It was a worrying thought that the pirates might still be waiting for them in Tatooine's atmosphere, but it was a necessary risk, and luck was with them—the pirates' ship was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was only the sandy brown of Tatooine's surface.

"It would help if we knew where we were before," Anakin murmured. Aviva, sitting beside him, shrugged helplessly.

"All space looks alike to me," she admitted with a wry smile. Anakin grinned in spite of himself.

"We'll just have to land and look around," he decided.

"Couldn't you find him?" asked Aviva. "I know you and he spend a lot of time together."

Anakin considered this. The idea of Drin and himself forming a bond had never occurred to him. It was worth a try, he decided—but when he stretched out with his mind, encompassing Tatooine in a thin veil of the Force, all he felt of Drin's presence was a faint coldness, not nearly strong enough to guess at a location.

"Somebody must have seen the pod land," he pointed out, but there was more hopefulness in his voice than certainty. The futility of searching for one lost fifteen-year-old on a planet populated only halfway was beginning to sink in. Although this was hardly the time for it, Anakin glanced over at Aviva. "You couldn't sense him, could you?"

She shook her head. "We were never that close. I knew him, but we only spoke a couple times."

Good for you, Drin, was Anakin's immediate pleased thought.

They landed in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, high dunes rising around their ship. Despite the midday heat Anakin grabbed his cloak from his room, and Aviva, seeing this, followed suit. He knew from long experience that, while Jedi were not necessarily shunned on Tatooine, they were not always welcome either.

"You grew up here, didn't you, Master Skywalker?" asked Aviva. "Is there anyplace nearby we could look?"

Anakin thought. The problem was that sand, no matter how long you had lived in it, looked exactly the same from one place to the next. Looking up at the sky, he sent a tendril of the Force sweeping across the dunes. At first, there was only harsh, dead sand; he kept going, and then was rewarded with the sensation of life—a lot of it.

"I think there's a city, maybe five miles from here," he said at last. "It's a starting point, anyway. Can you make it?" Tatooine was deceptively void of any visible enemies, but just those two suns had dragged more than their fair share of victims. Aviva's forehead creased.

"Of course," she said, almost as though he had insulted her. They set out walking together; Anakin, already frustrated, thought to himself that this chip had better be extremely important for all the trouble they were going through to transport it.

The interminable heat was an inescapable fact of Tatooine. Even for Jedi, trained to withstand even the most brutal circumstances, it was growing more difficult by the minute to keep walking. Of the two, it was easier for Anakin, who had grown up among these sands and who was older and stronger. Once or twice he saw Aviva begin to fall behind, sweat beading on her forehead, but she never complained or asked him to wait. Her lips were stubbornly tight, as though asking for help were a breach of code.

It felt as though they had been walking for hours, though it had probably only been about one, when Anakin felt the city marvelously close. Straining his eyes, he could see its walls, tiny on the horizon, set in the crags of a cliff.

"We're almost there," he said to Aviva, pausing for a moment in his stride. "If we're on the right side of the planet, someone must have seen—"

"Master Skywalker, look!"

He turned, then followed the point of Aviva's finger. There, behind a sand dune only fifty yards away, he could see the glint of polished metal. Breathless, they both ran toward it, exhaustion suddenly forgotten.

"That's it," said Anakin as soon as they'd cleared the dune. "Good work."

"Do you think he's still inside?" asked Aviva anxiously.

"I hope so." All escape pods were stocked with protein cubes and water, enough for several days' worth of sustenance. There would have been absolutely no reason for Drin to leave its shelter, not after just a few hours. Anakin walked up to it, glad for the momentary shade the pod provided, and knocked, his heart in his mouth. "Drin?"

But no sound issued from within, and the door did not open. To his credit, Anakin swore only mentally, though it wasn't quite as satisfying that way.

"He might have gone to the city," Aviva suggested. "If he saw it."

"It makes sense," Anakin agreed. With time his temper had begun to cool, and he was beginning to feel some sympathy for Drin, alone on a strange, hostile planet and entrusted with a microchip that was supposedly extremely important. Things were bad enough—in Drin's fifteen-year-old mind, they had probably been magnified a dozen times.

