H'okay. So. Because we're kinda being pressured into keeping replies personal, I'm going to start replying to each review individually through email. If I read something amusing or fun, I might post it up here, but I'll ask you first, I promise. :)

So, starting with this round, you should be getting replies pretty soon after you review. If you do review. I'm smirking right now, because I know there are more people who I'd like to meet that read this story and don't review. (Nudge, nudge.)

And here's chapter nineteen! Enjoy.

As Stribur and Leia made their way down the back slope of the ledge, Leia began to wonder what precisely she thought she was doing. The initial point of her mission to Itets-Enuzore had been to sign a deal with Ganscorp, a company of which her unexpected roommate's father was not only an employee but a board member. At this particular moment, however, she was sliding downhill to investigate a completely different company than the one she was assigned to with an Intel agent she was impersonating while on what was supposed to be a shopping trip between two old school friends.

Did I do this? I don't think I did this. She blew aside a strand of red hair that had stuck to the sweat on her face. Actually, I'm fairly sure this is all Solo's fault.

It was her backup thought, and it had served her well over the year she had known him.

"How're we doing this, then?" Stribur puffed out between breaths. "The finding out relevant stuff part, I mean."

"We look at all the cliché and boring ways to do it and pick the one that seems the most flavorful and interesting, okay?"

Stribur laughed, a squeak mixed with a pant and a grunt as her shoulder caught a particularly nasty edge. "Er, okay. 'cept I think boring and cliché have their uses. They're boring and cliché for a reason, eh?"

"Right. We could either try to do some incredibly flexible acrobatics and flip ourselves into that side window or one of us could try to seduce the foreman to let us in to copy sensitive files." Leia licked her lips as she struggled to remain right side up on the slope. "Either of those sound particularly appetizing to you?"

"Hmm. No."

"Thought not. In that case, I'd say distraction is the name of our game."

"What, er, what kind of distraction?"

Leia stopped her descent to look at Stribur. "I was thinking we could start singing the Corellian Spacer's theme and get a massive dance party going."

"Ah ha, see, I am getting better at reading you. I can at least tell when you're being sarcastic now."

Leia grinned as she resumed her awkward backwards-climb down the hill. "Mmm. Nice." She exhaled loudly as her foot found another purchase. "So what's it going to be? Acrobatics, seduction or distraction?"

"Oh, gods, please! I didn't – she's on the road. Did you - ?"

The men in yellow passed her with alarm in their eyes as the man behind the desk turned his head and gave a snort of boredom. "Can I help you?"

Leia swiped a hand across her brow as she rushed to the desk and smeared a long streak of dirt onto the top of it. "Yes, sir, my friend. She's – oh, gods – she's out there."

He stood up with obvious hesitation, shaking his head to clear his eyes of his long, golden hair. "What were the both of you doing here in the first place? Ma'am."

"Please, sir, it's a long story and she may need medical attention – I'm not sure. I just, she flipped over and fell, I think, and I, and I-I – "

"You're sure it's an emergency?"

"Well, yes, maybe, I just, help her, please." Leia steadied herself with the counter, using its support to lift her upper body. "Please."

With a moan of protest and a loud exhalation, the desk manager moved around the desk and strode past Leia as she collected herself and double-clicked her comm.

"Why you women have to be so dependent is far beyond me, you whining, manipulative, money-grubbing –"

You stupid, slimy, egotistical, son of a –

"Where did you say your friend was?"

"Oh – up around this building. Maybe we should call somebody or something, she seemed so hurt – "

He turned to look at her, eyes squinting. "I can handle this. There is no need to waste anyone else's time. You're already wasting a great deal of mine."

Nerfherding, idiotic –

"Well, I am so sorry, sir, to waste your … gods, she was supposed to be right over there." Leia pointed at a far building, a break station, it appeared, for the manual laborers. "That green thing over there."

He was silent as he approached the building, and Leia reached behind her into her pack and followed him as he made a complete circuit around the shanty. He turned with a heavy breath, mouth open and eyes squinted, then took a step back and reached his hands up behind his head.

"Hi," Leia smiled as she closed one eye to aim the holdout blaster at the man's forehead. "Unless you have a serious desire to get a bolt of pretty complicated super-heat put through your thick skull, I suggest you keep it down." She winked. "For the sake of fun and all."

He nodded.

"I have no real aspiration to kill anyone today. It's been decently good, today has, and I'd be much appreciative if it would stay that way. Prembli?"

He looked up quickly, eyes widening. "Old Corellian?"

"Well, I picked up a few phrases from a friend of mine. Colorful phrases, too. I'm sure I could say some terrible things about your mother if I thought hard enough." Leia nodded to the man. "You seem surprised."

"How did you know I was Corellian?"

Leia reached back again to her pack and retrieved a palm-sized metal disc. "You look it. Tall, dark, handsome – " she pressed the disc to the man's neck and stepped back as he fell " – and completely dense."

She watched as his eyelids fluttered closed and his breathing became steady and slow, then grabbed him under the arms and strained to pull him into the shanty. After five minutes of slow and languorous hauling, she managed to dump the man onto the table in the shanty, then searched through a few cupboards and shelves. She moved over to the other side, where five backpacks were lined up, dirty and sandy all of them, and rifled through them, flinging rags and holozines around.

"Yes – " Leia pulled her prize free of the third pack she searched, a nearly full bottle of cheap whiskey, moved over to the table, and dowsed the man's clothes and hair with the amber liquid, situating the bottle in the crook of his right arm.

