I was actually ready to post this chapter several days ago, but sadly my internet connection has been intermittent for the past few days. I finally got a new modem, which seems to have fixed the problem, so now I can actually give this to you all. Before you read this, I would like to make clear that this arc is not supposed to be a mystery story. At best, it's more of a detective story. As such, don't go looking for subtle clues in previous chapters as to what's going on. There are a few, but not regarding everything. I am nowhere near a skilled enough writer at this point to actually write a proper mystery story. Maybe in the future, but not right now.

As with the past two chapters, I'm going to take this opportunity to ask any of you who have not yet done so to please donate to one of the many charities helping Ukrainians impacted by Russia's invasion of their country. It's easy to normalize things like this and let them fade into the background of our 24 hour news cycles, but please don't let that happen here. I intend to include a paragraph like this in every chapter I publish until this tragedy is resolved. Constant attention and pressure is the best and only weapon ordinary citizens have to combat things like this, and I want to arm as many of you as I can.

Many thanks for the huge positive response to the last chapter. I'm glad Naruto's empathic powers are so popular, as they're going to continue to be a big part of his character going forward.

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Chapter 24

Naruto's dreams were dark. He saw the attackers, or victims, he wasn't sure which. He felt them die, felt that terrible emptiness swallow up their souls. He relived the fight, and he saw every person he had failed to save. All the while he heard the distant echoes of the Kyuubi's laughter, mocking him.

"Shut up!" His dream self shouted. "Just shut up!"

"I told you that you were too weak. Even now you flail in the darkness, like a worm. How pathetic."

"Go away. You're wrong," he said, but his protests were feeble. Over and over, the scenes played before him. The random deaths, most of them people who stepped into the path of a blaster bolt by mere chance. The screams of raw agony from the shooters, and the looks of blessed relief on the two who killed themselves. Finally, their deaths, and the horror that he had seen in their minds. Together they wove a grim tapestry, one he couldn't turn away from.

"See where refusing me has led you. Where it leads you still. How many more such failures can you endure? How many more will die for your petty spite?"

Naruto shook his head. "I won't listen to you. You're evil."

"Evil? I offer you the chance to stop evil. Use my power. You could right these wrongs in an instant. You could track down your enemies wherever they are hiding and drag their broken bodies into the light. It would be easy."

Naruto glanced up and saw the vast expanse of the Kyuubi's cage in front of him. Behind the bars, two red eyes glowed like ancient suns, suspended far above him in an inky sky. The paper seal that covered the lock lay before him, just out of reach. A red miasma of chakra seeped through the bars and swirled in front of him. He could feel the pure, unfiltered power it gave off, along with the familiar malice.

"You know what you must do. You have done it before. Take my power, use it, and fulfill your precious promises. Think of all that you could accomplish with such power. All you have to do is take it."

Naruto's hand began to move, though whether to seize the power in front of him or banish it even he did not know. Before he had done much more than twitch, though, the dream (if it was just a dream) shifted. The cage and its prisoner vanished, leaving Naruto to gaze on a wholly new vista.

He saw strange, shadowy figures standing over a vast ocean of stars, one crowned with green, one red, and one gray. They loomed taller than mountains, their faces distant and obscured. One of them, the one crowned with green, turned to face him, and spoke in a woman's voice, one he found familiar.

Rest easy now, young one. Rest, and remember what is truly important.

His eyes snapped open, and he shot bolt upright in his bed. His breath came in quick gasps until he got it back under control. After a few seconds, he looked around at where he was.

'I'm in my room at the palace. Master Windu must have brought me here after I fell asleep.'

Naruto shivered as he remembered his dreams. Whatever had happened with his empathy it had clearly shaken him more than he had initially thought. Perhaps that wasn't so surprising, though. Even now, he couldn't suppress a shiver when he thought about those screams. And that hunger. That soul-consuming void, swallowing everything, swallowing his-

No. He shook his head to dispel the foul memories. When that didn't work, he slapped himself across the face. Hard. Hard enough to knock the rising panic back down, giving him a semblance of focus and letting him think clearly.

'Yeah, definitely worse than I thought.'

