Chapter Text
It was every Jedi Padawan’s duty at some point within their tenure as an apprentice to shadow a random galactic senator for a week to learn more about how democracy functions. It is generally considered to be a valuable and necessary, but boring experience that every padawan suffers through at some point.
16 year old Anakin Skywalker, however, did not see his upcoming visit to the senate in such a light. Obi-Wan was on a secret mission off-planet with Quinlan Vos, and so Anakin was left with Quinlan’s Padawan Aayla Secura for the month. The Jedi Council apparently thought that with Obi-Wan off-world and no pressing missions, it was the perfect time to have Anakin shadow a senator. (Fools, they forgot that Obi-Wan kept a sometimes literal tight leash on Anakin for a reason. He was 99% of Anakin’s impulse control on a good day.)
They assigned him to Senator Lott Dod. Y’know, the Senator who ‘allegedly’ helped organize the Trade Federation’s blockade of Naboo. (There was no ‘allegedly’ about it. Anakin may have sliced into the Trade Federation’s internal communications a few years back on a dare, but he has proof damn it! It’s just not admissible in Court because it was ‘ImPrOpErLy ObTaInEd’.) Why the Council thought that it would be a good idea to assign Anakin to a Senator like that, he’ll never understand. He still snarls at Nute Gunray if he sees him, though from a distance as that restraining order is still in effect. Though how were people expecting him to react to seeing someone who tried to kill so many? Not bite him and not let go until his jaws were forcibly pried off the bastard’s leg? And he was 12 then! Come on! It was just justice for the Naboo because the courts sure as hell didn’t provide any. (He may or may not have received a gift basket from the Queen after word of that leaked. Plausible deniability and all that jazz.) Anyways, Anakin is still incredibly, and rightfully he might add, salty towards the Trade Federation and those associated with that bantha shit of a federation.
Back to the main topic, it is incredibly clear that whoever assigned him to that poor excuse of a senator was definitely not in the right frame of mind.
Anakin stared slack-jawed at the innocuous email that oh so helpfully informed him of his assigned senator, a basic biography of Lott Dod, necessary items, behavioral protocol, a map of the Senate, and when and where he needed to report to.
Still in shock, he looked at Aayla and wordlessly handed her the datapad with the email still up. She quickly scanned the message, and broke into fits of laughter. “Who-”, she spoke through her incredulous and increasingly more hysterical laughter, “-the kark thought this was a good idea?”
Anakin shook his head frantically. “I have no kriffing clue, all I know is that whoever the kark it was and whoever was involved with this had to be on something incredibly strong to okay this.”
“Oh I know that kitten. I’m pretty sure that everyone can see how badly this is going to go. It’s just a matter of if there’s going to be another restraining order or not, and what happens to lead to that.”
“That’s probably a very fair statement”, Anakin sighed, slumping down onto the couch.
She patted his arm sympathetically. “Try and make the best of it, okay? This is probably the only chance you have to be let near the sleemo without supervision. Just get a recording of whatever shavit goes down for me please?”
“Of course.”
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In the week prior to the dreaded shadowing, Anakin hunkered down and did drukloads of research. He looked up everything he could find about Dod, and compiled an incredibly extensive profile of the man. He used some …..less socially acceptable methods to access extra, more encrypted information, and even visited Dex after his talk with Aayla to ask if he’d heard anything about the man.
Reading through the information that he collected, Anakin was boiling mad. Lott Dod had become a Senator after the Eriadu Trade Summit before the Invasion of Naboo, where there had been an attempted assasination of then-Supreme Chancellor Valorum, and the murder of all of the Trade Federation’s leadership. After the massacre, Dod and Nute Gunray became the most prominent leaders of the Federation, and Dod was appointed Senator of Neimoidia and the voice of the Trade Federation in the Senate. He was responsible, at least in part for the Invasion, and when Padme had pleaded for help from the Senate, had objected to her claims and delayed any action by suggesting that the Senate form a committee to figure out the truth, delaying needed support. In the seven years since the blockade, he had continuously protected the Trade Federation and denied any wrongdoing, supporting harmful bills and using his influence and connections to get them through. He was as nasty and corrupt as they come.
