Kess struggled to draft this proposal because the final decision wasn't a meeting of the minds, nor was it a mediation for both sides to compromise to a middle. The answer was a flat-out "no", but Kess fretted how to word a convincing argument why the Ewoks should be left alone for full and unmolested use of their moon without the scientific back-up to prove they were sentient and civilized enough to hold legal galactic ownership of Endor. The registration listed them as Nature's Tenants, which by itself was correct, but they -

"Tayla is in trouble."

Kess heard the voice as clearly as if it were in her own ears, but there was no one in her office to say it. She looked over her shoulder and found no one standing there. She reached out with her Force senses, but nothing felt out of the ordinary.

Curious, she got out of her desk chair and stepped through the open door to the office common. Raol was finishing up a comm call, but his voice was different, too distant and quiet to have the volume and clarity as though someone were standing right behind Kess's chair. The voice she heard was a man, perhaps elderly, with an Inner Rim accent much like her grandfather's, but she knew it wasn't him. She would have recognized his voice if it was Obi Wan Kenobi.

Raol finished his comm call and gave her his attention for orders. Clearly-and not surprisingly-the office manager hadn't heard the voice.

Kess closed her eyes and reached out, speaking in voice and on the Force simultaneously. "Where is she?"

Paused and quiet to pay attention, she only felt the usual buzz of the population at work in the surrounding offices, and the loud hum of life on the over-populated planet beneath her feet. Yet she focus enough to listen if any of those emotions were trying to send a message specifically to her.

All was quiet.

Luke emerged from the conference room door and was still gesturing his guests to be quiet for a moment. He eyed her across the common and recognized something out of place. He paid attention.

Kess whispered at him. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard you," he noted. "What's going on?"

"I heard a voice say Tayla's in trouble."

Luke closed his eyes and reached out too.

Kess lifted an index finger for both men to wait and be quiet, then spoke soft and loud through the Force again. "Where is Tayla?"

Her voice rippled out in a dozen musical notes like tiny distorted waves on water. It echoed and faded into the background noise in the distance. She listened hard, sensed out, and waited for an answer, but her mind was already listing the best places to go look: the whore house, the school, Rikatin Street Market...

The silence stretched longer than Kess had the patience for. Perhaps that first message was the only clue she needed anyway. She and Luke exchanged a glance, but . . . nothing. He shook his head too.

Kess turned and reached for-

"403 Civil Precinct."

The voice faded in and faded away again. Kess stopped short and looked to Luke to see if he heard it too. He lifted his brows and shook his head, but then he flicked his chin, go.

Kess grabbed her rebel jacket off a chair and moved her feet to the exit as she put it on. She was already trotting through the door when she heard the voice a third time.

"You only have a few hours."

Walking into the 403rd Senate District Civil Police Precinct gave Kess some pause. The officers weren't stormtroopers exactly, but the white armor and black body suit were close enough to make her uncomfortable. There must have been thirty or forty of them in the big room, scattered about the many workstations, comm terminals, and coffee mess. Kess cleared her throat to approach the front desk and quietly reported in. "Jedi Lendra. I understand you may be holding a Tayla Jeeling."

Some helmets turned at her entry, others turned to hear her name. As she waited, Kess tried not to stare back and ended up falling into an accidental parade rest. Her senses alerted her that most of the people in this room felt she was a criminal, but she held onto the senses that a few of those people felt she still did a good thing by facilitating the cease fire.

Commandant Halidan came out in the same stormtroopers-looking armor but with blue stripes of rank on the white armor shoulders. "Jedi Lendra?"

She nodded and brought her feet together. "I understand you may be holding a Tayla Jeeling?"

"Who called you?" His tone was accusatory.

"That's um..." she glanced around to all the onlookers, all the occupants of the room. No Tayla. Finally, she admitted to the Commandant. "That's complicated. Do you have her?"

He considered this a moment, looked at the floor, then back at her, then motioned her to come along. Once in a back office, he didn't offer her a seat and didn't sit down himself. Instead he faced her down. "We have her. She wouldn't tell us her last name and her DNA didn't match anything on file, so we couldn't bring up a record of her legal guardianship. She's been asking for us to contact you, but since it was easy to confirm you don't retain legal guardianship of anyone, we didn't believe her. As a minor, we can only hold her for five days before we have to transfer her to a secured juvenile facility, in which case even a legal guardian must retain a special release order for permission to keep the child at home to wait for the trial."

