Disclaimer: Sigh... I need to be a better pretend writer...

Captain Skee and Commander Gree looked at each other. Upon hearing all of Luminara's communiqué, Skee clicked shut his comlink and said, "Okay, we got the signal. I'm going to finish up checking everything out in here."

"Agreed, Skee," Gree said, also shutting off his comlink. He lowered his voice to ensure his next words could be heard, yet not easily overheard. Skee's abilities with all forms of technology were impressive, and likely he had already scanned the room for listening devices. However, if Skee was known for his computer skills, then Gree was known for his tracking abilities, his paranoia being one of them. Someone needed to keep this (relatively) new guy on his toes. He was exceptionally skilled at finding beings who tried to escape the Republic's grasp; among them a few "wayward" politicians, bounty hunters, assassins, and now a lost padawan. "I'll go down to the gardens and retrace the padawan's steps. Those tracks she noticed are likely still there, and they might give us a clue as to where she's being kept."

"Alright." Skee tapped his wrist comm. "Make sure to maintain comm silence. The tracker in your comm will remain on and broadcasting your location at all times. Remember to look as lost as possible, or just out to enjoy yourself, in case you run into any of her staff. The General said that her padawan last saw her stepmother before the mental connection went blank, and we don't know who among her staff are involved."

"If any of them are involved," Gree said pragmatically. "Remember, the General also said that it could be a coincidence that Lady Kiln was last seen before their mental connection was interrupted. It could be that the entire household is innocent."

"Could be, but it's better to be safe and careful than regretting it later on."

"Agreed." Commander Gree made for the door. "I'll be recording my observations as unobtrusively as possible. I recommend you do as well. We'll meet back here in four hours."

"Alright. Good luck, Commander."

"Good luck, Captain." The door whispered shut behind the clone commander, and Skee was left standing alone in the middle of the computer room. Not for long, however. Just then, the door whispered open, and the three techs of the household were looking at him.

"Captain, are you done yet?"

"Almost." He gestured at the computer banks. "I need to make sure that none of the viruses we deconstructed are left to wreak havoc on your systems." That was only partly true. What he was hoping was to do a little reconnaissance as well in their systems, to find something that might help them know why the padawan had been taken or find the padawan, preferably both. With what Ani had told him and now her disappearance, he was inclined to believe the stepmother had some role in the kidnapping. Hopefully Gree would be successful in his work outside.

"Well, don't take too long, clone," she said finally. "We need to get back to our work. We're going to have a backlog of data crunching, rerouting, and upgrading as it is."

"Don't worry," he gestured at the terminal in front of him. "I will only use this terminal. What I'm shouldn't take too long, and I will do what I can to stay out of your way." I'm sure you also have a lot of work to do to double check your encrypted security wall. Not that you'd ever be able to figure out I'd gotten through, his mind wanted to brag.

"We thank you for your speed and hard work," the youngest – he forgot her name – said. "As you do what you need to do, we will do our work, mutually working to stay out of your way."

"I thank you for your help," Skee said formally, turning back to the screen. He had a lot of sneaking to get to.

The garden, having initially astounded him with its colorful splendor during the day, was now thankfully muted by the remaining night. Even with the first rays of sun threatening to creep over the horizon, causing the snow to glisten on the mountains, everything yet remained still and silent. Gree was studying the tracks in the garden while ignoring the leftover scents previously released during the day. The trail that wove through the garden towards the forest was yet visible, even in the low light. He had improved at following trails set by Jedi, and this one was easier since it seemed that the padawan hadn't cared to conceal her path. He would correct her when they got her back, although not too harshly. Leaving a path this obvious could prove valuable to their search. Weaving through the grasses, flowers, and approaching the trees, the steps became less noticeable in the dirt. However, the soil's consistency changed underfoot from loose clumps to more of a solid state not unlike walking on the duracrete back on Coruscant. Footprints wouldn't make as much of an impression or be as noticeable.

