Private Firestarter

[Colette]

It wasn’t every day you stumbled upon your master’s husband in the corridors. Or, well, it was actually, but it was not every day that he then also asked if you wanted to tag along on a small investigation. Needless to say that when the chance to go on an assignment arose, Colette took that chance in a heartbeat.

Besides, it was a good chance to get to know someone that meant a lot to her master and that was a bonus. They had met on the herdship previously, and Colette had certainly come by their home every now and again so they weren’t total strangers, but this would be just the two of them. A good time for Colette to show what she went for.

He obviously knew, but only from Valery’s perspective.

Besides, any reason not to be in the temple was nice.

The duo strode up to an alleyway covered with what seemed to be a whole bunch of posters. While this wasn’t anything new, people put those up every day, these posters seemed to contain, well, nothing at all actually. Each of them were a different color put into place with a meticulous precision, yet none of them seemed to actually contain anything. If there was text on them, then Colette most certainly couldn’t see them, and with her limited capability in the force she most certainly couldn’t sense anything with them either.

So there they stood for a moment in thought.

“They are certainly there with a purpose in mind.” Colette said and turned her head to look at Kahlil. “Any idea on why someone would go putting up a hundred posters on a street corner like that?”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Hide a message, maybe. Distract from somewhere else. There's a couple reasons that come to mind further, but.." Kahlil reached up, tugging down one of the colors. Every one of them was a single, solid color all the way through, painstakingly placed. This one, however, had the smallest edge of a different color. Barely noticeable, short of knowing where to look. It wasn't the first he'd seen of this, though.

Neither was the symbol underneath. A black hand print.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it? What do you think is going on here?"

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

Thinking cap on. Colette pouted as she put her hand on her chin and began to glance around the alleyway. Nothing about this made sense. It was basically artistic trash, but in a good way. Clear thought seemed to have been put into this, but there was no telling what the message they were conveying was.

“I get a feeling there is a message, but I don’t quite know what it would be.” She mused aloud as she began to walk along the alleyway. In one end there were a few curious individuals checking out what they were doing by the entrance to the alley, and on the other end was nothing but more alleyway. Colette looked at them for a while longer until they began to disperse.

“A lot of people around too.” She mused yet again as she approached the entrance to the alleyway. She turned around back towards Kahlil. “I don’t—” Her frown faded into nothing and left a blank stare on her face. A light in the back, further into the alleyway flashed for a moment to light up more papers before it went out again. “Wait a minute.”

A little less than a minute passed as she shifted to one side and then the other. Down, up, a mixture of all four. Another flash, the papers still seemed to… Hmm, that was strange.

“There’s more over there, and…” She squinted. “They kind of line up with the papers on this wall…”

“Do you have a flashlight?”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil glanced towards the end of the alley, frowning just a little. Any manner of eyes could be the pair that set this whole thing up. He studied them, searched for any hint of the one who could've been responsible.

“Do you have a flashlight?”

He blinked, glancing back towards Colette for a moment. Then nodded as he reached for a simple flashlight on his belt to pass her way.

"What did you find?"

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

A hand slapped at the flashlight being handed to her.

“No, don’t give it to me!” She hissed and pointed over towards the wall deeper into the alley, around the corner from where their first set of papers had been found. “Over there! Go over there and point it at the wall. There’s a bunch of papers near the ledge of that lower roof, I think.”

Colette paced back to where she had first seen it. Sure enough, when Kahlil lit the wall up there was a whole other pack of papers right there before them. From where Colette stood it became rather obvious that they were linked somehow, except they didn’t line up. The one further away seemed… Bigger somehow? Yet not really.

Colette approached Kahlil and grabbed the flashlight. She waved it towards where she had been standing.

“Check it out.” She said and nodded her head over towards the spot. Once Kahlil took the spot she pointed the flashlight at the wall and looked back at him with a shout. “Weird, right?”

