PROLOGUE: BEFORE VORTIGERN'S LAKE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2409 SENDAI, ISHIYAMA Kaitlyn Hutchins sat on a sofa in the study of Sakura Shinguuji's house outside Sendai - one of the only rooms in the building furnished in a Western style - jotting in a music notebook when an auburn-haired woman in a purple gown swept into the room. "Be rejoiced, loyal followers!" she announced haughtily, her hands making a dramatic flourish. "For now - only two and a half hours late thanks to the train service on the Ono-Sendai Line - your idol, Sumire Kanzaki, has arrived!" Kaitlyn raised the index finger of her right hand in greeting, her left not slackening its pace across the page. Curled up at her feet, her pet tiger Sergei raised his head, blinked once at Sumire, then put his head back down with a muted "grmph." No one else was present. "... Hmph," Sumire said. "No one appreciates a good entrance any more... " Kate finished the phrase she'd been trying to get down, then looked up and smiled. "Sorry, Sumire, did you say something? You're late, by the way." Sumire laughed, then crossed the room and dropped a bundle of envelopes in the younger woman's lap. "Kaitlyn, darling, I bring you your mail all the way from Ohji and this is the thanks I get? Really, now." She seated herself in a chair opposite, crossed her legs elegantly at the knees, and gave Kate a dark-eyed smile. "The one on top is from the NAU Conservatory." Kate blinked, put her notebook and pen down beside her, and picked up the mail. Indeed, the top enveloped did bear the crest and return address of the Conservatory of Music at New Avalon University. "Oh, hello, Sumire," said Miki Kaoru from the doorway. "I thought I heard you arrive. Trains running late?" "Snow on the line south of town," Sumire replied, then mock-huffed, "Honestly, I don't see how Sakura can stand to live in such savage isolation." "It must be the fresh air," Miki opined, moving Kate's notebook so he could sit down beside her. "What have we here?" While he was trading repartee with Sumire, Kate had opened the envelope and was now reading the letter inside it. As she did, her face took on a look of mild astonishment; then she handed it to Miki. "'Dear Miss Hutchins,'" he read aloud. "'On behalf of the Trustees of the Conservatory and the New Avalon University Board of Regents, I am pleased to offer you... '" He turned to Kate, eyes wide. "Wow." Sumire gave him a narrow-eyed look. "I hope you don't always leave off just before the good part like that," she said. Kaitlyn snorted, then said, "They want me to take over their student orchestra." "That's not all they want," Miki said. "They've offered her a teaching fellowship." Sumire looked impressed. "For credit?" she asked. Kaitlyn nodded. "It leads into a graduate fellowship in the fall, or so they say." She glanced at the letter again, then turned a little smile to Sumire and added, "It seems they've been impressed by my film-score work this fall." "How about that, Kaitlyn - your very own bidding war," Sumire said with a smug grin. "I told you working for me would open doors." "I already told Hotohori I'd be going -there- next month, though," Kate said. "I'll have to turn this one down, I guess. Maybe they'll hold the graduate part until I finish my BA on Tomodachi... " "Oh, nonsense," Sumire said, making a dismissive gesture. "You said yourself the other girl, what's her name - McClellan? - can handle Hotohori's orchestra. You'll be doing her a favor." Kate looked thoughtful. "Mm... true," she said. "Heather's good. She did nice things with the orchestra at DSM after I graduated, and she doesn't need to spend another semester in my shadow." She sighed. "And it'd be nice to go home to New Avalon. I haven't really lived there since I was 12. But... " She turned and looked at Miki. "What about you and Juri?" This, thought Kaitlyn wryly, -this- is why most humans don't have more than one life partner. Our little ape brains can't keep up with the -logistics- of it all. But Miki just kissed her and smiled. "Well, it hardly matters to -me-," he said, causing her to blink in momentary consternation until he went on, "since I'm one mostly-complete project report away from being finished with NIT forever and amen, hallelujah." Kate, who had rather lost track of most of her friends' academic standings during her stay on Ishiyama, gave him an amazed stare. "You're FINISHED?" "I -am- a supergenius," Miki said dryly, making both women snort. "Anyway, I've got grad schools offering me everything from a SoroSuub XP38 to a free neurojack rig to sign up. You'd think I was a basketball player or something. I might as well take NAIS up on their offer, even if I can't recall offhand which one it is." He frowned for a second, then brightened and said, "Oh, right - the condo. Well, that'll come in handy. "As for Juri," he went on, "you mean she hasn't told you about the mischief she's been up to while you've been away?" Kate shook her head blankly, causing