Giggle. "Well, I'm not good with authority you know."

(But Elesse's authority is - good, even though Anakin hadn't realized that yet when she was a kid. Maybe she'll get in the habit here. (...That's a weirdly nice thought. Something to poke. Probably with Joul, Anakin just knows Kalra would tease her about it.))

Yeah, Elesse is just going to- quietly disengage, here. Her padawan seems just fine at the moment.

"Perhaps this will be good practice, then."

(Awww.)

"We'll see."

"I suppose we will. Come, we should finish packing."

Okay. 

There's not that much left to do, other than final checks. And then - they're off.

Indeed they are.

The first stage is to find an actual solid lead they can follow. They have some general areas, which means that their time is mostly spent in various seedy cantinas and dive bars in the relevant port cities, listening for loose talk.

It provides a more gentle way for her to ease into the role, too. She's not openly a slave, but - she's deferential, she keeps her eyes down and her attention keen (and that reminds her of the dark her, the one who'd been serving the dark Elesse, and that's certainly an... Interesting thought), she hovers nearby Elesse when not on 'tasks.' She settles into the flow of being overlooked. Refines her and Elesse's false dynamic - Ani as Elesse's general manservant seems to work best, and it helps present Elesse as the right sort of newly not-poor.

Ani overhears a lot of things. Slaves often do. And the mind reading's convenient there, allows them to coordinate much better.

(Anakin's okay so far. She's nervous, but - Elesse's touch on her mind is soothing, and she likes doing things for people she likes, so serving Elesse feels increasingly natural. She dislikes having to be demure in response to rudeness, to turn her head away from cruelty, to defer to people who aren't Elesse, but she keeps a lid on her temper, keeps her expression placid, and saves her bitching for when she and Elesse are in private. And she's been a saboteur longer than she's been anything; she can nudge little bits of chaos into motion. Arrange for chances for people who just look... Unhappy to leave, even if Anakin's not sure they're 'technically' slaves, in ways that can't really be traced back to her. That helps kick the ants' nest, too, which is good for their mission.)

They get nibbles and overhear plenty of rumors, though not too much of it's concrete or new.

But at one of those seedy bars there's a human woman in dark leather clothes that cover everything except a section around her eyes, who's been hanging around this bar a lot, smoking. She has a likely adolescent Twi'lek boy hovering around her a lot, though she doesn't seem to be using him quite the same way Elesse's using 'Ani.' He's a quiet bundle of misery; she doesn't trust him.

She plays nearly any game she can get in on, and she's chatty once Elesse gets a few rounds in. And, after one point when Ani quietly brings Elesse a new drink then fades back, she turns her head and comments, "Your girl's well trained."

"If you take a firm hand early, it saves trouble in the long run."

"Oh?" she seems a bit amused and decently interested. "How long has she been working for you, then?"

"Coming up on six months, now."

Whistle. "Most take a lot longer to train than that."

"Well, her mother was a former slave. It runs in the blood."

She laughs. "Good luck for you, then."

"It was rather. The first step in moving up in the galaxy."

She raises an eyebrow. "Looking to get more?"

"To enter the trade. I possess a reasonably fast ship."

"And a pilot's luck, it seems," she teases, then downs a shot. "No one's gonna give you valuable cargo without a record, but here's the right place if you wanna build that record."

Elesse matches her drink.

"That's what I was hoping."

She gives an almost flirtatious smile. "I could maybe introduce you around - if you convince me you're worth my good word, of course."

Also what she was hoping.

"What sort of assurances would that take?"

Light hum. "If I'm helping you advance - why don't you show me exactly how you get your slave so well behaved." Smirk. "And what you do when she's not."

She raises a brow. "Hoping to steal my methods?"

Elesse also brushes against Anakin's mind, a quiet question.

Sharp grin. "Always looking to improve."

(The first thing that crosses Anakin's mind - memories and imaginings of all the discipline and training methods she's witnessed or heard of, many of them incredibly brutal and degrading.)

(The second thing - Elesse doing those to her.)

(The third thing - her opinion - takes a few moments to come online. Her brain's somewhat stunned by the mental images she's currently having. The first wash of opinion is fascination. The second is a desperate want. The third, sitting on and intentionally squashing the other two, is - she trusts Elesse, and this could be their first break.)

Ani's head is bowed demurely, but there's a little hitch in her breath, a tightening of her shoulders, a flush on what's visible of her cheeks.