FicWad

Corde went down first, with a blaster bolt going straight through her heart. Verse screamed, then returned fire. Padme did likewise, while out of the corner of her eye she saw Captain Tarpals take the disguised Senator Okiltine by the arm and usher her into a nearby building before she could protest. As the crossfire with their unknown assailants filled the platform, Padme began backing towards the building, ready to bolt as soon as she could be sure that the Senator was a safe distance ahead...Roos was familiar with some of the lowest levels of Coruscant; he could be trusted to lead the Senator safely where her pursuers might not dare to go...

"Verse..." she called. "Verse, come on." Ahead of her, Verse showed no signs of retreating.

What is she doing? She'll be shot! Padme thought frantically. But now Verse didn't seem to even be firing. A quick glance around told Padme that the rest of the entourage had fled, but she couldn't leave Verse there. She crouched behind a pillar where she was protected from most of the gunfire and yelled desperately, "Verse! Please! You'll be killed!"

But Verse only laughed, and then screamed, "Dad! Show yourself, dad! I know you were responsible for this now, that's why I'm still standing here unharmed, dad!"

Then she fell, as if in slow motion, shot through the heart like Corde had been.

There was no time to think. Padme swerved around the pillar, fired off one last bolt, then turned towards the door.

But as she did, two men burst out of it, and she found herself pulled back against one of them as the other easily wrenched her blaster pistol from her grasp. Her arms were yanked over her captors shoulders and she cried out in pain as the muzzle of her pistol was pressed against her chin.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" hissed an oily voice in her ear. "Your Senator's dead, handmaiden-or is she? Perhaps that was a decoy? Perhaps the Senator was posing as a member of her entourage?" The pistol jabbed her skin. "You, perhaps?"

Let them think I'm her. It'll keep her safe for that much longer.

"Stop right there!" Another voice yelled from behind them. "Unhand the girl."

Next thing Padme knew she was free, and the two men were running down the platform with a pair of Jedi knights in pursuit. They were almost upon them when they reached the edge and jumped.

Padme ran to join them as they peered over the edge. "I think I can see them," said the younger, a padawan, she thought.

"I think they're associates of-" Padme started, but she was interrupted when from below the platform there was the sound of an explosion, and seconds later a speeder burst out of the foundations, the two men fighting over its steering controls.

"Guard the handmaiden, Anakin," the older Jedi ordered the younger one. "There's no way those two could have shot the Senator; there has to be a whole gang of them who may still be about." He leapt off the platform, aiming for another one.

"He'll never get to them that way!" sighed the padawan. "I suppose you want to stay here," he said to Padme, in such a tone that implied she really should not want to stay there, as they looked fully at each other for the first time. He was a handsome young man.

"No," said Padme, "I want to help capture those two men, if I can," and she meant it.

His face split into a wicked grin which Padme was certain was unbecoming of a Jedi. "Hold on, then," he said lightly, then he scooped her up and jumped.

A minute prior Padme had been convinced she could never be more scared than she had been just then. That belief gave way in the face of hurtling through thin air with nothing more to hold on to but a teenage Jedi. She was too scared even to scream.

A moment of her feet again touching something solid before they again were up in the air brought little relief. Anakin grabbing onto the tail of someone's vehicle and them dangling from it while speeding who knew how many miles per hour through the air brought less. But finally they landed on a platform near some sort of brassy entertainment facility. There was a crowd gathered just outside it, and it looked like someone was being arrested.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Padme asked timidly.

"Don't worry, I've got it all under control. Isn't that Senator Greyshade's speeder?" He pointed to a shiny yellow and orange speeder.

"Why, yes it is!" Padme remembered Senator Okiltine's last meeting with Simon Greyshade. It hadn't been a pleasant experience. Nor was perhaps the experience of any decent sentient being when dealing with the most despicably corrupt Senator in the Republic.

But when she realized Anakin's intentions, she felt the need to say, "Master Jedi, if you take that speeder, he will be furious beyond-"

"Good." Then he practically tossed her into the passenger seat, leapt in next to her, and took off, so quickly that noone in the crowd even seemed to notice them.

When he flashed her another grin, she shook her head and said flatly, "You're crazy."

"So my Master's said a couple of times. Hey, don't get robes all tied in knots; I'll leave it in his personal parking spot." Then he took the speeder up a steep ascent that Padme was sure was illegal in at least half the planet, if not the whole of it, swerving madly to avoid the skylanes and ignoring the sirens from angry drivers.

"Sorry!" She herself called to them, though she was afraid they probably couldn't hear her.

Finally they leveled off and there was Anakin's Master, who had taken notice of them and was standing there glaring at Anakin.

"Hop in, Master," said Anakin cheerfully. "Have you kept any track of who we're chasing?"

His Master jumped lightly into the backseat, and said, "I thought I told to stay with..." Then he stopped, and stared at Padme incredulously.

"Hey, she wanted to go after them. Her mistress has just been murdered, after all." Padme briefly considered telling them that Corde had been posing as the Senator, but that really was need-to-know information, and she could tell them later if something happened that required them to know; they didn't now.

