A/N: I just want to point out that Coruscant is quite different than in the movies. Yes, there's still the city and the different levels of it, but 'suburb' areas have also been built around Coruscant. They contain trees and grass and it's where Alessa lives.

Disclaimer: Star Wars is not mine and never will be.

Chapter 2: It's illegal…who cares?

Alessa quickly threw on her brown sweater, black baggy pants and her metallic looking boots.

She silently slipped through her small window and grabbed hold of a nearby tree branch and climbed down the tree. She knew her parents were asleep. She wasn't sure how, but she just knew. Her brother was asleep too.

She grabbed her hoverboard from near the back door and went to the front yard, where from there she took the hoverboard into the city.

It took her half an hour to get to the city and take a bus down to the sewers of Coruscant. There was a secret bar down there where she met up with Skess. They sat down at a table.

"When are they starting the race?" Alessa asked Skess.

"In a couple of minutes. The racers are getting their vehicles ready," Skess replied.

"What vehicles? Who's racing?"

Skess shrugged, "I think Rayceer might be, there's also some dude with a podracer."

"Oh my god! Are you serious! An actual podracer!" Alessa was astonished. Podracers were rare. No one actually podraced anymore, apparently they did that years ago, but Alessa wasn't sure when.

"It's not going to fit in the sewer. Apparently they're huge," Skess said.

"Who cares! It's still a podracer!"

Skess rolled her eyes, "A swoop bike will work better. Someone in the race also has a normal speeder."

"Lame," Alessa said and rolled her eyes as well, "who uses a normal speeder?"

Before Skess could reply some creepy alien (they had a lot of them around there) came up to them, "want some spice?" he asked in a slithering voice.

"No thanks," Skess said.

"How about a death stick?"

"No," Alessa said, "Just go away!"

"I will go away," the creature said and turned around and left.

"Good job," Skess said, "how come you always manage to scare the creeps away?"

"I'm just that good," Alessa joked.

Skess rolled her eyes.

"The race is starting!" Alessa said excitedly.

Both girls got up and went over to one of the windows to look out into the sewer to see the races. Racing was illegal in Coruscant, as people could get hurt, but the Government still hadn't found them down here. Probably the last place they'd look.

There was a loud beep which echoed through the sewer, then another one and on the third the racers started the race.

"And the racers are off for their first lap," the commentator announced.

"GO RAYCEER!" Skess said. He had gotten the lead right away. Alessa laughed, she didn't really like Rayceer. He was a zabrak and was very kind to Skess. However, he was very up himself and Alessa, personally, didn't want Rayceer to win.

"And Rayceer's in the lead. Man this guy is good. He's won, like, 100 races or something," the commentator said, "wonder if he'll win this one?"

Suddenly, Alessa felt someone come up behind them, "Boo!" they said.

Skess jumped in fright, "Dayne! Don't do that!"

"I scared you!" The 18 year old male twi-lek said excitedly, "but I didn't scare Alessa," he said when he noticed, "damn it. Again. You never get scared!"

"That's because I knew you were there," Alessa said and rolled her eyes.

"How?" Dayne asked.

Alessa shrugged, "I just knew you were there."

Dayne sighed, "You always seem to know I'm here," he complained.

"Don't worry, you'll scare me some time," Alessa said to cheer him up.

"Oh gosh!" Skess exclaimed.

"What?" Alessa asked.

Skess didn't reply, but Alessa noticed what was wrong. As she looked over at the board which said who was coming first to last, Rayceer had been taken over by someone else.

"Wow, he's been taken over," Dayne said.

"It's the newbie with the podracer too!" Skess said.

"Really? Wow!" Alessa said. She hoped that the 'newbie' would win.

"There's a newbie with a what?" Dayne asked.

"Podracer," Skess said.

"What's a podracer?"

"It's some ancient piece of crap which was used in podraces," Skess explained.

"It's not a piece of crap," Alessa argued, "it may be ancient, but it's awesome! Podraces were played in wide open areas usually, especially in backwater planets!"

"That sounds…interesting," Dayne said, "so these podracers, they must be big?"

"I guess. I've never actually seen one before," Alessa explained, "but I hope after the race I can see this guy's."

"Maybe get his number while you're at it," Skess said sarcastically.

"Oh, very funny," Alessa said.

The race continued and there was lots of cheering and booing as people watched what happened on the screen and outside, looking at who was coming first. The commentator also said some foul language occasionally when something not to his liking happened.

During the end of the final lap, Rayceer came back into the lead.

"Look!" Skess said, "He's going to win!"

"Don't get your hopes up," Dayne said unhappily. He always tried to get along with Rayceer, but Rayceer always ignored him as if he wasn't there or pretended he didn't know who he was.

The whole bar fell silent to watch who was going to win. Alessa could feel the tension and excitement that she felt nearly every night at the bar.

"AND RAYCEER WINS!"

And then lots of people in the bar cheered. There was hooting and yelling.

"He won!" Skess said, jumping up and down.

Alessa was disappointed, but didn't let it show, she smiled and cheered with Skess. Dayne wasn't too happy either and wasn't smiling, unless Skess or Alessa looked at him he'd put on a fake smile. Alessa knew better.

Everyone went to crowd around the door where the racers came through.

Rayceer came through and everyone cheered like Coruscant had won the nunaball finals.

"Thank you, thank you," Rayceer said, "I always win guys! Don't get your horns in a knot!"

"You can't get your horns in a knot! And not everyone has horns like you!" Someone yelled and everyone laughed.

People went up to him patting him on the back, shaking hands and congratulating him. Rayceer then spotted the trio standing near him.

