Chapter Six – Silly Little Hacker Child Unfortunately for me, not all the time spent in the Temple was fun and pranks. There was, of course, 'meetings' with the Council, at which Mirax and I would get bawled out- rather impressively- for what we did 'wrong'. Honestly, it was just harmless pranks. If we got to that defense, though, over half of the Council would jump down our throats, telling us that those 'harmless pranks' had caused some very sharp repercussions in the life Force around the Temple. It's not like we were aiming to be bad or anything, but we were just good at it. After once such happy occasion, upon which time the Force saw fit to drop in with prank ideas right after we'd left the Council Chamber, Mirax and I were walking towards the meditation room, as usual, to- obviously- meditate on what we'd done. Mirax was grinning, as usual, from the trouble we'd stirred up. Of course, because I was watching her grin, I just happened to walk headlong into another person. But she wasn't a Jedi. I took a step back, offering a hurried apology, just as Mirax started sniggering. The woman looked over at me, or, rather, over and down at me. I may have just turned ten, but I was hardly five feet tall. Before I could say anything past my quick apology, Mirax had interrupted what the other or I would say. "Hi, Iella," my friend said, mirth and fun evident in her voice. I just turned to stare at her, blinking. Mirax grinned at me. "Adra, this is Iella Antilles, my glorious commanding officer's wife." She looked back at Iella, then said, "What's the call for today then?" The woman- Iella- smiled at Mirax and nodded to her explanation of relations. "Please to meet you Adra," she said to me. "And Mirax, you should know I'm not giving out Intelligence for you to pick apart into a prank." Mirax looked absolutely shocked, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. I was quite sure it had, but I kept that to myself. Iella was grinning at Mirax now and then she nodded to someone behind us. Turned my head ever so slightly, I saw that it was Master Windu and Master Thracia. Grumbling about never having found out what Iella did, nor who the woman with her was, I walked past them, nodding, then found my way to my room. There was some datacards piled on the bed, one or two having fallen to the floor. So I wasn't exactly meticulously neat...no matter. I didn't exactly have to be neat and clean to be a Jedi, after all. Well, so long as that meant my room. Jedi were expected, as a body, to appear clean and polished. My muttering continued far into the time I worked away on program hacking. Technically, I was supposed to be practicing lightsaber technique, but Master Yaddle was rather lenient about my computer habits. It was an odd thing, because I'd never really been interested in computers before. I mean, I supposed I sliced into some files once or twice before, but I never really thought about it as fun, as I did now. With a jolt, I realized that all natural light was gone from this side of Coruscant, the neon forms of it now illuminating my single window. I glanced back at the computer, wondering what the kriff I was doing hacking into Bastion City's main computer. Well... With a slight grin at myself, I allowed way for an excuse about hacking into that one. But still, I should've probably have been doing something else. Before I turned the computer display off, I saved everything to a datacard and sent the information to Intelligence. Then, before the desire to find dinner became too strong a lure, I went off to find Master Yaddle. * * * * * A week went by, a week without my being any the wiser to what kind of 'trouble' I'd stirred up at Intelligence headquarters. What I hadn't realized then was that my datapad's code was foreign to the officers in the building. I'd just figured I'd send them the stuff, be a help and whatever. Wrong. As it went, the Intelligence slicer teams hadn't been pulling up a good hand of cards when it came to the sabacc game of drawing the right numbers to the passcodes of Bastion. The fact that they received a rather large chunk of Imperial information from an 'anonymous' person was a bit nerve- wracking. And personally, I can understand that. I mean, would you feel very safe if some person sent you stuff you'd been trying to get your hands on for months? No, probably not. That was the problem though, because that's basically what I did. So, naturally, Intelligence sent out its search for the slicer who'd made the cut into Bastion City's files and sent them, not only to make sure this person wasn't sending Imperials information as well as to see if they could rope them into anything past freelance slicer. Or at least that's how I perceived it. It happened to be the middle of the day when Intel made it to the Temple, though I still didn't know they were searching out who gave the information. I was, as usual of this time of day, contemplating debates on Force use. Master Yaddle was telling me about the way some Jedi of the Old Order had issues with some ways Jedi used the Force. Outside the room, there was some sort of commotion. It sounded like a group of people had come, demanding information. Master Yaddle, seeing I obviously was paying more attention to the noise than to her, nodded and led the way out to the main hallway. The people in immediate view were wearing light-gray clothes, their names on a patch just off their left shoulder. Immediately, I recognized one. It was Iella, the woman I'd spoken to the week before. And the white-haired woman was with her once again. Iella was talking to Master Thracia, the Jedi Master nodding slowly, a frown on her face. A few minutes of silence reigned, in which time a few Jedi Masters got their padawan's attentions and moved them away. Master Yaddle had almost succeeded with me, but then, "Adra." I stopped, turning to see who had spoken. It was Iella. She was looking at me, a no-nonsense expression written on her features. At this point, I was thinking 'Oh kriff, oh kriff' over and over again. I was, undoubtedly in a lot of trouble. But instead of saying any of this, little padawan me walked over to where I was requested. Iella and Master Thracia were saying something again, but stopped as I came over. "Did you hack into the Imperial systems?" Iella asked, no preamble whatsoever. Blinking slightly, I nodded, not sure I wanted to risk denying the truth. To my surprise, the older woman grinned. Master Thracia raised the corners of her mouth in a shadowed smile at her, then turned to her own padawan and gestured her away. I was left with the Intelligence group and Master Yaddle. However, Iella was speaking again. "Have you ever done that before, Adra?" she asked me, quite calmly. I nodded my head slowly and Iella's face broke into a smile. I saw her glance to Master Yaddle, then she looked back at me. "What would you say to coming to Intelligence for a bit and hacking into some other programs? You know, so we can see what you can actually get into." It was my turn to look at my master. She was grinning in her weird way. When she saw me look at her, Master Yaddle nodded. Taking that for my answer to give to Iella, I looked to the Intelligence officer and nodded as well. "I'd love to, actually."