Author's Notes: In Which Jai Thanks You All For Waiting For Forever Well, here it is. This was a hard part to get through. 8D Many thanks to all readers and reviewers, both here and on forum. I appreciate all your kind words, and your patience - It's been a very, very long time, I know. And we've reached the halfway point of the story! I have three more chapters planned after this, and then... a sequel. Which will be much more SRS BZNSS than this fic.

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Chapter Four: In Which The World Ends for Ven Because He Figures Out What Sadri Meant When She Said She'd "Persuade" Marott

"Long enough." - RC-1136, 'Darman'

"Is it remote det time?" Jav was positively jumping up and down with glee and Sadri wondered why all the commandos seemed to be reverting to a child-like state of mind.

The holocharts were back up on the kitchen table, this time showing a blue grid laid out amongst the normal green lines of the factory plans. Pi Squad and Sadri stood around them, watching intensely. It had been decided that the best plan of action to disable the droid foundry would be to blow it up at a remote distance: Sadri wasn't in the mood to have to fetch dead commandos out from under rubble, and besides, a remote strategy lent itself well to the covert nature of their operation.

"Soon," Sadri said, trying very hard to be reassuring and to not laugh in Jav's face. "Your recon the other day went well; judging by the height of the building and the particular density of the material it's made of, you should be able to lay your dets in this area-" she indicated the blue grid, "without destroying the surrounding area."

"Like a controlled demolition." Jav spat out the words as though they tasted funny.

"Yes, Jav, and I'm sorry that you don't get to watch the big boom, but if it'd make you feel better you can lay strip cams when you go in. Then you can watch it on a large screen, just like one of those curling games the people around here are addicted to."

"I'd like that," Jav blurted out, his speech pattern quickening again as he downed another cup of caf. "I'd like that very much."

Sadri patted Jav on the head. "I know you would," she said calmly. "So. I figure that I'll come up with some excuse to meet up with Marott, and you guys can go and lay those dets. We're still left with one issue."

"How to get Marott's bank numbers?"

"Precisely, Leeroy. He seems to be a very skeptical individual. He doesn't trust people easily." Sadri sighed, her eyes flickering down to the floor for the briefest of moments before she brightened again and looked back up at all of them. "Fortunately, he does have a weakness."

All the commandos looked confused. Except Scrat.

"Women," he volunteered quietly.

"Bingo." Sadri nodded. "It seems like I'm going to have to try and be his girlfriend. That might get me into a position where I'll be privy to the information we need."

Ven blinked slowly. "Can't we just drag that out of the systems?"

Leeroy snorted and shoved his brother in the shoulder. "No, you di'kut, remember what she said when we got here? It's not in any system. Or I'd have gotten it by now."

Sadri grinned. "Exactly. So I'm going to have to appeal to his baser nature."

"And how far are you going to go with that?" Ven's dark eyes flashed anger as he looked at Sadri, and wiped the grin right off the Jedi Master's face. It was as though he had just figured something out, and he didn'tlike the conclusion his mind had drawn.

Her face was like ice as she glared at him. "As far as is necessary."

Ven did not glare back. In fact, he didn't even look at her. "Of course, General," he said, reverting to that forced formality that she disliked immensely.

Sadri pursed her lips. This was why their relationship couldn't happen. This was why she didn't let him do anything more than kiss her the night before. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to Ven – it's my duty and I have to do it even though I would much rather be with you oh why can't you see how much this is killing me leave but don't leave – but she said absolutely nothing.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. "I'm going to the lake," she announced, grabbing a can of insect repellant and leaving the cabin, slamming the door on the way out.

All of Pi Squad dealt their squad leader a strange look.

"Okay, what was that all about?" Leeroy asked, grunting slightly as Scrat slapped him over the head.

---

She was not fit for this job. Even if most of Pi Squad would disagree with her. She was sure that they admired her for her resilience and sense of duty, and were probably wondering what had kept her out here for more than an hour.

Ven probably had a few things to say to her about her so-called sense of duty, though. Doubtless he felt betrayed, despite the fact that they had a relationship that was completely undefinable in her mind. She'd kicked Ven out of her room the previous night because sheknew that if anything happened between them, she wouldn't see this operation with Marott through. Jedi or not, she was too busy and he was too important for them to be sneaking off in the middle of the night to engage in ridiculous yet thrilling trysts, hoping that nobody would see – It was a relationship that was based on several things that Sadri, in her position of Jedi Master, should not have allowed herself to feel in the first place.

Sadri growled to herself, sitting against the rocks, up to her neck in cool lake water. She could see the log cabin-slash-base of operations beyond a grove of trees. Lights were on, and she could smell something vaguely edible cooking. She wondered who was actually doing the cooking. Probably Scrat: he definitely won the Most Likely To Retire From The GAR And Be A Domestic award in her eyes. She pondered the irony of the whole situation. Were it not for the importance of their operation, she could have easily imagined the entire thing to be a camping trip with some friends.

And they wereher friends, these idiosyncratic clones of a bounty hunter. Their individuality and humanity didn't surprise her at all – what really intrigued her was the variance of personalities that this band of brothers had. The fact that they were worldly wise enough to realize the line she was walking, and gutsy enough to actually crack jokes about it continued to be a mystery that even she couldn't figure out.

The Force rippled suddenly, and she turned back toward shore and saw him there, waist-deep in water, a grin on his face as he noticed her. She froze, uncertain of what to do, then decided that she would notpay attention to the way the water was clinging to his skin, which was less blemished with scars than it could have been.

"Shouldn't you be cooking?" she asked, looking up into his eyes. He didn't seem at all to be bothered by this awkward situation.

Ven grinned, his dark eyes sparkling, and Sadri wondered what was causing his sudden change in mood. "Shouldn't you not be out here without cover?"

She folded her arms over her chest, providing all the cover that she could manage what with her robes and towel folded neatly on the beach about twenty metres away. Her eyes remained fixed on Ven's face. Despite the fact that millions of men looked just like him – and they weren't exactly aesthetically unpleasant, either – the combination of good looks and a personality that complimented hers made him very unique and very attractive to her. She smiled.

"Speaking of without cover," Sadri nodded in his general direction, "what are you doing out here?"

"It's hot," he said, diving into the water and resurfacing in front of her. "And I figured we should talk. You know. About your little task."

Sadri took a deep breath and continued to stare into Ven's exotic face. "Okay," she managed to eke out. "What about it?"

"You know you don't have to do it like this," he said quietly, moving closer to her. He placed his hands on the rock face, boxing her in, forcing her to keep looking at him. "I mean, just … all for the information?"

"The Council wants it to be as bloodless as possible," she said, attempting to maintain her sanity, because this was rapidly becoming awkward and uncomfortable. "This is the only way I can do what they want and do what I need to do."

"But…"

"Would you disobey an order?" Sadri's eyes bored into Ven, an attention-grabbing shade of green, and she watched him close his mouth, suddenly lost in thought. The Force rippled again, her sight showing her a red-tinged aura over both of them. The aura was growing, expanding, sending a message straight to her unconscious mind.

"I don't know," he replied. "It would all depend. But you… you have the choice?" He lowered his head, then looked up at her. "Don't you?"

She sighed, taking one step forward, not even realizing that she was doing so. "I can choose," she said quietly. "And… I've already chosen."

"What do you mean?" Ven's thoughtful look changed to one of confusion, and he straightened, looking uneasy with the crypticness of Sadri's statement. His focus was elsewhere, and he almost jumped straight out of the water when she put her hand on his shoulder and took another step. She was close enough that he could embrace her.

But she didn't answer his question.

Not with words, anyway.

---

It was very strange to be in Pegwin's city centre, in full armor, sitting in the back of a transport vessel that they had liberated earlier that day, waiting for the shopping crowds to subside so that they could enter the foundry. Leeroy had done an excellent job of overriding the security programming that kept the place under wraps most of the time. As far as the programming – and therefore the Separatists – knew, absolutely nothing was wrong with the foundry and there were most definitely not four Republic Commandos waiting to bust in. This sort of clash between military and civilian life had become distressingly normal for Ven and the rest of them, but they made no complaints.

Far from it, actually: Jav was surveying his plethora of explosives and whistling a jolly tune to himself, Scrat was checking and rechecking his Deece, and Leeroy was still poring over his datapad, not moving except to beat Jav over the helmet when the whistling finally got to him. Jav quickly cut out of the shared comlink and continued to whistle, judging by the rhythmic movment of his helmet.

And all the while Ven could hear Sadri as she spoke with Marott. The girl definitely had a pair, considering that she – as Alice Chespo, of course – had chosen to meet up with the man at a glittery tapcafdirectly across from the foundry. Both her voice and Marott's voice only came through when the band chose to stop playing music, and that didn't happen very often. But he knew she could hear him.

"Who the hell designed this city, anyway?" he grumbled. "First the giant Tower of Pointlessness, and then they have factories in the middle of the city and surround them with restaurants."

Over the one-way channel Ven could hear Sadri snicker, and try to cover it up with a cough.

"Careful," Leeroy interjected, a grin in his voice. "You might make her choke on her drink, and then we're out a chef."

"I thought the stew tasted fine," Scrat said, eyeballing the scope on his Deece. "Either that or you're worried if General Oboa dies you'll lose your chance to have her."

Now Ven was laughing. Scrat might have been the quietest one of them all, but there were still times where his deadpan would deliver a very glorious insult to one of them, and it always left them reeling.

Leeroy chuckled. "Blondes aren't my thing," he said casually. "Anyway, how's she doing?"

Ven grunted. "She's going to go deaf if she stays in there much longer. How's the pedestrian traffic?" He checked his chrono; it was 1700 hours. Stores were now closed, meaning a lot less civilians to notice what they were doing.

"It's getting lighter. Slowly."

"Oh,lovely."

"Well, you know, we could go in, it doesn't look like they're concerned about this place…"

"Forget it." Ven craned his neck to look outside the transport, his eyes falling on the few civilians who were still out in the street despite the fact that it was growing darker. He sighed. "D'you know who we have to talk to in order to get some of that matte-black kit? It'd make me feel a bit better." Most squad leaders would be yelling at their brothers to take a nice warm cup of shut the fierfek up, but Pi Squad had been trained to babble and yet operate simultaneously.

Considering that their training sergeant - a hard-as-nails woman called Sal Vantada - had a penchant for never shutting up and yet maintaining hyperawareness, it wasn't all that surprising.

"Nobody on this planet, that's for sure. And I don't think Sal is all chummy with Omega Squad, anyway. " Leeroy tapped at his datapad some more. "But the good news is that the override is holding. Ahh, and something interesting: There'll be some scheduled downtime in about five minutes. If we're going to go, I say we go then. That way if we fall down we'll have time to get back up again as opposed to becoming droid parts ourselves."

Ven continued to stare at the street, allowin g himself one glance at the tapcaf where he knew Sadri was. "Sounds good, Leeroy. Scrat, Jav – you ready?"

Jav tapped the multitude of utility containers strapped to his belt. "Always am."

Scrat just nodded, strangely relaxed, his hands on his weapon.

"Okay then." Ven checked his own weapon, and Leeroy and Jav followed suit. "How much time?"

"Two minutes."

"Remember, we're just setting up. No big boom today."

"Yeah," Jav said with a disappointed sigh. "I know."

"Your time will come, ner vod," Leeroy said, clapping his brother on the back firmly while looking at his own chrono. "One minute, thirty."

They crowded around the back door of the transport. It was closest to the receiving dock of the foundry. Jav had his hand on the door release. "On your mark, Leeroy."

Utter silence reigned in the transport, apart from the muted bassline of the music coming from Sadri's tapcaf, which only Ven could hear. The squad leader shifted nervously on his feet, and momentarily cut himself out of the squad comm channel.

"Sadri," he breathed. "I – just be careful."

He switched over, heard Leeroy declare "Mark.", and wrenched open the door.

It was on now.