"Here we go."

—Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano

Instinct and training took over.

With a silent push off from the permacrete, Ahsoka leapt onto the snub-nosed prow of an old shipping freighter, the durasteel dented and pebbled from its years in space and slicked with a fine layer of condensation. Her feet didn't stay still long enough to slip; another quick leap and she found purchase alongside the freighter's starboard engines, fingertips braced against the wet hull.

But in the seconds it took to gain a vantage, the Force-signature in her mind vanished, as if a glowrod had simply winked off.

Fog drifted up and around her, thickening to a dense, soupy gray. The only light came from illumination banks set in regular intervals all along the port's wide docking bays, reduced to pinpricks in the haze. Ahsoka waited, tilting her montrals and attempting to dispel the odd, cottony effect fog had on her senses; too much like swimming through the dark, murky waters of Mon Cala's lower seabeds.

The Force itself still eddied and lurched through her mind without any consistency, as it had from the moment Commander Fox had removed the Force-block binders from her wrists in the tribunal chamber. She probably should've spent the last five hours meditating, rather than digging through Fives' bizarre collection of manifests and floorplans, but she figured time was now a little bit more on her side. At least the GAR didn't have a warrant out for her head.

But to actively seek with the Force again, like she'd attempted to do down in the Undercity…

It was one thing to move things around; manipulating the physical had come surprisingly easy to her, even as an Initiate. Sifting through the mental, the emotional—that had always been a trial. Over the last two years—despite all of Anakin's training—it only seemed to get harder, like the war itself was muddying the entire mental landscape of the galaxy.

Well, here goes nothing.

But to Ahsoka's surprise, the Force moved out from her with only a crackle of protest, as if eager to reassert itself in her mind. It sensed and sought with a clarity that was almost alarming—although why the Force hadn't been quite so forthcoming when she'd been searching for the truth…

Maybe I just didn't want to see it.

Ahsoka shoved those particular ramifications off to the side and focused on the now.

There was someone sleeping inside the ship she'd alighted on—male, elderly, with the hazy mind of someone who liked their spice too much; further away, past two old, empty transports that she could just make out with her montrals, she felt the impression of several other minds, all ensconced in a mid-tier yacht. Also sleeping. No one else seemed inclined to walk the docks; not at this time in the morning.

She had felt that presence: a Force-sensitive's mind was unmistakable, regardless of species; bright blooms of color against a mercurial tapestry. Not always easy to track down, but still vivid enough to draw the eye.

But whatever she'd sensed had vanished, as nebulous as the fog around her.

With a soft huff of frustration, Ahsoka pushed away and dropped back down to the permacrete.

Five minutes later—once she'd descended from the port into the glow-rod lit and fog-free depths of a hovertrain station—she felt it again, winking in and out like a bad holoprojector. And again, when she'd passed the hovertrain by and slipped past the sleep-glazed eyes of early-morning commuters, then down a slideramp into an enclosed shopping arcade, already bright for the morning. Small tapcafs were open and slowly filling with their share of foot traffic, each jogging for position in lines that streamed out the sliding doors.

It was the normal world, everything so far removed from both the Temple and the GAR that it could've been another galaxy. It was also as temptingly benign as the rows and rows of glazed pastries displayed behind one delicatessen's transparisteel windows.

She stopped long enough to stare at a plate of crumblebuns, gloriously sugared and so tempting she could almost taste them—and for a second, she forgot the odd presence firing like a wistie on and off around her.

"Well," she said, "if they want to chat, they can find me over breakfast."

Funny enough, that's exactly how it happened.

"What, no rest for the wicked?"

Not surprisingly, Coric found Rex in the captain's base office, head bent over two datapads and likely comparing either the manifests or scheduled troop transports for the joint campaign between the 501st and the 330th. As Rex had said, the official channels had been satisfied and Coric had even seen the 330th's new secondary general in the main medbay. She was a shade of green reminiscent of unripe muja fruit, almost dull against the vibrant red of her sister. Both Jedi had head-tresses that flowed in elegant waves as they walked with Commander Doom, apparently discussing the 330th's recent losses and necessary replacements.

"Thought that was for the weary." Without glancing up, Rex pulled another datapad from a pile and handed it to Coric. The medic didn't bother reading it; he recognized the 330th's emblem and medical insignia, and as he'd just spent the morning reviewing both legions' current medical capacities and scheduled supply ships, he likely knew the contents well enough to rattle them off without a peek. Ringo Vinda was expected to be a long campaign; the medical bays were prepping for the worst.

