Hello, again! Welcome to Chapter 3! And so, you've now met my OCs, how do you like them?
Thank you to pronker for reviewing! Have a chapter dedication!
It was early when Corrie's alarm went off. Very early. Too early. He groaned and rolled over, throwing a hand out to stop the insistent bleeping, before sitting up and scrubbing his face with his hands. He yawned largely, before checking the chrono. Why am I up at 4:00 in the morning? he asked himself. Slowly, the memories came back to him, and Corrie's face lit up. That's why.
Corrie ripped the covers off of his body, attempting to stand up at the same time, and only managing to get severely tangled up and hit the floor with a thud. A loud thud. Corrie held his breath for a moment, feeling tentatively over their training bond to see if Obi-Wan had woken up. When he came back with a negative, Corrie let out a breath of relief, unwrapping himself more carefully from the sheets, before opening his door with a slight hiss. He passed through the flat as quietly as possible, in only his sleepclothes, leaving his cloak and even his shoes behind. Obi-Wan could not suspect him to be gone.
Silently, he tip-toed to the door and made it outside, leaning against the wall. He felt again for Obi-Wan's consciousness. When he found his Master to still be sleeping soundly, he pumped his fist in the air and trotted off down the hall.
Last night – as far as he knew - had gone off without a hitch, and he was hoping that it would continue like that. He knew they would inevitably be found out, like they always were. Well, almost always. Corrie grinned at the memory. However, it was almost a game now, to see how long they could go without getting caught. There was a real art to evading capture. Firstly, you had to make the prank untraceable. Unnoticeable, if possible, make sure no-one saw you or heard you, that as few people knew about it as possible, until the prank took effect. Then, you had to act as though you had nothing to do with it, and that was the tricky bit, particularly with long term pranks such as Corrie's most current, more so for Jedi. You had to figure out skirt around the issue without being noticed, and to avoid further punishment when you were eventually found out, you had to make sure you somehow never lied to yours or any other master. The dangers were endless. It truly was an art form. Corrie had written the Padawan Pranksters Guide, he should know.
Macu peeled off the wall to join Corrie as he jogged by. "Hey, Seline."
"Oh, hey Cu-Cu." Macu absolutely hated being called Cu-Cu.
He glowered at the human beside him, but ended up grinning at the puppy dog eyes he was being given.
"How'd you go last night?" Corrie asked, checking a chrono as they passed another room. 4:09.
Macu shrugged. "Easy."
Corrie rolled his eyes. He never directly mentioned the crime, in case someone was listening, but that was a pathetic response. Then again, it's more than he should have expected from Macu. It was rare that he spoke out of mono-syllables. "Mine wasn't all that difficult in the end, either. It sure looked like it for a bit." he added, grinning.
Macu didn't ask.
Corrie didn't expect him to.
They reached the room last, finding the others all crammed into the small space of a closet/room. They could never decide. This tiny, drab spot was one of their numerous after mission rendezvous.
Only, usually, it was used to house just three of them, not all six.
"Nice of you to join us, boys." Jonah said pointedly.
Corrie shot her his most winning smile as he wedged In between her and Lolee. "Well, we're here now, so let's get this party started!"
No-one else seemed overly-enthused by his exciting cheer, but then again, over the years they'd become rather de-sensitized to Corrie's constant hyperactive tendencies.
"It's all set up, we just need to figure out exactly what we're doing." Crawen informed everyone.
Arak nodded. "We set up the program to this broadcast from this spot. Everyone put their generators in place, so we can broadcast all over the Temple, except for the Council Room, as per the plan." she added. Her and Cra were the technical support. That was how it worked. Corrie and Lolee came up with outlandish ideas, Jonah and Macu brought them back to reality, and Cra and Arak made them possible.
"Here's the tricky bit. We can't put the controls on our datapads, because that'll incriminate us the second they start looking. What we can do, is, and this is the good bit," Cra continued, starting to get excited. No-one had a go at him for getting excited over technology. Usually the ideas were worth it. "We can put a hidden file on our data pads, that only comes into existence when someone activates the signal from in here."
It was a brilliant idea, but they knew he wasn't through yet.
Arak kept going. "That way, we can just have one person in here, remotely activating the broadcasters in your devices. Then, we have one person selecting the rooms we want to broadcast to, because we don't want to interrupt any meetings or anything that's actually important. And then, finally, we have another person actually doing the broadcasting. Then, if one person gets caught, they can shut off the program if they want to, and the other two can do the same. And, if only one person gets caught, they have no way of proving you did it, because they'll only be doing a third of the deed."
"We can pre-record things on our datapads and transmit them, like music, that way it's not obvious whose pad the music was on. We can just speak into the datapad, subtlety required, or you can go to a computer, through a series of passwords and file entries, activate the program from there and type in what you want to say." Cra finished.
There was silence for a long moment.
"Force, you guys are brilliant." Corrie exclaimed.
"You know that, right?" Jonah added.
Arak and Crawen smirked at each other.
"Hey, Corrie, why are you in your sleepclothes?" Lolee asked out of the blue.
The others laughed for a moment at his randomness, before turning to Corrie and waiting for the answer.
As Lolee's question had reminded him, Corrie shifted onto his knees. "Well, my genius plan for an alibi isn't going to sound half as impressive after that display,"
Lolee gave the techno-Padawans a round of applause.
"But, here it is. We need to broadcast twice this morning. Once as an alarm and once when everyone's in the corridors. We can just put through music, to keep it easy on the first go, although I really think we should add a bit of-"
Jonah cut him off. "Corrie, we can deal with theatrics after we sort out the alibi." she said, always the voice of reason.
Corrie acceded her point with a nod. "Sorry, back on track. Anyway…" he paused for a moment to remember what he was saying.
"Two broadcasts?" Macu prompted.
Corrie pointed at him. "Thank you. Two broadcasts. The first time, three of us should go back to bed and get woken up by it, and then later, we swap and the other three get an alibi while we're operating it in the halls. With Cra and Arak's ingenious invention, it should be easy for those operating it to look like they're not doing anything, as well. It's pretty perfect."
Macu nodded. "It is. Someone should announce the Jedi Radio as being online with the alarm. The other one can just be a song that everyone has on their datapads."
Arak nodded. "That's a good idea. Everyone has Coruscant Clappers, don't they?"
Predictably, Lolee and Corrie started singing immediately.
"I think that me, Arak and Macu should do the alarm. Being asleep is a more convincing alibi, and you guys need it more than we do." she said, not even joking. It was true. Everyone would immediately suspect Corrie, because it was always Corrie, they'd suspect Lolee because it was always Lolee too, and they'd suspect Cra because of the technical complexity of the operation. Arak was really too innocent for anyone to suspect, and Macu and Jonah? Just no.
The small group looked around for a moment. The whole thing had gone perfectly. Everything worked, there was a way to do everything. They had just invented a very advanced system of communication and no-one had even noticed yet.
"Here's to a job well done, then, people!" Corrie said cheerfully as they exited the cupboard.
Cra shook his head as he went to bed. "We're getting way to good at this."
Ok, I realise I said that there would be real characters in this chapter, but apparently I lied. I promise you Obi-Wan exposure next chapter!