Sumire to let out a musical laugh. "Oh, you're going to like it," she said. "Not only is it beautiful, elegant, and devious, it involves New Avalon." Kate grinned. "Oh, this I have to hear." "So... " she said half an hour later, lounging in the Shinguuji family's monstrous oak hot tub. "Mm?" Juri Arisugawa replied, coming out of a languid half- drowse. "When were you planning to tell me about your big adventure?" Kate asked with a mischievous lack of rancor. Juri opened one eye. "What?" "Miki and Sumire said you've been Up To Something this fall. Sumire said I'd like it." "Oh." Juri chuckled. "It would have come up eventually. To be honest, I thought you'd find it a bit boring." "I'll be the judge of that," Kate said mock-sternly. "All right, well... " Juri paused, considering where to start, then said, "Mary Broadbank and I took over Aztechnology in October." Kate blinked. "How'd you manage -that-?" "Well, Mary had a substantial piece of the common stock, left to her by her grandmother," Juri said, "and her grandfather gave her another. As for the rest of the majority... I already had that." "You did? Since when?" Juri's smile got slyer. "Do you remember when MegaZone and I first met?" Kate considered that, then gave her a shocked look. "I thought that was ScudCo stock." "So did Zoner," Juri said, "and some of the portfolio he transferred was, but not all. The rest was a mixture of several different securities... including about 30 percent of Aztechnology. Combined with Mary's holdings, that gave us just shy of three-quarters." She laughed darkly. "You should have seen the look on her father's face when he said he knew for a -fact- that even with her grandfather's share, she only had 45 percent, and I said that was certainly true, -but-." Kaitlyn laughed. "I can picture it. He must have been -purple-. Either that or chalk-white." "He went through both by the time we were finished with him." Juri slid around the bench built into the circular tub and cozied up to Kate, then went on, "I only wish Liza could have been there to see it." "Speaking of which, I suppose you don't need the ten percent she gave -me- now," Kate said. "Actually, that will be helpful," Juri said, leaning closer. "You see," she went on, her green eyes half-hooding, "that was only phase one. We're in the middle of phase two now." "And what," Kate wondered, her voice dropping as Juri came nearer, "is phase two?" She felt Juri's soft chuckle against her lips, and her eyes slid shut as the redhead murmured, "We're selling the company to GENOM... " Utena Tenjou had her hand on the knob to the tub room door, a towel slung over her shoulder, when she heard a mighty splash from within, followed by Kaitlyn's voice almost squeaking, "You're WHAT?" Her only response was a throaty, unmistakable laugh and another splash. ... OK, so much for -that- idea, Utena thought wryly as she turned and headed back down the hall. I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 5 - Overture in A Minor Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2005, 2014 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2410 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI The house at the end of Wildwood Road had an odd air about it, one Anne Cross couldn't quite pin down. Unlike the house's other occupants, she hadn't been to college, so she had no way of knowing that it felt much like a dorm on moving-out day at the year's end. Kaitlyn's move to New Avalon was an accepted necessity, and the opportunity it embodied was something none of her friends grudged her, but all the same, it was a rather sad thing to see her leave - and a little strange for her housemates, since the house she was moving out of technically belonged to her, not them. Moving day itself thus had something of the air of a party, and something of the air of a parting, as Kate's friends came together to help her gather up her things. She wasn't taking everything with her that day - not nearly everything, in fact. She and Anne, her apprentice in the family kenjutsu style, would be setting up house in a brownstone a friend of Kate's father's had found for them in the borough of Claremont, but until they'd had a few days to look around the neighborhood and get used to the setting, she didn't want to commit to moving a lot of heavy things. Anne was of mixed mind about the transition herself. She'd only lived on Tomodachi for a few months, and early on, circumstances had conspired to make her a virtual prisoner at 1140 Wilwood - but it had been the first stable home she'd had in years, and she'd come to love it. So she enjoyed the festive air of the moving party, but in the afternoon she found herself wanting to step back and be with herself, to try and get some perspective on the change. She slipped away to the dojo behind the house and worked out, practicing basic maneuvers and solo kata, doing her best to clear her mind. She was ambivalent about moving to New Avalon. Though it was a beautiful city, it was