There were also rumors of the nerf herder using slave labor for the Trade Federation, and of him harassing female interns and workers. And those were just the rumors he could confirm. So yeah, Anakin was royally pissed .
Screw no hate, this was personal damnit and if not hate, incredibly strong dislike was more than warranted in this situation.
Despite his anger, he felt a smile begin to grow on his face. Because tomorrow he became this man’s shadow for a week, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
As always, Aayla was right. He was going to make the most of the situation and put the fear of pissed off teens into the person who needed it the most. Time to put those acting skills to good use, for the first few days at least.
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The next morning saw Anakin at the Senate building bright and early, looking as serene and put together as Plo Koon. Aayla had dropped him off 15 minutes ago, but not before wishing him luck and updating him on the arrival status of his ….supplementary materials. What did he do to deserve a friend like her?
He took a deep breath and plastered on a bright smile as he saw Dod approach. Step one was in progress .
“Good morning Senator Dod, I am Padawan Anakin Skywalker, and I have been assigned to shadow you for the next week. I believe that you were sent some background information before this…?” he trailed off, leaving the question for Dod to answer.
“Yes, yes I am aware.”
“Perfect!” Anakin beamed, only slightly cringing on the inside. Some discomfort was well worth it if it meant that his plan would go off without a hitch. And he really should be using his acting skills more anyways. “I can’t wait to get an inside look as to how our democracy functions. As the past few years have shown, especially with the Invasion of Naboo, democracy is vital!” He saw Lott cringe minutely and cheered internally. Got you, kriffwad. Anakin: 1, Whiny Trade Federation Bastard: 0 . “I hope our temporary partnership is beneficial to us both.” Here, Anakin held out his hand for the senator to shake, which he did reluctantly.
“Yes, the same goes for me”, Dod said. Anakin had to admit, he did have a good sabacc face. However, unfortunately for his dear Senator, two can play that game . And Anakin came to win.
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The first day progressed in a mundane fashion, with Anakin familiarizing himself with the rest of the Neimoidian delegation, which included a few other interns, some quite nice, a far too long senate session, and attending a few meetings with the senator.
The only thing of note that occurred during the day was when Dod had to excuse himself while speaking during the Senate session, for undisclosed reasons that he would not even reveal to the rest of the delegation, instead rushing out of the pod and heading for the ‘freshers.
Anakin might have used a Lipana-infused hand sanitiser right before shaking the Senator’s hand, but how could he have known that even touching the fruit caused the Neimoidian to have a delayed allergic reaction consisting of sweating, itching everywhere, and irritable bowels? (His research, that’s how.) But no one even suspects the far too cheery Jedi Padawan either way, so it worked out just fine as he knew it would.
During the meetings, he payed attention just enough to know what was going on and appear attentive if any questions were asked of him, but he instead used his datapad to chat with the other interns.When he came in that morning before the Senate assembly, they added him to the private chat, which was aptly named ‘a Lott of suffering’, which while sad gave him a great look at the rest of the office’s feelings towards their darling Dodykins. Hm. He wondered if he could recruit at least some of them to help him…..
That would need to be thought about later. Maybe if they needed swaying (though from the chat it looked like the interns were five minutes from shoving his head into a flimsi shredder themselves), he could get them food?
He shook himself out of his thoughts, he could dwell on that later. For now, it was time to act like his life depended on it.
The meetings finally ended, and while that was technically the end of the day, Anakin needed to build his character a bit more before he could leave.
Rushing up to Dod and interrupting what was definitely a Highly Suspicious conversation between him and the senator for the Techno Union, Gume Saam, that he made a mental note to follow up on later, he asked “Senator Dod, is there anything else you need help with?”