"Hello, there, young man." Startled, Gree whipped his head up and behind him. There stood an elderly woman, so wizened by the years that he was amazed she could still move, let alone stand. Her tan tunic was unadorned with long sleeves, and fitting with a torso that reached mid thigh. She had slim dark shoes around her tiny feet, a gray skirt brushing over the tops. Her wispy gray hair was wrapped up into a tight bun close to the top of her head, punctured through with two slim sticks.

"Good evening. While I am glad you're enjoying our lovely selections, I trust you will take care to not trample all of my garden?" she asked after a moment of silence.

"You're the gardener, then. I've seen you once before." Too late, he realized his tone was too interrogative, potentially raising her suspicions about him being out here, and resolved to soften it, hoping that he hadn't offended her or caused her to be suspicious. Luckily for him, she was nice enough to refrain from making any comments about his behavior, although her next comments were in a cooler tone of voice.

"Correct. I am Liv Newra. I have been caring for these gardens of this house for many decades of service."

"Ma'am, with no disrespect intended, I do not have much time for small talk. I regret that I have an errand of grave importance, one that requires my full attention." There, his tone and voice had overall improved, grave and urgent but no longer interrogative.

"Ah, of course. I did not mean to interrupt." He signified his response with a nod, taking his gaze from the woman to review the set of prints before him. She didn't appear to be a threat, more genuine curiosity than suspicion or desire to interfere, and so he ignored her presence at the very edge of his peripheral. Unfortunately, he had come to the last scraps of visible material he could utilize. The tracks ended less than two feet in front of him, just several steps before the edge of the forest began its sprawl. As far as he could see to his right and to his left, the forest formed the edge of the entire east boundary of the estate. Between the individual trunks of the trees, he saw a combination of leaves, grass, and moss acting as the carpet, a very thick one at that. Tracking any further would be difficult. He frowned as he thought hard, deep in concentration. Would it be worth the time and energy to continue on, considering what he had to go on here?

"Excuse me, sir, are you interested in the forest?"

"Wha- Oh. Actually, yes. How far does it extend?"

"Oh, to the mountains and back."

"It hasn't been cultivated?"

"Oh, no. Considering it's owned by the estate, we decide what we are to do with it. Unless we hired someone specifically to farm it for us, we have left it as it is."

"It is? But, and pardon me for saying this, I thought your borders ended where the forest began on this side."

"Officially they do. However, during the war on Alderaan between the houses due to the Empire's infiltration and manipulation of us over one thousand years ago, we aided the house of Organa in a surprise strike. That strike was key to crippling the houses loyal to the Empire. A young Jedi Knight was most helpful in assisting us during that assault. Anyway, due to our loyalty to the Republic, success in the raid, and the capitulation of the traitorous houses after that, we were awarded the entire plot the forest is on. It used to belong to the house of Thul, leader of the traitor houses. Their properties were cut back drastically as a result of their revolt, and the acres cut given to the houses who supported the Republic as a reward. Our portion is this entire forest, stretching all the way to the base of the mountains, several miles away. Over the years, from generation to generation we have used it mainly as a wildlife sanctuary."

Wildlife sanctuary? Gree thought. "Does anyone actually go in?"

"Not unless approved beforehand by Madam Kiln, and even then the person must be carrying a pass on them. Occasionally the lady will venture into the woods, along with a trusted employee or two. But the rest of us don't go in."

"Would you tell me who else goes into the woods besides her?"

"Well, Finara, her handmaiden often attends."

"You mentioned more than one person, though," Gree emphasized coldly. The elderly woman sighed, before acquiescing the desired information. Upon doing so, she looked at him critically.

"Is this regarding a possible… incident?"

"Perhaps," Gree said neutrally. Even though she was more willing to talk to him than the others he had met, trying and failing to ask them about relatively unimportant topics, she still had enough sense it seemed to be as vague as possible. Figures, seeing as how she's serving a political household.