They grew closer to the city, and Anakin frowned. That couldn't be a city, could it? It was too small, and its buildings were much higher than Tatooine buildings usually went. Then again, he hadn't been on this planet for a long while. Perhaps he was mistaken…

The sand underneath their feet was growing harder and more packed the further they walked, to form what could have almost been a road. Here and there Anakin could see shallow indentions in the dirt, perhaps the footprints of beasts of burden, like eopies or banthas. He kicked idly at a rock lying on the ground, still wondering at the back of his mind which city this could be. He certainly didn't recognize—

A terrified, high-pitched shriek jerked him out of his thoughts. Anakin whirled to see Aviva hit the dirt, and from a hole in the ground had appeared a large, toad-like creature, its long tongue wrapped tightly around her ankle. It was pulling her, hard, toward a gaping mouth full of needle-sharp teeth.

She screamed again, kicking, and before anything else had time to happen, Anakin's lightsaber sliced through the creature's tongue. With a rattling keen of pain, the animal ducked down into its subterranean hideout again, and Anakin deactivated his lightsaber. He knelt beside Aviva.

"You all right?" he asked. She nodded, breathless, inching away from the severed tongue. "What about your leg?"

"It's fine," she assured him. "It doesn't hurt."

"What happened?"

"I—I stepped in one of those things," Aviva choked out, pointing to what Anakin had thought were animal prints.

"Yeah, avoid those," Anakin advised her unnecessarily. He made to stand, then froze, looking down to where the creature had disappeared again. An expression of disbelief crossed his face. "That was a worrt."

Aviva blinked. "A what?"

"I know where we are," Anakin said heavily. Standing, he helped Aviva to her feet. "And it's not a good place, either."

"What?" said Aviva again. "Master Skywalker, where are we?"

Anakin looked once more at those walls, tucked neatly into the rocks around them, then back at Aviva. "Have you ever heard of Jabba the Hutt?"

There were no footprints leading up to Jabba's palace from the pod, but that meant nothing, what with the desert winds that swept constantly over the sands. They walked until they reached the gate.

"Are you sure this is the way in?" Aviva asked. Her doubts were understandable—the entrance was enormous, seeming more like another wall than anything else. Anakin had never been to this place before, but he could sense the empty hallway beyond the gate, which was good for two reasons: it meant that he knew that this was, in fact, the way to get inside, and it meant that there was no one waiting behind the door with a blaster.

"I'm pretty sure," Anakin answered. He stepped forward and placed an experimental hand on the door, trying to figure out how it opened. No sooner did his palm touch the stone, however, than a small, round section of the gate opened up and what looked like a large mechanical eye emerged from it.

With a series of beeps and whistles, it looked from Anakin to Aviva and back again, scrutinizing them with quick precision. Though Anakin didn't speak Droid—and he was now beginning to wish that he'd brought an R4 unit from the ship with him to translate—he could make a guess at what it was saying.

"I'm here to speak with Jabba," he said loudly, feeling a tiny bit silly for talking to an eyeball, which, by definition, should not be able to hear him. The droid made a few more noises, none of which sounded promising. "Please, it's important."

He tried again in Huttese, which gave him no different results. The droid retreated as swiftly as it had come into its hole, as so many things seemed wont to do today. Very few in existence had enough power that they were able to dismiss Jedi with such nonchalance.

"Wait!" Anakin shouted. Desperation made him do something he'd wanted to avoid. "My name is Anakin Skywalker, and I need to speak with Jabba the Hutt immediately!"

The droid did not reappear, and Anakin stepped back, disheartened. "We'll have to find another way in," he said to Aviva, who was beginning to look worried. But without warning, almost even before he had finished speaking, a grinding sound reached their ears, and the gate began to open, revealing a dark and musty hallway several meters wide.

"Come on," Anakin said, his voice hushed slightly, and they entered.

He walked with his shoulders straight, an expression of determination on his face. Both Jedi knew that fear was bait to minions of the underworld, and Anakin was glad that Aviva had enough sense to imitate him, even though he could sense the nervous uncertainty in her mind.

But even as Anakin walked, he felt something so cold that it burned settle in his stomach—fear, such a foreign sensation that it took him a moment to recognize it. Jabba had always been an entity of fear on Tatooine, looking down at the pod races he attended with huge, indolent eyes. The power he wielded was horrifying in its enormity, and though everyone knew that he was helpless without his hired guns, that didn't stop the quiet terror that seeped into their subconscious.

Jabba was a childhood fear, one that Anakin had never had the chance to overcome—but he also presented a much more real danger. Anakin had never once had any doubts about visiting Watto after so many years, although he knew the junk dealer would have given both his wings to have the young man back in his possession. Jabba, on the other hand…there had been rumors, just before Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had taken him away, that the Hutt was planning to make a bid on Anakin, and Watto would not have dared refuse.

