.

Shaak was silent throughout this explanation, after which she waved a hand and the vines holding Ranma captive receded. "Ranma, don't take this the wrong way, but your people were sick."

"Yeah, I can't argue that." Ranma sighed, moving to enfold the taller woman in a hug.

Her lips twitching, Shaak wondered if she should point out Ranma's fascination with her lekku. But given the differences between them and the fact that Ranma had never made any indication that she would like to try some of the things with her lekku that she had described just now, she refrained. Besides, while my lekku are very sensitive, they certainly aren't that sensitive, or prehensile, or…well, anything like those tentacle thing, really.

Before her thoughts could continue down that somewhat odd path, Shaak was brought back to the here and now by Ranma's arms falling down her back. One hand began to play with her back lek, the other grabbed Shaak's rear, as Ranma kissed Shaak just as hard as Shaak had kissed her previously.

Their passion, which had been somehow set to the side during the discussion about Japan and its tentacle porn, came back now. Shaak kissed Ranma back just as passionately, her arms going around the shorter girl's as their lips and tongues dueled for dominance. Shaak's hands went in different directions, one hand curling around Ranma's pigtail, the other kneading her rear.

They were interrupted once more, this time by the crash of thunder and the sound of rain beginning to hit the leaves high above them. "Great, just great," Ranma groused as the two disengaged, staring up through the verdant forest. "Guess staying in female form wasn't enough to save us from a dousing. Unless the leaves will block out enough for us to stay dry?" she added hopefully.

"Not this high up, no. Not entirely, at any rate. Rains on Kashyyyk tend to be quick, but very, very heavy, and as I said, the leaves serve as sluices to help send it down further," Shaak replied, feeling out the weather with the Force as much as she could even while she replied to Ranma's question. "We could head down deeper, but to go deep enough to get away from the rain would carry us down below the fifth level. But I feel that our best bet is to just to get under cover."

Quickly moving around the pool of water, the two of them got under cover just as it began to rain. At first Ranma had no idea what Shaak was talking about, as the rain seemed rather gentle, from what she could see. Then she cocked her head, and began to listen more than watch. The sound of rain from on high was a deep, thrumming sound against the branches of the wroshyr leaves.

Turning from watching the rain sluicing down through the leaves, Ranma found that Shaak had shed her fur cloak, tossing it down to form a primitive sort of bedding. She had also sat down in the middle of it, leaning against the back of the trunk that made up the back of their small hiding place. She smiled at Ranma, beckoning with one hand, and Ranma moved quickly to her side, kneeling there before leaning in, kissing Shaak once more.

{warning Lemon Content incoming!}

A few moments were spent simply kissing, nuzzling into one another, then Shaak decided to move things along. Her hands found their way to the bottom of Ranma's shirt, pulling it up, interrupting their kiss as Ranma leaned back, pulling her shirt off and tossing it aside. By the time she had, Shaak had done away with the leather undershirt she had been wearing as well as the silk bra underneath, laying it to the side with a mock warning glare at the redhead. "Now remember, I like this set, and you still haven't bought me a repmmm!"

Ranma interrupted her with a kiss, which continued for a while, Ranma's hands traveling up from Shaak's washboard stomach to one of her lekku, while the other moved down, beginning to play with the top of the pants she had worn under her robe. With only one hand, however, there was little Ranma could do alone, and she refused to stop playing with Shaak's lekku. Shaak reluctantly let her hands fall from the redhead's back to pull first at Ranma's pants, then her own. The two pairs of pants were kicked to the side so hard they nearly fell off the edge of the branch.

Pulling back and panting, Shaak kissed Ranma's cheeks and neck as Ranma moved to cover Shaak's body entirely with her own, pulling her down so they were both laying down instead of leaning against the back of the wroshyr branch. Ranma mewled at her touch, but then reached between them with both hands, playing with Shaak's C-cup breasts. Tweaking her chalk white nipples caused Shaak's head to loll back as she moaned, thrusting her hips up lightly.

But before Ranma could concentrate further on that, Shaak pulled the redhead down, nuzzling and licking at Ranma's neck as her hands began to roam Ranma's body in turn. The smell of Ranma's female form, of flowers, grass, and a hint of alrdriga, invaded her senses, as Shaak's own scent did the same to Ranma. That scent was otherworldly, almost, her skin and sweat smelling slightly spicy to Ranma's senses, with some kind of orange-based scent there too.