"Speaking of weary…" Coric trailed off, setting the 'pad down close to the edge of the desk and taking a seat in one of two chairs set in front. When the captain glanced up, it only took a moment for Rex to sigh and drop both datapads to the desk.

"Don't start, Coric."

The medic waved him off. "Not you." Although he doubted the captain had slept since Ahsoka's send-off, he wasn't going to lecture. Coric leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees and rub his hands together, wondering exactly how to phrase this. "We're designed to handle every stress this war can throw at us, Rex. But some marks are being left and showing enough signs that I'm starting to get concerned."

The captain's eyes narrowed. "Is this about Kix?"

"In part, yes."

There was an irritable shake of his superior's blond head. "He picked a hell of a time to get his briefs in a wad."

Coric snorted but pressed on regardless. "It hit too close, Rex. Did you read up on the men killed down there?"

The captain rubbed one hand at the stubble on his chin, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes."

"Kix trained under Pol." The loss of one of their best triage clone medic-trainers—as opposed to one of the enlisted—had been a hard blow; Coric had genuinely liked Pol and had celebrated his permanent transfer to the ArmyMed facility just last month. It had been a frankly surreal experience; kitted clones rubbing elbows with the wide-eyed, admiring—and jewel-draped—Coruscanti public. The whole thing had been held at a swanky restaurant that jutted out from the dizzying heights of a spacescraper, all of which was hosted by Pol's self-proclaimed patron—a bizarre story in itself, which the patron repeated to varying degrees of accuracy as the night wore on.

At the time, Coric had been amused by Coruscant's high society and their sudden interest in clone armor and clone hairstyles and clone ways, and although they all seemed to think of his brothers as more decorative than functional, none of the troopers had minded the attention. But watching Pol at work among them had been an interesting study; Pol had wielded his own personality with all the finesse of a laser scalpel and the glitterati had lapped it up.

It meant nothing in the end. Pol had just been another body for the base's recyclers.

Why Pol had even been down in the prison sector that night was a question that couldn't be answered, and news of his death had hit like a blow to the solar plexus. Life wasn't promised to any of them—they were created to die for the Republic, after all—but to die in what was arguably one of the most secure places in the entire galaxy…

It was both an irony and a seeping wound.

But Kix, in particular, was taking it too hard.

Rex seemed to agree. "Coric, you know that doesn't excuse his behavior."

"No. But it also doesn't negate those recordings," Coric pressed. "Can't you find anything—" Rex held up a hand, then quickly twisted it to the flat signal for 'silence'. When Coric peered at him, puzzled, the captain only shook his head. There was a particular glint to the man's eye that Coric recognized, and with a frustrated sigh, the medic changed tactics. "How often are the nightmares?"

It was Rex's turn to be thrown. "What?"

Coric almost laughed at the expression on his superior's face; he was as wide-eyed as a startled tooka cat. It also answered a growing suspicion. "I spend a lot of time measuring brain waves. It's pretty essential during a dip in bacta, and we're all similar enough that there's not a lot of deviance." Rex grunted acknowledgement of that; the captain knew at least the rudimentary logistics of the medbay's practices. "Over the last year, I noticed the REM patterns getting thrown off in most every trooper that came through the bay."

"Basic, Coric."

"REM—dream sleep." He felt the corners of his mouth hitch up. "It's just a part of a humanoid sleep cycle, but still pretty essential for mental and physiological recovery. If they'd wanted something that could keep going without real sleep for days, they should've cloned some—"

"Coric," the captain said, holding up a hand. "Past...the sleeping bit, what are you getting at?"

"From what I can pull from most medical, non-military texts, nightmares don't generally affect REM sleep or the sleeper; it's just an aspect of it, normal as regular dreaming."

Rex waved him on when Coric hesitated. "Yet…"

"This is where I start guessing. Going off what I've observed of troopers in the bacta tanks, their sleep-cycle is interrupted around the halfway point—mentally—of the REM stage."

Rex caught the emphasis. His eyes narrowed and his arms crossed over his chest. "And that's significant, how?"

"It's one thing to have your sleep interrupted by some outside source. But for the brain to regularly stimulate itself out of a normal and necessary function?" Coric scrubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. It was unacceptably abnormal; focus wasn't an option on the battlefield. "It's not a good sign."

Rex studied him for a moment, his gaze thoughtful. "And how does this relate to Kix?"

