A reminder that this particular arc starts on Chapter 71: I know I haven't updated in a while.

/

A month later

Relinka Spetzv's first thought was that she felt weird.

Weird and … and cold. She always liked plenty of covers. She had always been a naturally chilly person. She likes lots of blankets. Where were her blankets?

She groaned aloud and reached out a questing hand for her shaak plushie. She had slept with Shaakie for ten years, but sometimes he fell off the bed while she was asleep.

She groped around for a minute but her fingers came up empty. She would have to open her eyes, which she did not want to do. If it was light outside, that would mean she would have to get up to get ready for work and she was so so so so tired…

She opened her eyes a slit, then a little wider, jerked, rolled, and found herself falling off of the bed in a jumbled heap.

"Ow!" she moaned.

"Oh, I am so very sorry," and unknown feminine voice said. "Are you all right?"

Relinka sat up abruptly and brought her hand to her aching head even as she looked around frantically. She was not at home. She was, in fact, in a small but well appointed room whose sole window looked out into space.

No, not space. Hyperspace. Where was she?

She jumped at the sound of approaching footsteps and looked up into the face of a very beautiful young woman, with dark eyes and long chestnut tresses, clad in a simple black jumpsuit, whose expression was full of concern.

"Where I am?" Relinka demanded, scrambling to her feet. "Who are you?"

"Who I am is a bit complicated," the woman said, patting the bed invitingly. "Please do sit down, Host Spetzv. You are still recovering from the drugs."

Relinka felt too shaky to protest, but these words did not reassuring her in the least.

"You know who I am?" she demanded as she collapsed back onto the bed.

"Yes, of course! You are Relinka Spetzv, co host of the most watched Holonet News show in the entire galaxy. That is why we abducted you."

Relinka felt her throat close up in terror. "Abducted…?" she squeaked fearfully.

"Yes," the woman replied, "and I do apologize, I am doing a terrible job of this. We mean no harm to you, I assure you. My name is Padme and … hold on a minute…"

'Padme' walked over to a drink dispenser and returned with a cup full of delectable creamy blueness.

"Here you are," she said. "I understand blue milk is your favorite drink?"

Relinka accepted the cup with a trembling hand and demanded, "Is it drugged?"

"No, no!" Padme assured her. "No. If we wanted to keep you drugged, we would have given you an injection before you woke up. No, go ahead and drink it."

Relinka grimaced and then decided her captor was right. She might as well keep up her strength. She downed the entire glass of blue milk and set it on a small table to the right of her bed. It was the best blue milk she had tasted in literally years, fresh, with just a hint of cinnamon. It gave her the courage to demand, "What do you want from me?"

Padme told her.

/

Two hours later

Executor

In orbit around Ryloth

"Go ahead," the technician said, and a familiar light started flashing on the holocam.

Relinka blew out a breath, straightened in her chair, and stared straight into the cam.

"Good morning, afternoon, evening, or night, fellow sentients," she said. "This is Relinka Spetzv. Unfortunately, I am not speaking from the Holonet studios on Imperial Center. I have, in fact, been abducted, and I do not know where I am, nor who is in charge of the ship I am being currently being held on. I therefore must apologize if anything said during the upcoming interview involves insults or threats against our glorious Emperor Palpatine and his Empire. My primary captor insists on broadcasting an ... an explanation for her decision to abduct me. If anyone can find out where we are, and rescue me, I would be most grateful. And now, my evil captor!"

She gestured with a flourish toward the dark haired woman, and she could see, the a small screen to the right, that the technician had sufficient training to pull back so that now both women were onscreen.

"Thank you, Relinka," the woman said with a charming smile. "First, let me introduce myself. I am Padme Amidala Naberrie, and I was queen of Naboo some 30 years ago, and then a Senator of the Old Republic 23 years ago. Some very odd things happened a few weeks ago, and I was pulled forward in time to discover that my ex-colleague, the former Senator Palpatine, has transformed a democracy into a dictatorship, and that my beloved galaxy is now under the harsh fist of the most evil person I have ever been privileged to meet. I wish to tell the Emperor in particular, and the galaxy in general, that my colleagues and I intend to kill Palpatine soon."

Relinka stared at the woman incredulously. It was hard to know where to start, exactly; the threats to the Emperor? The time travel?

"You speak treason!" she finally said. Best to show everyone that she was still loyal to the Emperor.

(This was, of course, assuming that this broadcast was actually going out. The sensible thing would have been to refuse to do the interview, but for all her crazy costumes and even crazier hair, she was, at heart, genuinely passionate about telling the people about what was happening in the galaxy. How could she turn down an opportunity like this one?)

Her guest (abductor?) lifted one elegant brow and crossed her legs. "Well, I would not say that is true; after all, I died within days of Sheev overthrowing the Republic and declaring himself Emperor, and I certainly never pledged my allegiance to him."

"Sheev?" Relinka repeated weakly.