Shaak slowly ran her sharp teeth up and down Ranma's collarbone, reminding Ranma once more of the otherworldly nature of her lover. And damn it, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

In return, Shaak's naked body was once more open for Ranma to explore, which she did, marveling once more at how in her female body the passion of the moment seemed…not less, but softened, somehow. Why that was, Ranma didn't know, only that she had yet to feel the same near out of control feeling she had run into in her male body. Then again, last time was a bit of an exception even there.

Setting those thoughts aside and smiling tenderly, Ranma used her position on top of Shaak to move down her body, halting Shaak's attacks on her own neck. Instead she began to lick at Shaak's breasts, nipples, and lekku, her hands busy with the other side of Shaak's chest at the same time.

Once more Shaak found one hand playing with Ranma's hair, enjoying the feel of it through the fingers as she undid Ranma's hair tie, letting her pigtail loose in a curtain of fiery red hair. Her other hand squeezed first Ranma's rear, then moving up and around to grab Ranma's breasts. There she began to play with one of Ranma's cherry-red nipples, while looking down at where Ranma was now licking her own.

Biting her lip lightly, Shaak pulled her hand away from Ranma's hair, letting it trail down the shorter woman's back, first squeezing her rear again, then moving around and between them. Her fingers stopped on the tuft of hair right above Ranma's privates. She locked eyes with Ranma for a moment, then at Ranma's nod, began to run her fingers up and down Ranma's cleft.

Ranma shifted slightly upwards to let Shaak have better access to her lower body, one hand moving down to Shaak's privates while she used the other to reposition herself. Immediately Ranma began to play with Shaak's small, engorged pussy lips. Already very wet, the whiteness of them against the backdrop of Shaak's red skin amazed Ranma anew as he looked at them.

Both women began to moan almost continuously now, leaning in to exchange tender kisses or to run their lips and tongue over necks and naked shoulders, while their fingers took most of their attention.

Ranma soon found the little bud right above Shaak's small pussy lips, lightly playing with it. Shaak moaned even louder, then pulled Ranma into a kiss, their tongues dancing as the tempo of their lovemaking began to pick up.

Pulling back from the kiss Shaak raised the same hand that had been playing with Ranma's privates between their faces. As Ranma watched, she gently licked her fingers, first one, then two, and finally three. After a second she let the hand trail back down towards Ranma's privates as Ranma watched, their eyes still locked together.

Realizing what Shaak was asking, Ranma gulped, then nodded convulsively. "Bet, better to see something of what it will feel from this side of things before we um, try it in my male form, y'know?"

Shaak's black eyes seemed to light up, and her whole body shuddered. The idea of being with Ranma, of 'going all the way,' as it was called, with his male form, called out to her Togrutan side and her female side at once. But despite that, she knew the concession Ranma was making and knew she couldn't go fast.

So she slowly, gently, returned her hand to Ranma's privates, playing with the edge of her slit for several minutes while Ranma simply panted and moaned, leaning her head against Shaak's shoulder as she watched. Then, just as slowly, Shaak inserted the tip of her finger.

For her part, Ranma had to fight back the urge to squeal and leap away, just like she had retreated from the same kind of sensation on Mandalore. But Ranma fought the thought down with difficulty. It might be new, it might feel strange, but that doesn't mean it's wrong, and it can help me later on to make certain it feels good for Shaak; remember that, Ranma, she thought.

Watching Ranma's face, Shaak paused, waiting until Ranma nodded at her before gently moving her finger deeper. The feel of Ranma's slit clenching around her finger was strange, but not unpleasant. So she continued, slowly pressing her finger deeper.

Eventually Ranma was able to get used to the odd sensation enough to become an active participant once more. Nipping and biting at Shaak's neck and collarbone, Ranma let her other hand trail down to Shaak's uncovered flower. Like Shaak had done with her, she took her time, slowly inserting her finger and moving it around gently. At the same time, Ranma slowly eased around so that their bodies were once more lying flush against one another, her legs on either side of Shaak's.

They stayed like that for a time as Shaak explored Ranma's privates and Ranma began to once more do the same to her. Then Shaak suddenly flipped them, the move startling Ranma so that she didn't even fight it. "What…"

Chuckling throatily, Shaak slid off Ranma's body, flipping herself around. Now she hovered over Ranma's form, her now dripping flower hovering over Ranma's face, as her own face hovered over Ranma's thighs.

