The Republic has fallen.
In the final days of the Clone Wars, Chancellor Palpatine died under mysterious circumstances. With the Senate struggling to retain a sense of unity, it was the perfect time for the Separatists to strike. And strike they did...
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It was startlingly straightforward to escape Noreino House, even in broad daylight – but as with that snap decision to inspect the Izadash mine several weeks prior, Lux expected it was only because he had the element of surprise. The next time he tried playing hooky, the probe droids that had hastened after him wouldn't be foiled by jamming signals addling their sensors. The handful of sentient tails that were sent as an extra precaution wouldn't follow the first street boy Lux could find that matched his height and build walking toward the gambling dens in Lux's fine cloak and tunic.
Up until a few days ago, he'd lapped up his father's complaints about security risks, and hadn't left the palace unaccompanied. He hadn't known his father's game, before – hadn't even thought to expect a game from his own family. He knew better now, and even if the scope of Zakhan Noreino's ruthlessness had opened a gaping wound in him, he was happy to be out and moving. The secondary project he'd snapped up for his stay at the villa – getting to the bottom of an apparent conspiracy with Houses Taevarion and Bonaga – had gone nowhere, and it was freeing to finally be back to gathering intelligence and making contact with informants...
Especially when the report he'd promised his father about the situation in the border villages was gathering dust on his desk.
Lux shook the thought away as he scampered into the narrow townhouse that was today's rendezvous. Then, passing the ratty spare cloak he'd been wearing over the plainest shirt and pants he owned to the protocol droid butler that had admitted him, he turned to greet his host: Major General Akani Acesto.
Akani flashed him a cool smile, and then, on unspoken agreement, they pulled heavy-duty datapads from their pockets to scan each other and the charming sitting room they stood in for cams and bugs. He doubted she'd betray him, and he hoped she felt the same about him, but it paid to be careful. Akani had the same policy, intensified by the risks she took on the daily as an Imperial officer. Both of those were reasons why he'd kept in contact with her after the fall of the old Rebellion against the Separatists.
"It's always good to look upon your face with my own eyes instead of reading your words on a screen, Lux, so don't misinterpret me," she said, shaking the few strands of caf-brown hair – the same shade as his own – that had escaped her tidy bun out of her eyes. "But when you want to meet in person, it usually means something is wrong."
"Forgive the sentiment, but with everything that's been going on, I wanted to see a friendly face." That, and Lux couldn't stand being in his rooms a minute longer than he had to with Alynna staying there, but that wasn't something he'd tell Aunty Akani, as some of his compatriots had called her. They'd never been all that close.
Lux and Alynna still hadn't come up with a more permanent living situation for her than returning her to the slave quarters, but it was starting to feel impossible to work with her near and preserve his façade. There was a constant itch in him to ask her questions, hear her opinions, or reach out for her hand in the middle of a particularly dense page of Kyzeron legislation – just to know she was there.