still a city, and one much bigger than Nekomikoka to boot. Moreover, Claremont was downtown, not out at the edge of the city. How would she react to living among skyscrapers and concrete again after experiencing the nature preserve that was the back yard here? Well, you'll just have to make the best of it, she told herself as she finished her exercises and put away the bokuto she'd used. She got out the broom and started sweeping up. It took her a moment to realize that she was being watched. When she did, she turned to see the tall, lean form of Kaitlyn's senior student, Kyouichi Saionji, leaning against one of the support columns, a small smile on his face. He was dressed for traveling, with a long coat and sturdy boots, and he carried his lightsaber on his belt and a small pack on his back. "Hello, Juni-chan," he said. "Sempai," she said, startled. "Why are you dressed for a trip?" In reply, Saionji passed Anne a narrow, flat box with a catch on the lid. "Juniper," he said seriously, "I have to go away for a little while. I need you to keep this for me. Don't open it, just keep it safe until I come back to claim it from you." "Um... sure," Anne answered. "What's in it?" "Nothing bad," he said, "but something I need someone -else- to keep safe for a little while." Anne put the box in the pocket of her jacket, feeling honored that he'd picked her and not Utena or Kaitlyn. "I'll keep it safe for you, sempai," she promised. "You keep -yourself- safe, OK? I want you to be there for my journeyrank test." Saionji smiled the small, pleased smile that he saved mostly for her when she'd done a good job at something. "I'll do my best, Juni-chan," he promised. Then he turned and left the dojo. By the time she thought to run to the door and call after him, asking where he was going, he was nowhere in sight. "Hm," she said, then took the box out of her pocket and regarded it again. I wonder what's in there, she wondered, then tried to put it out of her mind before curiosity ate her alive. She put the box away again and turned back to sweeping the dojo. She had nearly finished when a voice called from the doorway, "Anne? Oh, there you are." Juniper turned to see Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan, coppery-skinned and silver-haired, standing in the doorway, her golden eyes glinting in the low light. Night fell early in January at this latitude, and twilight was gathering fast in the dojo, since Anne hadn't turned on any of the lights. "Oh, hi, Azalynn," she said. "Yeah, I'm just... giving the dojo one last sweeping up." "You're missing the fun," Azalynn chided her playfully. "Kate and Utena are just about to get to the -really embarrassing- stories." Anne chuckled, then sobered and said, "I guess I'm not really in a fun mood." Azalynn waited for her to put the broom away and come out onto the steps, then sat down beside her and said, "What's bothering you? That you and Kate are moving far away? Bah," she said, making a dismissive gesture. "You know Kate's our leader, whether she tries to be or not. You watch, we'll all be in New Avalon within a year. The only real reason we're on Tomodachi in the first place is because she decided to go to NIT after high school." Juni eyed the Dantrovian, trying unsuccessfully to figure out whether she was joking. Azalynn gazed back, then giggled and put an arm around her to give her a shake. "You think it's a joke, and maybe it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes true anyway," she said. "Juri's going to be moving within the next couple of weeks, and Miki too. Utena wants to finish her degree with Professor Schepartz, but once that's done - well, you know Kate's Dad wants to give her a job at the IPO. As for the rest of us... well, Moose hasn't said anything, but I know he's already looked into transfer options, and so has Dorothy." "And you?" Anne wondered with a smile. "I go wherever the wind blows," Azalynn said cheerily. "Now c'mon. Cheer up and let's go join the fun. Unless you'd rather we went and, uh, consulted the spirits as to the auguries for your move," she added with a golden-eyed twinkle. Anne snorted. "You're incorrigible," she said, getting to her feet. "Let's go see if Devlin's eaten all the hummus yet." MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2410 NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Anne was a little preoccupied as she walked toward her first day of school in three years - partly because it -was- her first day of school in three years, and partly because it was the first time she'd ever gone to a school that wasn't part of the same colossal building as her own living space. In point of fact, her living space wasn't -in- a colossal building, which was enough of a change from her old situation on Orron IV that her concerns about moving to New Avalon as a city never came to pass. She felt welcome and safe in the quirky streets of Claremont; even safer, perhaps, than she'd felt on Tomodachi. There, it had taken a very bold or