With a weary sigh, he sank into a meditation pose and repeated the exercise that Mace had taught him. It came easier this time, and to his complete lack of surprise, he noticed a few foreign notes coloring his Kyber crystal's song. He couldn't tell where, or who, they had come from, but they definitely weren't his. Whatever they were, as soon as he had once more marked his emotions, they seemed to shrink and vanish. As they did, Naruto felt some of the unconscious stress he had been carrying vanish along with them. Not all of it, but enough that it felt as though a lead blanket had just lifted off his chest.

As soon as he had completed the exercise, he hurried to change his clothes and wash the cold sweat off his face. Once done, he rushed out the door and honed in on Padmé's presence. After two days by her side, he could pick her out of a crowd with ease, probably because of his empathic abilities. Finding her in the mostly empty palace was child's play. Once he had a lock on her direction, he beat a hasty path to get to her. As far as he was concerned, she was still under his protection, and he had never checked on her after the attack.

Much to his surprise, he could sense that she was quite close and getting closer. Indeed, he had only to round two corners before he saw her walking down the hall towards him. She had dressed simply, without the royal makeup or fancy gown, which meant that she wasn't there on official business. As Naruto skidded to a stop in front of her, he noticed she was not sporting her usual inscrutable expression. Instead, she was giving him a concerned look reminiscent of the ones Ayame and Shizune used to give him occasionally.

"Naruto? I didn't think you were up yet," she said.

"I just woke up a few minutes ago. What are you doing over here? It's not safe."

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "You're as bad as Captain Panaka. I am perfectly safe in the palace. Besides, I was just coming to make sure you were alright. Master Windu wasn't very specific, but he said something bad happened?"

"I'm fine," Naruto said. He hoped that would be the end of it, but Padmé's pointed expression killed any hope of that. He squirmed for a few seconds before sighing and giving in to the inevitable.

"Something was wrong with the guys who attacked you. Their brains were… messed up, somehow. Anyway, it turns out I'm an empath, and when they died, I felt it, and it was bad. It shook me up a little, but I'm fine now. It wasn't a big deal, really."

Padmé looked startled and faintly disturbed at his description. She gave him a worried look, one that made Naruto squirm some more. He didn't like people fussing over him, but at the same time, it felt good to know that someone cared enough to actually worry about him. It made for an uncomfortable mix of feelings, one that he handled in the finest traditions of teenagers everywhere. He ignored it and hoped it would go away.

"Naruto, it sounds like it was a pretty big deal to me," she said. "Feeling someone die… I can't even imagine it. Are you going to be okay?"

Naruto drew up every ounce of stubbornness he possessed, which was practically enough to generate gravity, and nodded once.

"Of course."

Padmé gave him one last concerned look before she smiled, apparently satisfied with what she saw.

"I'm glad. Also, I wanted to thank you. That whole situation would have been much worse if not for you."

Naruto eye-smiled and scratched the back of his head. "Heh. It wasn't much." His smile faded. "I should have done more."

Before he could sink any deeper into angst, Padmé reached out and flicked him in the forehead. "None of that. Brooding doesn't suit you. Besides, you saved me, and all of my handmaidens, along with who knows how many others. You had the whole situation contained in just minutes. If you weren't a Jedi, I would be giving you a medal right now."

This time, Naruto's embarrassed blush was visible, peeking over the top of his mask. He was, it turned out, still a sucker for praise. It didn't help that, while he had no romantic interest in Padmé, the part of him that was a 13-year-old boy had noticed that she was an exceptionally beautiful young woman. Puberty reared its ugly head once more, and it took him a moment to untie his tongue.

"I was just keeping my promise to Anakin," he said. "Besides, I used to do missions like this all the time back on my home world."

That definitely came as a surprise to Padmé, whose eyes widened.

"You what? What do you mean, you used to do stuff like that?" She spoke quietly, her tone calm and deliberate. Dangerously so, if fact. It should have served as a warning to Naruto, but he was still busy trying to shift the mental image of Padmé hanging a medal around his neck in front of the cheering masses. As such, he gave possibly the worst form of the truth he could have chosen.

"Yeah, I was a soldier for my village. My team and I did several bodyguarding missions, and we were attacked on each one. These guys weren't even all that bad compared to some of the ones who tried to kill our clients back then."

