"Well! It's the Jedi Consort, in person!" Pete frowned heavily. "Have you been drinking at another bar?"

Anakin looked alarmed. "No, never, Pete, I swear!" He gave Pete a nervous grin. "Well, maybe very occasionally when I'm not on Corriscant. Or just, you know, a really long way from here."

Pete snorted.

Anakin frowned. "Padme had me surrounded with all of these kriffin twelve-steppers for a while. I finally had to go on some stupid peace missions to shake those botak's off." Slavers had attacked, sabers had hummed, blasters had blasted and heads had rolled. The death toll had been staggering, but it had been worth it to save the slaves. If Anakin was now free of his 'entourage,' none of them were complaining. Strangely, no more of Padme's 'clean and sober' friends had volunteered for the job of following him around and preaching at him.

"Oh, Anakin." Pete thumped the bottle down on the bar. Pulling himself together, he poured Anakin the usual and pushed it over. "So how do you like life as a father?"

Anakin grimaced and took a deep drink. "It's just… great. Wonderful. Never been better." Luke was one evil little chubba, true Sith material if his unerring aim for pissing in his father's eye was anything to go by. Leia hated him, squalling like a kicked Jawa every time he picked her up. Worse, he'd thought that Padme would slim right back down once they were out, but she was still… bulky, eating like a Hutt in someone else's larder. She had swung the ceremonial Sword of Honor that he'd brought back from Chandra V right at the Skywalker Family Jewels when he'd made the barest little hint of a roundabout suggestion that she just might maybe want to order something a little lighter than a deep-fried gundark for once.

Pete laughed until he had to wipe at his eyes. "That's good to hear. Speaking of evil, have you heard anything from Sid?"

Anakin relaxed, managing a grin. "Yeah. He tells me that he took an apprentice."

Pete started polishing glasses. "Huh. Did you quit the Sith? What about that whole 'Rule of Two' thing?"

"Rule of two?" Anakin blinked, clueless. "Is that one of the investing maxims?"

Pete eyed him curiously. Anakin had never cared about investing before. "The Banite Sith Rule of Two. The Sith Order consists of one master and one apprentice. It was set up that way by Darth Bane after the Force Wars, in order to keep the Jedi from tracking you guys down. You left the Book of the Sith laying on the bar the last time that you came in. There's a whole section on the Banite rules, philosophy and overall goals. I have it right here under the bar for you. Hope you don't mind, but I've been reading through it during the slow times."

"Nah, go ahead." Anakin took a drink, finally remembering where he'd heard of this 'Darth Bane' before. "I never quit the Sith or the Jedi. I think that I skimmed through some of that book, but there wasn't really anything in there about the Force, just a bunch of political poodoo. I was never that big of a reader anyway."

Sid shrugged. "Are you going to send it back?"

Anakin shook his head. "No need. She's not a Sith apprentice. That would be pretty stupid. Sid's teaching her how to direct holovids."

Pete's eyebrows went up. "She?"

"Heh. Her Sith name would have to be 'Darth Blondie' or something like that. As far as I can tell, the poor old stoopa started having the emotions again and she latched on like a szat fly sensing blood." Anakin sniggered. "He's dropped a few decades, went all blond with really long hair and got himself a holo show where he goes around digging up old droids and the like. She talked him into a job as his PA."

"PA? Is that some Force thing?" Pete was wondering about 'dropping decades.'

"She's Force sensitive and never got caught by the Jedi, but nah. I had to ask around about it too. It means 'Personal Assistant.' A PA brings the caf, carries messages, takes care of all the loose ends and generally does all the actual work on a production." Anakin laughed. "She'll end up causing him way more trouble than a Sith apprentice ever could."

Pete laughed along with him. "So much for breaking the chains. I suppose that producing holovids has got to be more fun than being in the Senate." It had taken him a while, but after learning that Force users could change faces, Pete had immediately realized that Darth Sidious and Palpantine were one and the same.

Anakin shuddered. "Oh, man, don't even mention that kriffing hellhole. They just never stop coming around, asking what I think about this, what I think about that. Well, I don't think about any of that political bantha-poodoo that they get so worked up about, ever." He mostly thought about Force-throwing them out of the windows.

Pete started polishing his bar, a thoughtful look on his face. "They're just trying to get you to parrot back anything that Padme might have said. Knowing what she thinks is valuable information to a senator."

Anakin snorted. "If I listened to her talking I'd have already jumped off of the palace balcony. I figured out how to block my ears with the Force after the kids were born and I've been using it to tell if she wants me to agree with her or not since the day that I met her, so I don't really have to know what she thinks about anything."

"I might still be married if I had the Force." Pete thought nostalgically about his divorces. "What you ought to do is get them to pay you."

