The next day, Obi-Wan went into the refectory to catch up with friends, only to find that most of them were either out in the field or busy teaching classes - Reeft teaching actual children was a concept he'd have to see to believe - but after exchanging hellos with Master Drallig and a few old classmates, Obi-Wan bumped into Anakin Skywalker and joined him for lunch. With Anakin's mouth occupied by a tray of dumplings, Obi-Wanded ended up doing most of the talking. Everything about the past two years and the past two days came tumbling out. Anakin ate and listened in rapt silence, daring to speak only when it was clear that Obi-Wan had finished.
"So… what are you going to do now?" The teen's concern was spoiled by the fleck of unidentified vegetable clinging to his chin. Anakin was now on his third round of lunch, surrounded by desecrated plates and bowls on all sides. Under normal circumstances, Obi-Wan would've gladly found the energy to gawk and tease the boy for it, but he was not quite ready to release his gloom into the Force.
"Play civil detective, I suppose," Obi-Wan replied, leaning back from his half-eaten sandwich. "Master Windu seems to think I'll be good at it."
"Of course you will," Anakin said around a new mouthful. "You're good at everything."
Obi-Wan frowned deeply. "You don't believe that, do you?"
Anakin shrugged with that unique compound of maturity and simplicity endemic to teenagers. "Why shouldn't I? Name something you're bad at."
"Flying," Obi-Wan said immediately.
"You're not."
"Well I certainly don't like flying."
"Doesn't mean you're bad at it. Force," Anakin shook his head, "you sound like my master."
Obi-Wan allowed himself a microscopic smile. He watched as Anakin scarfed down another massive spoonful of mashed tubers and felt his mood lighten.
"I'd ask where you plan on putting all that food, but as tall as you've grown since last I saw you, I think I have my answer. You'll be taller than Dooku, soon,"
Mouth still full, Anakin looked up, eyes glittering with competitive spirit. "That's the idea."
Anakin was already taller than Obi-Wan, and the knight realized very suddenly that he didn't appreciate the padawan's satisfaction. He ticked an eyebrow. "Or maybe you'll start growing fatter instead."
"Hey!" Anakin yelled. As he did, a glob of tuber mash fell out of his mouth and splattered onto his plate. He slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide in surprise. Obi-Wan howled with laughter, and knights three tables over turned to look. Anakin glared at them, face glowing scarlet.
"For what it's worth," Anakin said, after he'd overcome his embarrassment and finally finished eating, "it'll be nice to have you around again."
Obi-Wan's spite prevented him from agreeing out loud, but he smiled. "Thanks."
"Maybe you could come spar with me sometime?" Anakin proposed hopefully. "I've gotten a lot better, you know."
"I'm sure you have. I'll talk with Ben and see if we can find a time when all of us are free."
Anakin's smile leaked into the Force itself as a tangible entity, and it compelled Obi-Wan to smile, too. He wondered if the apprentice did it on purpose – if he knew he was doing it at all. Ben had told him before that Anakin had yet to fully comprehend the extent of his own abilities, but could already tap deeper into the Force than most knights would manage in lifetimes of study. And he's using it to smile.
"Wizard," the boy said. Obi-Wan made a mental note to explain to him later that it was an exceptionally outdated phrase.
Obi-Wan was grateful for the darkness of the security suite. The hazy blue light of the holoscreens allowed him a modicum of dignity as he stared, utterly baffled, at the security feed as it looped over and over again. "Hmm," he grunted.
"As we said in the police report, we have no idea how they even got in here," the head of security was saying, growing more annoyed the more he talked about it. "The camera moves to the right, as it should, sticks for a few ticks, as it should, and then moves back - Boom! No lightsaber. But that's what, twenty seconds? Twenty seconds to get into the room, across the hall, get into the case - somehow - take the saber, put the case back, and get out of the room again? In twenty seconds? Who does that?"
It was a quandary, for sure. Obi-Wan scratched his chin, stubble rattling against his fingernails. "Is it possible the footage is fake?" he asked.
The security chief crossed his arms tight across his chest. "We've looked into it. There's no sign of hacking or changes to the coding. No one was even online in the system, not even our droids. It's an isolated system, too, top of the line. If someone got in there, there would be a blip for us to find, even if they tried to cover their tracks, but…" The man gave an exasperated shrug.
The museum curator, who'd been watching quietly to one side, spoke up.
"Is it possible, Master Kenobi?" she asked. "To do all that in twenty seconds?"
"And not leave a trace?" Obi-Wan turned to her with brows raised high. She was unfazed. Without any believable explanations open for consideration, she was willing to entertain the absurd.