Again, Coric hesitated. His hunches were usually correct, but he doubted Kix would be at all amenable to this kind of request—and he didn't particularly want to make it an order. "I'd like to see if this carries on in someone who isn't or even hasn't been in a bacta tank."

"You're the medic, Coric. You make that call."

"But only with your approval. Tell me, Captain." Again, Coric leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You have had nightmares, right?"

The play of muscles along Rex's jaw was answer enough.

Coric took a calculated risk. "And they started after Umbara, right?" Again, the captain's silence was telling—although Coric nearly rolled his eyes at his brother's obstinacy. Straight answer. It isn't hard. "Right," the medic answered for him. He rose from his seat and started for the door, sliding the datapad from the desk as he went.

He'd actually made it halfway over the threshold before Rex spoke.

"Kix volunteered for that duty; he knew what was being asked of him—they all did." The captain blew out a frustrated sigh. "If it hadn't been those four, Fives' speech might not've had the same effect."

Coric didn't turn. He couldn't turn, but he needed to say it. It had been a year—it still needed to be said. "You had him line up to shoot his best mate, Rex." He glanced down at the datapad; rows and rows of neat, accessible data, nothing at all like the messy, bloody chaos of a man's chest blown open by flying shrapnel—but still nothing like the hell of mopping up after the treason on Umbara. Coric had been in bacta from the initial assault, and it had fallen on Kix's shoulders to coordinate all of Torrent's squad medics during a fight that saw casualty numbers rocket to atmospheric heights—and yet Rex had still apparently offered Kix the choice of shooting his best friend and brother.

Coric would never forget Kix's haunted gaze when he'd reported to him, immediately after Coric had been lifted out of the tank; his brother's brush with a fallen Jedi had left scars worse than a lightsaber's burn. "Voluntary or not, you can't not have nightmares about that."

The door slid shut on the captain's silence.

"Flat blue half-top caf, up!"

"Dry shot froth-caf!"

Ahsoka was almost certain she hadn't seen the inside of a specialty tapcaf for more than twenty minutes in her entire life. After devouring two loop pastries, she'd sat at one of the back tables and watched the parade of morning commuters, all while listening to an unending list of the ways caf could be frothed, folded, made, and unmade. It was...odd, how much civilians liked their caf. But then, she knew better than to try to speak to Admiral Yularen before he'd had at least two cups every rotation.

The place smelled delicious—of steamed blue milk and caf and the heady scent of baking pastries—and there was a constant flow of customers and conversation, all borne along at a lulling murmur that was somehow just as soothing to her mind as a few hours of meditation. Granted, it'd been hours and hours after her final verdict, and fatigue was finally settling in her muscles and itching at the back of her eyes. But some inexplicable hunch made her wait.

Finally, two hours after she'd walked into the tapcaf, a bloom of Force-awareness brushed against her mind.

"Wondered if you were going to join me," she said, without glancing up from the holonews tablet that she'd borrowed from a barista just ten minutes before, as she'd snagged her third loop pastry and slowly nibbled it down to crumbs. She wondered if it was normal that the final verdict on her trial had been shunted down to the lower dregs of the news; not even twelve hours after the fact and all she could find was a small blip, and not even a mention of Barriss as the real traitor.

Long, furred fingers, tipped with stubbed claws, tapped the duraplast table. She waited until he sat.

Ahsoka flicked her thumb over the tablet's controls; the low holo-image faded into the flat gray of the screen. "Is there a reason you've been following me?"

Her visitor didn't answer, and when she looked up, she nearly flinched.

A black-furred Nalroni, heavily scarred along the left side of his face and narrow, graying muzzle, sat hunched in the seat across from her, looking as out of place in the specialty tapcaf as if Hondo and his pirates had plopped down for a chat. A ragged robe was draped over his shoulders and she caught the distinct smell of the Undercity off him. Underneath the robe were, unmistakably, the standard brown wraps of a Jedi: threadbare, old, but well-fitted to the canid's lean frame. And of course, just visible at his waist, hung the hilt of a saberstaff.

As if the firm press of his mind against hers left any doubt.

He met her regard with a flat, calculating stare. By instinct alone, her hands jumped to the lightsabers at her waist. Black eyes followed that movement and settled on the two silver hilts. "You are no longer Jedi."

Sithspit. That didn't take long. "...No."

"Yet the Council has allowed you to keep your lightsabers. An unusual departure from tradition."