That was the reason Anakin had been reluctant to give his name—he could not help wondering, foolish as it might have been, if Jabba still wanted the universe's only human podracer, and what the Hutt would be willing to do to get him. The worry was only amplified by the fact that it was apparently Anakin's name which had gotten them inside.

From the shadows before them, a figure appeared, taking slow, cautious steps. It was a moment before Anakin recognized the pale, dark-robed Twi'lek that had always stood beside Jabba at the races, whispering in his ear. His slitted eyes took in their robes, and the lightsabers at their belts.

"Master Jedi," he greeted them softly. "My lord Jabba is not seeing visitors right now."

"It's a matter of great importance," Anakin returned. "I'm sure your master will understand."

"I am afraid that to gain access to Jabba now is impossible," said the Twi'lek, his voice low and almost akin to a snake's hiss. His name was on the tip of Anakin's tongue—Fortune, or Fortuna—though it wasn't exactly necessary.

"But I'm sure," Anakin repeated, stressing the last word, "that Jabba will understand." The fingers of his right hand made a movement so small that Aviva just barely caught it. The Twi'lek's eyes blanked for a moment, then refocused.

"I will speak to my lord," he agreed. "Come with me."

They were led further down the hallway, tiny puffs of dust rising from the ground with every step they took. For the first time, Anakin noticed the faintest strains of what might have been music, and a glance at Aviva's face told him that she'd heard it as well. At last, they reached a small set of steps that wound around the wall, so they could not see where it led. The Jedi followed the Twi'lek down these, and then, quite suddenly, they had reached Jabba's inner sanctum.

The music they had heard earlier—if you could call it that—was much louder in here, coupled with the noises of several creatures talking all at once in several different languages. The room seemed torn between garish color and bleak neutrals, allowing glimpses of a dancer dressed in brassy yellow amidst a sea of dirt brown, or a girl with deep purple skin against the dull gray of the walls.

Every sort of being seemed to be here—Aviva's eyes were wide as she took in a million things she had never seen before. Anakin, who remembered all this decadence from long ago, noticed more the numerous bounty hunters who stood lazily against the walls, becoming suddenly alert when Jedi entered their den. And in the middle of all this was Jabba.

The god in slug form lay upon his repulsor sled with his eyes shut, apparently unbothered by the deafening cacophony around him, slime dribbling from the corner of his wide, toothless mouth. Surrounding him was a medley of various creatures, from a silver-coated protocol droid to a Kowakian monkey-lizard on a leash to a vaguely-dressed human woman who leaned against the sleeping mountain of blubber, playing idly with a strand of dark hair. Picking his way around these, the Twi'lek approached Jabba and whispered something into his ear. With a start, the Hutt awoke.

Though Anakin had not had cause to use the Huttese language in some time, he still remembered most of what he had learned when he was nine. He couldn't hear everything the two aliens were saying, but he could pick up bits. Anakin's own name was mentioned a few times…and they were arguing about something, no doubt the visitors. Then the Twi'lek was rushing toward them with shuffling steps.

"Jabba will not speak to you now," he whispered. "He does not wish—"

"Jabba," said Anakin suddenly, breaking into Huttese, "I'm looking for someone, a boy. Have you seen him?"

The Twi'lek's eyes widened at this breach of protocol, but Jabba answered for himself. At the sound of his booming voice, the music died away, and conversations trailed off across the room.

"Get out, Jedi," the Hutt ordered, temper rising. "You are not wanted here."

Poor Aviva looked quite bewildered, but there was no time to translate for her.

"You don't remember me, Great One?" The obeisance slipped from Anakin's tongue automatically—it was second nature for those who had dealings with Hutts to pander to them. "Not after that deal you made with Watto all those years ago? I earned you a lot that day."

That had been a long time ago when Watto, deep in debt to the Hutt, had offered as his last hope all of his slave's winnings in the next race. In what had been one of the closest races of his lives, and probably the second most important, Anakin had saved Watto's hide and given Jabba far more than what Watto originally owed.

The Jedi could almost see the thoughts running through Jabba's mind, trying to connect the Toydarian with this stranger that had come bursting in. Then suddenly his eyes flickered, and a great, hefty chuckle burst from his mouth.

"Little Skywalker, the racer," Jabba laughed. "I heard you had left Tatooine for good."

"I came back. Now, can you help me?"

To Anakin's surprise, Jabba shook his head. "I have not seen your boy," he admitted. "Surely a Jedi can find his own student."