"I… heard," the old woman began, faltering in her words a bit, "that the… the padawan hadn't come back from the ball earlier. Is that true?"

"Perhaps." He could be just as vague. She didn't immediately push him, instead turning her head to survey the grounds, her eyes sweeping across it all before coming up suddenly. Her eyes met his, brimming over with a fair amount of clarity and determination.

"She's missing. Why else would you be out here, questioning me like this?"

"It's only part of an investigation, ma'am." He gave in to her a little too quickly, he saw, but his gut told him that she had known. A little acquiescence here might mean more information would be forthcoming later on. "Nothing personal."

"Of course. However, I wonder if you can tell me something?" He warily considered her request, letting silence sit for a good minute-and-a-half. She still maintained eye contact with him, so she couldn't be that easily unsettled.

"What?"

"The missing padawan is the heir to this estate, then?" Her look was all-knowing, turning into a sigh and her saying, "As I thought."

Whatever drugs were being pumped throughout her system were continually causing her to space out, back and forth from a physically present yet mentally unstable consciousness. When she did come to, her mind was slow to adjust, and if it did adjust, the light immediately became brighter and what she could make out was blurred. If nothing else comes of this, at least any desire to go out and experiment with drugs has been greatly diminished, Ani told herself, trying to brighten her outlook on the situation.

Being helpless was so frustrating, bringing back memories of her former master that she had tried so hard to keep buried. Releasing them had been a skill that she had tried and tried and always seemed to fail at. Then, back at her place of birth, she again struggled to release her emotions properly. She knew she remembered a bit, pieces here and there, but not everything, and what had happened to her at her age back then had only intensified the shreds of memories and emotions internalized. What she had remembered was her view of a tragic situation, and a biased view at that. However, the sense that something deeper and darker lay in her memories came back again, reminding her of her nightmare before that announcement to their team, before the Council meeting, before coming here. It gave fuel to her fear at her situation and only strengthened these terrible memories, rising up again, and she cringed at her fear.

What could have been so bad that her memory kept it from her, and that it would fuel and encourage her other dark memories?

"I first suspected she was someone important due to the increased private conversations between Lady Kiln and her handmaiden, Finara. Then came all the preparations we had to accomplish previous to your arrival. Sure, it could have just been because the arrival was critically important, but not to the extent that we all had to partake in the cleaning. Items had to be removed, items had to be brought in and placed just so, the cleaning had to be done in stages. Everything was planned so meticulously, so carefully, that there had to be enough desire on the lady's part in order to accomplish this. Meeting her face-to-face only proved it. My part was already and has, for the most part, finished now. I'm proud of these gardens, and I have been keeping them in pristine condition for decades now, though soon I shall have to look at having someone else tend them. " The elderly lady maintained eye contact through all of this, expression serious, obviously leading or thinking she was leading up to something important.

"Of course." Gree nodded, absorbing her words, breaking eye contact to look back out over the garden. From here, he had a great view of not just the gardens, but the entire estate. The entrances, exits, windows to the building were mostly visible. Anyone entering or exiting would be clearly seen. The panoramic windows, however, were key. If someone had enough patience, they could determine who all lived here and to where they were headed, as well as routines and patterns among the staff. Relatively easy information gathering achieved.

"Besides meeting the padawan, however, the one thing that tipped me off was the disappearance of the other girl." Gree turned around to face her fully, a questioning look he knew was on his face. What had been missed?

"What other girl?"

Skee, despite being a techie at heart, never lost his situational awareness, which was pivotal in what he was doing at the moment. Every time he gave a casual glance around, any stares were immediately averted, and his fingers continued bringing up false windows and screens, purportedly finding and destroying any programs or viruses he found. Any time he so much as sensed stares going back his way, he would bring up the screens again, covering what he was doing. In reality, he was searching deeper and deeper in the computer databanks, gathering more and more intriguing information.

He was noticing a pattern as he was doing all of this. The older male and female were the ones giving him the majority of stares, while the young female had only gazed once or twice before becoming glued to her computer screen. He kept his breathing even, his body relaxed, as to make any suspicion seem unfounded, giving him the time he needed.