"Yes," she said.
It was a ridiculous question. Or it would have been, if Obi-Wan hadn't had so many memories of his initiate days, running obstacle courses for sport and timing himself against his classmates. He'd been a competitive boy, and had at one point been able to run through the entire course in thirteen seconds. Sure, there hadn't been any security cameras or state of the art sensors, but he was older now, and the force was a powerful ally. Twenty seconds. Obi-Wan played it out in his mind. Waiting for the camera to start moving, use the Force to open the lock, slide into the camera's blind spot, slip across the hall, Force the sensors off, Force open the case, take the saber, replace everything, slip back out the same way, jumping over sensors here and there.
Twenty seconds was tight, but he figured he could do it. A Jedi could do it.
"No," he answered the curator at length. "Not for a normal person, anyway." He sighed, and stepped to the door. "Thank you for your help. I need to look into this further. I'll let you know if I come up with any new information.
Annoyed to be left without a solution, the curator nodded. "Of course, Master Jedi. Please keep us informed."
For all his distaste of Coruscant, Obi-Wan had missed the Jedi Temple terribly, and among the many great halls, he'd missed the Archives with a special ferocity. The tall shelves, the secluded corners, the history. Some of his most formative epiphanies and most restful naps had happened in this place. Little had changed since those distant Padawan days - including his clearance codes.
"Oh, come on," he entered in his passcode for the fourth time.
"Access denied." The words echoed along the quiet lines of research consoles, and several initiates were sending him serene glances of do you mind. Obi-Wan scowled and punched in a new code, this one as familiar as his own. He held his breath.
"Access denied."
"Seriously?" He hissed at the machine, and smacked it. A knight with a young padawan gave him a scathing frown. He glared back and pulled out his comm.
"Jinn," came the answer.
"You've changed your clearance codes," Obi-Wan accused. It took a moment, and then Qui-Gon chuckled.
"Are you still using those? Surely you have your own by now."
"I do, but they don't seem to always work," Obi-Wan grumbled, looking at the error screen which seemed to be ingrained in the very surface of the display. "Apparently I need a master's clearance to see this file, which is ridiculous. Knights and masters aren't so different. "
"And yet they come with fairly different privileges. I've been telling you for years you need to take on an apprentice."
"Yes, and I'll train them and graduate them in time to get access codes for this damn mission, shall I?"
Qui-Gon was laughing again. "Why do you think I took on Feemor?"
"You're unbelievable."
"Ask Master Nu for help."
"I can't."
"Why?"
Obi-Wan glanced around, checking to see if anybody was listening. He peeked out over the console to Madame Nu's desk, and could see her bustling busily around her work. Her silver hair was drawn up into a bun, as it always was, crossed with the long, sharp hairpins he'd seen her wield as weapons on more than one occasion. He whispered:
"I lost her only copy of Master Tardashaani's Hutt Space in Hutt Space."
Qui-Gon snorted in suppressed laughter, and Obi-Wan wanted to reach through the comm and hit him.
"Address your fears head on, padawan," Qui-Gon advised with a smile in his voice, "it is the only way to move forward."
The line went dead, and Obi-Wan scoffed. He glanced again at Master Nu, and sensed in the Force itself that approaching her was out of the question. Moving forward was untenable. Therefore, he would move sideways. He opened a new comm call.
"Kenobi."
"Ben, I'm back on Coruscant and could use your help."
"Force, Obi-Wan. It's nice to hear from you, too, welcome back," came Ben's chagrined reply.
"Sorry. I meant to come by and say hello, but Mace has got me running around playing detective-"
"Yes, Anakin told me; he thinks your mission is fascinating. Maybe you should let him have a crack at it, if you despise it so much."
"I don't despite it, I just…" he closed his eyes. He didn't have time for this right now, and certainly not in the archives, where he had an eavesdropping audience. "My access codes aren't working, and I was wondering if I could borrow yours."
"If you need my access codes, you must be investigating something touchy," Ben's voice had a strange quality to it, a sort of echo. Footsteps sounded behind him, and Obi-Wan turned to see Ben Kenobi, still holding his comm. "What has Mace got you into?"
Obi-Wan hadn't seen his older self in ages. Ben's hair had now only the faded suggestion of ginger amid dusty grey, but behind new sets of wrinkles, the man's smile remained one that Obi-Wan recognized from the mirror. The peculiarity of their relationship was constant, but Obi-Wan felt himself relaxing to see the older man again. He closed his comm and gestured to his console.
"Come and see for yourself."
Ben bent over the screen. His eyebrows shot to the sky.
"Force, I should've thought you'd need a Councilor's code to see this."
