24: The Green Dot

"Hmph…" Yuichi noted his change of setting dispassionately. He sat on the edge of a walkway on Coruscant, the heavy sky overhead loosing sheet after sheet of cold rain. He flicked his cigarette over the edge and watched the tiny ember spiral into the darkness below his feet. "It's been a while."

"It has." Nanashi sat next to him and, as usual, there was a bit of distance between them. It wasn't due to a lack of affection on either's part; it was just the kind of people they were. "How are you?"

"Apart from you being dead? Pfft! Fine." He could smell the wet pavement and feel its roughness beneath his hands. This was obviously no ordinary dream. "This real?"

"From a certain point of view."

"I hate that mind-warping Jedi relativistic bullcrap." Mr. Sakaki didn't notice that he was moderating his language as he always had around her. "Are you my daughter or am I just having a dream?"

"I'm here."

He looked at her and turned his gaze back to the chasm beneath them. He fumbled for a moment, then, "You… uh, look well."

Her lips quirked upward slightly. "Is it that hard to say something nice?"

"Take what you can get, ya little brat."

"Ahh… It's been a while since anyone's called me 'little.' I kinda missed it."

Yuichi made a sound that might have been a laugh. "Speaking of little, what's with the twerp?"

"I'm sorry?"

"This, uh, Chiyo-chan. How does she know us?"

"Oh, you've met Chiyo-chan! She's my… well. Master Kamineko's student."

"The last Jedi, eh?"

"Yes."

He considered for a time. "So why the hell is she so disgustingly cute?"

Nanashi shrugged. "No idea."

"You know I can't stand cute things," he growled, sounding almost sulky. In response, the younger Sakaki laughed out loud. It was startling--her father couldn't remember the last time either of them had laughed like that. He smiled a little out of reflex. "What?"

"I just missed you," she sighed, still grinning.

"So is there a high and mighty cosmic purpose for this visitation?"

"No. I just wanted to see you before I had to go," she giggled again, taking in the grim landscape. "You're in as sunny a mood as ever, I see… oh, hello, Marco." The huge marble-calico cat meandered around them and poked her side. She picked him up and nuzzled his furry cheek. "You look hungry."

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am!" Marco replied.

Sakaki Sr. stared.

"You'd better feed him when he wakes up," Nanashi advised as she put the cat down. Marco looked between them. "If you'll excuse me, I have a dream of my own to attend." He nodded to Nanashi, "Master," and then to Mr. Sakaki. "Idiot-who-gives-me-food."

Nanashi laughed again as the cat vanished. "…the hell?" Yuichi managed. "He'd probably like you more if you didn't throw him across the room," his daughter explained lightly.

The Black Knight lit another cigarette and regarded her oddly. "I've never seen you like this… you were always such a serious kid. What gives, eh?"

"All through my life, I felt like there was this huge weight on my shoulders." The young woman leaned back, closing her eyes and smiling softly. "It's such a relief, you know..."

"Huh? What's a relief?" It had stopped raining at some point during their conversation; though the clouds still hung thickly over them, the landscape was somehow less foreboding. "…Nanashi?"

"You'll see, some day." Sakaki rose to a crouch and kissed his cheek. "I, I have to go now. 'Bye, father."

He blinked at the abrupt farewell. "Yeah. See you later."

Her cheer faded. "Probably not."

"Now hold on!" he yelled, but his eyes were already opening on the Dark Charger's cockpit ceiling. "Goddammit," he said softly. "Nanashi…"


"Yuichi Sakaki. The man's an animal. No compassion, no restraint, coldest bastard you ever met. He'll take anyone if you pay enough and kill anyone who gets in his way to do it." Shiro placed a hard-copy on Grand Moff Kimura's desk and stood back. "This is the one that Matsuyama hired."

Kimura took the paper in hand and adjusted his opaque glasses. "Hm. And we're certain the old Intelligence Chief was bad?"

"Yes, sir," Kenichi said, stepping up next to his partner. "I put a worm on his console two days before he left. It captured the message on the end there."

"I see it…" it was a text-only message to the Black Knight. "Who's this 'guest' he's talking about?"

"We don't know, but there're a few theories going around the office. We think it's most likely that girl that Lord Nochichi was showing interest in. We know she was involved in that… er, incident on Bespin, and that's where Sakaki here resurfaced."

"And more importantly, why do I care?"