"And without it?"

"Most minors without prompt legal guardianship wait for their trials in Juvenile Detention. By law, we have to transfer her SJF by 1700 today if legal guardianship doesn't come to take her. We hoped the clock on the wall break Tayla's stubbornness enough to give us some identifying information."

"What's she in for?"

"Soliciting without a license."

A reluctant chuckle blurted out of Kess's mouth.

"She approached a Senator on the Avenue of Core Founders and he reported her into a Purple Guard."

Trying not to laugh and growl frustration at the same time, Kess rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. The Commandant gave her this brief moment to react to this news, but Kess recognized time was of the essence, and she had no idea how long it took to process a release. "So what do I need to do to get her out of here before 1700?"

"You've already done it. Her last name is Jeeling?"

"Woah. Yes. But wait a minute."

"No." He shook his head and began to leave the room. "I can't wait a minute. If we can't find and get her LG here in the next three hours, we have to transfer her."

Kess spread her hands. "Can't I take her?"

"No." The white face/black eye helmet shook his head at her. "You don't have any legal rights here."

Kess blinked back, then tried again. "Can I talk to her?"

The helmet turned as he considered this a moment, then looked back at her. "First tell me how you found out she was here."

She flattened her mouth but shrugged the truth. "I sensed it on the Force. Tayla's my Jedi Apprentice. That's why she wanted you to comm me instead of her mother."

He shifted his feet back to her and angled his head. "So why didn't you sense it five days ago?"

In order to not have to go into explanations this guy would never understand, Kess came up with a quick and convincing lie, "Because she's just getting started in her Jedi training. She's not very good at this stuff yet. And good thing too if she's starting to act out like this."

His feet shifted.

"The girl needs discipline. She's not going to get that from her mother. And she'll get too much of it in SJF."

"I don't have the legal right to turn her over to you."

"But you do have the power to let me talk to her. Five minutes. Supervised if you want. That's all I'm asking."

Finally, the Commandant nodded and led her to a gated hall in the back. She followed through a security gate, down another hall and through another security gate. . . . then a third gate, each time with a Police Trooper standing by to unlock, hold the door, and lock it again behind them. Kess wasn't sure she knew how these electronic locks worked. She made mental not that it would take a minute to use the Force on each one, should the need of illegal escape arise.

Yet, she had to play by the rules on this one. Busting Tayla out of jail was not an option. Illegal escape would only be the case if they illegally attacked Kess too. Most of these guys recognized her and didn't like her. And Kess realized she was wearing her rebel jacket into this place. She accepted it that getting five minutes supervised talk with Tayla was the one and only favor she was going to get.

Gray walls, gray bars, gray floors. Harsh white lighting reflected off the white armor of Police Troopers at every turn. Not even a Star Destroyer made Kess feel this apprehensive, she could only imagine what it must be doing to Tayla's demeanor.

In a cell within a long row of other similarly-packed cells, Tayla huddled cold and scared in the far corner. Rough-looking teenagers, mostly non-humans of one sentient race or another, hung out on the floors and benches waiting the extended hours just as Tayla was. Five days? There weren't enough benches for all these kids to sit down at the same time; where did they sleep at night?

With the Commandant standing against the wall behind Kess, and two other troopers in sight, Kess stood outside the bars and met eyes with the shamed girl in the corner. Tayla wore hardly more than a green corset. Makeup streaked down her dark face like ink. Her shoes were long gone, and shehad ripped the small holes of her fishnet stockings into bigger holes so her little feet could fit through. Now her stockings stopped at the ankles, and her dirty bare feet curled over one another on the concrete floor.

Kess motioned her over.

Tayla sniffed and crawled slowly to her feet. Stepping over other kids - one tried to kick her - she came to the bars and wrapped her dirty hands around the dirty metal. "You didn't tell them who I was, did you?"

Kess pressed her mouth. "I didn't know we were keeping it a secret."

Tayla's green eyes pleaded with new tears, "Please don't tell her. Please take me home with you. Don't let them take me back there. Please? Please!"

"Tayla, I'm not your legal guardian. I don't have the right to take you home with me."

"But you're a Jedi. Can't you -like- outrank that or something?" Her voice lowered to a secret murmur. "Can you bust me out of here tonight maybe?"

Kess sighed heavy and shook her head, but she didn't have time for that kind of Q and A. "Why don't you want to go home?"