foolish Psi Corps enforcement team to attempt her arrest. Here, in the very lap of the International Police, such an attempt would require boldness to a degree almost suicidal. For that matter, she was a different girl than the one they'd almost bagged in that mall in Nekomikoka. If she were jumped here and now, she might hope to give a reasonable accounting of herself, and help wouldn't be far away. Truth to tell, though, she wasn't even really thinking about the possibility of ambush. What preoccupied her had little to do with her own situation. Kyouichi Saionji was missing. Anne had assumed, when he'd appeared in the dojo and handed over the mysterious package (which she still hadn't opened), that he'd already discussed his planned trip, whatever it was, with the others. Surely he'd have run it by Kaitlyn, who was, after all, his sensei. -Certainly- he'd have mentioned something about it to his girlfriend, Wakaba Shinohara. But no. He hadn't mentioned a word of any travels to anyone. He'd just packed up some things, dropped off his mystery package, and vanished. Kaitlyn was concerned, but not overly so - she knew he was competent and expected he'd be able to handle whatever he ran into, and journeymen of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu did have a certain tradition of, well, -journeying-, though she was mildly peeved that he hadn't even bothered to tell her he was going. She was more annoyed on behalf of Wakaba, who was somewhere just to the left of furious. As for Juniper, she was worried, and wondered if she was doing the right thing not telling all the details of his visit to the dojo. He hadn't specifically -asked- her not to tell anyone that he'd given her the package, but she figured if he'd wanted it generally advertised, he wouldn't have been so discreet about it in the first place, so she kept quiet. She was still mulling this over as she stepped into the main entryway of Harkness Street High School, having completely failed to take in the building's brooding facade. Like so many new students before her, she followed the pointing sign to the office and shortly found herself before Principal Wesley Dodds. Anne was immediately struck by the principal's presence - not that he was forceful or commanding, in any conventional sense, but... there was something about him that hinted at unseen forces and unknown places, and being the sort of person who was attuned to that kind of thing, she noticed. What was more, she could see he knew that she'd noticed, and it seemed to amuse him. He gave her the briefing, which included such eyebrow-raising highlights as the run-down of which students had sorcerous ability and/or superpowers, which teachers ditto, and a warning not to indulge in too much psychic activity near the southeasternmost dormer on the third level, so as not to unduly distress the building's mostly quiescent haunting. Armed with that knowledge - and no longer wondering why no one in the office seemed to be taking any notice of the wooden sword she was carrying - she reported to her first classroom, which was about half-full when she arrived. It was a pretty ordinary-looking group, Anne decided, looking over the room as she stood by the door and considered where to sit. More non-humans than she was used to - they were practically unknown on Orron IV - but she was long past any lingering trouble her upbringing might have given her with that. They were all about her age, all neatly dressed (no uniforms here, though), they all looked reasonably bright... One of them, a tallish, athletic girl with long blonde hair, turned and saw her standing there. She immediately broke into a welcoming smile. "Hi," she said, standing. "New student?" "Uh, yeah," Anne replied. "Anne Cross." She offered a hand. The blonde girl gave it a firm shake. "Courtney Whitmore. Welcome to Harkness Street High. C'mon, I'll introduce you. We've got a couple minutes before Mr. Hall shows up." With a confidential grin, she added, "He thinks he's the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince, which is cool? Except it means he has kind of a vague idea of time in spans of less than a few hundred years." MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2410 Two young women stood at the apex of the colossal crimson and gold step pyramid that was the New Avalon headquarters of the Aztechnology Corporation, leaning against the safety rail at the edge of the airship pad and watching the city's aerial traffic. They said nothing, merely watched, as though waiting for something. A few moments later that something arrived, in the form of a long, sleek, black air limousine that detached from the traffic pattern around the ziggurat and slid smoothly to a halt near the building's roof entrance. The two women turned and went to stand near the limo as a man in red armor got out of the driver's seat, went to the back of the car, opened the passenger seat, and stood stiffly at attention. Dr. Lawrence R. Mann, Master of GENOM