There was another boy there at the base of the balcony outside of Meng Shi's window, where Meng Yao liked to sit: a boy few years older than him, taller, in finely made clothing that would normally make Meng Yao itch all over in futile envy, but the other boy’s eyes were white around the edges in a way that was immediately, painfully familiar. “Someone’s chasing you?” Meng Yao asked, and the boy’s eyes widened even further, surprised, but he nodded in confirmation. “There’s a trellis around the left side – can you climb up? I'll hide you.” "Thanks," the boy said, later, once the man he called Wen Ruohan had left. "My name is Nie Mingjue. What's yours?"

“Are you going to kill me right here, Mand’alor?” Obi-Wan manages. Fett freezes, his hold loosening, and shoves away from him as if burned, getting to his feet. Obi-Wan coughs, looks up to where the man is watching him with some strange mix of emotion. His shields are exceptionally strong, for a null. “There is no Mand’alor,” Fett says finally, and walks right out of the room. (Or: 15-year-old Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker crash-lands on Kamino on the one day a cycle when the seas are calm and the storms abate. At the time, he doesn’t think much of it. Later—much later—he will come to see it as an omen.)

Upending a base full of slavers was supposed to be a straightforward mission. Agen was unprepared for abduction, cloned armies, and the dark edges of the mystery that surrounds them, stretching back a thousand years. Though, in fairness, Alpha wasn't at all prepared for Agen, either.