"Not mine, but another's," answered Anakin. "The girl and he are in my care for the time being."

"Ah," said Jabba softly. "A shame." His reptilian eyes stared with blatant covetousness in Aviva's direction, and Anakin knew he wasn't talking about Drin. With one hand, in what appeared as a casual move, he took Aviva's arm and moved her to stand behind him. Jabba's odd penchant for beautiful humanoid women was legendary among those who knew him.

"Are you certain you have not seen him?" Anakin asked, steering the discussion back on track. "You do not know where he is?"

All through the conversation, the Twi'lek who had led them here stood between Jabba and Anakin, twisting his hands nervously. At this, he stepped up quickly onto Jabba's repulsor sled and whispered something again into the Hutt's ear. Around this time, Anakin felt an urgent tugging on his sleeve.

"Master Skywalker, what's going on?" Aviva asked. "What are you saying to him? Do we know where Drin is yet?"

Anakin shook his head. "Not yet," he said, keeping his voice low. Jabba could understand Basic, though the Hutt tongue was the only one he was capable of speaking. "Don't worry, though, we'll find him."

"It seems I do know where this student of yours is after all," Jabba said suddenly. Anakin's attention jerked immediately to him. "My guards found him trespassing in my palace, and threw him in the dungeons without my knowledge. You are free to release him, Jedi."

Anakin breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. "Da loda nadda. Thank you, Exalted One," he said fervently. Apparently finished talking for the day, Jabba's eyes closed once again without another word, and Anakin and Aviva were free to go.

"Well?" demanded Aviva as Anakin, guessing as to the direction of the dungeons, led her down a narrow and winding staircase. "Now do we know where he is?"

"Yes," Anakin said breathlessly. "He's down here, I think." At last the stairs ended, and they found themselves at the head of a long hallway, with several doors embedded into the sand-scarred walls. It was extremely dark down here, with only a few solitary glo-lamps hanging precariously from the ceiling. Rather than look in each cell, Anakin stayed where he was and called Drin's name yet again, very loudly. Finally, he got an answer.

"Anakin?" The voice was faint, but unmistakable. Anakin and Aviva rushed toward the noise. The door was, of course, locked, but within a few seconds the Force had helped Anakin divine the five-digit key code. The door slid open, and Drin tumbled out. The words poured out of his mouth, rushed and relieved.

"Anakin, I didn't think you'd be able to find me, I was afraid they'd just forget me down here, I was trying to contact you but I couldn't and then I started looking around because I thought if I fou—"

"Drin, for the love of the Force, shut up," Anakin said firmly. "It's ok now."

The boy nodded shakily, then fumbled at his belt for a moment before shoving the microchip into Anakin's hand. Anakin had completely forgotten about the kriffing thing. He took it and shoved it grumpily into his pocket, then took Drin by the shoulders.

"You're not hurt, right?" he asked, his tone concerned. "They didn't hurt you or do anything to you?"

Slowly, Drin shook his head. "No, not really."

"Good." Straightening, Anakin's voice changed dramatically to one of righteous anger. "When we get home, you're going to be doing a lot of work on patience. And keeping your head under pressure. And you're on refresher duty for two weeks."

"What?"

"I don't know what you thought you were supposed to be doing up there, but jettisoning the pod after five minutes was not it. You're just lucky I don't make it a month!"

Drin's mouth twisted unpleasantly, but he nodded, knowing Anakin would do it. Having sufficiently vented his frustration, Anakin took a deep breath and looked around.

"All right, so we've got to get back to the ship. Just stay close to me, both of you. And Aviva—"

He reached out with two fingers and jerked the hood of her cloak over her head, effectively hiding most of her face. She frowned, confused. "What's that for?"

"Avoiding trouble," Anakin answered cryptically. "Now come on."

They set off walking up the stairs again, the two Padawans behind the Knight. Anakin could hear them murmuring to each other, Aviva accusing and Drin defending. He knew Drin was more shaken than he would let on, which was the only reason Anakin had let him off so easily.

They went back through the den of iniquity, which seemed to have already forgotten their existence, and through the gate once more, unbothered by the guards. As soon as they were back outside on the hot sands, Anakin breathed a great sigh of relief. Just the thought of that place made his skin crawl; there the Hutt had sat for hundreds of years, and there he would sit for hundreds more, surrounded by decadence and filth. Nothing ever changed on Tatooine.

"Come on," he said, pausing for a moment to let the sun warm him. "Let's go back to Coruscant."