A conspicuous silence greeted his last remark, and, with a sense of dread, Naruto glanced over at Padmé. It was not a comforting sight. Even without his empathic powers, her pursed lips, clenched jaw, and flared nostrils told him all he needed to know about how she felt about that particular revelation. Why in the galaxy had he said that? He must have still been out of it; he hated talking about his past.

"You were a child soldier?" She asked. Her voice was soft and deadly, in the way a razorblade is. Naruto winced as heard it and made to head her off before things got out of hand. He really did not want to go into detail about his past right now. That was a painful enough subject at the best of times.

"Yeah, but it wasn't like they forced me or anything. I volunteered. Just forget I mentioned it, okay."

"Forget you mentioned- Naruto, you just told me you were a child soldier. That you saw combat. I don't think I'm going to forget that anytime soon. How could a Republic world allow such barbarism? Does the Senate know about this? Such a thing has to be sto-"

"It wasn't a Republic world, alright," Naruto cut her off. He took a breath and loosened his clenched fists before continuing. "Look, my godfather and I were trapped in stasis for 50,000 years. The Jedi found us and freed us a little over a standard year ago. The Republic didn't even exist back then. That's all I want to say about it, so can we talk about something else, please?"

"Naruto, I just-"

"Please drop it, Padmé!" Naruto snapped, and for an instant his eyes turned hard and flinty. Though Naruto was several centimeters shorter than her, in that moment Padmé could have sworn that he loomed tall and menacing. She felt the vaguest sense of some distant, terrible power, as if a storm on the horizon had suddenly drawn near. All the color in the hall seemed to drain into the boy before her, like he was all of a sudden more real, more solid, than mere matter could hope to be. Her teeth clicked shut, her breath caught in her throat, and beads of cold sweat broke out along her brow.

Then it was over, the moment gone almost as soon as it had come. Naruto closed his eyes and took a series of deep slow breaths. Padmé released the breath she had been holding and surreptitiously wiped her forehead. Wisely, she said nothing, and waited for Naruto to finish calming himself.

"I'm sorry," he said after a minute. "That was- I'm sorry. It's just, I really don't like to talk about my past. It happened, it's over, and I want to focus on the now. I'm sorry for scaring you like that, but can we please talk about something else?"

Padmé hesitated for a moment and then broke out into an apologetic smile.

"Of course we can, Naruto. I'm sorry for pushing on a sore subject like that." She paused and smirked. "And you don't have to worry, you didn't scare me. I was just a little startled, that's all. Now, let's go to the debriefing. We don't want to be late."

Naruto nodded gratefully and took up his usual position off to her right as they started off towards the meeting. As they walked, he shot her a teasing look.

"You don't have to lie, you know. I could tell you were scared when I snapped at you."

Padmé somehow contrived to look politely confused and impish all at once. Naruto was almost tempted to take notes.

"I don't know what could have given you that impression," she said.

"You looked like you'd just seen a ghost."

"I told you, I was just startled."

"Empath, remember," Naruto said, with the air of someone laying down an Idiot's Array in sabaac. Padmé just shot him a stink eye.

"I wonder if I can still have people beheaded," she grumbled. They glanced at each other and burst out laughing. Their friendly sniping continued as they walked down the halls. All the while, though, Padmé kept one eye on her young Jedi protector. No matter what he said, she could tell that whatever he had felt in those men's minds had upset him greatly. She had grown fond of him over the past few days, and she was determined to do her best to raise his spirits.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Once they had joined Captain Panaka, Mace, Lieutenant Typho in the meeting room, the briefing began. Mace, by an unspoken yet unanimous agreement, took charge of the proceedings without preamble.

"Based on what Naruto told me about what he sensed from the would-be assassins, I ordered a more in-depth autopsy of all the attackers than would be standard." He pulled the results up on the holotable. "When the tests came back, all of them showed signs of severe withdrawal. They were dosed with something, something so addictive that they all died when they stopped taking it."

"Why was this never found before?" Padmé asked, back to her royal persona. Captain Panaka stepped forward to answer her.

"Before today, there was never a reason to do anything more than a cursory autopsy, your highness. All the terrorists were either killed by local security forces or committed suicide. The withdrawal signs are limited to their brain, and wouldn't show up on anything but the most careful subcellular analysis."