Corporation, emerged from the car, straightened his thousand-credit grey sharkskin Armani, and walked to the two women, his bodyguard/driver falling into step behind him. Mann tried to keep his bearing as formal and corporate as possible, but a grin kept stealing onto his face, and soon the shorter of the women who awaited him was matching it. "Miss Broadbank," he said, nodding to her. "Miss Arisugawa," he added, acknowledging her companion. "It's official - my board just signed off on the last of the merger documentation. Aztechnology is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of GENOM Corporation." He held out a hand first to Mary, then to Juri. "Welcome to the family." Then, gesturing to the limo, he said, "Buy you lunch?" "Is this business or pleasure?" Mary asked with a smile as they walked toward the vehicle. Mann laughed. "For me, both. You two will have to make up your own minds. Still, there will be work involved. I need to bring you, Miss Broadbank, up to speed on what will be expected of you as a managing partner, and as for you, Miss Arisugawa, I have a proposition you might find interesting." "Oh?" Juri said, raising an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said as he bowed them into the limo ahead of him. "I have another division that could use a fresh approach to management, and I think you'd be perfect... " THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2410 NAR SHADDAA (THE SMUGGLERS' MOON) NAL HUTTA SYSTEM, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES Like a great many of the businesses on Nar Shaddaa, the Tix-Volik Aerotaxi Company was a bent operation. It wasn't outright criminal - at least, not by the notoriously lax legal standards of the Smugglers' Moon - but it didn't operate in a way that would pass muster in many other places. For one thing, its equipment was very poorly maintained, something that should have been of some concern in an environment where a lift-system failure meant a two-mile plunge into the anonymous oblivion of the Vertical City's lowermost levels. For another, the drivers were slaves. The Outer Rim slave trade was a thing not often discussed in polite circles. Even in the Territories, sentient ownership of other organic sentients was of very dubious legality; it was banned outright on most of the more settled and established worlds, and largely considered a creature of the wilder centuries and more remote sectors. There were educated, important people in the Territories who would vociferously and quite sincerely insist that slavery was something you found in the -truly- lawless regions, like the Coreward Frontier, not on the Rim. But it did exist, in places like Nar Shaddaa, and Tatooine, and Pleiku IV, and even - in vestigial form - in the Vastru system, where fixed-term indenture was still a common legal framework for the employment of farm laborers. Wherever the Hutts went, and their slime trails criscrossed the Outer Rim Territories as in few other places, the slave trade went with them. For the most part, it was confined to Hutt society itself. Most common people - even most lower-echelon gangsters - didn't have slaves, they had droids (the distinction being arguable in some places, but not on the Rim, for the most part). Real live slaves were a prestige item, conspicuously flaunted even as their true status was being coyly hidden from the public. The customers who rode in Tix-Volik taxis generally didn't -know- their drivers were the owned property of the company's proprietor, a greasy human named (imaginatively) Kiv Tolix. Their ID placards, prominently displayed in the passenger areas of the aerocabs as required by law, listed them as freemen - but on Nar Shaddaa, unknown to most visitors, "freeman" was a legal term meaning "slave". Such was the perversity of the Hutt legal mind, though Hutt lawyers routinely insisted it was a translation problem - a limitation of the barbaric pidgin that was the Standard language, and nothing to do with the glorious and honorable legal traditions of the Hutts. For that matter, most Tix-Volik customers had no idea that Kiv Tolix -himself- was a slave, and only owned his company on paper. He, and it, really belonged to a Hutt named Vorgo, who was part of the vast and vicious Syndicate, a criminal organization that needed no other name. Vorgo's business associates included a laundry list of slug-like crime lords spanning the known galaxy, from Begraag, the master of the betting pits of Solaris VII, to the vile Jabba, lord of Tatooine. It was even whispered that he had ties to the most vicious and loathsome Hutt of them all, the ineffable and elusive Braxa, whose stubby hands held the strings to more murders, bombings, kidnappings, brainwashings, and "spaceliner accidents" than any other single criminal's. Not many of Tolix's own -drivers- knew that he was just another slave, and it was not a fact whose dissemination he encouraged. He had, in fact, arranged for several unfortunate maintenance-related