The senator replied in a disgruntled tone that the day had ended, so Anakin should be heading back to the temple, or ‘wherever you live’ and that no, he did not need any help so maybe go bother ask the other aides?
So he did. As it turns out, a lovely aide by the name of Sugu (call me Su) Dirtio needed to copy a very large stack of documents, but needed to leave for a family thing, so could Anakin take it over for her, and here’s the code cylinder for the office and copy room. Of course he agreed to do it.
A slow, slightly manic grin spread over his face. This was just what he needed.
____________________________________________________________________________
Anakin had gotten back to the temple later than he wanted the night before and even then he had more he needed to do, so when he woke up the next morning, he still felt groggy and not rested. He still forced himself up though, there was work to be done and mayhem to witness.
Same as yesterday, Aayla flew him over to the senate, he greeted the senator with enough enthusiasm as a naive high school principal, greeted the aides, grabbed caff for everyone, you get the idea.
He walked into the office and began his work. But sure enough, 15 minutes later a pained yelp and then an angry cry rose into the air.
“WHO MOVED MY DESK?”
This was followed by loud footsteps, and then- thump!
Anakin heard some choice Neimoidian curses being uttered.
Throughout the day, the same sort of pattern followed. The senator would try to sit in an armchair without looking and fell onto his arse at least twice, and he dropped his datapad many times as well when he thought he was putting it onto a table or desk. And the number of times he tripped…..well, it wasn't anything to scoff at, that’s for sure.
He snickered behind a stack of files he was sorting through. Who knew that moving every piece of furniture 4 measly inches to the left would mess Dod up this much?
By the time of the last meeting before the Senate session, Dod was thoroughly thrown off his game and visibly ticked. It didn’t help that he realized that he had mistakenly opened an email containing a virus, and now his datapad would only play R’i-Ick Ast’ley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. So he couldn’t even do work from there now.
Dod stormed past with his cronies following, with the aides not attending this meeting because of confidentiality issues.
“Okay, I need to know who did this. Because I need to buy whoever it is caff for a month. This is glorious!” said a young aide by the name of Day Tonkub.
Another aide, Vay Onnkin piped in, “I totally agree. I wish I could take the credit, but there’s no way I could’ve sent that virus, which was genius by the way.”
This set off the rest of the aides.
“Yeah!”
“Whoever it is, I need to worship. Stick it to the man.”
“This is the best day I’ve had here since I started!”
“So someone finally snapped and is giving the kriffwad a taste of his own druk? Props to them.”
“Hey guys?” Anakin asked in an innocent tone. “If you don’t mind telling me, why exactly do you hate Dod so much? I mean I don’t blame you from what I’ve seen the past two days, but I’m just curious as to what he’s done to earn this much hate.”
Su sighed heavily. “Yeah, we probably should’ve given you an explanation/warning before. In our defense, this is the first time we’ve had a Jedi here since I started, and I’ve been working here for the past five years. And I’m the oldest of this crew.” She gestured at the ten assembled aides. “They’re mostly interns or just graduated poli-sci majors who needed a job ASAP. There’s a reason there’s such a divide in the office. It’s either us or his main aides, who seem to worship the ground he walks on. It’s disgusting to watch.”
She shook her head for a moment. “Now back to the main point: We hate Lott Dod because he’s a piece of sexist, corrupt, just downright nasty scum. He constantly promises bonuses or raises but never gives them. He’s ‘forgotten’ to pay us five times, he never pays overtime, we always hear him talking about shady druk in his office, and there’s so much more, but the worst thing is that he’s constantly harassing the younger women in the office, and he makes lewd remarks when no one else can hear and leers at us. He treats us like bantha crap and never gives us a raise or a promotion, passing us over for less qualified and less experienced men. He pays us less than our male counterparts. And he constantly misgenders Zi! They’re non-binary, he uses ‘they’ and ‘them’ enough when referring to us in general instead of using our kriffing names, but he purposely seems to go out of his way to use gendered language for them!”
