Her apprentice is very diligent when they don't have to pretend they don't care about literally anything at all ever. This is actually—gasp—kind of fun.

Today it's combat training with Khem Val, who has grudgingly consented to not eating Occlus's apprentice.

Occlus' apprentice is very thankful!

He is ready.

Khem Val is big, and hard to hurt, and has been fighting basically continuously for his entire life. Rafa has his work cut out for him.

Well. He's okay with bruises. And failing a lot. He's diligent and tenacious and stubborn and he pays attention to Khem Val's moves and tries to anticipate and/or imitate them.

Khem has much more height and muscle mass. Rafa's better off trying be tricksy against him.

He'll get that soon enough, yeah.

Then eventually he can start scoring some hits.

Occlus shows up in time to watch the last round.

He's not really the kind who'd be slacking just because she wasn't watching before and would shape up with her there. He's also not the kind to get nervous when watched. So he just continues doing the same thing he's doing—or, rather, improving the thing he's doing by the same process he's been using.

"Good improvement. Remember to mind your footwork."

"Will do."

She nods at Khem, and he leaves. "Did you finish the reading?"

"Yes, ma'am! And I picked a couple more stuff that looked interestingly related—"

A training dummy floats over.

"Run through the first three forms and explain it to me."

He does it nearly perfectly where the 'near' part is not being acquainted enough with the material to recite it completely accurately.

She nods at the end of it. "We're done for today. Tomorrow we are going to Nar Shaddaa to meet with one of the Moffs I've been courting. You will attend as well, to project power."

"Yes, ma'am. Should I do anything in particular or prepare in any special way?"

"Dress neatly. And look for information on the Orrishid Group and the CN-12 chip."

"Yes, ma'am."

And then he's left to his own devices for a while.

He will look for information on those things for a while, then!

The Orrishid Group, based out of Nar Shaddaa, is a microchip manufacturing consortium noted for their innovative nanocircuitry designs and, in the CN line, targeting algorithms. The latest model is the CN-10, but there's some buzz on the Holonet about a revolutionary next generation.

Anything on this CN-12?

Not readily available. Is he any good at slicing?