"I hope not," Obi-Wan replied, not willing to entertain the possibility of asking Mace Windu for help.
"No, that is the code for a master's approval. Interesting." Ben pulled up the dialog box and typed in his personal codes. The database finally opened, and Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief. Ben stood back and watched the knight scroll through the thousands and thousands of entries. "So," the master wanted to know, "What do you hope to learn from a list of every single lightsaber in the galaxy?"
"Well," Obi-Wan was already setting up a search, "lightsabers aren't exactly your everyday thief's fodder, and this thief is not an amateaur. I have to think that if someone got it into their head to steal such a traceable weapon, this can't be their first time. So," within the filters, he selected a box labeled "Stolen", and waited for the results to load. It took a few seconds. Then:
-Showing 50 of 7,286 results-
"Kriffing hell," Obi-Wan burst. Across from him, the knight with their padawan actually stood up and glared at him. Obi-Wan ducked. "Sorry," he said, and avoided eye contact. The knight scoffed and ushered his apprentice away. Ben suppressed a laugh.
"I'll leave you to it," he gave his counterpart a pat on the shoulder. "You should come by for dinner, I'm making stew tonight." Ben glanced at the screen, where Obi-Wan was slowly scrolling through the results. "If you're not too swamped. Force be with you, Obi-Wan."
"You as well, Ben," Obi-Wan waved, and continued scrolling.
That there were 7,286 stolen lightsabers out there somewhere in the galaxy was alarming in the least, but Obi-Wan's fears were belayed when he realized he was looking at a list of all lightsabers that had ever been stolen at any time, including those which had been returned or destroyed. He refined his search until he was looking at a list of decommissioned lightsabers that had been stolen in the last ten years. There were only two, one of which was the target of his investigation.
The records on the second saber were no help. It had been stolen eight years ago, the thief had never been caught, and there had been no reported sightings of the saber since its disappearance. It had been stolen from a poorly-protected cultural heritage center in the mid-rim, and Coruscanti authorities assumed it had been cut up and sold for parts - particularly for its kyber crystal, which was a rare and valuable resource. The prospect comforted Obi-Wan - better the saber be destroyed for parts than pose a danger to others.
He received no such comfort from the recently-stolen saber. The paperwork on its theft was already familiar to him, but he was surprised to see that the database was exceptionally up-to-date, and even reflected his own mission movements since the previous day. He wondered who was in charge of updating the database, and if they would be any help. He pulled up the access and administration log.
"Professor Huyang, I should've known," Obi-Wan found himself smirking at the thought of the ancient professor. Why hadn't he thought of asking the droid in the first place? Huyang wouldn't just tell him what lightsabers had been stolen, but who'd made them, what color they were, and how much the kyber would be worth on the black market. Or at least, he'd know how old and how big the kyber was, and Obi-Wan would be able to make his own guess at the price.
As he scrolled, another familiar name caught Obi-Wan's eye. The database was seldom accessed, but this Jedi had been into the database three days in a row, just two weeks ago - before the saber had been stolen. Obi-Wan frowned.
"What the hell were you doing here?"
"Lola! It's Lola!" the Zygerrian girl's huge, fluffy ears were the first to pick up on the footsteps down the hall, but on her word, excitement spread to the whole creche.
"Lola?" one boy dropped his blocks, which interrupted a game of push-feather on their way down.
"Lola!" those pushing feathers clambered to their feet, and others joined them, and they all began jumping their way to the half-door to look outside and see.
"Master Lola!"
"Lola's here!"
"Lola!"
"What, what, what is this, then, eh?" Their creche master emerged from his quarters, where he'd been trying to steal a private moment to file his paperwork. "What's this about Lola?" he asked. One of the older children, a Chiss boy of eleven, explained:
"Tanassi says she heard Master Aola down the hall."
"Did she?" Feemor replied, surprise drawing out his brogue.
As if on cue, a blue, freckled Twi'lek knight came bustling up to the door, and the crechelings shrieked in glee. Aola Tarkona lifted her hands out as if to hug them all at once.
"Younglings!" She beamed at them, and they beamed back in a fog of joy that boiled and bubbled across the Force for yards.
"Lola! Lola!"
"You're here! You're back! Lola!"
"Master Lola! Look at my feather!"
"Lola! I got a new tooth!"
"Master Lola, tell us a story!"
Aola let herself into the room and was immediately mobbed. The younger children started climbing on her, and she lowered herself to the ground to accommodate as many as she could manage, laughing the entire time. The older children hung to the sides, but were all smiles as they waited their turn to accost their favorite knight for her affections.