"Skess!" he said, "how are you? Hi Alessa!" Rayceer said, he didn't even acknowledge Dayne.

Alessa rolled her eyes. He never did acknowledge him.

"I'm great! Congrats!" Skess said. Rayceer put his hand around Skess.

"Uh, Congratulations," Dayne said.

"Thanks," Rayceer said, but didn't look at Dayne. He steered Skess away.

Dayne stood there awkwardly.

"Don't worry about him," Alessa said, "let's go see that guy with the podracer, what was his name?"

"Uh, I think it said Brak on the screen or something…" Dayne said and went out to the start of the race track to see him.

It was quite disgusting on the track because there was the sewage water, but Alessa had walked across it a few times before and was quite used to it. Unexpectedly she nearly fell over, but luckily didn't.

The podracer was incredible. It was a blue colour with black flames. It was pretty big, and it was at least five times the size of a speeder bike.

"Wow!" Alessa said, "That is a beauty!"

A guy appeared to be cleaning the pod, or fixing it up. He was human and looked pretty untidy. He had black hair which came to his shoulders and his fringe was pretty long, but you could just see his stunning grey eyes through it. He looked like he'd worn his clothes for a week, he smelled like it too. He looked up at Alessa and smiled.

"Sure is. Most people think it's just a heap of junk, but it works well," he said.

"It's pretty big," Dayne said.

"Yea," The guy said, "I'm Brak Dagachia by the way."

"I was right!" Dayne said.

Brak looked at him in confusion.

"Oh, your name was on the screen, everyone's is," Dayne explained.

"Oh, yeah. So, do I get to know your names?" Brak asked and smiled again.

"I'm Alessa," Alessa said and shook his hand.

"Dayne," Dayne said and also shook his hand.

"Pleasure to meet you," Brak said, "unlike Rayceer. You know I tried to talk him, just walked away from me, ignored me completely."

"He's alright," Alessa said, "a bit up himself, and a bit of an idiot."

"Yea," Dayne said, "he ignores me too, even though I know he knows my name. I don't get what his problem is."

Brak patted Dayne on the shoulder, "uh well, Karma will get him at some point."

"Karma?" Dayne asked.

"Never heard of Karma?" Brak asked him.

"I have," Alessa said.

Dayne shook his head.

"Say person one does something bad to person two," Brak explained, "then something bad will happen to person one because of the bad thing he did to person two. Or vice versa. So person two does something nice to person one, then something good will happen to person two because of their kindness."

"oh, I get it," Dayne said and nodded, "so your saying that something bad will happen to Rayceer?"

"Exactly," Brak said. He went back to cleaning his pod, and fixing it.

"Need help?" Alessa asked, "I'm good at fixing things."

"Sure," Brak said, "wanna help, Dayne?"

Dayne shrugged, "I'm not very good with machinery…"

"You can clean it," Brak suggested, holding out a rag.

"Sure," Dayne replied.

They talked for a while, fixing and cleaning the pod. Alessa learned that Brak's parents were dead so he was smuggling with his older brother. His older brother left him here to see if he could win a race and get some money, since their smuggling wasn't going too well at the moment.

"Do you smuggle for anyone in particular?" Alessa asked. She had met some criminals before, but never a smuggler. Usually the criminals she did meet were drug dealers, or thieves.

"Most of the time, the Solo's," Brak replied, "You know, the outer-rim crime lords."

"No," Alessa replied, "I don't particularly keep in touch with the criminal world."

"Yeah, she lives in a normal suburb and pretty much leads a normal life," Dayne said.

"Well, the Solo's, they've only been crime lords for a few generations. A couple of them say they're descendants from some of those 'Great Wizards', it seems like lots of powerful people say that. Anyway, we occasionally do some things for them, get paid big you see?"

"Okay," Alessa replied, thinking they sounded completely stupid. She was also annoyed with two certain words: Great Wizards. They seemed to be popping up now that she was studying it at school.

Brak opened his mouth to say something else when Skess came through, "Alessa!" she said, "come on, we have to go! It's three in the morning! We need to get some sleep."

"Oh crap," Alessa said. She put down the screwdriver and looked at Brak and Dayne, "see you around? Maybe?"

"I'll be coming to more races until I win," Brak said

"And I'm always around," Dayne said.

"Okay, see you," Alessa said and then ran after Skess.

Alessa and Skess ran out of the sewers and outside into Coruscant.

"Who was that cute guy?" Skess asked as they took out their hoverboards from Skess' bag.

"Who?" Alessa asked.

"The cute guy you were hanging out with, there was Dayne and you, who was the other guy?"

"Oh, Brak, he's the guy that owns the Pod."

"Seriously?" Skess asked.

"You didn't notice we were cleaning it and fixing it?"

"No. I didn't look."

Alessa rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.

Luckily Coruscant was the 'planet that never sleeps' so they caught a bus back up. Skess got off at the stop before her.

"I'll see you at school tomorrow, okay?" She said, getting up.

"Yeah, see you." Alessa replied. She hadn't noticed how tired she was and nearly fell asleep on the bus.

After a few minutes she swore that she felt someone was looking at her. She looked to her left, but only saw an outline of a blue transparent person. Alessa stared at the spot, but the 'person' was gone. She decided that she just must be incredibly tired.

Another few minutes and she got to her bus stop. She got out of the bus, retrieved the hoverboard and quickly went back home.

When Alessa got back home she put the hoverboard back into its original spot and went over to the tree, climbing back up into the window. She quickly changed into her pyjamas and noticed that it was just after 0330. She lay down on her bed and just before she fell asleep, she swore she saw that blue glow again.