accidents to befall drivers who learned the truth and were either foolish enough to try for some leverage out of it or simply failed to keep him from finding out. There was one who knew and had so far lived - a young human of singular intensity, possessed of fantastic piloting skills, preternatural senses, and a deeply buried but incompletely hidden core of pure, sun-hot rage. Tolix let him live for three reasons: 1) The young man was arguably more valuable to Vorgo, who occasionally took him off the taxi-driver job to use him as an assassin, than Tolix himself; 2) He had so far exercised great discretion, seeking to gain no advantage from the knowledge other than the satisfaction of knowing that Tolix was aware he knew; and 3) Tolix went in constant, mortal fear of him, to the point where he was half-convinced that if he killed the boy, he would simply rise up from the dead and wreak a hideous revenge. The young driver knew that last fact, too, and it gave him even more private satisfaction than knowing that Tolix was a fellow slave. Not least because he -was- planning to kill Tolix, and soon. He'd had about enough of life as an unpaid cabdriver and part-time killer (also unpaid). It was time to move on. On his way out, he'd have to take out Tolix anyway, so he figured he might as well enjoy it. It'd be a novelty to have to eliminate someone who had done him an actual wrong or two, as opposed to complete strangers whose crimes he neither knew nor really cared about. Except when he was working on one of his "special jobs", he wasn't allowed to have weapons, and all equipment he was issued for a job was scrupulously recovered after each mission, so he'd spent months carefully designing, pilfering the parts for, and quietly building the weapon for his escape. It wasn't much to look at, but it would work, he was confident of that. He was very good with his hands, even if one of them was a crude bionic prosthesis. Always had been. Technical work came to him as easily as flying... ... as easily as killing. He parked his cab at the far end of the garage, as usual. He maintained it himself, with meticulous care - another reason why Tolix would have found it hard to employ his usual method for rubbing out troublesome drivers. His ride was the only one in the company that would have passed a legitimate airspeeder safety inspection, if such things existed on Nar Shaddaa. He parked it out there so that anyone else would have to walk an inconveniently long way to mess with it, and so he could be the first one out at the start of the shift. He walked toward the office in the back with his usual long-legged stride, a slightly gangly youth with a visible measure of physical confidence. He had long, curly brown hair and rugged features touched with a hint of delicacy; the other drivers called him "Prettyboy", but never to his face. Apart from his shabby clothes, the only thing that marred his appearance was the stark, unpolished mechanicality of his right hand, a metallic manipulator that wouldn't have looked out of place on a labor droid. It may have -been- on a labor droid once. He'd deliberately dawdled on the aerial streets of the Vertical City for as long as he dared before returning to base, knowing that Tolix would dismiss the other drivers and then hang around to bitch at him for joyriding. As it happened, there was precious little joy in the ride this particular time, but that was as immaterial as Tolix's head was about to become. The garage was deserted, just as he'd hoped, but as he approached the office, he felt a -wrongness-, subtle and hard to define, scratching at the edges of his consciousness. He shrugged it off - of course the situation felt hinky, he was about to murder his boss, after all - and walked on, opened the door, and stepped through into the office. "Yes, Tolix, I know," he announced loudly. "I've been out burning ions on your decicredit again, and - " He stopped because Tolix wasn't listening. In fact, for a moment, Tolix didn't appear to be in the room, until the driver noticed his boots jutting out from behind the dispatch console. Only then did he sense the presence of another in the room - He whirled, raising his mechanical hand, and as he splayed the fingers, a round port built into the palm of the hand glowed yellow- white with a keening whine. "Don't move!" he barked to the man standing behind the door. "This is a concussion blaster, it'll paint you all over that wall." The man chuckled, his voice low and calm. "I don't doubt it," he said. "Relax. I don't mean you any harm." He nodded toward what remained of Tolix. "I wouldn't necessarily have harmed him, either, if he hadn't pulled a blaster on me - though that's not certain. He was just unpleasant enough that I might have felt compelled to teach him a lesson." "Why are you here?" the young cabdriver demanded, his dark blue eyes glittering with intensity. "I came to talk to you," the intruder replied. "You -are- Anakin Skywalker, aren't you?" Anakin blinked. "How