The robed stranger moved effortlessly through the crowds thronging the spaceport, and as she struggled to keep pace with Talia, who was in turn struggling to keep pace with their quarry, Rian noticed something peculiar.

Everyone the man encountered moved out of his way, but no one seemed to notice him; as he approached, they would step aside without looking directly at him, then return to their original track after he passed, seemingly unaware that they had altered their course at all.

She and Talia were not nearly so fortunate; as they pushed and shoved their way through the concourse, their progress was marked by a steady chorus of protests and curses.

So much for subtle.

The stranger never turned around, but he must have been aware of their pursuit, for his pace increased, and he vanished around a bend.

Talia increased their speed to the point that Rian was all but running. They turned the corner and stopped in confusion.

He was gone.

Swearing with an uncharacteristic note of frustration in her voice, Talia scanned the milling crowd ahead of them, looking without success for the hooded and cloaked figure. Wondering at the reason for her friend's intensity, Rian glanced around, then nudged Talia, pointing to the door that stood immediately to their left.

"Only way he could have gotten out of sight that fast," she said, pulling a small item out of her pocket and placing it over the security keypad. Her father had warned her that this trip was to be used solely for rest and relaxation, but there were some things that she would no more have gone out without than clothes, and this was one of them. With a barely audible hum, the device identified the correct sequence of tones within seconds and the door slid open. With a grateful smile for Rian, Talia stepped through. Rian followed, wondering how the stranger had gotten through the door: by normal means or by the use of the strange powers he had displayed thus far.

The door hummed shut behind them; Rian had turned to check that no one had followed them through – a longstanding habit – when another, more ominous hum caught her attention.

She turned, slowly, cautiously. They were in another corridor, this one narrow and deserted save for she, Talia and the stranger, who currently had Talia backed against the wall, the tip of his light saber nearly touching her throat.

Rian tensed, wishing she had thought to retrieve one of the blasters from the fallen troopers – but then, such weapons had not done them any good, had they?

"Why are you following me?" The stranger's voice was calm and level, showing neither fear nor anger, and his face displayed only a mild curiosity – and perhaps the slightest hint of irritation.

Talia met his gaze, seemingly unaware of the deadly weapon only a fingerwidth away from taking her life. "I want you to train me," she told him. "I want to become a Jedi."

Rian blinked. She didn't know exactly what she had been expecting to hear, but that hadn't been it.

If the stranger was similarly surprised, he hid it well. After a moment of hesitation, he deactivated the light saber, the blade vanishing with a soft hiss, although Rian noticed that he did not put the weapon away. He pushed back his hood, revealing light brown hair, lightly touched with grey, trimmed short on the front and sides, longer in the back, falling just below collar length. He regarded her wordlessly for a long moment, his blue-green eyes thoughtful and guarded.

"You have the ability," he murmured finally. "I can feel the Force within you."

"My father was a Jedi," Talia told him proudly. "He was killed in the Clone Wars."

Rian blinked again. Other than saying that both her parents were dead, Talia had never volunteered any information about her past, and she had adroitly evaded all of Rian's questions on the subject.

The stranger's eyebrows rose perceptibly at this statement. "His name?"

"Anduin Mystraal."

Rian blinked yet again. She had always known Talia by the surname Rashan, but then, she was beginning to wonder if she had ever really known the other woman at all. She looked accusingly at her friend. "You lied to me?"

Both of them seemed to have forgotten her presence. Talia looked at her, first with surprise, then with an irritated resignation that stung Rian more than she would show.

"I didn't lie to you," Talia replied calmly. "I've always used my mother's name; my father's isn't safe within the Empire."

"Wise decision," the stranger agreed, eyeing Talia appraisingly. "I knew your father," he said finally. "You look much like him," he added, a brief shadow of sorrow passing across his face.

Talia's expression gave no indication of what emotions – if any – the Jedi's words engendered in her. "Will you train me, then?" she persisted.

He stared at her, visibly weighing his options, then glanced at Rian. "What about her?" he wanted to know.

"She'll be leaving," Talia replied instantly. "She's got a flight to catch."

Rian's jaw dropped, but before she could formulate a suitably indignant reply, the Jedi shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but that is out of the question," he said. "She has seen me; she knows what I am. She'll have to come with us until I can decide what to do with her."

Talia's brilliant green eyes gleamed briefly at the 'us', but all she said was, "If you let her go, she won't say anything. You have my word –"

"I can speak for myself," Rian snapped, irritated at being discussed as though she wasn't there. She turned to the Jedi. "If she's going, I'm going," she informed him.

"Dammit, Rian!" Talia hissed, but the Jedi held up his hand.

"She is coming," he said firmly, though his eyes twinkled slightly with what could have been amusement. He glanced at Rian. "You seem intelligent enough to realize that it would be a bad idea to try to run or call for help."

Rian snorted. "It'd be a really bad idea if I wanted to come with you, wouldn't it?" She hated it when people confused youth with idiocy.

He nodded. "True enough," he conceded with the faintest of smiles, motioning for them to walk ahead of him down the corridor.