Ahsoka stared at him. "Ah. Seems so," she hedged. As far as she knew, there weren't any Nalroni Jedi currently in the Order. Granted, she hadn't kept up with all the thousands of Jedi, but the Nalroni as a species were rare enough that she was pretty sure she'd remember even a mention of one. "And who exactly are you?"

Again with the silence. A bubble of unease wormed its way up into her chest. Then— "You make no attempt to hide your feelings or your intent," he said. He could've been discussing the non-weather on Coruscant, for all the inflection he put in his rough voice. "That is a foolish mistake. For one who is considered a war hero, I expected some attempt at subtlety."

"Excuse me?"

The Nalroni leaned forward, close enough that the stink of the Undercity washed over her. "Interesting that you would come so close to a conviction. And yet, at the very last moment, your Master reveals the true mastermind."

"If you watched the trial, you know how ridiculous it was."

"Yes. But your Master's timing was impeccable."

"Trust me, it always is."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps what?" she shot back. "It happened. It's over. And does it really matter? Full confession." Ahsoka irritably crumpled up the napkin and made to slide out of her chair.

"Perhaps it matters who you believe did it."

Ahsoka hesitated. It hit close enough to the truth that—after a moment—she settled back into her seat, hands folded on top of the table. One of his ears twitched; she wondered if that was his version of a smile.

Or maybe he just had fleas.

"I've lived most of my life in the Temple," she said. "Why have I never seen you before?"

His response was easy and unexpected. "I'm an underworld operative."

"And you just announced that in a public tapcaf." Ahsoka shot a pointed look around the cafe. "Right."

"These types care little about the sentients around them, let alone the creatures a hundred levels below or a star system away."

Ahsoka glanced at the closest table; true to form, it was a Rodian businessman caught up in a rapid-fire conversation with the wildly gesticulating holo of a Twi'lek spacer.

Still... "That doesn't mean no one is listening."

"You have your specific talents, Miss Tano. I have mine."

Ahsoka swung her attention back on the Nalroni; he was so oddly intense that part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, and another part wanted to just walk away and get a good few hours' sleep.

But all the little leftover pieces of the last few days hung at the back of her mind, twisting with every thought, restless as an anooba. And after Fives' chunk of non-information, she'd take any lead. "Alright. Fine. I'm listening."

"I have reason to believe there is a threat to the Jedi Order currently on Coruscant."

Ahsoka tilted her montrals toward where she knew the Temple rose, a blunt, imposing fortress of solitude against the rest of Coruscant. "There's a few hundred of them every day on the main steps, you know."

The Nalroni sniffed, nostrils fluttering with the action. "The protesters are nothing but an inconvenience."

Especially when they've got an inside person to push their ideas.

"Exactly," the canid said.

Ahsoka jolted in surprise, then narrowed her eyes at the figure across from her. "Stay out of my head."

"Control your thoughts."

"I'm not a Jedi."

He leaned even further forward, bringing with him the stench of acrid old oil and burned things. "We have an Order for a reason—and that is to teach one such as you to control your abilities. You are strong. Too strong to simply wander the pedwalks of Coruscant and not expect either enemies or exploiters to find you."

"And that's why they sent you?" She could only assume as much; Master Kenobi had offered her a gift, blessed as such by the Council—but apparently tagged with a condition and a very strange mission. Her jaw clenched in renewed irritation. She didn't need a babysitter, especially one as crazy as this guy.

"No."

"No, they didn't send you?"

"My orders are extremely specific," he replied, nose twitching as if bothered by that fact. "And I believe you can assist me."

Ahsoka tried not to roll her eyes. "I really doubt that."

Without a change of expression—really, he had the personality of a castrated bantha—he retrieved a holoemitter from beneath his robe and placed it on the table. With a casual wave of his hand, a flickering blue figure rose and rotated slowly. "Tell me what you know of this masc."

But Ahsoka's confusion spiked to new levels. The figure was a clone trooper, washed in blue light but utterly unmistakable. She'd served beside him for long enough, after all.

Although why a self-proclaimed underworld operative would have any interest in him was a bizarre enough puzzle to throw her out into the Rishi Maze.

"What, in all that's Force-saken, would you want to know about Tup?"

A/N: Many thanks to impoeia for her beta'ing! If you haven't checked out her stories, do yourself a weekend treat and read them.

Happy Halloween, all!

It wasn't my intention for a certain character to be introduced on All Hallows' Eve, but I do love that it worked out that way.