"You mean the Jedi? The cheap krifnacks do. A week's pay for a Jedi Consort gets me a caf, but no donut. The pay table hasn't been updated since about five hundred years before the Ruusan Reformation. Inflation is a terrible thing." Anakin took a long swallow and put down his glass. "How 'bout hittin' me?"

Pete did so. "I meant the ones that are fishing around for information on Padme. Play your cards right and you could make a pretty good income just stringing them along and telling them whatever they want to hear."

"No need." Anakin looked around, leaned in and said, "I was out joy riding around in my Etta Seven and I had a vision about the Banking Clan. Those hozaks were trying to gin up some 'rebels' to go after Padme! The CIS treasury was never 'lost,' they just sent the automated Star Galleon that was carrying it to hide in the Shalaway cul-de-sac until they could get another rebellion going! I found it, pulled the Magna Guards out of the airlocks, guessed a bunch of passwords with the Force and reprogrammed everything." Anakin grinned and took a drink. "Its stashed close enough so that I can just grab myself a hat-full of hard credit whenever I run short."

"That explains why the Muun combines suddenly went broke." Pete sat his long-unpaid tab on the bar. "The Force is awesome."

"That's what happens when you put all your shodongs in one basket." Anakin forked over a big advance and then looked over the bar. "No Yoda?"

Pete shrugged, dropping the stolen credits into the till. "He found the Book of the Sith back there, did some editing and then said that the Force had stopped telling him to come in and get lit every weekend." The bartender wasn't sure how he felt about that. Yoda was a big-tipper, but he was also a little too free with that stick of his.

Anakin shrugged. "I won't miss carrying him back to the temple."

Pete nodded, and then threw his bar rag at a particularly lazy wait-droid to get the stupid thing moving. "I never realized that 'Consort' was an official Jedi title. It doesn't fit in with the whole 'no attachments' thing."

"That's all poodoo anyway." Anakin snorted. "Think about it. How are there always plenty of new padawans around if none of the Jedi are having kids? The answer is the Mind Trick, that's how."

Pete considered that and nodded thoughtfully. It's what he would do. "And the title?"

Anakin swirled his drink and took a sip. "The Old Order used to raise the consorts to the Happan Queens way back when and Padme is technically still a Queen. The title was on the books, so there you go." He sighed. "I really thought the Jedi would just tell me to get lost, but now it's worse than ever. Mace kriffin' Windu is right in my face, all the time. He decided that a 'Jedi Consort' has to be some big example, I guess to all the kids that want to go out and nail a queen for themselves, so it's been nothing but Battle Meditation all kriffin day long, every kriffin day." He rolled his eyes. "And Darth Plagueis is right there in my face the minute he finally leaves. Let me tell you, there just isn't much you can do about a Force Ghost."

Pete slid another glass in front of him. "Did you learn anything cool from the Darth?"

Anakin looked around for anyone watching and then smirked. "Check it out." He peeled off his glove, exposing a very pale but entirely human hand. "That crazy old stick really knows his Force stuff. It hurt like a bitch, but I grew my arm back and fixed a few other things."

The bite mark that Ventress had left on his ass had scarred into permanent indelibility, unless he wanted to try slicing a cheek off with his light saber. It turned out that the point was moot anyway. A Republic Bureau of Investigation unit had still been tailing him and had recorded the whole incident from beginning to end anyway.

Padme had gotten the data, thrown a screaming, foaming fit of completely berserk animal rage and then put a billion credit bounty on Ventress' head. Strangely, she did not blame him for it at all, having cried at him over his 'ordeal.'

"By the void!" Pete poked at the hand, seeing the skin turn red as the blood pooled under his finger. It was undeniably a real hand. "That's incredible!"

"Yeah." Anakin put the glove back on. "I'm gonna have to vanish for a little while, take a working vacation to Mygeeto and Muunilinst, pay a little visit to some of those e chu ta's after Padme to finish off some more loose ends. I'll just tell everyone that I had a new arm cloned when I come back."

"What about when someone else comes around asking where to get an arm?" Pete looked up as another regular entered, and started making his drink. "You have to have a reason they can't go get one too."

Anakin frowned. "Well, I suppose that I could make up some kind of poodoo about those Banking Clan botaks. Maybe a secret clone army of me that got destroyed after I whacked off a spare arm nice and high so th- Kriff!"

Jango Fett sat down next to him. "Being cloned just means that you can buy off the rack. Otherwise, it's overrated."

Anakin hurriedly chugged his drink, wincing and expecting a stun blast.

"Relax, Jedi, I'm not here for you." Jango took a drink and nodded at Pete. "Any messages?"

Pete nodded. "Yeah, Jango, here you go." He thrust some message prints over the bar at the bounty hunter.

"So you drink here now?" Anakin caught Pete's eye and pointed at his empty drink.