did you know - " "You cut a distinctive figure," the other man said dryly. "Who sent you? Tell me!" "In good time," the intruder replied. "For now, we should get out of here. I suspect that Mr. Tolix, whether he knew it not, was equipped with a deadman alarm." The younger man considered that for a half-second, eyes narrowing and flicking toward Tolix's remains. "If I'd wanted your head, I could have taken it when you barged past me just now," the man in the shadows pointed out. Anakin thought that over too, his mind racing, his instincts tugging at him in a way he had learned, over the years, to trust. They were telling him two things: that this man was not his enemy, and that he was right about the alarm. "OK," he said. "Let's go." They ran to the end of the garage and piled into Anakin's cab, which fired up instantly at his command. As he hit the repulsors and levered the vehicle out of its parking slip, the office door banged open and a squad of armored paramilitary troopers burst through, weapons at the ready. "Looks like you were right about that alarm," Anakin noted. He jammed the throttles open; the speeder-cab shot out of the garage like a missile from a launch tube, ejected into the evening scrum of Nar Shaddaa's upper-level traffic. Signal horns blared and drivers shook fists as he powered into the traffic pattern without regard for any niceties of aerial conduct. "You have a destination in mind?" Anakin asked his passenger sardonically as he gunned the cab down a main thoroughfare, then banked hard to port and shot down a narrower side passage. The other man, who was dressed in a dark cloak that hid his other garments and most of his face, replied, "My ship is docked at Tower 647 Southeast, Level 244." "Sixty-credit run," Anakin remarked with a wry grin, zooming down another side passage. "Maybe not," his passenger noted as a pair of black speeders popped out of alleys ahead. /* John Williams "The Battle of Endor, Part III" _Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi_ */ The souped-up yellow cab burned past them before they could get into anything like a block position, but their intent was confirmed a moment later as they formed up for pursuit. A moment later, scarlet blaster bolts were whining past the cab. "And me without my portable deflector rig," Anakin complained. "I'll handle them. You just drive," his passenger said. Then, standing, he threw off his cloak to reveal himself clad in dark robes and high boots. He hurdled the seat, and as he went over, Anakin heard a sound he hadn't heard in years - the snapping hiss of a lightsaber igniting. It sent a chill up his spine and raised goosebumps on his bare arms as he wrangled the speeder down two elevation levels and around a three-dimensional rotary. For a second, just a second, he was twelve again and the galaxy was at his feet. Then he was a seventeen-year-old runaway slave once more, and the stranger in the back seat, lightsaber or no, was still a stranger. He gritted his teeth and increased power still further, robbing it from the repulsors to feed to the thrusters - at this speed, most of his lift was ballistic anyway. Any other Tix-Volik speeder would have exploded by now, but Anakin's responded smoothly, the snarl of its primary thrusters deepening as the vehicle surged forward. Behind him, he could hear the unforgettable sound of a lightsaber deflecting cannon fire, and then, far off behind, a muffled WHOOMP that had to be one of their pursuers going up in smoke. Seeing that, the pilot of the other speeder wised up and stopped firing. Instead, he poured on the speed as well, hoping to crowd his adversary into making a mistake. Gods knew there were plenty enough to be made up here, what with the heavy evening traffic, the randomness of -other- drivers, and the various fixed hazards presented by the city. Anakin Skywalker was not a pilot who made mistakes. He knew every cubic foot of the airspace above this part of the Vertical City; it was his beat, his turf, his -home-. He knew every corner, elevation barrier, traffic hotspot, walkway, holobillboard, and docking spire for miles around, all in a constantly updated, perfectly researched 3-D holomap he kept in his head. He was, if he did say so himself, the greatest pilot - speeder or otherwise - in the galaxy, and there was no way he was going to be herded into a power coupling by some two-bit spud in a black XP39. His maybe-Jedi passenger, who was back in the front seat now, offered no editorial comments as Anakin took what would have seemed to anyone else like absurd chances, darting between heavy cargo haulers, yoyoing up and down through a pack of cruising luxobarges, splitting the difference of a pair of walkways connecting two towers. The last maneuver was the capper; the XP39 was a little bit taller than Anakin's skycab, and the top walkway skinned the top of the cabin clean off it. If the driver avoided decapitation, he didn't manage to keep control of his vehicle, which plowed