Realizing what she wanted, Ranma decided to preempt her and leaned up abruptly, locking her lips around the tiny nub above Shaak's flower, sucking gently. Shaak convulsed, moaning loudly enough to scare any animals nearby, slumping down against Ranma's thighs. Smirking, Ranma leaned away, blowing lightly on Shaak's pussy for a moment, then more gently beginning to play with her lover's beautiful white flower, enjoying the taste of her juices on her lips, a tangy, spicy, apple like taste, almost, her hands gripping the red skin of Shaak's thighs.

Shaak slowly recovered from Ranma's sudden assault and immediately began to return the favor, nuzzling into Ranma's small snatch of hair, amused again that it felt so different from one form to the next. One hand gently kneading Ranma's thigh, she began to hesitantly lick at Ranma's slit, wondering what it would taste like. It tasted somewhat tangy, almost, but Shaak could not for the life of her explain why, or make any further comparison. Regardless, she began to once more insert her finger. She felt Ranma stiffen, but she did not try to protest or move away, and Shaak continued, eventually inserting her finger up to the second knuckle.

For her part Ranma couldn't say she really enjoyed the feeling of being penetrated like that; it was just too strange to her mind. On the other hand, the feel of Shaak's tongue along her slit was almost enough to take Ranma's attention away from working Shaak over.

It might have been the fact that Shaak had felt this feeling several times before, but it was Ranma who began to lose control first. Her body began to spasm under the taller girl, her hips thrusting up into Shaak's mouth as she moaned continuously, pulling back from Shaak's flower as her head lolled against the fur of Shaak's cloak underneath them, her hands falling to the wood to either side of the cloak. Gleefully Shaak redoubled her efforts, throwing the redhead over the edge as she pulled her finger back out of Ranma's slit as she bit down lightly on the tiny clitoral nub at the top.

Shaak found herself lifted slightly off the redhead into the air as Ranma bucked, screaming her orgasm out. Her fingers actually gouged slightly into the bark of the branch under them, which Shaak noticed with amusement, not concern. My toughness training seems to have had a secondary objective, she thought ruefully.

Despite the depths of her orgasm, Ranma recovered far faster than Shaak had thought, going by her own example. This was why Shaak found herself being pulled down into a kiss that made her moan. A second later the smaller redhead had twisted them around until Shaak was once more on her back, the fur of her cloak gently tickling her back. Before Shaak could do anything, Ranma was moving down her body, leaving kisses all over her stomach and chest before her tongue dove into Shaak's white flower.

While she hadn't been as quick as Ranma, Shaak still was close to the edge, and it didn't take long for Ranma's ministrations to send her over. She howled, her mouth open wide as her fingers twined through Ranma's hair as she came, only loosening their hold when Ranma moved away from her flower to kiss her inner thigh.

Her eyes still halfway closed as her lekku twitched in aftershocks, she watched as Ranma stood up for some reason. The redhead looked outside, and Shaak noticed that the rain had stopped. She continued to watch, her body feeling quite boneless, as Ranma walked out of their small hiding place. The redhead then did something to the pool of water which caused steam to rise up into Shaak's line of sight.

Ranma stepped into the pool of water, feeling the change hit him. Then he turned back, somehow unsurprised that his arousal had carried over, and he was now as hard as a metal bar. Returning to the small overhang, Ranma kneeled down next to Shaak, looking at her in question, his eyes filled with love and desire for her.

Smiling at him Shaak nodded her head, opening her legs wider and laying back, giving herself over to his ministrations entirely, anticipation and love blazing in her deep black eyes. As he moved between her legs, however, she felt a tremor of, not fear, exactly, but perhaps trepidation, seeing Ranma line his large member up with her tiny flower. "Just, just go slow, please, Ranma?"

"I promise, Shaak. I love you, and the last thing I want is to cause you pain," Ranma said seriously, then smirked. "Cheesy, I know, but true."

While Shaak giggled in response to Ranma's purposefully lame joke, Ranma slowly slid the head of his cock into her pussy. Shaak's giggle broke off into a gasp, then a whine as she began to feel sensations she had never had before. Yes, Ranma had fingered her before, but this was different; Ranma's member was so much wider than his finger. And staring into Ranma eyes like this, feeling his breath on her face, his pulse throbbing through his member, simply amplified the feeling. As did seeing the love within those deep blue eyes.