Padmé nodded, clearly unhappy, but just as clearly resigned to it. There wasn't much choice. She couldn't change the past, and for all her idealism, Naruto had noticed that she had a practical streak as well.

"Whatever drug they were given left no trace in their bodies," Mace said. "However, the medical examiner believed it targets the memory and impulse control centers of the brain, among others. In effect-"

"It destroyed their sense of self," Naruto breathed. "That must have been why they felt so broken."

"Indeed. That hunger you felt was likely the withdrawal killing them," Mace said. "They would have been left highly suggestible, and easy to brainwash. This would explain why there were always so few victims compared to what you would expect. They were fighting their programming as best they could."

"So you're telling me that these weren't terrorists?" Padmé said, her fists clenched so tight Naruto could almost hear the tendons creak. "They were victims."

"Yes," Mace said, and the general tension in the room ratcheted up. Naruto couldn't blame them. He was struggling to contain his anger himself. "Whoever is truly responsible for these attacks used these people as weapons."

Naruto ground his teeth at the thought of such callous disregard for sentient life. It reminded him of Orochimaru, or those slavers in the Undercity he and Ahsoka had encountered. Suddenly, as he was brooding on the inexplicable evil of some people, a light seemed to go off in his brain. A series of hitherto unconnected facts all lined up and neatly dropped into place. When they did, he gasped and stepped forward. His eyes lit up with excitement, which drew several curious glances. He hesitated for a moment, though. If he was right, this was going to hurt Padmé. Badly. Still, he pressed forward, resigned to the soon to come storm.

"All these victims were among the missing people, right?" He said, in answer to the unspoken questions.

"We can't confirm it, but that's a reasonable assumption," Lieutenant Typho said. "It would certainly explain why we haven't been able to identify any of them. The Trade Federation destroyed most of the missing people's records."

"Exactly," Naruto said. "But how would the kidnappers know to only target people who didn't have records anymore? Governor Bibble said that they only partially destroyed your census records. Some of them were still intact. If these guys were just targeting random transients, you should have been able to identify at least a few of the attackers."

"What are you getting at, Naruto?" Padmé asked.

"Whoever kidnapped these people and turned them into mindless weapons had to have access to the remaining census data. That's the only way they could have checked to see if their targets were still in the database."

It took a few seconds for the implication of what he had just said to sink in, but once it had, Naruto felt the ripple of shocked realization run through the room. Captain Panaka summed up everyone's thoughts.

"Whoever did this is us in the government," he said, disgust and self-recrimination vying for space in his voice. "How could I not have seen that?"

"Because I don't think they're actually in the government per se," Naruto said. Panaka and Typho shot him confused looks, while Mace gestured for him to continue.

"My clones have been spying on everything going on in the palace since I arrived. No one has accessed that sort of information, or done anything else suspicious. I think whoever this is has close ties to the government, but isn't actually in it. At least, not yet."

Padmé caught the implication first. "You think it's one of the candidates in the election? Why?"

"Because this whole thing is about the election," Mace said. "The Force has been telling me that from the beginning. At first I thought it was about disrupting the process entirely, but it's not. This has all been a plot to swing the vote in someone's favor."

Padmé was noticeably quiet. Naruto suspected she could see where they were going and didn't like what she saw. He hated that this would be painful for her, but he had no choice.

"I'm almost certain it was Deyne Tapalo."

Padmé inhaled sharply. "That's impossible. I've known Deyne for years. My father worked with him. He is a good man. He couldn't be responsible for something like this."

Captain Panaka nodded, but he looked thoughtful. "Deyne is a respected public figure. What evidence points to him?"

"For one, whoever planned the attacks clearly had knowledge of how Naboo security forces operate. The attacks have often been coordinated to the response time of the local authorities, and they always had clear lines of escape into areas that prevented pursuit. It takes law enforcement or military knowledge to plan stuff like that."

Typho was nodding, but Padmé shook her head again. "There are thousands, even tens of thousands of people on Naboo with that knowledge. Plenty of them could potentially get access to the census database. This does not implicate Deyne."

Naruto grimaced beneath his mask. He could feel her frustration and denial, along with a creeping suspicion that maybe, just maybe, her father's friend wasn't as good a man as she had thought.

