The first thing the former villainess was aware of was that the sun was shining brightly on her face. Ok, wait. The sun never shone directly on her face because her room was in the middle of an abandoned warehouse and there were no windows. Well, unless you counted the skylight, but the sun only shone through that later in the day, like eleven-ish in the morning…

Ventress shot bolt upright in bed, sending her silky blue sheet flying to the end of the bed. She grabbed her homemade alarm clock frantically, gazing at its face. 11:06. There was no misreading the glowing blue numbers. 11:06. 11:06. 11:06. 11:07. Without any further clock-staring, she flew out of bed and down her spiral staircase into the lair.

There was no one there. One of the monitors, however, was on, showing the news. To her horror, Obi-wan was on scene, reporting on a car accident… and Minion was saving the day. No. No! They had let her oversleep and now she was shirking her duty! This would never do. The invisible car was gone, but the bike was still where she'd parked it last night. She swung one leg over it, started the motor, and took off at high speed.

"Minion!"

"Sir? What are you doing here?"

"I'm here because there's work to be done- my job, to be specific."

"I meant why are you here in your pajamas." Asajj glanced down at herself. Sure enough, she was still wearing her flannel pajamas and fuzzy blue socks. Oops.

"That's not important right now. I asked you to wake me up in the morning!"

"Allow me to point out that it's still morning, dearest." Obi-wan had joined the conversation. "You needed sleep."

"Not cool."

"He's right." Minion agreed. "You're overworking and undersleeping lately, and this isn't something we need you to handle. In fact, looking over what you did yesterday, it looks like the fire department has been shirking, not you."

"Anakin never needed to call the fire department."

"Anakin can shoot fire suppressant from the palms of his hands. I don't think we can really compare the two of you." Obi-wan insisted.

"Well maybe I'll make a device that can shoot fire suppressant."

Minion just had to rain on her parade. "Um, sir, there already is such a thing. It's called a fire extinguisher."

"I'll make a better one." Ventress insisted.

"Cute pajamas, by the way." This remark was from Obi-wan, who was smiling softly at her.

She was silent for a minute, unsure of what exactly to say to this. "I hate you."

He chuckled. "No, I'm serious. You're adorable."

Perhaps the average woman found it sweet or romantic or some other sickening sort of adjective if their love interest called them adorable, but Asajj did not. She found adorable to be a word best applied to things like puppies and kittens and not to formerly evil now heroic aliens. She did not want to be adorable.

Obi-wan found her adorable, and the more she insisted she wasn't, the more adorable he found her. Oh well. He would find her adorable even if he stopped telling her she was adorable, so she may as well accept this. "Fine, I'm cute, whatever! Now what else needs to be done here?"

The other two looked at her, perplexed. "Everything is done, sir. I flipped the car right side up and loaded it onto the platform truck. The ambulance took the driver to the hospital with a broken arm and a concussion. The truck drove off. What else did you want done?"

"No, you don't get it! I was supposed to do those things!"

"I never knew you wanted the publicity, I'm sorry Sir."

"That's not it." The heroine sighed, frustrated. "I have years of bad reputation to erase. I just don't want anyone to think I'm being lazy, that's all."

"No one thinks you're lazy, darling." Obi-wan gently rested his arm around her shoulders. "All of Jedi Temple is thrilled with the job you're doing."

"Of course the fickle public is. The Jedi are still mad at me about Anakin. They think I'm a murderer. And even if I weren't, they'd still hate me. They all hate me."

His voice dropped. "Well, I know one Jedi who doesn't hate you."

She glanced over at him with a knowing sort of smile. Just as the two leaned in to touch lips, Grievous threw his arms around the two of them, clearly not understanding what was going on here. "Yeah, Obi-wan doesn't hate you at all. And I'm here for you all the way."

Desite the fact that his metal limbs were squeezing her way to tightly, and despite the fact that he'd interrupted a moment with Obi-wan, she appreciated it. "Thanks Minion. I suppose I did need to cath up on sleep. I'm supposed to get ten to twelve hours, for maximum efficiency." She explained to Obi-wan. "Which is why I've lost a bunch of stuff right now."

"Wait wait." Obi-wan asked, struggling out of Minion's arms. "You sleep like half the day?"

"For the best men-tahl capacities."

"You've barely slept six over the past few days."

"Which is why I've lost stuff." She explained, as though this should be the most obvious conclusion.