Jango shrugged. "It's as good a place as any." Ventress might come for the Jedi someday and Pete would hear about it. The woman had disappeared so thoroughly that she might as well be dead.

Anakin picked up his new drink. "Well, I'm glad you aren't going to shoot me again."

Jango laughed. "That would literally be suicide. Some of the 505th are watching the place. Padme told them to kill anyone that threatens you. Those boys take her orders seriously."

Anakin brightened. "The boys are here? Be right back." He strode out the door.

Pete stared after him. "He calls the clone troopers 'boys?" Most people were either scared of them or didn't think they were anything more than organic droids.

"The 505th was detailed his personal bodyguard after the Ventress incident." Jango shrugged. "And he's really a pretty good guy. Everyone likes him, especially after the whole uniform thing."

Anakin reentered the bar, five copies of Jango in their drab gray duty uniforms and garrison caps following. They were armed, but only with blaster pistols. "Sit down, fellahs, the drinks are on me!"

"Thanks Boss!" All five happy voices replied in unison.

"So what do you boys usually drink?" Pete was curious. Would it be different or all the same?

"Heh." Corporal Rory looked nervously at Anakin.

Anakin raised his glass to them. "I always knew all about the still, so relax. There's no rank in the bar!"

The clones relaxed.

"We make our own Gash out of any fruit or vegetables the mess has." Rory looked past the bartender. "Hey, Jango, what drinks do we like?"

Jango swirled his drink thoughtfully. "Most all of them, so long as there's no blue milk, but I'm partial to a Correllian Old Fashioned today."

"You don't say." The clones all grinned cheerfully. "Five of those, then."

Pete was unsurprised. Anakin had paid far, far ahead, so he pulled out the really good whiskey and mixed up the cocktails. "So what was the uniform thing?"

"Uniform- Oh, you're talking about the bodyguard uniforms." Anakin laughed. "I talked Padme out of ordering the Nabooian abomination that she wanted. It's no wonder Naboo lost so many wars with uniforms like that." He gestured with his glass to the clone next to him. "I just picked out an old Mandalorian Empire pattern in field grey and had the droid add shoulder straps and Republic buttons. I found out those kind of straps are called passenten."

"Huh." Pete pushed each clone a drink.

"Thank the kriffin' maker." Rory took an exploratory sip, looked very pleased and raised his glass to Anakin. "The Empress' uniform was kind of pink and had a skirt. The big puffy hats alone would have gotten us laughed out of the galaxy."

"You'd have killed all the witnesses." Anakin sniggered. "You should have seen her old queen suit. That woman is all Naboo."

"Speaking of Naboo, what's with this 'Imperial' thing that the holos are on about? Aren't we supposed to be a Republic?" Pete had been spiking with anxiety ever since he'd heard that particular gem.

Anakin just shrugged. "Don't know, really don't care."

"Doesn't make any difference to me." Jango didn't care either.

Rory thought about it. "Isn't Empress the next rank up from Queen? Well the ruler of the whole kriffed-up galaxy has got to be better than some lousy two-bit Queen. It's only natural she gets a promotion." He was perfectly willing to blast anyone that didn't agree.

The clones chimed in with their agreement. Padme had fixed the ration so that they got real food now.

"I heard that it was some Munns and the Banking Clans that were really behind it. They paid off the senate to make a surprise proclamation." Jango was in on all of the gossip.

"Those worthless kriffnacks!" Pete shook his head, poured himself a Correlean whiskey and knocked it back. "What good is a senate full of spineless bribe taking botacks anyway? Might as well just be rid of them!"

The clones cheerfully agreed, completely missing his point.

Anakin put on a little grin. "I'll have to ask about it when I swing by next week to find out which ones were trying to kill her." They weren't getting off that easy.

The clones all frowned, stiffening.

"Can we come too?" Rory felt a great urge to unload his blasters on anyone that threatened the Empress.

"Sure." Anakin usually traveled by fighter, but why not? Maybe Padme would let them have a frigate or something.

The clones cheered.

Pete poured drinks all around, and got himself another whiskey, well aware of what happened when Anakin 'swung by' a place. "What about the Jedi?"

"I suppose they can come if they want, but it's only some bankers." Anakin shrugged. "I usually have to shake off a crowd of the younger ones when I go out. The temple is boring as kriff and they like the trouble I get into."

The door opened and a woman entered. She looked around and then saw Pete.

"What can I get you?" Pete saw that the woman was pregnant and frowned. He wouldn't serve a pregnant woman.

The woman smiled nervously. "Maybe you remember me. I'm Tawny, and I was in here last month with my friends, Amber and Honey. We were partying with this guy, a sabback player called Ben K. Nobi. I'm looking for him. We, all three of us I mean, really need to talk to him about something important."

Anakin, caught in mid swallow, choked on his drink.