"Sheev Palpatine. That's his first name you know, Sheev. When I was still in my teens, I thought of him as a mentor. He wore such a kindly face, which regrettably hid a calculating, vicious, and evil mind. I was just one of those caught up in his web; I deeply regret that I called for the no confidence vote which allowed Palpatine to take the Chancellorship of the Senate. However, there is no point in crying over a broken convor egg."

Relinka frowned, then remembered that she had been forced to apply her own make-up today and that this ship (whatever it was) did not have her favorite kind of cosmetics on board. The last thing she needed was to show off wrinkle lines!

"Let's talk about this time travel," she suggested, smoothing her brow.

"All right, lets!" Padme replied cheerfully.

"You must realize that such a claim is ludicrous," Relinka said patiently. "No one can travel through time."

"And two months ago, I would have agreed with you! But here I am!"

Relinka shook her head and put on her sympathetic expression. "I suppose it is possible that you believe that you time traveled, but no rational person would do so. You belong in some kind of mental facility, Padme – or whatever your name really is."

A moment later, it occurred to her that poking the rancor probably wasn't the best idea. This woman looked harmless, but somehow she and her cohorts had managed to kidnap Relinka from Imperial Center. She had no idea where she was, and they could torture and murder her with impunity.

To her relief, Padme chuckled at this and said, "Well, my husband is entirely rational, and he believes it."

Relinka lifted an eyebrow and immediately relaxed it. Wrinkles!

"You are married?" she asked politely.

"Yes," Padme said, her eyes dreamy, her mouth quirked up fondly. "Yes. I used to be five years older than he is, and now of course I'm almost twenty years younger, but whatever. I love him and he loves me."

"Is he the one who arranged for my abduction?" Relinka asked boldly.

"Yes," Padme said, and waved a slender hand toward the door. "Ani, come on in here!"

The door slid open and Relinka turned with a curiosity which quickly morphed into full blown, terrified horror as the two meter form of Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith strode in the room, his chest plate lights blinking ominously, his heavy breathing filling the room.

"Anakin, you are frightening Host Spetzv," Padme said sternly. "Come and sit down next to me."

Relinka's vision wobbled slightly as the cyborg stalked over and took his place on the couch next to the slender brunette; the furniture groaned slightly under the Sith Lord's mammoth weight, but did not collapse.

"Excuse me," Relinka said, and was vaguely aware that her voice was an octave higher than usual. "Are you saying that you are married to Darth Vader?"

"Yes, though I call him Anakin," Padme said cheerfully. "He was Anakin Skywalker, you see, a very famous Jedi Knight. Unfortunately, Sheev managed to dig his talons deeply into my husband and regrettably I was pushed forward in time and thus wasn't able to intervene. But now that I am back and together we are going to kill the Emperor. Right, Anakin?"

"That is correct," the Sith rumbled dangerously. "I am going to kill him, and chop him to pieces, and feed him to the colo claw fish."

Relinka, at this point, came to a quite shattering realization. She was obviously in the midst of a nightmare, or brain damaged, or something of the sort. None of this was real. None of this could be real.

"I'm dreaming," she said aloud.

Padme groaned aloud and cocked a sympathetic eyebrow. "No, Relinka, you are not."

"Yes, I am," Relinka declared, and stood up. She took a few steps towards Vader, who was so stinking tall that even seated, he and she were eye level, and she said, "There is no way, in all the galaxies, in all the nebula, in all the black holes, that Darth Vader, who has been loyal to Emperor Palpatine for as long as anyone can remember, who is the Emperors' second in command, would commit treason against his royal highness!"

This provoked the (pretend) Sith to rise to his feet, and Relinka found herself lifting her chin to stare into the black, insectoid mask of the most dangerous man in the galaxy.

(But this was a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream.)

"It is not treason," the (imaginary) Vader snarled turning toward the holocam. "I pledged my life and my breath and my soul to Palpatine to save my dear wife, and he betrayed me, he betrayed Padme, by seeking to drain her life force. He tried to kill her, and I will kill him in return, and I will never give up my task, as long as I draw breath! I am coming for you, Palpatine! I am..."

"Stop it!" Relinka yelled at the vision. "Stop! You are babbling!"

The giant body turned toward her, the great cape swishing dramatically, and a gauntleted hand reached out, and the bass voice bellowed, "Babbling, babbling? How dare you say such a thing..."

Relinka discovered, at this point, that she was not, in fact, dreaming. Because she was choking. She couldn't breathe. She could only blink in terror as the breath seized in her lungs. And the 3% of her brain which wasn't freaking out realized that visions did not use the Force to choke people.

"Anakin!" Padme snapped, leaping to her feet and whacking the Sith hard on the arm. "What did I tell you about choking people! Stop it at once!"

In an instant, the invisible grip disappeared, and Relinka took in a gasp of sweet, sweet oxygen. Then she burst into tears.

Padme hurried forward to pat the woman on the shoulder and said, "I'm terribly sorry about all that. After all, he's only a Sith Lord!"

The former queen of Naboo turned toward the holocam and said, "We're about done here but I wanted to say one last thing. We're coming for you, Palpatine. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid."