"Quite the reception today, huh?"

At the sound of Alynna's voice, Lux' crossed legs and the datapad propped against his topmost knee phased back into focus. It took him a second to remember he'd been rereading the information he found in the Izadash mine in the hopes of following up on some leads. He had no idea how long he'd been zoned out.

"Sorry?" he slurred. Immediately he saw his father's disapproving scowl in his mind's eye, and cleared his throat to try again. "I don't take your meaning."

Alynna grinned at him from across the speeder, and Lux caught a hint of one sharp canine beneath the curve of her lip. "Turn around, genius."

"Wha–"

He broke off when the shapes of people flashed by his peripheral vision. Glancing over his shoulder, Lux spotted what Alynna must have seen from her front-facing seat: the thick crowds gathered on either side of the street.

The chauffeur, a gruff but sweet old butler at the villa, was already slowing down to make a smooth landing in the center of the latest town on his itinerary, but Lux reached out to touch his shoulder anyway. "Pilot, slow us down a little more."

The speeder decelerated until Lux could make out individual faces in the throng – tired and drawn, but with a spark in their eyes that made him hopeful – and even hear snatches of conversation:

"The bright young lord will have Kindness bless us–"

"Do you bring the Lady? Kyze Jarash?"

"Lady Kindness? Is that the one they say–"

Alynna frowned. "Who's Lady Kindness?" she asked him, tilting her chin at the last person who'd spoken as the speeder passed out of earshot.

Lady Kindness... Kyze Jarash. Yes, Lux remembered her. "She's from an old legend. Do you know what the distinction is between the Great Houses and the Lesser Houses?"

"Well, the Great Houses are a lot richer, for the most part – old money and old titles versus new ones," Alynna said, a little snidely. Lux let it pass uncontested. It wasn't like Onderon's nobility had been very good to her, after all. "And the Great Houses are the ones that can trace their lineage all the way back to the original settlers on Onderon... and that affords them extra status, I think?"

"Yes. But the point I'm getting at is the fact that most of the Great Houses are several millennia older than any of the Lesser. The jungles are dangerous, and the original settlers faced difficult odds. It was said that while they blazed the trail, they had a guardian angel, so to speak, called Lady Kindness – Kyze Jarash in Onde'er."

Alynna nodded, her face held in suspension between a warm smile and cold eyes. Perhaps she'd heard this story before. Still, it was an odd reaction...

"Since the Great Houses are descendants of those settlers, and legacy and history are so important," he finished, hoping her expression would change and give more away, "a lot of people think Lady Kindness still watches over the nobles and protects the common people from harm. The ones who are worthy of her, anyway."

"Lady Kindness. Huh."

Alynna sat back in her seat, crossing her arms beneath her bulky shawl; she always wore one, even when the winds off the mountains weren't too brisk. Her smile had frozen into something Lux couldn't place, but there was no time to analyze it. The speeder was already pulling to a stop before their more official reception.

Lux caught sight of Etrik Bonaga and grinned to himself. He'd been trying to smoke the man out into the open for the better part of two weeks, only to be turned away each time by subordinates offering him apologies and quaint excuses. He didn't doubt Etrik was busy, but instinct told him there was something else there. Now was his chance to find out what.

Lux turned to help Alynna out of the speeder, then disembarked. When he looked up again, the familiar figure of Lady Noronessa Taevarion, smartly dressed in a headscarf and traditional garb, had made its way to the front of Etrik's party.

The small collection of local security, aides, and administrators immediately took a few steps back – never mind that they were committing a major offence to the two nobles before them. Noronessa offered him a grin, as though oblivious to the sudden space around her, and clasped her hands demurely over her skirt.

"Lord Aluxsidrian, a pleasure to see you again," she called airily, striding across the packed dirt road to meet him. Behind her, the others collectively relaxed.

Lux caught his frown halfway and spun it into his third-best courtier's smile, answering her short bow with a gracious nod of his head. There would be time for suspicions later. "The pleasure is mine, Lady Noronessa."

"I'm glad I caught you. My mother wants me in Kyzeron by the end of the day, and I wasn't sure how far she'd allow me to push back my departure."

The research Lux had done since their last meeting two weeks before came back to him in a flash. Her mother. Lady Arahlee of House Taevarion. Direct liaison from the Onderon Intelligence Bureau to the Lord Imperator. I need to step carefully here, lest my father get wind of something amiss. "I'm not surprised she wants you back. It's a rarity to find young nobles on the rise this far away from the action."

Noronessa laughed. It sounded practiced. "If a person can start pulling strings for a favorable marriage at sixteen, they should be able to take part in the family business by that age, too."

Lux choked on his own spit. On instinct he glanced over his shoulder, and found Alynna watching with wide eyes and her full lips pressed into a tight line.

Was that it, then? Lady Noronessa had bullied Etrik and his entourage into giving her center stage so she could woo him? The tactic was as heavy-handed as her comments, but Lux had learned something of her character through her data files. She was indeed young, but if she'd had the typical Taevarions education in intrigue and subterfuge, she was no stranger to politics.

"That, and Mother is convinced I'm up to no good out here, away from the rest of civilization. You're gaining quite the reputation, in my circles." She craned her neck to glance over Lux's shoulder, tugging a corner of her scarf – a swath of rich fabric whose blue and green patterns helped even out her mottled skin – tighter around her head as she did so. "Is that her?"

"Pardon?"

"That little Togruta is the slave girl you wouldn't leave the auction house for, is she not?" Noronessa said, and Lux held back a scoff. Alynna was two, almost three years Noronessa's senior, and that much more a woman. "You helped her out of the speeder like she was a highborn lady."

A surge of satisfaction rose in Lux's chest. Alynna saw it as an unnecessary favor, but treating a lowly slave with the same courtesy he would a noblewoman was the only act of rebellion – subversion, rather – Lux dared to perform openly.

But he couldn't tell Noronessa that, so he summoned a blander answer to satisfy her curiosity. "I've found her deserving of my respect and courtesy."

"Well, she must certainly have put in the work earning it. These parts don't offer much in the way of society, as you mentioned, but you've hardly left Bonteri Villa since your flight from Kyzeron – and even then, only on pressing invitations. Truth be told, my mother worries about your... appetite."

She grinned, and Lux felt a little sick. He'd grown up the son of a Republic Senator and a famed Onderonian general. The scrutiny of distant gossipmongers had never bothered him, but this... this was too close. With every word she spoke, Lady Noronessa sliced a new ribbon of him away to stick under her microscope.

"Feeling vulgar today, my lady?" he managed to force out.

"Always."

Blessedly, Alynna chose that moment to come up behind him, twining her arms around his middle until her hands brushed over his chest. At her touch, the instinct to flee dissipated, and Lux breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

Look at this logically. Think, don't feel it, Lux thought, using Alynna's hands as anchor points to calm himself.

Lady Noronessa was advertising that she had people monitoring him, either from inside the villa or out. Was it a blunder? No, she knew what she was doing. Had she caught on to the stolen data? He was the likeliest thief, so that was basically a given – but she couldn't back him into a corner by providing him with excuses.

"If I may be so bold as to interrupt," Alynna purred, moving gracefully to Lux's side to take his arm, "I believe someone my master wished to speak with is in the process of slipping away."

A flash of annoyance crossed Noronessa's face as Lux glanced up at the crowd behind her. Etrik Bonaga and two of his aides were pushing back through the rest of the group to the seating arrangement beyond. The common people had to stand as they watched Lux speak, but with two members of Great Houses plus their retinues in attendance, a place of honor had been cordoned off near his platform.

Lux grinned at Alynna. He'd given her a description of Etrik some days before (short, Human, light-skinned, balding) and Lux was so relieved she remembered it in time to keep the man from slipping away again he could've kissed her.

Noronessa, however, looked distinctly dismayed – and hid it poorly, making a broad gesture that ended with crossed arms. With that, everything else clicked into place, and Lux stopped halfway through disentangling himself to go accost Etrik.

She was speaking brashly on purpose, distracting Lux to stop him from questioning her family's rival, Etrik, who claimed the Taevarions had stolen from him. Etrik, whom Lux's father said had already been 'dealt with'. What better way to deal with someone than to send an emissary to cow them into submission?

His mind was racing, scrambling to fit all the pieces together before it was too late. He still wasn't fast enough. Dakharen was beside Noronessa in an instant – he'd come out of nowhere, huffing and puffing like he'd just run to meet them.

The man had asked leave to go on ahead earlier that day, claiming several less than favorable clips of his lord were circulating on the gossip newsfeeds. He'd wanted to speak with the broadcasters about catching Lux's better angles.

Lux hadn't seen anything he took issue with, but the old man had served his mother well. He trusted Dakharen's judgment and insight. His timing, however...

"My lord, I have news," he said breathlessly, bowing first to Lux then to Lady Noronessa. "There was a reactor leak in the mine. They're not letting anyone in."

Lux's sweet, high feeling of victory evaporated. "What?"

"I... suppose that's the reason so many people were here to meet you when their shift would be barely over otherwise, my lord. The mine doesn't have enough radiation suits to go around, and even if they set one aside for your inspection–"

"I've made it my business to investigate the mines in every town I visit! Would my itinerary even give me leave to come back some other day? Why didn't you comm me to tell me this earlier?" Lux demanded.

"Begging your pardon, my lord, but I just found out myself."

Lux took a calming breath, and put conscious effort into his voice to keep from grumbling. "Of course. I apologize."

Lady Noronessa smiled sympathetically, and Lux had a sudden impression there was really no reactor leak at all. After so many unimpeded investigations, he was peeved to find the tactic of announcing major last-minute changes to plans was as effective a counter-maneuver against him as it had been when he'd used it on the administrators in Izadash two weeks before.

"Forgive me," Dakharen said to fill Lux's silence, "but I believe the broadcast is due to start soon."

"I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to get to your errands later," Noronessa added with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"I'm sure," Lux echoed, but he knew Etrik would be gone by the time Lux was finished answering the audience's questions.

As the others made their way to their seats, Lux felt another soft touch on his arm. He knew it would confirm the rumors Noronessa spoke of, but he wouldn't say no to reassurance when it was offered so readily; at least this way, he knew exactly what Alynna was willing to give him, and wouldn't embarrass himself like he had the other night. He wove his fingers through hers and squeezed them tight. 

"I didn't teach you to shrink from adversity, L– Master," Alynna murmured. Her voice caught before the honorific, and his stomach did a flip when he realized it was her reflex now to address him by his name. "You'll find a way around this. Focus on the present, and sort the future out once you've given your speech."

"Right," he said. Live in the moment. He was getting better, but that was one lesson he still struggled with. Perhaps failure and higher stakes would be more compelling tutors now that his opposition was finally taking a stand against him.

Focus on the present, he thought, shaking himself. He had a speech to give.

Ahsoka had never hit the same place twice, but apparently a week was long enough for the town officials to start comparing notes with the local Imperial thugs.

That, or she'd simply gotten lucky and never had to face a densely populated town on the miners' day off. More people on the streets was certainly reason enough to heighten security, and while it was an interesting challenging to sneak past all the patrols and checkpoints, Ahsoka was glad for all the pedestrians milling around to give her extra cover.

A tall, broad Devaronian hit her shoulder as she rounded a street corner. Ahsoka hissed in surprise more than pain, hurrying to right the shawl covering her montrals and part of her face before too much was visible.

"What would you say if you knew you'd just bumped into Lady Kindness, I wonder?" she muttered snippily, glancing after him.

She sighed quietly a moment later. In retrospect it felt silly, considering how showy she'd been in Izadash with the jewels and supply crates, but she'd hoped to keep her little excursions under the radar – for her own sake as well as others'. The attention gave her a rush, made her feel like she was on top of the world again, and she couldn't afford to act out of pride and misplaced self-confidence when she didn't have anyone watching her back. Even the slightest bit of ill-timed scrutiny could reveal her identity before she had a chance to track down Anakin.

Still, if the reputation of Lady Kindness continued to grow... well, every fight needed a symbol, a rallying point.

Even with the bulk of the GAR to back it, the Republic war strategy had relied on secured friendly systems as staging areas and resupply points. Local malcontents could be whipped into self-sufficient, solidly entrenched cells to hit precise targets from the inside and reclaim and hold territory while the larger mobile force kept the enemy's attention. Ahsoka had seen the potential firsthand on the frontline; it was a tactic they'd often used in the 501st, Anakin's fighter squadrons drawing fire while Ahsoka's teams snuck behind enemy fortifications and did some damage unnoticed.

The Rebellion had been too new for that at first, struggling to so much as feed and fuel itself with the bulk of its viable troops on the run. She'd thought they were ready after ten months stockpiling and establishing bases, and broached the idea of a conference on Felucia to discuss it. The Empire had cut them off before any real discussion could begin.

With much of its rural population practically reduced to serfdom and the rest living in fear of true enslavement by the nobility, Onderon was fast approaching the point of snapping. Lady Kindness could push them through it in the outer villages, and the nameless, elusive Jedi could continue her work in the cities. Once Ahsoka had backing from the Rebellion, they could take the planet in a matter of months.

Ahsoka flattened herself against the side of a building and shut her eyes tight. Maybe if she willed it hard enough, the cold duracrete at her back would sap these traitorous thoughts from her mind the same way it was stealing her body heat.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She'd sent word to Ashalla that she'd help in Kyzeron, but she couldn't move to anything more elaborate than what she was doing out here. She had to find Anakin and she had to get back to the Rebellion. Everything else could wait until she was in a position of power, and able to send an agent to rally the people. She was a battlefield commander, not a teacher.

She forced herself to relax as she set out again. Yes. Once she was back in Kyzeron, the mystery Jedi would slip from memory, replaced by Lady Kindness' lower and less costly caliber of insurgency: quiet miracles and lucky breaks.

"Live in the moment, Ahsoka," she told herself. "If you can preach it to Lux with such confidence, the least you can do is follow your own damned advice."

With some difficulty, she turned her thoughts to the task at hand. Filching medical supplies had gone over well in the past, but very few of the towns she'd seen – this one included, according to a shopkeeper she'd asked earlier – had working medcenters. With no doctors to make accurate diagnoses and acquire the needed medicine, that left a few unqualified caregivers to tend to patients with chronic health conditions using little more than basic first aid kits.

Ahsoka had never been the best at healing, but after a few crash courses from Barriss between the fall of Coruscant and her capture of Felucia, she was confident she could use the Force to heal infections and recent injuries. Today would be an experiment. If it went well, she'd do the same – plus pilfer more medical supplies – in the next towns she and Lux visited.

There was a catch, though: success hinged on opening herself dangerously wide to the Force. Only the utmost concentration would allow her to maintain both the healing process and the mental shields protecting her from the Elites' detection. Without Barriss' training and innate calm, the slightest distraction could throw her.

Ahsoka took a deep breath. She wasn't calm or peaceful by nature, but if the Force was with her, perhaps she was strong enough to fake it.

She followed her senses through the streets to the place where suffering and sorrow bled thickest into the Force. The old warehouse matched the description the shopkeeper had given her: squat, and made with faulty duracrete prone to water infiltration. When she stepped inside, the air was moist and smelled faintly of mold.

Even before she saw the beds – some folding cots, others merely blankets heaped over crates – she could already hear Barriss' complaints about the place, never mind that her friend had done more with less during the war and after.

Grief pressed down on her. Ahsoka pushed it away as she headed toward the back of the makeshift medcenter, which was less crowded with well-wishers and family members than elsewhere. Now wasn't the time for sadness.

Even here there were currents of the Living Force, streams that pooled together and bonded the sick and dying patients to one another. Using a few crates as cover, she sank to her knees and submerged herself in their ebb and flow.

She'd only been to Mon Calamari once before, and she hadn't had much time for sightseeing while locked in a struggle against the Separatists to claim the planet. Still, she remembered a few quiet moments watching fish slip almost noiselessly between corals and beds of kelp, and the eels following them even more quietly.

Compared to them, she'd been a clumsy intruder completely at odds with her surroundings. But the Force was her element, and the blundering Elites couldn't follow her this deep – not when she could feel a music to the waves washing overhead that they would never hear. Not when she knew how to bend herself to follow them, carried along then snaking free again as invisibly as that Mon Cala eel.

Ahsoka opened herself to the melody, letting the water stream in until she was full to bursting. Moving as though in a dream, she rose to her feet and bent before the closest bed. She cured the teenager sleeping there of the festering wound on his leg with a single touch.

She healed every person within reach, pouring the Force into them to stymy their natural healing processes. She began to tire as the flow eroded the strength of her physical form, but her mind was awake, high on its sudden proximity to the light side of the Force. Surely she could manage one more... and one more after that...

She pressed her hand to the forehead of the next patient. The old woman's skin cooled under Ahsoka's fingers, and the hacking cough that made her throat raw and sore abated. Nearly spent, Ahsoka opened her eyes and staggered to her feet.

Someone had rounded the crates – a man in his late twenties with a full beard and hair so dark a black it almost shone blue. He stared at her openmouthed.

Ahsoka ceased to be the eel and became the Togruta whose body was never made for swimming. She kicked blindly, searching for air, and broke to the surface so abruptly she was certain every living thing in a ten-klick radius had felt it.

"Lady Kindness," the man murmured reverently.

Immediately Ahsoka took back any speculation about the Devaronian's reaction. This man's scrutiny was overwhelming. She didn't want to be this close anymore, didn't want to know what anyone else thought of her. She scrabbled for the nearest fold of her shawl and tugged it up to obscure the lower half of her face.

Heedless of the danger now that her protective barriers were gone, Ahsoka laced her voice with the Force's power. "You will forget what you saw here today," she hissed. "Once I leave, you will chalk what happened up to an unrelated miracle."

She breezed past him before he could repeat her words back to her. That oversight – and its potential ramifications – didn't occur to her until she'd met up with Lux and they were half of the way back to the villa. But by then, of course, it was too late to change anything.

The ramifications of Ahsoka and Lux's actions in the villages are beginning to manifest. Lux was convinced he'd latched onto the tail end of a conspiracy after he discovered the first false Noreino crest, but since then, he's encountered more walls than doors. What are Lady Noronessa's motivations? Is she an enemy, or a potential ally? And on Ahsoka's end, who is this stranger that walked in on her healing trance? Has her atonement to Barriss put her missions to find Anakin and rejoin the Rebellion in jeopardy? Only time will tell...

SURPRISE EARLY UPDATE EVERYONE!!!

I realized my Wattpad anniversary (birthday? name day? day I got here?) falls conveniently on a weekend this year, and hey, SIX YEARS is a pretty major hunk of time. When you add on the spare change of the previous months I spent writing the first five books of UAAT before actually joining, that's a third of my life. Wooooow...

But hey, it's been pretty damn well spent, if you ask me, and after all the love you guys have shown me in that time, I wanted to give some back! And what better way to do it than by having Ahsoka's Robin Hood shenanigans start to go wrong?

*crickets*

Ah. Well. Moving on, we have a new word for our Onde'er vocabulary! According to that fan-created database with information on Onderonian Great Houses I mentioned some chapters ago, House Rash is the House of Judges. Since I feel good intentions and good judgment go hand in hand, I wanted the two to have a similar spelling: 'jarash' is kindness, while 'rash' is judgment, or an archaic way to refer to the one passing judgment. (I'm not wholly sure what the current way of saying it would be in order to differentiate from the House, but I'm toying with the idea of calling judges 'onderash', or the people's judgment.)

I don't imagine all the other Great Houses are quite as literal with their names. But since some of the Great Houses do have one specific function of society that they like to stick to, I thought in this case, it could be like the last name Carpenter, or Smith – actual occupations that eventually turned into hereditary last names once enough generations had gone by. Considering in my canon the Great Houses were formed of the families of the original settlers of Onderon, that doesn't seem altogether unlikely to me.

I've encountered some curiosity about Lady Noronessa's aims, and she gave quite a lot away in this chapter. In being blunt, she was actually being very subtle, but there may be some truth to what she said. Lies within truth within lies. Sounds like something she'd come up with, honestly.

Next chapter (which will be a week and a half from now) we'll finally start to see some action on Ahsoka's 'contacting the Rebellion' front, and learn a bit more about what she thinks about the enigmatic Lady Noronessa.

And, once again, for my American brethren in this lovely fandom who have happened upon this story:

I'll talk to you guys in the next chapter!