Standing back, she surveyed her work. Fine work, if I do say so myself. She smirked. I don't know why no one consults me about pranks on base.

She restashed her blaster and the tranquilizer, fresh from Stribur's "packed lunch" weapon's stash she'd discovered early on the way here, opened the shanty door, checked to make sure no one was around, and crept towards their hideout and meeting spot.

After nearly fifteen minutes without any sign of success or failure, Leia began to panic.

"Graduate, come in. Come in, Graduate." Pause. "Graduate, do you copy?" Pause. "Come in. Do you read?"

Leia sighed and lowered her comm to her side.

Where is she?

Another five minutes passed by.
When Stribur was twenty minutes late to their rendevous, Leia resorted to outside assistance.

"Nerfherder, do you copy?"

A scrambled burst of vocalizations broke through, then a snap and a clear connection was created. "I copy, Monarch. What's up?"

"Graduate isn't answering her comm. I lost her sometime between 1100 and 1200 while she went for the main objective."

There was a pause and an exhalation of breath. "Where was she?"

"Not a safe question to ask, Nerfherder."

"Right. Scrambling frequency. Hang on a sec."

If I went in through that side window, maybe I could see …

"Okay. Where was she, Monarch?"

"At the foot of the hill. About thirty yards away from where I am now."

Another pause, then a sharper, harder voice issued out of her comm. "I want you out of there."

She tilted her head in annoyance. "And leave her there? I can't do that."

"I'm coming to check it out, but I won't be able to concentrate if you're still in the red, alright, Monarch?"

"But – "

"For once, just do what I tell you to do."

Leia shook her head as if he could see her. "I am not leaving her!"

"You leave now, or I'm going to take my ship and pull you out of this ridiculous situation entirely. I've had it with this planet and I'm tired of watching you pull stupid stunts for some data or info or whatever that may or may not be useful to anyone, much less worth your life."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Watch me." His voice dropped into a mildly threatening tone.

If I leave now, I can get back to the Sorreh's before they leave. And if he really is coming –

She sighed in defeat. "You're coming?"

"The minute I know you're leaving."

I'm leaving Stribur. I'm leaving her –

"Yeah. On my way. Move fast."

"Back to class. Back to class and professors and tests and papers and those annoying blonde models walking around with the long legs and the perfect skin." Ivoen swept her hair around in the wind, watched the splay gulls as they flew overhead.

Leia didn't look at her. "They don't have perfect skin, Ivoen." Stribur should have been picked up already, if he left when he said he would.

"Yeah, they do. You know those Filian Boxic Plants? Arni's dad brought her three to set up on her windowsill."

He'll comm, right?

I shouldn't have left her.

She's captured, it was a trap, Vader's got her on the scan grid –

" – Rims?"

"Hmm, what?"

"Where were you just now?" Ivoen gave a slight smile, the first Leia had seen directed her way since the "drug ring" explanation. "You looked like you were a thousand kilometers away."

Leia smiled, freshly distracted from her ruminations. "Just tired, I guess."

They resumed the normal chatting as the speeder cruised away from Rivaucnev City, the winds battering their progress back to Itets-Enuzore. Leia spent most of the drive either smoothing over relations between her roommate and her roommate's parents as mother and daughter argued politely over matters of style and personal taste or staring out the transpasteel window as the ocean sped away from them and the sun hid itself behind massing fogs of passing clouds. The bursts of warmth that rained down on them when the sun proved victorious against the blanket of clouds was enough to remind her that Han was on his way to get Stribur, that Han had never actually failed her, that the situation was under control because he was involved in it.

That thought in itself was frightening enough to give her pause.

Only when she heard the three-toned incoming call notification did she loosen her grip on the speeder's handrest.

"Jace. Have you found my compact yet?"

"No. Haven't seen it." He paused, then continued in a slightly brighter tone of voice. "Looked everywhere for it and thought maybe I'd get to it before you got back to school, but it looks like its hiding."

Dammit. Just what I need. Another reason to feel guilty.

"Good news, though. It's not broken like we thought it might be."

Leia brought her head up in surprise. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. And I think I found your old datapad while I was looking for your compact."

My what?

"I'll let you know if it is for sure once I've opened it to see if it's yours."

But, Stribur –

"I'll find your compact. Don't worry about it. Just concentrate on school. It'll be fine."

Leia sighed. "Okay. Well, thanks for checking."

"Yeah. Anything for you, Sweetheart."

Leia's mind blanked at his words. "Uh, yeah. Talk to you later," she bit out. He decides to be gentlemanly now?

She shook her head and continued to study the departing coast, focused entirely on the Stribur situation and not on Ivoen, even as she continued to talk to Leia in an ongoing rant about self-centered music critics with no imagination.

What just happened here today?

What happened to Stribur? Why does Han think she's hiding? And what is she hiding from in the first place?

Leia sighed and brought a hand to her temple.

Stribur's gone, we've got no information regarding the hibridium, and I have about three hundred text documents to read for psych.

Am I done with this college-student-spy-infiltrator thing yet?

Okay, people. Here's the deal. I went shopping today and praise wasn't on sale. Well, not the name brand. The knock-off was there, but I can always tell the difference. It might be the aspertame. Whatever. The point is, I need y'all to give me praise or criticism because I'm a bit low on both lately. :) Si? Okay. Awesome.