messily into the side of the left-hand tower a half-second later. The taxi's meter had started automatically when the vehicle left the garage with a passenger aboard. As Anakin pulled to a graceful halt alongside the battered Leopard-CV dropship parked on Level 244 of Tower 647 Southeast, the meter's glowing red display indicated precisely 60 credits. Both men disembarked. Anakin walked around the nose of the cab and said wryly, "I guess I can waive the fare this time." Then, his face going hard, he raised his right hand, leveled its built-in concussion blaster at his passenger, and said, "Now, I seem to recall you owing me an answer." The man in the dark Jedi robes smiled slightly. He was a thin-faced, coldly handsome man with short-cropped, almost military- style green hair - a Zardon, maybe? He met Anakin's accusing gaze calmly, but there was a piercing intensity in his violet eyes that matched Anakin's own. "I have a proposition for you," he said. "Oh yeah? What might that be?" "You think I'm a Jedi," the man replied. "Well, I'm not. I represent a much more specialized, much more... -elite- organization. An organization in which there might be a place for someone with your potential." Anakin blinked. "Who the hell are you? How do you know anything about my 'potential'?" "My name is Saionji," the man replied. "I know your potential because I can -feel- it just looking at you, but beyond that, I've done my homework. I know quite a bit about you. I know, for example, that you were once the property of a Hutt-aligned junk dealer on Tatooine; that you escaped at the age of nine in the care of a Jedi Master named Aarok Sifu-Dyas, and that you were Sifu-Dyas's padawan for three years, before his untimely death here on Nar Shaddaa... at which point the Hutt Syndicate recaptured you and put you to work as Vorgo's errand boy." When Anakin had nothing to say to that capsule summary of his life, Saionji narrowed his eyes and went on, "I know that the Force is strong with you - but your master never really understood you, and his death left you without purpose. I can give you that purpose." Anakin looked skeptical. He didn't lower his weapon, but he did say after a few seconds, "I'm listening." "Anakin... would you like to learn how to harness the beast that lives inside you?" The young man looked startled. "Master... Master Sifu-Dyas said - " "I'm sure he was a very wise man, but he was wrong about this," Saionji replied with glacial certainty. "You can't kill the dragon in your heart, Ani. If you do, your heart dies with it. Men like us can only fight to make them work for us... or let them consume us." He held out a hand. "Come with me and I can teach you how to fight that battle. It's one I've fought all my life." Anakin stared at him for a few seconds, his instincts grappling with his fear of the unknown. Then he powered down his weapon and took the outstretched hand. "What do I need to do?" he asked. "For now, very little," Saionji said. "There will be work, and a lot of it, but right now, all you need to do is say a few words and accept a token of your new allegiance." He outlined what was required. Anakin looked on the verge of balking; aspects of the simple ritual clashed with his considerable innate pride in much the same way that being a slave did. But something in Saionji's eyes, something in his voice, gave the young man the first spark of anything like hope he'd felt since Sifu-Dyas had died, and in the end, he wasn't going to let even his pride stand in the way of seizing that hope. So he knelt, bowed his head, and said, "Master Saionji... I pledge myself to your teachings. As your novice student, I am yours to command." Saionji smiled. "Excellent," he said, and he seemed to mean it. "Rise." Anakin stood up and regarded his new master curiously. "It seems you have no choice but to revolutionize the world," Saionji said. "Your place has been prepared." He reached into an inner pocket of his dark tunic, withdrew a small item, and handed it to his disciple. "Put it on," he said, and Anakin obeyed, slipping the signet ring onto the third finger of his left hand. It was made of a metal he'd never seen before, lustrous and opalescently black, and its face was a blood-red gem cut in the stylized semblance of a flower. "Welcome to the revolution, Anakin Skywalker," said Saionji. "Welcome to the Order of the Black Rose." /* Many Small Functions "Betrayal" */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 5 - Overture in A Minor The Cast (in order of appearance) Kaitlyn Hutchins Sumire Kanzaki Sergei Miki Kaoru Juri Arisugawa Utena Tenjou Anne Cross Kyouichi Saionji Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Wesley Dodds Courtney Whitmore Lawrence R. Mann, Ph.D. Mary Broadbank Juri Arisugawa and introducing Anakin Skywalker Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins Plotting assistance Anne Cross Janice Barlow and The Usual Suspects With grateful acknowledgements to the original creators E P U (colour) 2014