"Lots of reasons!"

Kess lost her patience, but maybe firmness was what the girl needed. Kess set her weight on one foot crossed her arms. "You better start talking or I am going to leave you here."

Tayla considered this hard. Her eyes went to the Commandant standing behind Kess and lowered her voice even further. "I don't wanna . . . do . . . what my mom does."

Kess sobered fast. "Why do you feel the need to specify this?"

Tayla licked her lower lip to try to figure out how to put it. "Saffron won't. She don't make deals for us kids. But mom can outrank her. Mom can make a deal outside the house, and then all the money go to her."

"I can't believe your mom would be considering this."

"She don't know yet. Dude ain't asked her yet. But I know he's gonna." Her face and voice suddenly looked a dozen years older, "Kess, I know he's gonna."

"But your mom still has to say 'yes'." Kess struggled to understand this. The kid was eleven!

"She won't at first. But if ask right after she run outta spice and run outta money . . . . she ain't gonna say no."

"Has she ever made you do this before?"

"No, but nobody asked her before! I ain't a kid no more! The guests been seeing me different, and-"

Tayla's momentary strength was crumbling to an elongated panic again, so Kess interrupted her with a gesture. "Alright. Alright. You're going to have to hang out here a little longer. I'm going to have to think of something creative."

"You gonna bust me out?" Tayla asked eagerly. "You gonna take me home with you?"

Kess considered that, but shook her head, and met Tayla's eye as she turned away. "Be careful what you wish for."

She motioned to the Commandant and followed him back out the three security gates and into the main office. She took a few minutes to understand the full range of legal hurdles here, thanked the Commandant for his help, and left the police station without her apprentice in tow.

As she flew the speeder through traffic and down into the red light district where Saffron's whore-house resided, Kess considered if she should update Luke on the situation now or later. She had a feeling the decision was going to have to be made on the fly and, out of respect, shouldn't make this change without getting his opinion on it.

Yet she already kind of knew what his answer would be.

Somehow, she didn't want him involved in this. Tayla was her apprentice and Kess needed to deal with this one on her own. She used the speeders text link to send him a message that all was well, but she'd need the speeder for the rest of the night and he'd need to find his own ride home.

"One of these days we're probably going to need two speeders," she muttered as she set it down in a filthy parking space on the side of a dirty road.

The whore house was just ramping up for a normal weeknight of regular business and several of the ladies greeted Kess with a hello, but they had another question too. "Have you seen Tayla?"

"She's safe. I need to speak with Olean."

Anacap freaked out. "Where is she? She's been gone for a week! Saffron's is worried sick!"

Kess swallowed tension to hear that. Saffron was worried? But Tayla's mother wasn't? She cleared her throat. "I need to speak with Olean now."

Soon, Saffron came out to meet her in the foyer.

"I need to speak with Olean," Kess insisted.

Saffron looked reluctant. "Olean's with a customer. Can it wait?"

"Not long." Kess warned. "I have three hours to complete a number of tasks after this one, and if I don't make it, Tayla's going to juvie."

Saffron took this in with a sigh and a nod. "Give me a minute. Anacap, can you escort Kess to a private room so they can talk?"

Kess looked around the tiny room as Anacap left her there. Red and purple velvet with sparkling silver tassels and a mirror covering the full ceiling. The bed was one thing, but the chair didn't seem any less used. Kess turned around to face the open doorway and waited on her feet.

"Have you come to save me from my evil ways?" Olean whined as she entered. She sat down on the bed and finished buckling the leather pants back over her thighs and knees.

Kess lifted a brow and a grin, "Do you want to be saved from your evil ways?"

Olean shot her a look and resumed her task. "Where's my daughter?"

"She's in prison."

"Whad she do?"

"She was soliciting Senators in the Avenue of Core Founders."

Olean rolled her eyes and sighed defeat. She gave Kess another hard look and pulled a death stick out of a pack on the table. "Y'know, I was okay with her going to see you about that damn voice in her head, but I thought you were going to make it shut up, not give her more ideas on how to get herself deeper into trouble!"

No longer caring of this woman's opinion, Kess sat down on the chair and set her elbows on her knees to eye the woman with severity. "Olean, I can't make the voice shut up. And neither can she. All I can do is teach when to listen to it and when not to."

"So teach her not to listen to it already! You been hanging with my kid for weeks now!"