Once he felt he had enough breathing room, and the apparently random stares happened less and less, he surreptiously brought up a small window to look at photos and stills he had been able to sneak from the feed. The system had been encrypted before, still was, in fact, but here he had the chance to get into it. Like many software programs, this one was most vulnerable to being hacked while being used. While they were running their systems and programs over there, Skee had had the idea to run a virus masked as one of their programs past their firewall and sneaking past them until he got to the one he wanted. Essentially jumping from program to program, he was able to sneak into the video footage from the cams and copy what stills he could, one picture at a time. Sneak any deeper, and he could be caught. This was something that he could chance, but carefully, and for now at certain levels. Later, as long as he left a piece of the virus embedded, he could get back in for a more thorough look.

As he browsed carefully and quickly through the pictures, he soon frowned, before catching that action and replacing it with his emotionless facade. Why was there another young girl in the feed? It looked like she had featured prominently no more than almost six months ago, before never again resurfacing. The pictures in the feed that he continued to siphon from continued to correlate the timeline. Before six months, this person had been living here, walking around these grounds, before up and up disappearing. Stranger coincidence was, she looked extremely similar to the padawan. They had never seen any pictures of this girl around the house, yet up until six months ago she appeared to live there. His eyes narrowed in on the picture. Apparently, given how close she stood to the lady of the house, Marana had at least known of her, if not outright associated familiarly with her.

He had to show this to the general.

"Almost done, clo – sir?" The man, Daran, he remembered, was turned toward him, one eyebrow raised.

"Almost," he replied evenly. "Just a couple more minutes, and –" A slight pulsing icon on the upper corner of the screen alerted him to something urgent. Without another word, he turned back around and focused his attention on that. Someone had been alerted to the presence of his program, and said program was about to be located by another program. He could guess the likely outcome if that were to happen. His thoughts began to turn as he perused what he had seen of the three staff members that had walked in. The older man had been checking on him the entire time, between glances and comments. The more rural woman, while ignoring him altogether, was facing a console that he could easily glance at – and had. She was continuing updating various programs that he had been able to view, which ruled her out. That only left… that younger woman! He bet she had been checking in on him regularly, spying on him. The times he had turned slightly in response to something someone else had said, she had been staring intently at her screen, and he wasn't able to actually view her screen. Maybe she hadn't seen everything, or maybe her program was gathering it for her. Either way, he had to neutralize it before exiting the system. One hand kept up the typing while his hand began to drift towards the screen. Time to outwit her.

The sun was setting over the entire property. Instead of being in her main bedroom, she was sitting in her hidden office. She could see everything she needed to. The cameras were working properly, even at this distance, which she was glad to see. The bounty hunter was doing as she was told. Good to have that verified. She may need to ensure it later on, later in the process. The padawan remained sedated, also necessary at this stage. She would have to move fast. If she tried to escape at all before the Jedi left the planet, she could potentially figure out a way to contact her master, even with the drugs in her system. She knew of the stories, regardless of whether they were true or not, or somewhere in between. She wouldn't risk anything where the Jedi's powers were concerned.

Anyway, the work she had to engage in soon preoccupied her the most. The Jedi Master should be recalled soon, given the intel she had given her. Finara had indicated that the message had been sent and received by the ship in orbit. The clones, smart though they were, undoubtedly would find nothing in the gardens, given their ardent search attempts. Neither her systems could not be cracked, thanks to her team. The Jedi would be recalled by the Republic, and would have to give up her search for her padawan. Simple enough for things to screw up her plans as soon as she began them, so she'd need to take extra precautions. Thankfully, her handmaiden could be trusted to divert the attention of said Jedi Master, as well as report her movements. Normally she'd prefer to do so in person, but she had other plans.

"Finara?"

"Yes, milady?"

"Cover for me. I'm going out."

"Yes, milady."