Talia glared irritably at Rian, who returned her gaze with the innocent who-me? expression that she normally reserved exclusively for use on her father. She knew that it would irritate Talia even more, and it also served to mask her own anger that her friend had tried to send her away. It was rare that she was the calm one (unheard of would perhaps be a more accurate assessment), even if it was in appearance only, and she was determined to savor the fiction as long as possible.

They preceded him down the corridor until they reached a second closed door. Rian watched expectantly as the Jedi stepped around them to the security keypad, and was moderately disappointed when he pulled out a device that was not unlike the one she carried (although considerably older, she noted smugly). He glanced back and chuckled at her expression.

"Expecting a bit of magic, were you?"

Rian grinned. "Would've been fun. Doesn't work for stuff like that?"

He shook his head. "The Force is not terribly effective with electronic systems; normally, I use an R2 unit for things like this, but they are difficult to conceal." The door slid open, and they stepped out into what looked like a maintenance bay.

"Stay close behind me," he ordered, "and say nothing to anyone."

Rian and Talia stayed on his heels as he moved at a purposeful yet unhurried walk through the bay, the workers moving out of their path as automatically and unconsciously as the people in the concourse had.

They reached an external door and slipped through just as an alarm klaxon began to sound. Looking back, Rian saw the door slide shut, heard the unmistakable sound of security locks engaging.

She snickered. "A little late."

"Fortunately for us," the Jedi responded. "Once the alert is activated, the doors can only be opened at the control room."

The planet, at least the part of it that Rian could see, was covered in dense jungle, the humid air redolent with the scent of decomposing vegetation. The Jedi led them through the trees to a pair of speeder bikes concealed beneath moss.

"Expecting company?" Rian wanted to know.

"Not the type I got," he replied with a rueful shake of his head. "Can you ride one of these?"

"Yeah," Rian said, "but she's better at it." She jerked a thumb at Talia, who offered her a crooked smile.

"That's not surprising," the Jedi said with a smile. "Anduin was one of the best pilots I ever met."

As Rian climbed on behind the redhead, she couldn't resist asking, "You're not going to try to dump me off, are you?"

"No," Talia said with a sigh, "but you're too damn curious for your own good."

Rian grinned, unrepentant. "Can't let you have all the fun."

The speeder bikes were much better suited than traditional landspeeders to moving quickly through the close-growing trees, and Talia found herself hard pressed to keep up with the Jedi as he wove in and out among the massive trunks and dangling vines. The primary life forms seemed to be insectile; spindly creatures with glistening, transparent wings flitted through the air, and others with many legs and iridescent, multisegmented bodies crawled along the ground and on the tree branches.

After what seemed like an eternity of darting through the trees, doubling back several times in an apparent attempt to detect a pursuit that never materialized, they came to a break in the trees at the foot of a mountain range. The Jedi pulled his speeder bike to a stop beside a formation of large boulders that had apparently rolled down the mountainside at some point in the past. Rian looked upward nervously as she climbed off, wondering which of the rocks that lay strewn over the slope above them would be descending next – and when.

The Jedi strode to the nearest boulder, examined its surface and laid his hand against it. Rian stepped back in surprise as the enormous rock tilted back, revealing a hole in the ground beneath it and a lighted staircase leading downward.

Talia and Rian followed him downward into a warren of tunnels that seemed to lead directly under the mountains. They passed other people in the tunnels; instead of seeming unaware of their existence, they murmured respectful greetings to the Jedi – Rian caught the name 'Kennarin' several times – and cast surprised glances at the two women.

'Kennarin' returned the greetings, but never paused in his purposeful stride, which was fast enough that Rian had to jog to keep up.

"Boruk!" he called out to a Bothan emerging from a side door. The Bothan's yellow eyes lit up at the sight of the Jedi, then narrowed as he noticed Rian and Talia.

"What happened?" He demanded, the finely furred skin of his face furrowing in obvious concern. "Where is Devrak? Who are these?"

"No time," the Jedi replied tersely. "Get ready to evacuate. Where is she?"

"Evacuate?" the Bothan's eyes widened, then he visibly controlled himself. "She's in the comm room," he added, brushing by and setting off down the hall at a trot.

The Jedi turned and set off again, following a series of turns that quickly had Rian lost. They entered a room filled with view screens, work terminals and an assortment of individuals of a half dozen different species, all intent on the tasks before them. Their host approached a human female who was bent over, studying a readout on the screen before her and speaking in low tones to the short, vaguely reptilian humanoid sitting at the terminal.

"We need to talk," Kennarin announced. "Now."

There was no response. The woman continued her conversation.

The Jedi watched her, his face expressionless, for several seconds. "Dormé, I said –"

"I heard you," she said, standing and turning around. She seemed to be in her early forties, with dark hair, shot through with strands of pure white and plaited into a single heavy braid that hung down to the middle of her back. Her face bore the mark of a youthful beauty that had aged well, but her dark eyes were hard and tired. Her expression as she regarded Kennarin was carefully neutral, shifting to open displeasure as she noticed Rian and Talia.

"You were sent," she began, her voice controlled, precise, "to rendezvous with an agent, not pick up strays."

She sighed, shaking her head. "Honestly, can't you damn Jedi do anything right?"