"There is one other thing. During the attack, the shooters didn't target Cordé. They targeted the handmaidens. They knew you would use a decoy."

That little bombshell didn't go over well at all. Panaka and Typho both cursed sulfurously, while Padmé went pale. Only Mace held his composure, though Naruto could feel his mind whirling away through their bond.

"You're absolutely sure of that, Padawan?" He asked. Naruto nodded, and Mace accepted it.

"There are maybe a dozen people besides your handmaidens who know about the decoy system," Naruto said to Padmé. "Deyne's grandfather was King. He would know about it. Through his contacts in the security force, he could easily get access to the census records. He knows all about Naboo security procedures the same way. Not to mention, he is the only person connected to the election who's benefiting from these attacks. At this rate, he's got a good shot at winning the throne."

Padmé said nothing for a long moment. Naruto could sense the turmoil within her, the desperate wish that what she was hearing didn't make so much sense. The chivalrous side of him, the side that hated to see a friend suffer, wanted to offer some measure of comfort. The more rational side of him, a side that had been growing under his master's tutelage, said that she needed to reach her conclusions on her own.

Her silence stretched on for what felt like hours but was in reality less than a minute. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, subdued, but backed by steel. It said, in no uncertain terms, that she was Queen and her word would be law.

"Your argument is… persuasive, but it is not proof. While I acknowledge we must stop this madness, and soon, I will not allow us to compromise our principles while doing so. Moreover, a false move now could alert the true culprits, as well as throw the entire election into chaos. If you would have me order Deyne's arrest, then bring me evidence of his treachery."

Panaka and Typho both inclined their heads with a murmured "Yes, your Highness." Naruto looked at his master, who stepped forward to speak.

"If that is your decision, then we will begin investigating right away. With your leave?"

Padmé nodded and dismissed them. Mace turned to leave, and motioned for Naruto to follow. Once they were in the halls, he looked down at his Padawan with approval.

"You put that together well, Naruto," he said. "You grow more perceptive by the day. You are learning to trust the Force, and listen to what it says."

Naruto shot him a suspicious look. "You had already figured out it was Deyne, hadn't you?"

Mace tilted his head to one side. "I suspected him, certainly, but I was not sure. I did not know that the assassins had ignored the decoy. That was a crucial detail, one you did well to spot."

Naruto huffed a little, but he let it slide. There were other, more pressing things bothering him at the moment.

"We should go after him now. We know he's guilty. Why don't-"

"Because we do not, in fact, know that he is guilty." Mace cut him off with a severe look. "We suspect he is guilty. Remember Padawan, Jedi are not above the law. No one is. Queen Amidala was right to demand proof, for both practical and moral reasons."

At that, he stopped and pinned Naruto in place with a stare. It wasn't angry or judgmental, but Naruto still felt as if he was being examined, though for what he didn't know. Just when he was about to ask what was wrong, Mace spoke.

"Naruto, can you keep a clear head on this mission?" He asked. Before Naruto could give his emphatic, and slightly offended assent, he stopped him with a raised hand. "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment. You just went through a mental trauma, one you have not yet fully recovered from. This mission has become very sensitive, so I need you to center yourself and give me an honest assessment. Can you keep a clear head?"

Naruto swallowed his initial angry retort. As much as he hated to admit it, his master had a point.

'Force, I nearly blew up at Padmé just for asking a question earlier,' he thought. 'Can I really be level-headed right now?'

He silently went back and forth on the matter, before his face set with determination. In the end, there was only one answer he could give.

"I can handle it. I have to. I have a promise to keep."

Mace looked at him for another long moment before he nodded, apparently satisfied. He knew what promises meant to Naruto and knew to respect them. Even so, if he had actually thought Naruto could not handle it, he would have benched him in a second. His unspoken vote of confidence bolstered Naruto's own.

"Very well. In that case, I want you to tail Deyne. You are less conspicuous than I am, and more suited for stealth work. Follow him everywhere. Find out if he is guilty, and who else is involved if he is. I will follow up on the attackers. If I can identify them, we may find out how and where they were abducted."

Naruto smiled beneath his mask. As familiar as bodyguard work was to him, he had never liked to stand by and wait to be attacked. Here was a chance to do what his instincts always told him to do; find the bad guy and take him down. Even if it was only a glorified stakeout, at least he would be doing something.