Shiro blinked. "Uh, sir? It's… I thought that it was your charge to eliminate the Rebellion. She's obviously important to them, and if she's the one who destroyed the Implacable…"

"Ah, yes, the Rebellion," Kimura said quietly, as if just remembering. Had he really been that obsessed with Kaori? "Yes. Did Matsuyama ever get a reply to this?"

"Well, sir, as you can see there, Matsuyama tells him to 'follow the green dot' when they get out of Thyferra Primary Spaceport. A day after he left, Sakaki sent a message that said 'Green dot? What the hell are you talking about?' So if we wanted to take them, we could probably figure something out."

"I like that idea. I will give it serious thought. Now before you go, gentlemen, how do you feel about this?" He held a notebook out to them. Kenichi took it and the two intelligence men leaned together to look.

"Er, what is it, sir?"

"My proposal for the new female uniforms."

"Well… uh…" Kenichi was tongue-tied. "Well."

"I don't think it'll fly," Shiro commented with a smile, "But it'd sure be nice!"

"I thought so, too. Wish me luck."


Towering trees of an impossible verdant hue swayed in a thick, fragrant breeze under a ridiculously blue sky. The city, shot through with bands and speckles of forest, was built from a white/red/orange clay that stayed cool even in the punishing sunlight. Traffic was almost entirely pedestrian, happy, unhurried people going about their days.

On Thyferra, sunglasses were standard issue. A touch closer to its sun than most humans were comfortable with, the rainforest world was ridiculously bright, hot and humid. Now, the first two didn't bother the Tatooine-raised Chiyo in the least, but that last had her sagging like a wilted flower.

She and Yuichi walked through Thyferra Planetary Spaceport, dressed in the Thyferran style of loose, light garments in pastel hues. There was also another style that many young women chose to wear, and it ensured that the guards and customs agents were always at least a little distracted.

A good thing, too. Though most of them were too young to remember the modest fame of the Black Knight, Yuichi always ran a slight risk landing on any civilized world. As for Chiyo, she still hadn't figured out how to do her pigtails one-handed, and they'd broken out the green dye again. (The Customs Agent had given her a strange look, which she found rather rude, but a much ruder glower from Yuichi resolved the situation.)

"This place is beautiful!" Chiyo said brightly, managing to seem upbeat even thoroughly run down by the climate as she was. "I read all about it, you know, on the way here. There's an indigenous race here, did you know? They're called the Vratix! They're these great big insects, at least 2 meters tall…"

As the girl nattered on, Yuichi glanced at her sideways. He happened to know that she'd barely slept since awakening the first night, that whatever happened to her had struck a much deeper blow than just taking off her arm, and that she was on her way to join the impossible fight against the Empire. And yet here she was, sunny as Thyferra itself. Resilient little bugger, he thought appreciatively.

"…they know all about the rainforest's plants, in fact, I read that Vratix invented almost 70 of all the medicines on the galactic market. Isn't that incredible?"

"Sure," Yuichi said disinterestedly. "Wait, did you say something about carbonite in there?"

Chiyo blinked. "Yeah, uh, they perfected the process for preserving living things in carbonite here."

"So that's…" Yuichi slapped his forehead. "Of course!"

"What?"

"I didn't manage to get Ohyama, and he made off with this block of carbonite from Osaka. I couldn't figure out why he wanted it."

"Ms. Tomo!" Chiyo gasped. "It must be her! I wondered why I sensed… Mr. Sakaki, are you still after Ohyama?"

"Yeah, and I'll get him, too. Taught the arrogant little cock everything he knows, but not everything I know."

"M-mr. Sakaki! Please, you have to help us rescue her!"

"She's probably dead, kid. Those industrial tanks aren't made to-"

"Don't even say that!" Chiyo took his sleeve and stared up at him earnestly. "Please! I'm begging you, will you please help us?"

Yuichi turned away. Damn puppy-dog eyes! This was why he hated cute things! "All right," he said out of the corner of his mouth, "Fine."

Chiyo threw her arm around him. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Sakaki!"

"Don't mention it," he grumbled, pushing her away gently.

They exited the spaceport (it was mostly open air, like nearly all civic areas on Thyferra) and sat on a bench. The city stretched out before them and above in a network of bridges amid the towering trees. As well as the usual human traffic, they now saw small groups of Vratix leaping about on powerful, reverse-jointed legs.

"They look kinda creepy," Yuichi observed.

"Mm," Chiyo settled back and looked over the searingly bright landscape, drumming her fingers absently on the bench. "So, a green dot?"

"He didn't say anything more. I guess- oh, check it out." Without an ounce of concern, he indicated a small green laser-sight hovering on his chest. "Well, that makes me feel welcome." He raised his middle-finger in the sniper's general direction and stood. "This is goodbye for now."