She paused for a minute to compose herself. “Though he’s a scumbag, he’s a scumbag with connections . Every time someone tries to complain to HR, they’re fired on the spot and no record of the meeting or the complaint is ever logged. We have so much evidence of all of this, but again, when anyone tries to share it, it’s wiped and the person is forced to sign an NDA so they can’t talk about how bad of a workplace this is. We’ve tried going to the Jedi stationed at the Senate before, but we’ve been stopped every time. It’s infuriating and we’re basically trapped here. It’s why we all band together and why we have the groupchat, we can only talk about this shavit to each other.”
Anakin looked around the room at the others. All of them were tense, hands balled up in fists and teeth clenched. He could basically feel the anger radiating off of them. And it was a good thing that he had his shields slammed up, because he was just as angry. They were all so young, mainly between the ages of 18 and 25, though Su was closer to 30. They didn’t deserve this, they had been stuck working for this sheb for who knows how long, they deserved revenge too.
He took a deep breath. I’m about to do something potentially incredibly stupid aren’t I? Well, YOLO I guess.
“It was me.”
Silence filled the room. Anakin really hoped he’d made the right decision and things weren’t about to drastically backfire on him.
“....Could you repeat that?” Vay asked tentatively.
“I said, it was me. I’m the one who moved all the furniture and sent him the virus. I did it. And if I’m not caught, I plan to do a hell of a lot more this week.”
“Who did you say you were again?”
“Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker. I was the one to take down the Trade Federation’s droid control ship in the battle of Naboo.”
“Oh shit, that was you? What the hell are you doing here then?” a young intern named Jox Otrim asked incredulously.
Anakin groaned. “Every padawan has to shadow a randomly assigned Senator for a week. Someone decided to assign me to Dod, apparently not thinking that I wouldn’t have a grudge because ‘Jedi don’t carry ill will to any!’ or something. And we can’t switch or really request a new one if there’s not extreme extenuating circumstances. And mine somehow didn’t count.”
“Oof. That sucks for you my man.” Jox winced.
Anakin glanced at the chrono, and smiled devilishly. “Well, a close friend of mine reminded me that this is the only time I’ll probably ever be this close to him since Nute Gunray’s got a restraining order for me, and my master’s away for a mission so it’s the only chance I have for a little revenge. It’s why I’m acting so bubbly and naive around him, he’ll never suspect me. Now, two quick things before we need to head to the Senate Rotunda: one, no matter what happens, you will not reveal any part of this conversation to anyone else who I don’t okay first, because we could all get into a huge amount of trouble. Secondly, would you guys be interested in joining in on my plans for revenge and general mayhem?”
The entire time Anakin was speaking, the rest of their jaws got progressively closer and closer to the floor. When he stopped talking, they seemed to shake themselves out of their daze, and most of the group looked at Su, who seemed to be the unofficial leader/den mother of the aides.
To her credit, she seemed to have been rolling with the punches and listening intently to what Anakin was saying.
“Firstly,” she said in a calm tone and looked the others in the eye, “I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we would be thrilled to get some revenge on the jerk.” When she saw that every single aide had (very enthusiastically) nodded their assent, she continued “secondly, what in the everloving kriff do you mean that Nute Gunray has a restraining order on you?”
Anakin grinned, baring his teeth. “Exactly what I said. Apparently old Nutesy-pootsie wasn’t expecting a Jedi padawan to lunge at him and bite him and not let go until forcibly pried off. A failing on his part. Always be prepared for anything, especially if you’re a known criminal who played the courts. Constant vigilance!”
Day sputtered. “The kriff kid? I mean obviously good on you, but what the kark??”
Anakin laughed gleefully while sprinting out of the door. “It’s time for the Senate session, and trust me, you’re not gonna want to miss it. Just put on your best poker face first!”
