Renee deCata, aka Mychae Qiin, looked around at the grey stormy city. She had every reason to gawk, no matter which alias you knew about - Renee deCata was an agriworld military brat made good and her city experience was limited to Sobrik until now, and Mychae Qiin was a Coruscanti girl and employee of an organisation run jointly by Jedi and Republic military and thus was not likely to set foot in the centre of the Empire as anything but a prisoner. Either way, neither had any expectation of seeing Dromund Kaas. But there she was, on a day's liberty from the Mid Rim Ballet Corps and let loose in the Empire's capital.
There were certain things that needed to be done; things that had to be hint-dropped while she was here. She was a woman on a mission, after all; the whole point of her months of alias-solidifying infiltration had been to get onto Dromund Kaas, which was the last place that anyone had seen her partner. The man had been seen wearing the uniform of a high-ranking Imperial military man. Whether traitor, double agent, brainwash victim or undercover himself, this long without word meant he needed to be either rescued or silenced.
It was up to Mychae to figure out which, and get it done. What was more, she had to do it alone. Srina, probably the best qualified to work a mission like this, was too recent a defector to be able to pose as someone else on Dromund Kaas - it would be hard for people to believe her dead if someone recognised her on Kaas as the woman who'd had a business meeting on their premises six months previous. The other options were equally dangerous - the Greystorms might have managed under ordinary circumstances, but the one Sith Pureblood had way too much of a temper, the human Jedi was ... well, a Jedi, and the other one was too prone to flying off the handle. That wasn't even getting into the one who'd burst into Flames if she so much as set foot on Kaas soil. And the Hapani noble ... there was no way that throwing a Hapani female onto a planet that wasn't entirely shy about sexism would end well, and never mind her nobility-born tendency to say "This will be done the way I want it" when she had no idea how to play this particular game...
"May I help you, Miss?"
"Oh!" 'Renee' looked up at the man who'd spoken to her, outwardly looking shy and apologetic but inwardly sizing him up. Coruscanti cantina rats tended to look for a pickpocket or mugger first; the spy in her asked whether this was a bigger sort of threat. Thankfully, she saw neither; just an overweight man who apparently ran a pastry stall. "Um ... I'll have one of ... those, please," she went on, pointing and forcing a faint blush. "Sorry. I'm ... a little new to the city, so..."
The man grinned a bit. "Well, your reputation precedes you." With that, he gestured towards a poster advertising the ballet in which she was currently starring, due to open in two days. "From what I'm hearing, it's the thing to see right now."
"Oh!" She let the blush deepen. It was way more natural this time; she was a self-taught ballerina, and so far no one had caught on, which was a lot better than she'd hoped for when she started. "Um ... thank you. Will ... will you be coming?"
The pastry vendor shook his head with a chuckle. "Those tickets cost more than I make in a month, my dear. I'll probably have to settle for holo, when they finally release it. Shame, really; the story is actually one of my favourites."
What would the mini-medic do? That question had got her very far as Renee deCata so far; it couldn't possibly steer her wrong in this situation. "Well ... maybe ... see, I don't really know the city, and I ... don't know who to ask about ... well, things to do on Dromund Kaas. If ... you could maybe ... suggest a few things to do for a day trip ... I might be able to send a pair of tickets for you?"
The pastry vendor laughed again, but it was moderately kind, at least. He clearly didn't expect the tickets to ever materialise. Still, he said, "There's a wonderful bistro over that way. Erm ... the Imperial History Museum is over there - don't worry; everything that looks Force-related is actually a replica. The Kaas Library is five blocks down and to the left, and there's a speederbus tour of the ruins under excavation, now that they've put down the slave revolt. A little costly, but I hear it's quite worth it."
"Thank you very much," said 'Renee', taking her pastry and handing over some credit chits. "You ... you're on shift all day?"
With a smile and a nod, the pastry vendor gave his customer her change. "Best of luck, Miss deCata. Or ... it's the stage, isn't it. It's 'break a leg' for the stage, right?"
'Renee' giggled. "Not for ballerinas. That's a curse for us."
She left the pastry vendor laughing.
Two nights later, after a couple of unproductive but somewhat informative days wandering Dromund Kaas' tourist attractions just for the look of the thing, the ballet opened. Peering out into the audience before the show began, Mychae's cybernetic eyes picked up the overweight pastry vendor and a woman who was presumably his wife in the fifth row. Both of them looked a little uncomfortable in what were probably their best clothes, but they also looked delighted to be there.
Mychae smiled and took up position. It didn't do anyone any good to forget that while the hierarchy was made of nerfshit, the people on Dromund Kaas were just people trying to live their lives. And throwing a baker into the midst of the highest ranks of Imperial society was just the sort of mischief she'd missed in her time away.