"Goodbye, Mr. Sakaki, and thank you."

Without another word, the Black Knight strode off and instantly vanished in the sparse crowd. The laser sight slid to the ground and skittered off in another direction. "Okay," Chiyo said gamely, and followed it.

The sniper must have had an awesome position, because the dancing sight led her for quite a trip. Whenever she lost it, he would shine it in her eye and circle the ground at her feet until she started again. Chiyo followed the little light across several walkways, finally into a Vratix quarter, where the insect-men were polite enough to avoid squashing her in their breakneck leaping.

Here, something rather eerie happened. A large Vratix, nearly six feet tall, landed squarely in her path. His exoskeleton was painted solidly black, unbroken except by his dull eyes and strips of white cloth wound through his claws. "Eep! Er, h-hello," she greeted timidly.

The monstrous creature nodded to her gravely and leapt again, gone as fast as it had come. She looked around but none of the other Vratix seemed to notice; she almost wondered if it the visitation had happened at all. What was that all about? Before she could consider further, the laser sight was again in her eye. "Ow! I'm going!"

Of course, it occurred to her that she was being steadily led away from crowds. It would make sense if she was meeting someone who wanted to be unnoticed, but it would also make sense if the sniper wanted her to be in a place with no witnesses…

You're just being paranoid, she berated herself.

As she mounted the walkway out of the Vratix quarter, though, she just about had a litter of kittens. For, about thirty yards away and walking towards the spaceport were the last two people she ever expected to see.

Miru and Yuka moved in a great hurry, flushed from the planet's heat. Of all the places to see those two! When had they left Tatooine? "Hey!" she called happily, momentarily forgetting all about her quest after the laser sight.

Yuka turned and gasped in surprise--not just at seeing Chiyo, of course, but seeing her with long green hair and one arm. She dropped a bundle that she had been carrying and the light cloth instantly billowed out in the constant breeze. It was a banner they were evidently going to hold between them. 'Welcome C-Chan!' it read.

"That's cute," Chiyo said with a smile… then noticed its design. As Yuka tried to recover it, she saw that the message was painted over a large green circle. Or rather, a green dot. They were the welcoming party.

Which meant…

The laser sight blazed once more in her eyes, and this time she doubted that it was just a friendly reminder.

"Do you think they're all right?" Yomi asked. She was stretched out on one of their room's beds, flipping through a book of Hyperspatial Mathematics. Talking to Chiyo had reminded her of her own, tragically interrupted, studies of long ago and she was thinking of resuming some time. She had been an ace student, back in the day.

Kagura leaned back in their only chair, feet resting on a small table and a magazine spread across her chest. Though she had been laid-back before, the humidity made her positively torpid. "What could go wrong?" she replied lazily, "Nobody knows we're here."

"That's if you trust Matsuyama." Yomi marked her place and set the book aside.

"I think he's all right. His guy saved us on Bespin, after all."

"Not all of us."

Kagura sat up and looked at her, a bit abashed. "Sorry, I didn't mean… well… uh, I was gonna go get something to eat. Want anything?"

"No, I'm not hungry."

"You're not…" the soldier blinked, "Since when are you not hungry?"

Yomi's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"

"Well, do your thing." Kagura said quickly, then tossed the magazine onto the bed next to her friend. "Check this out, though. It's open to the page."

As the soldier left, Yomi looked the indicated page of Thyferra News and Galaxy Report over with morbid interest. It concerned the incident on Bespin, telling the tale of a (largely fictional) battle between heroic stormtroopers and a huge band of scurvy privateers, with a large color illustration of Osaka covered with cutaways to show key points in their epic clash. Nowhere was Princess Kaori mentioned or the fact that most of the casualties were civilians rising against the Imperials.

There was a brief obituary for Ayumu, who had been killed in her office by a planted bomb. It seemed she hailed from Thyferra and her family ran a good bit of the Bacta trade here, which explained why the incident, five sectors distant, was even covered. Yomi read the retrospective with mixed feelings, wondering how much the poor woman's arm had been twisted to make her sell them out. That isn't the face of a traitor, is it? she wondered, looking at the sweetly smiling picture.

There was also a small collection of her wit and wisdom, which, at first blush didn't seem very witty or wise. But on further inspection, Yomi found that if you thought about the sayings sort of sideways…

She tossed the magazine aside. Thinking about Osaka, the Baroness and the Empire in general only reminded her of Tomo. With a sigh, Yomi returned to her mathematics.