Minion, who was packing some stuff into the backseat of the invisible car, explained. "Ventress tends to lose things when she's not thinking clearly."

"I can't for the life of me remember where I put the Dememorizor."

"What's it look like?"

"Sort of small, black and blue, ray gun thingy. It removes all memory of the past five min-uettes."

"Can't say I've seen it, although one, most of your creations are black and blue ray gun thingies, and two, if I happened to hit myself with it, I wouldn't remember seeing it." He turned to the cyborg, who was climbing into the car. "You can head back alone, Minion. I'll take the bike- that is, if you don't mind." The last statement was directed towards Cleverlight.

"Not at all. We can continue your lessons a bit." Asajj had lately been teaching Obi-wan how to use some of her less dangerous inventions. Once he knew how to work those, maybe she'd let him see some of the more deadly ones- she was concerned he'd kill himself. She had confessed to making a real and true death ray once, a handheld model that killed on contact. However, she'd worried about it falling into the wrong hands, and she'd destroyed it, and the blueprints.

"I wanted to see if I could. And once I found that out, it wasn't worth the risk of keeping around. I mean, what if someone stole it and went on a killing spree? So I destroyed it with fire." Obi-wan was unsure of which made him more uneasy- the fact that this woman was capable of making a death ray, or that she stated explicitly that she had destroyed it 'with fire'.

"Alright, I'll leave you guys to it then. I'll take care of any more emergencies that crop up. Stay out of trouble!"

"Trouble? Us?" Ventress asked sarcastically. "How could we possibly get into trouble?"

"There's a reason I call you troublemaker sometimes." Kenobi explained. "We'll be back at the lair soon. I just want to try my hand at flying this a bit more."

Obi-wan was really starting to enjoy the hoverbike, although his first ride on it had been absolutely terrifying and almost ended in Cleverlight's death. It was like flying, only with the reassurance of something solid underneath him, even if that something was stories above the ground. And admittedly, it was nice, just him and Asajj, zipping through the clouds, like entering another world.

After several loops around the skyscrapers, Obi-wan was about to slow down and look for a nice rooftop to rest on, when something caught his eye. There was a sort of shimmery spot, high in the sky, just behind Temple Tower. It looked a bit like the invisible car, but larger and a bit more visible, and of course, flying.

The Jedi pressed his foot against the accelerator (because no matter how many times he explained to Asajj that bikes are supposed to have handlebar throttles she insisted pedals were easier) and sent the bike shooting forward. Asajj caught his shoulders, startled.

"Where are you going?"

"After that thing." Said thing had started moving away, accelerating greatly. The two of them on the bike gave chase, pedal to the metal, literally. Whatever it was had greater speed than the bike, but was larger, and having difficulty negotiating among the skyscrapers. The agile hoverbike managed to keep up this way, until the thing changed altitude, rising up above the buildings. Now that it was a contest of sheer speed, they didn't stand a chance. The blurred spot took off, and was soon out of sight.

Obi-wan landed the bike on an apartment building roof. "Ok, so now the obvious question. That is…?" He turned around to glance at Asajj, but was surprised to see her look of confusion as well.

"I have no idea. Never seen anything like that." This was something she very rarely admitted.

"It definitely wasn't an ordinary heat wave. And I've never seen an airplane anything like that."

"But what on earth can it be then?"

"Do you think it might be… well… aliens?"

"Aliens! Pffftt. Don't be ridiculous."

"Rediculous? Looked in a mirror lately, my dear?"

"Yes, I know I'm not a human. But we have no in-dee-ca-tion of anything in the least extra-terrestrial since over twenty years ago."

"I remember when that story came out. A four year old alien, hiding in a prison. Most people thought it was a hoax, at first. But that's just my point- before then, most people thought that aliens were the stuff of sci-fi."

"Either way, it's gone, and we can't catch it." Asajj sighed. "We'd best get back to the lair. I bet a dozen reports have come in at this time."

"Alright, but we are definitely doing something fun soon. Agreed?"

"Er..." She thought for a second about her schedule- her messy, busy schedule. But... this was Obi-wan Kenobi. This was the Jedi she'd longed to spend time with for forever! She wouldn't pass up a 'date' with him for anything. "Absolutely."

Remember that heat wave- it's important. What it is, you don't have to know... yet.

Reviews would be nice... I mean, um, only if you want to... *fluttersqueek*