Feemor came to stand over the mountaineer younglings and their Twi'lek summit, fists propped on his hips. "And no love for your old master? What on earth did I teach you?"
"To live in the moment," Aola grinned, face half-hidden by a human girl who was hugging Aola's head to her chest. "And in this moment, I'm having a grand time." She grabbed one boy by his sides and tickled; he shrieked with laughter.
Feemor couldn't've have kept a straight face if he'd tried, and laughed along with them all as Aola kissed and tickled her way free of the mass of younglings.
"Clawmice!" Feemor raised his voice, and with reluctance, the remaining younglings melted off of the the Twi'lek knight and retreated to simmering rows of smiles. Feemor waited until Aola stood and straightened her robes. He smiled.
"It's good to see you, lass," he opened his arms for a hug, and Aola happily stepped into them.
"You too, master." Over his shoulder, Aola caught sight of the datawork and filmsi sheets piled on Feemor's desk. She laughed. "Have you filed any of that since I left?"
"Oh hush," he gave her tap on the back of the head and let her go. "Keep the little ones entertained and maybe I'll manage."
"Leave it to me," she turned to her adoring fans and let her master sneak away.
"Have any of you ever heard," she spoke, and had immediate command of the room, "of the Great Tarentatek?"
One youngling raised her hand. "Master Yoda said he fought one a long time ago," she said, hoping to impress. Aola raised one brow.
"I see. But did Master Yoda fight two at once?"
Oohs and ahs echoed around the group, reaching even to the older children who liked to pretend they were too old for stories. Aola grew a wicked smile, and took a cross-legged seat to begin her tale.
She'd just finished her first story and started warming up into a second when another knight appeared at the door.
"I thought I might find you here," said Obi-Wan Kenobi. Unlike Aola, who was a familiar face in the Clawmouse clan, Obi-Wan Kenobi was a legend incarnate, and inspired the silent stares of hero-worship rather than the excited shrieks of family.
"Och, is that Obi-Wan?" Feemor said from his office, and emerged in a cloud of incredulity.
"It surely is," Aola smiled up at the ginger. "Long time no see, Obi!"
"Good to see you, Lola," he used the pet name popularized by the Clawmouse clan, "You as well, Feemor."
"I thought it was all lies when Qui-Gon said you'd come back," the master accused, going to the door to shake the man's hand. "What on earth are you doing here? Come to take one of these hellions of my hands at last?"
"I am, actually," Obi-Wan deadpanned. Feemor, Aola, and the entire creche went wide-eyed, all holding their collective breath. Obi-Wan did not notice or understand their excitement. "I'll take the giant blue one with the freckles and the bad attitude," he said.
Aola scoffed, because she couldn't curse in front of the children. She picked the child off her lap and stood. "Impertinent," she said, and went to the door. She handed her burden to Feemor, who cradled the baby against his chest and ushered him away from the adults. "What can I do for the prodigal son?"
"Very funny," Obi-Wan said, chagrinned. "Mace has saddled me with a local investigation, and your name came up, I was hoping you could help me out."
"My name came up?" Aola's smile was fading in confusion. "How?"
"There was a lightsaber theft a few weeks ago, and it looks like you might've come across the same files I've been looking at."
"A few weeks ago?" Aola's frown was growing deeper. "I've been off-planet for two months, Obi." The knights frowned at each other.
"Master," Aola called over her shoulder, eyes not leaving Obi-Wan's face, "I'll be back in a bit."
In the archives, Obi-Wan and Aola bent over the console together.
"I don't even know how you got access to these files, they require a master's clearance."
"Or a consular's clearance, which I have," she said.
"You're a consular?" Obi-Wan stood back and looked at her in surprise. "Since when?"
Aola didn't even look up. "You've been gone a long time, Obi, a lot can happen. I got the certifications seven months ago."
"Seven months…" Obi-Wan reeled. While he was occupied, Aola scrolled through the database, nursing the same frown as before.
"This doesn't make any sense," she shook her head. "I've never seen this database before."
"Well clearly you have," Obi-Wan countered, pointing her to the access log. "Three times in a row, two and a half weeks ago.
"Two and a half… I was halfway across the galaxy. Why…" She saw the dates, and saw the search entries.
"Oh," she said, whole demeanor shifting.
"What?"
"This wasn't me," Aola said carefully, "but I know who it was."
"If it wasn't you," Obi-Wan looked down at her, "who the hell did you give your clearance codes to?"
Aola turned in her seat to look up at him, and he knew on sight it was going to be complicated.
"First of all," she pointed a threatening finger up in his face, "you're not allowed to tell the Council."
Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I have a bad feeling about this."