A vicious emerald bolt grazed across Chiyo's temple and punched a hole in one of the Vratix dwellings. For a few seconds the sky was dark with utterly silent but obviously panicking insect men, the thrum of their vestigial wings battering the air. With a surprised cry, Chiyo stumbled backwards and tried to catch herself with an arm that wasn't there.

"Oof!"

Fortunately, Miru and Yuka had the sense to take cover. The sniper had no reason to pay them any heed until he was done with Chiyo.

As she falteringly regained her feet, she realized that it was pretty cold comfort. How long did those things take to recycle? The answer came just as she started to run, blowing a crater in the bridge at her feet. She stumbled but somehow kept going, her strength ebbing quickly in the horrible humidity.

Her upbringing made it difficult to cope with too much water.

A bolt shrieked by ahead of her. With the Force to warn her of incoming shots, a single attacker wasn't really much of a problem; but still, she didn't have any idea of what to do about him. She sprawled behind cover and frantically turned the problem over in her mind… but then the question was taken out of her hand.

Streaking around her came dark, hulking forms; black-painted Vratix spreading in a semicircle from Chiyo's cover, springing with impossible speed from perch to perch. A single bolt stabbed out, narrowly missing one of them, before the whole phalanx of armored monsters descended on the shooter.

Chiyo thought she might have heard a brief, strangled cry, but managed to convince herself that it was her imagination.


The Katana rushed back towards the Rebel Armada, having collected Chiyo and her party. Kagura found her alone in its observation deck, pondering darkly much as she had after the battle with the Implacable, absently drumming her fingers on the transparisteel view-port and staring coldly at her reflection.

"Hey," the soldier greeted with forced cheer, "How's the big war hero? And how's that new arm working out?"

Chiyo took her hand off of the window and made a fist. "Pretty well," she said in an eerie parody of her usual good cheer, "Isn't it amazing what the Thyferrans can do?"

"What happened to you anyway? Was it Nochichi?"

Chiyo winced. "…yes."

"Every time you run up against that guy you get messed up a little worse. First the river, then the radiation burns and now… but hey, what are you doing up here? Miru and Yuka are looking for you."

"Just thinking."

"Listen, they mentioned something pretty weird. What's all this about a 'diminutive slayer?' Yuka wouldn't tell me."

"A hero of Vratix prophecy. They think it's me."

Kagura smiled and punched her shoulder. "Ha! It even has 'short' built right into it! A hero of prophecy? I knew you had it in ya, runt!"

"It's not funny, Ms. Kagura! I was their signal to rise out of bondage."

"Rise out of… but they're pacifists aren't they?"

"They still are. They…" Chiyo looked at the ground, her voice suddenly thick. "They tore off their own wings."

"What?"

"The wings serve no purpose, but…" the girl swallowed, "But they're a symbol of virtue and ascending spirit. I can't believe they'd… they'd actually give that up."

"Hey," Kagura put an arm across Chiyo's back. "You can't control what those idiots do, Chiyo-chan."

"But… but I…" tears started tracking down her face. She spoke very softly. "I don't want this… everywhere I go people get hurt and die…" This last was almost inaudible. "I'm just a kid."

Before Kagura could respond, the young Jedi threw herself into her arms and started sobbing. The soldier stood, hugging her back hesitantly, as close to absolute panic as she ever had been. She didn't know what to do about this!

"I'm sorry, Ms. Kagura! I'm sorry!"

"No, don't worry. It'll—uh—it'll be all right…" But then Chiyo fell silent, face still buried in her chest. Kagura stroked her hair gently, trying to think of something appropriately comforting to say. Suddenly, the girl tensed. "No…" her voice was shockingly clear and hard. "This won't do."

"Chiyo-chan, what--?"

The Jedi suddenly tore herself free, spinning and striking the viewport with her artificial hand hard enough to make the transparisteel ring in its frame. "I can't go on like this! I can't be a child anymore!"

"What? No one's…"

Chiyo ignored her. "I'm done…" WHACK! "…being a weak…" WHACK! "…child!" She hit the viewport even harder, but then the sound seemed to startle her out of whatever had gripped her. "Uh, sorry," she said abashedly. "I… sorry. Um, I need to be alone for a while." She scurried away as Kagura tried to reply.

Left alone, the soldier ran her hands over the viewport. Sure enough, there were four small divots in the metal, left by the girl's slender fingers. Kagura felt a chill in spite of herself. And honestly, she wasn't sure whether she was scared for Chiyo…

Or of her.