He ran for another hallway, leaving the confused shouts of his now fellow conspirators behind him. Slowing to a walk when he reached the more populated halls, he smiled to himself. That had gone better than he’d ever expected. Nothing backfired on him, he gained more people to help out, ones with much more insider knowledge than he’d ever manage to get from research. And he’s able to give them the opportunity to get back at their horrid boss.
Yes , Anakin thought to himself while doing final tweaks to the last prank of the day, everything is proceeding perfectly.
____________________________________________________________________________
The senate session had been dragging on for four hours at this point. Everyone was visibly exhausted, few actually listening as the senator of who-the-kriff-cares prattled on about a meaningless clause in the bill currently being discussed, as he had been for the past half hour.
It seemed as though the Chancellor was finally fed up with the ceaseless talk, and cut him off.
“Thank you, Senator Noviir. We do need to keep moving though, so could Senator Dod please come to the center of the rotunda?”
Anakin felt the main pod that Dod and his favored aides were in detach from the side of the room and float to the center of the room, while Dod began his speech about a deal the Trade Federation wanted to secure with the Republic for supplying weapons to the Senate guards. Like always, it heavily favored the Trade Union and even had a small section that would divert some of the funds to Dod’s own pockets, Anakin noted, and he wrote it down on his ‘pad.
Ten minutes in, all of the screens in the senate pods suddenly added a virtual cat filter onto Dod, giving him a cat nose, whiskers, ears, and a little bow to top it all off. Every pod in the senate was equipped with screens that projected what was going on in the middle of the room to the senators, as they couldn’t all hear or see what was going on at all times. As they displayed the same things, they were all hooked up to the camera that not only streamed the sessions to the senators, but that also live streamed to the Senate’s website, where citizens could see how the senate functioned. This meant that when the filter was suddenly added, everyone was aware, just not Dod or Palpatine as those in the middle turned off their screens so there wasn’t feedback.
Next to him, Vay choked and began to frantically type on her datapad. His pad pinged with a message in the GC a minute later, reading ‘ Anakin did you do this????’. He grinned and left the message on read, earning an elbow to the stomach for his troubles. He sighed and sent back ‘ For plausible deniability Vay i can’t answer that. What do u think?’.
‘That you’re both insane and a little genius.’
‘That’s v valid. Also u might wanna check Tweeter. May have gotten a friend in on this before to spread the word there + added an algorithm last night to subtly boost tweets that had both ‘cat’ and ‘Dod’ in them.’
‘Thank you Aayla’, he thought. Sure, she’d broken down laughing last night when he explained it to her and she’d ruffled his hair and said ‘hell yeah, stick it to the man, Kitten!’ (and he was NOT a kitten, curse that damnable nickname. Just because he’d allegedly sneezed like a lothcat when he had a cold during one of the times Aayla watched him when he was younger didn’t mean that the name needed to stick this long! It’d been six years for the force’s sake!), but she got some of her other friends to promise to help out too. Last he’d heard, one of her friends who was from Naboo was having a very good time with this.
He was startled out of his seat by yet another ping. It seemed as though not just Vay had followed his advice, but all the others as well, judging by the endless laugh-crying emojis and screenshots spamming the chat. He smiled slightly, sent an angel emoji, and turned off his datapad, choosing instead to watch the chaos in front of him.
It seemed that Dod was just becoming aware of the snickers coming from some of the closer pods, and he’d stopped talking about the deal in favor of whisper-screaming at his aides about what was going on. Unfortunately, it seemed like in the chaos he’d forgotten to turn off his microphone, so his increasingly desperate questions were being broadcast to the Senate and still being live streamed, all the while still having the cat filter on. It was going so much better than Anakin had ever planned.
Basking in the chaos and surrounded by the other aides who were silently dying of laughter, Anakin relished in the fact that Obi-Wan would have no way of knowing that this was going on, let alone being able to connect him to it. Yes, Aayla certainly was right when she said that he should make the most of this. It was going so well, and it was only the second of five days.
He couldn’t wait to see what the rest of the week would bring.