"Well, did you make any effort to warn her of the dangers-woah!" Anakin taken the speeder on a wild dip. Padme felt a flash of gratitude towards him though; his Master's attitude angered her. Did he think she didn't already know the dangers? That there was no possibility of her being willing to brave them, even if she wasn't a Jedi?

"Sorry, Master," said Anakin, who didn't sound very sorry. "I forgot that you don't like flying."

"I don't mind flying, but what you're doing is..."

"....a little crazy?" Padme finished for him.

"Will you please not gang up on me?" Anakin pleaded. But he and his Master continued to argue all through the resulting ride, pausing only when the latter advised Anakin to change direction, advice that Anakin thankfully took without protest. Soon they seemed to forget that Padme was in the speeder with them.

To Padme it felt like she had been jolted out of her life into some else's, and was now hoping she'd soon find some way to get back, because she couldn't see any just then. After careening through the air with nothing below her, doing so in a speeder was easier to get used to than it might have otherwise been, but Anakin drove so fast that she gave up trying to keep track of where they were going in this unnaturally huge city, where all the buildings looked the same, especially when they flew past. She wished she had some idea of where Senator Okiltine might be, especially as Corde and Verse's deaths began to sink in. Could they truly trust Roos Tarpals? She wanted to believe they could.

"Looks like they've made it easy for us." Anakin's Master broke off their ongoing argument as they caught sight of their quarry: the two men had crashed the speeder, and were sitting there having an argument themselves. Several thoughts about people truly being alike after all ran through Padme's head.

Even so, when Anakin stopped the speeder and leapt down with lightsaber ignited("I hate it when he does that," his Master commented), they abandoned their quarrel and grabbed their blasters.

They were little match for him. Their bolts rebounded against his lightsaber and hit their arms, causing them to drop their weapons in pain. His Master brought the speeder down and joined him. By the time Padme climbed out after them, they had the men very subdued.

"Looky here," one of them roared, "We have the Senator? Come to gloat, Senator?"

"Wait a minute!" Anakin turned and looked at her, shocked. "You're Senator Okiltine?"

Don't reveal until you have to. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not." She saw Anakin's Master looking at her very thoughtfully. Well, if he guessed, there wasn't much she could do about that. "But you've just killed two people very dear to me. Tell me who sent you. Was is Osic Excenil?"

"We don't know," sighed the other man. "We were hired by an anonymous client. If you really want to know, he's probably somehow connected to-"

"Don't just tell them!" his partner yelled at him, but the second man had suddenly stopped, mouth open. A moment later he against the crashed speeder, unmistakably dead. Four pairs of eyes fell on a dart that had embedded itself in the side of his neck.

"FRAK!" was all the second man had time for before a second dart hit him. Then Anakin whirled around, grabbed Padme, shoved her back into the speeder, and took off. Even as he did, Padme felt the metal of a third dart graze her cheek. Frantically she pressed her hand to her skin to make sure it hadn't pierced.

After a minute or so, Anakin looked back and said, "He's not pursuing, whoever shot those. I think his main objective was to kill the two men before they told us anything. He probably fired the third dart at you because he hoped for whatever reward they were getting."

"Will your Master catch him?"

"If he can. Though at least if he can't, we can use the darts to try to identify him. Come, Senator. Let me take you home."

She really did want to tell him that she wasn't the Senator, since he had apparently decided to believe that she was. But she certainly had no excuse now.

Unlike their earlier wild flight, here Anakin flew sensibly, merging into the skylanes and complacently following the flow of the traffic. Padme watched him as they flew. Part of it was fascination with the Jedi, of course; this was the first time she'd met any. But more then that, there was something about his face, his eyes, that drew hers. Like Jedi were supposed to, he radiated calm, but there was a sense of something dark and ominous beneath it. More than that, there was a contained within that calm a quiet but intense power, and it was only after the swing through Coruscant's platforms and the subsequent speeder ride that Padme could see how alive he had been during them, more so than anyone she had ever known.

He knew Coruscant very well, too; without directions he took her to the Senate District. There she guided him to her apartment building on the outskirts.

He settled into at one of the building's convenience entrances, and helped her out of the speeder. "Guess you should return the speeder now," she said, feeling awkward of the sudden, "before Senator Greyshade convinces someone to put the whole planet on red alert or something."

"Yeah," he agreed, then sat there for a moment or so. "Senator Okiltine..." Another pause, enough time for the shame to fill Padme's heart.

Then his wrist comm beeped. He activated it. "Skywalker."

"Anakin," said a small hologram of his Master, "I've found Senator Okiltine."

Padme didn't even wait to see Anakin's reaction, but turned and ran.

"Miss! Wait!" He called after her. She ignored him, but bolted into the open lift. The doors closed and she was alone.

All alone, fingers stabbing at her destination two floors down, and wanting to scream. She ought to have only been relieved that her mistress was safe. Instead, her shame was overwhelming her.