“Y’think there’s any more of them somewhere?”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil blinked slowly as he watched the Padawan. An amused sort of smile took over his expression. That was very much how Valery was as a Padawan. Certainly something for her master to work on with her, though. Most wouldn't take too kind to her demands. Kahlil though, he just chuckled and followed her orders. And squinted the moment he did actually see what she was talking about.

He nodded once, turning his gaze up and around before nodding to a nearby ally.

"This way. We go up. .. You can jump, right?"

He paused, just about to jump to the roof himself before looking her way.

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

So they shared the idea of heading up then. Colette gave Kahlil a nod and jumped up after him, although perhaps not as gracefully. He might have landed on his feet, Colette had accidentally stubbed her toe on the edge and landed face first in one of the puddles that were scattered across the roof.

But, where her cheek should have met durasteel or something equally rough, it was instead met with a mushy, thick layer of paper; part of which decided to stick itself to her skin as she pushed herself up and off the ground. Her hands beat upon her jumpsuit and brushed the worst of the ‘loose’ water off before she truly took in just how weird all of this was.

“More paper…” She muttered and looked across the wide area of the roof. “A lot more paper…”

That was… Interesting. Her brow rose as she walked across the surface trying to make any sense of it. There was a clear pattern to them, but from where they stood it was still difficult to see. The color of the papers seemed to shift and change though. It was clear that the ones seen from the alleyway were just a small portion of something quite a bit larger.

… But what?

“I can’t make any sense of this.” Colette grumped with a shrug. “It’s clearly not just trash, it’s some sort of… Art thing.”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Half of him was tempted to reach out and snatch her as she started to fall. The other half didn't want to add insult to injury. Rather than pay attention to the stumble, Kahlil pretended it hadn't happened in the slightest, at least until he glanced towards the paper again. He tilted his head, studying it over only briefly before glancing to the two separate points below. The different colors were now making shapes.

Letters.

He turned his head, looking up to the building beside them. Then jumped, landing atop one of the balconies just close by. One that seemed.. Unused, as of late. An abandoned apartment by all accounts. He peeked inside, just briefly. Paper. Lots of paper covered the window to stop him. Familiar paper, no less.

"I think I found where our artist friend planned this all out."

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

“Hm.” Colette let out a curious if not surprised hum before she jumped to follow Kahlil. This time with a bit more finesse. At least enough to not fall off a balcony and die. “Well, only one way to really—” The kid tried to bust the door open by tackling the door to no success. “Find out!” She exclaimed in frustration and tried it again with even less success. “Damn it!”

It was an unbeatable door. They were probably talking solid titanium, thirty inches of rigid steel in the center to stop people from—

Wait, was that…

Colette pushed a button next to the door, and just like that it opened itself. By sliding from one end towards the one that she had thrown her weight at no less. She looked over at Kahlil with a deeply unamused frown before she stepped into the small apartment without uttering a word.

The insides were… Disorganized to say the least, and a chaotic mess at worst. Not because someone had come through here to search for something — up until now, anyway — but rather because someone wanted to keep it that way. The more Colette found out about this ‘artist’ the more confused she got. Even she had some sort of standards. This was just a mess for the sake of it.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil raised a brow way up as she started to try and.. Knock down the door. She really wasn't- She was. Absolutely serious about it. He just cleared his throat as she glanced to him, trying not to just laugh. Spare her some embarrassment, if he could. Door open, he just stepped in to take a glance around. Ah. Messy. He frowned this time, just glancing briefly around. People who lived like this, this was too much. too messy.

"They're not here. But they certainly were. What do you think? Seems chaotic to me."

Chaos for a reason. Kahlil could see the pattern, but why not let the Padawan take the lead? Hopefully it'd help her feel better about the whole door thing.

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

The air reeked of dust and cigs. What little light there was to be had felt almost palpable as its rays seemed to float on the air like soup. Colette coughed for a second before she covered her mouth with her hand as if it would allow her to breathe more easily.