Ranma was somewhat in the same boat. Instincts from the most ancient part of his brain were demanding him to go faster, to drive deeper into Shaak. But he refrained, keeping his eyes locked on Shaak's face, watching her for any twinge of pain. The love in those black eyes of hers, however, showed no pain, and he slowly inched his cock in further. As he did so the sensations threatened to overwhelm him. Shaak was so tight, so hot, clamping around him like a vice. It was beyond anything Ranma had ever imagined, let alone felt before.

Twice Ranma had to stop as Shaak looked like she was in pain, muscles that she had never exercised before now twinging in distress. But each time the pain was only momentary, and as Ranma slid further, so too did the pleasure rise. Eventually Ranma's pelvis met Shaak's, and for a moment he paused, staring down into her eyes, waiting.

Instead of just nodding, Shaak reached up, putting her arms around Ranma and pulling him down into a kiss. Before their lips touched, she whispered, "Move, love," before lifting her open mouth up to meet his.

Kissing Shaak back deeply, Ranma began to move his hips, slowly dragging his cock in and out Shaak's hot, tight tunnel. The tightness had receded only slightly. She still felt like a velvet vice around his dick, and the friction now simply added to the sensation.

Holy FUCK! No wonder Hiroshi and Daisuke were so obsessed with girls and sex. This, this blows everything else out of the water. The only sensation he had felt that was nearly as powerful was when Shaak had played with his female form's clit. But then the sense of wrongness she felt about Shaak's finger penetrating her had taken away from that. Now there was no wrongness, only closeness, only love, heat, tightness, and immense pleasure.

It couldn't last. Even with their initial passions worked off, this was the first time they had gone all the way, and like in any physical exercise, practice did help in this particular field. It still felt like an eternity to the two lovers, or perhaps just long enough. Ranma broke their lip lock, whispering his words between moans, "Shaak, I, I'm gonna…"

"Do it, do it!" Shaak moaned, feeling her own end coming, her walls spasming as Ranma continued to hammer his length into her. "I want to feel it. More!"

Ranma nodded, then went even faster, his hips jackhammering into Shaak as she raised her hips to match. Ranma continued, nearly pulling his shaft out of her several times before slamming it back in. Then Shaak's tight tunnel clamped down on him even more, and she threw her head back in a howl, her lekku spasming once more so much that her back lek would hurt the next day. This threw Ranma over the edge, and he grunted loudly as he came, flooding Shaak's insides.

{End lemon content}

Still shuddering, Ranma pulled out of Shaak, collapsing to one side so that most of his weight rested on one arm rather than on her chest and lekku. Nuzzling into her shoulder he murmured, "I love you, Shaak Ti," against her bright red, sweat slicked skin.

"I love you too, Ranma," Shaak shuddered, her lekku spasming even more than they had after her previous orgasm as she kissed and nuzzled into Ranma's neck. "Oh, oh my… That was…that was unbelievable. Force, I know this isn't the first time I've said this, but why in the name of the Unifying Force did the Order decide outlawing relationships was a good thing?"

"Heh, don't know. It's not like I'm the Jedi in this relationship, is it?" Ranma asked, slowly pushing himself up off Shaak until he was hovering over her once more. He idly noticed that his member had yet to flag, still pointed directly at Shaak's core.

Seeing the same thing, Shaak groaned, trying to put together another coherent sentence, but for some reason she couldn't. Her body was urging her to start again. All she could do was try to find something else to concentrate on, something other than the aftershocks still going through her, the urge to feel Ranma inside her again. Her roving eyes caught sight of the cloak under their hips, and for some reason Shaak blurted out, "Oh dear. I'm going to have to clean the cloak you gave me quite thoroughly, aren't I?"

Ranma smiled, leaning down to kiss her before whispering throatily. "We can hunt you a new one later. For now…" With that, he began to move again, and Shaak moaned in renewed delight, locking her legs around Ranma once more.

Elsewhere, plans were moving. Elsewhere, the Dark was still closing in. But here and now, there was only light, and the love of Ranma and Shaak Ti.

End Chapter


So, more time elapsed, more fluffiness and continuing closeness, and more moves in the dark as Sidious continues to gather tools and resources, being far more proactive than he had to be in canon while doing so. This I think will be the way I fast forward the time frame. I won't use a real 'Two years later' sort of timeskip, unless I feel the need for it. We'll see. Anyway, hope you liked it, and the fact Ranma and Shaak have finally gone all the way LOL.

There will be no poll for December.