"Olean, it's not that simple-

"Fuck 'simple'." She spat. "Before you showed up, Tayla was fine."

"She wasn't fine."

"She was fine!" The death stick hand waved and gestured as she yelled. "She got food and clothes and a bed. And she don't have to work. She can go to school. . . . But not if she keeps getting caught."

"Olean, you're one of the voices she hears! She can sense what goes on here."

"Of course she knows! My kid ain't stupid. But we don't make her work."

"She thinks you will sooner or later. That's why she called me instead of you."

The woman's rage hardened. "Then why would she sell it before she has to?"

"Right now, that's not our concern. Right now, we have-" she checked the chrono "two and a half hours to get her out of there or she's going to be in lock up until the trial. . . . and she doesn't want to come back here."

Olean considered this with a smoky drag of her stick and waved her hand, "Whaddya want me to do, huh? Change my career? Y'know how many people in this town are willing to hire an ex-sex worker? I got no other options than working with the droids in the garbage scow."

Kess shook her head at the floor. This was the moment she feared. This was what she should have talked to Luke about before she entered this place. "Olean, I'm not trying to change you. I'm just trying to protect Tayla."

Olean's head drooped from her neck in disbelief. "You want custody."

Kess shook her head quickly. "I don't 'want' that, per say, but I can't think of any other options at the moment."

Olean flattened her heavily lipstick-ed mouth.

"You're her mother and legal guardian and I will not get in the way of that," Kess assured. "But right now- Olean, she was willing to risk going to lock up until her trial instead of coming back here."

Olean seemed to sober.

"And when Tayla has to appear in court in front of a judge for soliciting without a license at the age of eleven and insists she doesn't want to come home to a whore house? What do you think they're going to decide to do with her?"

Olean blew smoke out tight lips and hissed it. "Fuck."

Kess let her stew on it a moment, sensing out when the woman truly realized there were no other options, and lowered her voice with stiff respect. "Only with your permission and your blessing, I will take on temporary legal guardianship and she can stay with us for a little while until I can get her trained enough to stay out of legal trouble."

"Fine. Whatever."

She didn't even fight. She argued a bit, but she didn't really fight Kess on this idea. Maybe this was a good thing after all. Kess pushed to her feet and forced herself not to give Olean a piece of her mind. "Get dressed."

"I am dressed,bitch."

Kess barked at her. "Then get more dressed!"

By now Saffron had returned in the hallway. Since they never closed the door, the whole conversation was overheard by the Madam. Kess summarized it again anyway, "Tayla's going to stay with me for a while. I need to pack some clothes for her." Saffron's dark eyes went darker as she turned her feet to lead the way to the kids' room.

Olean rolled her head on her neck and bitched as she pushed to a stand. "And this is going to out me a night's wages too, I'll bet."

It took a lot of Jedi discipline to keep from backhanding Tayla's mother.

Four hours later, Kess nudged the eleven-year-old scruffy prostitute into her apartment and interrupted Luke and Nik in a meditation lesson on the couches.

Nik rattled his head at the girl. He'd heard of her but he'd never met her before. Luke took one look at Tayla and his brow arched with humor.

Kess shoved Tayla gently to cross the floor between them. "Scrub everything. Twice."

Delighted about this change, Tayla strutted between the two men like she was still on the prowl, calling out in sing song success as she went. "Remember, you can't punish me for anything you done yourself."

"Nah, you're right," Kess said back. "I can't punish you for pretending to solicit sex without a license."

The men reacted with silent, if not blushing, smirks of humor.

Kess added, "But pretending to solicit so you could pickpocket a senator?"

Already at the other archway Tayla slowed her feet and glanced back.

Kess met her eyes, "You are so grounded."

Tayla began to spin in protest, but Kess just pointed. "Shower."

Tayla disappeared into the back of the house and Kess collapsed in an armchair in the living room.

It wasn't until Tayla was entirely in the back of the house that Nik allowed himself an open laugh. Luke hid his flushing snicker in his own palm. Nik was humored by the kid. Luke was humored by what the kid was putting her Jedi Master through.

"You better quit laughing, farm boy." Kess warned with a crooked jaw and evil smile. "You haven't heard the best part yet."

Luke's face was red and bright, but he finally met her eyes. "What?"

"You were in a hurry to have kids in the house?" She told him, and watched his laughter quickly sober. "Well, guess what?"