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As it turned out, that something was not quite as exciting as Naruto might have hoped. Finding Deyne had been easy enough, as the man's location was usually public knowledge. Following him had been even easier. The man had guards, of course, but no one with the skills to detect Naruto when he was being stealthy. At public events, a change of clothes and a few minutes work with some hair gel and makeup served to disguise him well enough in the crowd. He looked like one of hundreds of avid supporters, or like the child of one at least. When Deyne was out of the public eye, Naruto used good old-fashioned sneakiness to slip close enough to let him see and hear what the man was doing. With the Force enhancing his already formidable senses, a trick Mace had taught him, 'close enough' meant within 250 meters. Usually he managed to get quite a bit closer than that.

He had considered using a henge to insert himself into Deyne's retinue of aides, servants, and advisors, but he had ultimately decided against it. For one, no one Naruto could pose as would be high enough in Deyne's confidences to gain any useful evidence. Indeed, from what Naruto could tell, none of the campaign's inner circle had more than a professional relationship, and they never discussed much besides the campaign and their political agendas. For another, Naruto did not want to spend any more time near Deyne Tapalo than he had to. The man's presence grated on his already oversensitive empathic powers. It wasn't that he radiated especially potent emotions though. It was that he didn't seem to radiate, or indeed feel, much of anything at all. Aside from a constant sense of arrogance and the occasional flash of irritation, his mind felt like a high desert; cold, dry, and lifeless.

He also had the excuse that he could not yet maintain a henge while using the Force. Master Yoda insisted it was possible to use the Force and Chakra at the same time. They were, after all, just two different expressions of the same thing, but neither he nor Jiraiya had made much progress on it yet. Given how invaluable the supernatural insights the Force granted could be, Naruto preferred to use it while investigating.

The last reason Naruto remained hidden was one he would not be sharing with his master, lest he earn a disapproving glower and who knew how many hours of meditation as penance. It was more exciting. The thrill of dodging the guards, the risk of discovery, and the mental image of himself as a cool, undetectable spy, lurking in the shadows, all appealed to his inner nine-year-old. It also helped make up for the stultifying lack of anything interesting to actually spy on.

As Naruto soon learned, the life of a politician was one of endless meetings, handshakes, and smiles so fake that he, an expert on such things, was half tempted to take notes. For the first two days, Deyne was a singularly boring target of observation. So much so that Naruto even began to doubt that he was actually involved. Every time those doubts appeared, though, he would remember the barren tundra he had sensed in Deyne's soul, and he kept at it.

Eventually, late on the third night, just as Naruto was about to turn the watch over to a squad of kage bunshin, his decision to rely on the Force paid off. Just before he channeled chakra to make the clones, he felt a tug at his senses, as if someone were gently turning his head. If there was one thing that Mace had drilled into his head even above the need for patience, it was to listen to the Force, so he listened. The feeling continued and grew until an image of Deyne's quarters resolved in his mind. Something was happening and was happening in there. The only problem was that those quarters were across a courtyard patrolled by armed guards and monitored by security pods. Fortunately for Naruto, it was also shrouded in darkness.

While most diurnal beings would have found the black cloak of a moonless night frightening, to Naruto it was a blessing. Beneath its cover, at once as impenetrable as stone and insubstantial as smoke, he darted across the roofs that ringed the courtyard. A few covert dashes and a single Force-powered jump found him on the roof of Deyne's building, directly above the window into his quarters. With great care, so as not to alert anyone who broke the mold and look up, he leaned over the edge of the eaves and peered through the window.

It seemed he was just in time. Deyne, who normally refused to be disturbed while sleeping, had just got up from his bed to take a call. What was more, he took it on a personal holopad that Naruto had never seen before. It was bulkier than a standard one, and when he used the Force to enhance his vision, he could see why. It had been retrofitted with a whole host of added security measures. From his lessons with Anakin, he recognized encryption and decryption hardware, signal scramblers, tracking countermeasures, and a black market range extender. In short, it was designed for making and receiving calls with no one being able to trace or listen to them. Unless, that is, they were physically present to spy on the caller. Like Naruto was.