“Their home matches their art at least.” She muttered. “Incoherent and seemingly unstructured.”

Well, if the elder had ever told her anything (repeatedly) it was that you needed to lift things to find things. Colette grabbed a nearby pile of papers with both of her hands and lifted it up only to find…

… Nothing.

She groaned and put the pile down again before she moved over to another pile.

“This doesn’t make sense.” She said frowned. “Everything about the papers outside reeked of intent, and yet the apartment seems to be little more than a mess.”

She turned over towards Kahlil with a deepening frown. “Am I missing something, Master Kahlil?”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Intent is rarely something we can truly understand without knowing who the person is or what drives them. We can guess, but that often leads to false assumptions. Instead of looking for a reason here, why not look for where they could be so we can ask them themselves?"

Kahlil motioned to the nearby datapad, offering a smile. "So far they've done nothing to harm anyone, just squatted in an abandoned apartments and made these signs. Illegal, sure, but hardly something to be worried about. Think we can get a location from that?"

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

“Yeah, I’m not saying we string them up from the nearest tree, Master Kahlil… ... Not that there are any...” Colette muttered before she picked up the pad and clicked it open, albeit with some trouble. “Password.” She said and turned back towards Kahlil. “Unless the password is, you know, 1-2-3-4 or something, we won’t really be able to do much.”

For the sake of illustration she would then proceed to tap the keys one, two, three, and four as such where they would be from her angle if she was using the device. From Kahlil’s perspective however — the one with the screen — the keys input into the pad was actually 3-2-1-6 which incidentally also seemed to be the passcode.

The click of an aperture, the signature sound of any device unlocking, echoed around the small room and Colette promptly squinted at the master to try and decipher if he had just done some sort of Jedi juju to unlock it.

Without letting her eyes off the man she stared him down until the screen faced her way and she began to sweep through the device, albeit yet again with some struggles. The kid hadn’t really had one of these growing up. The habit of using one was a newfound hobby.

She firmly pressed her index finger against the screen and swept away at it until eventually she came across its files, in which there was a very clear file simply named ‘target_map’ which seemed to show the local area with a certain set of buildings marked out along with what seemed to be the pattern this perp was creating.

… It didn’t make any more sense from seeing that.

“Well,” She said and turned the pad around yet again. “Seems they do indeed have some special kind of pattern in mind.”

“Any idea what it’s supposed to be? It just looks like a fractured and stretched out ball or something.”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil raised a brow in surprise as she seemed to unlock it. Luck? The Force?

There were no coincidences in the Force. His brow knitted together as she found the map. A full on set, huh? Lots of planning for so much seeming chaos. He reached out for the pad, and once it was handed over he started to scan through it himself. Quickly at that. Some were marked for art, but the others- Larger facilities. Companies, if he had to take a guess after recognizing at least three separate ones.

"Take out these special marks, and what's left when you zoom out? Looks like a symbol. .. Maybe it's a perspective thing. We should find a spot around this sign, see if there's an angle where it all lines up. I've got a.. Troubling feeling."

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

Zooming was pinch, or was it to ‘reverse pinch’? Colette’s thumb and index finger slid across the surface of the screen and sure enough… The screen rotated. She looked at the device perplexed at its insolence. Determined to try again she put both of her fingers on the screen again and slowly began to slide them towards one another, and this time the screen zoomed out to give her the whole picture again.

“Well now, would you look at that?” She said and raised her brow as she too began to see the pattern. “The pattern appears to be a code of some sort?”

“Hmm… That billboard…” Colette said and began to step outside again to look at the eastern section of their little puzzle. Once she had the marked out buildings at hand she couldn’t really help but notice how they lined up. Still…

“The billboard doesn’t make sense.” She said and looked at it from the balcony. “The pattern is too widespread from that angle. I’d say that what we want is…”

Her eyes trailed along the area before she squinted in suspicion.

“... Is it just me or is the billboard facing the temple?”