A hazy blue figure flickered into life above the holopad. Its features were obscured, but Naruto could hear its voice, heavily modulated, just fine. He idly placed a small recording bug on the windowpane and turned it on. It would transmit a video feed of the room straight to Captain Panaka, who would show it to Padmé. Not even a second after he activated the bug, the indistinct figure began to speak.

"Explain yourself, Tapalo," it said. Even through the window and a layered synthesizer, the annoyance in its voice was clear. Deyne bristled, though at the demand itself or the disrespectful tone Naruto couldn't tell. Probably both.

"I do not have to explain myself to the likes of you. I am-"

"Useful," the figure said. "You are useful. Not indispensable. Do not forget, we are the Black Sun. You live at our pleasure, and it has not been pleasurable of late. Now, explain yourself."

Naruto's eyes went wide, and he nearly slipped off the roof in shock. Black Sun was a name that brought up all kinds of nasty memories. The image of a group of young women and girls, huddled, starved, and frightened in the bowels of Coruscant, drifted across his mind. Black Sun had been responsible for that slaving ring he and Ahsoka had stumbled upon a year ago. They were far more than just petty slavers, though. Black Sun was the largest, oldest, and most powerful criminal organization in the galaxy. They had a hand in everything from drugs to weapons to piracy, and every imaginable crime in between. Rumor held that they had entire governments bought and paid for, and entire systems under their complete dominion. They were vast, evil, and nigh untouchable; and now they were on Naboo. Naruto growled under his breath, and the terracotta shingles cracked under his trembling hands like candy glass.

'Those kriffing bastards are going to pay for what they've done this time,' Naruto thought. 'I'll take them all down, hard.'

It was only when he felt the Fox stir in its seal that he noticed how angry he had become. He had crushed two of the shingles nearly to powder, and the noise of his teeth grinding together threatened to drown out the conversation going on inside. He took a deep, calming breath and ran through one of the control exercises that Mace was so fond of. Once he had subdued his temper, he refocused on the illicit conversation playing out in the room beneath him. Deyne, from the sound of it, had finally caved to the caller's demands.

"I took advantage of a unique opportunity. Queen Amidala made an impromptu visit to an unsecured venue. I still had assets nearby from the earlier attack. It was too good a chance to pass up. Her death would have all but guaranteed my election."

"Yet she did not die. Instead, you wasted the assets we gave you, put her security on high alert, and drew the attention of the Jedi. You are looking more and more like a liability, Tapalo."

Though he tried to hide it, Naruto could see Deyne swallow nervously. A spike of fear colored his otherwise barren emotions. When he spoke, however, his voice maintained its haughty confidence.

"Yes, she lived, but it hardly matters. Even a failed attempt on her life will make the people of Naboo fearful, and push them to me. As for those assets, so what? Make more. They were hardly irreplaceable. I've given you plenty of subjects. Let the Jedi sniff around them. If you did your job as well as you claim, it will amount to nothing."

The figure on the holopad was silent for several tense seconds. The pause lasted so long that Naruto thought they had cut the transmission off. Finally, though, the disguised voice hissed out again.

"Your pretty words do not fool me, Tapalo. Make no mistake, you live only so long as you are of use. Therefore, I suggest you make yourself useful. Clean up this mess. Remember your place. Do not fail like this again. I can assure you, if you do, the consequences will be… prolonged."

With that, the blue figure vanished, plunging the room into darkness once more. Satisfied that he had gathered what he needed, Naruto retrieved and pocketed the bug. He then crawled back up the roof a ways, and tapped his comlink.

"Did you get all that?" He asked. A moment later, his earpiece buzzed with an answer. It was Mace, who must have been watching the feed along with Panaka.

"Yes. The Queen saw it as well. You are to arrest Deyne for treason, criminal conspiracy, and accessory to murder. And Naruto?"

"Yes master?"

"Do it quietly. With Black Sun involved, we can take no chances. If they think we're on to them, they'll kill any prisoners they still have and disappear. We cannot allow that. Extract Deyne and send us coordinates for a rendezvous. Can you do that?"

"Can I sneak a 100 kilogram former soldier out of his own home against his will without alerting the dozens of armed guards and security droids patrolling the area? Sounds fun. Give me five minutes."

Naruto ignored the pulse of disapproval he sensed over their link. If his master honestly expected him to be completely serious all the time, then he would just have to get used to disappointment. Besides, just because he joked around a little on comms didn't mean he wouldn't be serious when it counted. He just wasn't above having fun while he worked.

A quick glance showed Deyne was still awake, and reading a report of some kind in his chair. Luckily, it faced away from the window, leaving Naruto free to act. Without further delay, he dropped noiselessly to the balcony below. A cursory examination of the window found only a basic lock wired to an alarm, which immediately raised his suspicions. Even an honest politician would have better security on their bedroom window. When he looked closer, he saw a more advanced hidden sensor grid that would raise the alarm if he messed with the others. If he had tried to disable the obvious security measures, he would have inadvertently activated the real ones.

'Clever,' he thought. 'Too bad Anakin taught me how to deal with stuff like this six months ago.'

His master probably could have scrambled the security systems with the Force, or else used his skills with shatterpoint to turn the whole thing to dust. Naruto was nowhere near that level of skill and control, but he did have the set of tools that Anakin had gotten him. Two minutes of work with an ion wrench and a bit of fiber optic cable and the sensor grid was now diligently monitoring the bricks in the wall. With that done, the basic lock and alarm combination didn't even last thirty seconds against him.

'Thank you Anakin,' he thought as he ghosted into the room and crept around to the side of Deyne's chair. Before he could notice the sudden breeze from the open window, Naruto struck. His flattened fist slammed into the man's carotid artery, and Deyne crumpled without so much as a whimper. He caught him before he could hit the floor and eased him down silently. As soon as he was satisfied that no one had heard him, Naruto bound Deyne with ninja wire, hand and foot. That done, he pulled a scroll out of his pouch and unrolled it, revealing a complex sealing array. The seal was mostly of his own design, though Jiraiya had helped with the more advanced aspects. It was a modified storage seal, designed to hold and transport live prisoners. Naruto judged it to be infinitely preferable to lugging Deyne's limp mass across rooftops in the dead of night.

As quick as he could, he molded his chakra and sealed Deyne into the scroll. Once he had tucked it back into his pouch, he crossed his fingers and created a single kage bunshin.

"Henge into Deyne, and try to make some excuse to lie low. Pretend you're sick or something. Just buy me as much time as you can, and don't let anyone see you dispel."

The clone gave him a crisp salute that somehow contained more disrespect than any number of rude gestures ever could, but it did as ordered. Naruto just sighed and thanked the Force that it hadn't actually talked back. Sometimes he truly regretted not learning some other jutsu from the Forbidden Scroll that night. Still, his clones managed to be ever so slightly more useful than they were irritating, so he resigned himself to putting up with them. He briefly wondered if other people found him as annoying as he found his clones, but he dismissed the notion. That was impossible. He was awesome. His clones were just defective.

With his task done, Naruto took one last look around to be sure he had left no evidence. If there was one thing both Kakashi and Jiraiya had, by dint of much effort, managed to teach him, it was how to be thorough. To be fair, they had both taught him a great deal more than that, but taking the time to be thorough had been an especially hard lesson for him to learn. Once he was satisfied that nothing was out of place, he slipped back out the window, reset the security systems, and vanished into the night like a particularly sarcastic phantom.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

So, as promised, Black Sun has returned. They make for a wonderfully sinister and flexible secondary protagonist, and I think they are woefully underused in Star Wars canon. You'll find out more about why they're on Naboo and what their goals are in the next chapter, but it's probably nothing good.

The part of this chapter I went back and forth on the most was Naruto's reaction to Padmé prying into his past. Normally, Naruto would never lose it at a friend like he does here. In this instance, though, he is still traumatized from last chapter. Keep that in mind for the rest of this arc, as it became a factor in every decision I had him make. As an author, I'm a big believer in consequences. If I hurt my characters, either mentally or physically, I always try to have that play a part in their story going forward, at least until it is resolved. If the Marine Corps taught me anything, it's that trauma lingers, and has both acute and chronic effects on people. If you ever think I have not properly portrayed how a character would react to a specific event, please let me know. I don't always write emotion well, despite my stated goal, so any input is valuable.

I hope to have the next chapter out before the end of the month, but I make no guarantees. Until then, be well, and leave any questions, comments, theories, or recommendations you may have in the review section. Thank you for reading.