Wasting no time, Colette jumped back down to the roof they had come up to the balcony from and sprinted — without the force — towards the billboard and leapt onto it. She raised the map before her and looked at the pattern.

“It looks like it’s still out of order.” She frowned and looked down at the buildings yet again. The papers were clearly lining up but… Not quite? She looked at Kahlil and then the temple.

“... Surely…”

“Nooo?”

“Is this something meant to be seen from the temple?”

 

[Kahlil Noble]

From the temple?

He clenched his jaw for a brief moment before glancing to the Padawan. Gave a brief, calm smile before stepping towards the door. "If it's something we should see from the temple, then it might be good to see it now. Come on, then." And he hurried. Not the usual calm there's nothing wrong hurry. He was doing his best not to put Colette on edge. Not that he wasn't. Something was going on, and given his own history, he couldn't help but be somewhat nervous.

"We'll take a speeder."

Colette

 

[Colette]

If the kid was wrong about this now it would be one big pile of embarrassment to swallow, most likely enough for her to turn into a permanent red mess for at least a week. Beyond pondering that she wasn’t really all that worried. She would notice the way that Kahlil had seemed to grow more worried, but to her this was more akin to hunting an animal than anything. Focus and patience was key here.

As they hopped in the speeder she couldn’t help but look at the master with a slightly amused grin. Not that he did anything wrong, or that she did anything wrong for that matter, but because it seemed to affect him more than her. The smile quickly faded when they seemed to get closer to the temple though.

It wasn’t really recommended that cars take this direct of a trajectory towards the temple since one of those many attacks it had suffered. At least so the Coruscanti authorities had issued, and so Colette would wholly ignore as she encouraged Kahlil to get within near-crash distance to the tower. She clambered over into the backseat of their vehicle with an ungraceful shuffle before holding the pad up towards the billboard and…

Something sparked. Not in her mind but in the actual streets down below. Piece after piece of the puzzle, one marked building after the other was set partially alight to display the hidden message. It had been meant for the Jedi after all, yet somehow slipped right under their noses.

Colette lowered the pad and squinted. The fires began to form the outlines of some sort of symbol it seemed to be… The Alliance symbol? Colette blinked and looked over at Kahlil to assess his take on this whole thing before another even greater flash began to twist and turn the symbol of the Alliance into something else. The ring remained but the eagle within began to twist and turn.

This was not just a paper fire anymore. Someone out there knew that they had acquired an observer. This was for them, for Colette and Kahlil to see as well as anyone else who happened to look out of the window in the temple.

The twisted eagle slowly took the form of another symbol, a symbol that had been hard to miss even for Colette who had just gotten here. The flames grew more and more intense as in the flames arose...

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Well at least she was calm. Kahlil chuckled to himself about his own paranoia. But the itch in the back of his mind was always just a warning of the Force. And it rarely lead him wrong. So he gunned it, taking the speeder through the skies with relative ease as he weaved through other ships. They needed to hurry. He could feel that much. By the time they came to a stop the feeling in the back of his mind.

And when they stepped out, it was clear why. His jaw tightened das he watched the fire, and his eyes narrowed.

"Well, that tracks. I'm going to investigate this. You are going back inside. Understood?"

Colette

 

[Colette]

Kahlil Noble

"Wha-" Colette harrumphed at Kahlil's orders. "But, why?!"

The indignation in her voice was not particularly hidden. Colette looked at the man, the burning buildings down below, and then over at the temple entrance.

"Are you seriously cutting me off because of the fire?"

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Yes."

Kahlil pulled his gaze from the burning symbol to fully look at the Padawan. Gone was the usual smile he held, instead replaced with a sense of urgency and intensity. The Sith had long been running around the Outer Rim, but for their symbol to burn on Coruscant again. He wasn't taking chances.

"Report to Master Valery, tell her a fire has started in the shape of the Sith. This isn't the first time they've made a move on Coruscant, but there is danger. Help her secure the temple."

Colette