Perhaps as a form of balance, there was only one technique at all related to concealing oneself in the Force for which I possessed any aptitude. Meaning I'd come to rely on this native attribute quite a bit. Especially in situations where I needed to keep a low profile with respect to other Force-sensitives. Like now, with a Dark Sider assassin on Padme's trail.
...
Unbidden, Dark Woman's words echoed in my mind again. This time concerning perception.
"Your eyes can deceive you. Making it unwise to invest too much faith in sight. Trust your instincts, avoid making assumptions, and always, always allow the Force to guide you." The words made me think of my injured Master, but I stoically weathered the painfully sharp surge of worry that rolled through me.
Actively allowing the fear and worry to pass through me, rather than simply releasing them along with my concern for how she was doing. It didn't take much effort to imagine the look of disappointment she'd lance me with, if I were to allow my fear for her to interfere with my duty.
"Master Jedi? I understand you disapprove of my actions, but aren't you going to ask me what I found?" Crissayel prodded. His voice a mix of understandable impatience and defensiveness. Ending the silence that had stretched since my criticism of his methods, and interrupting my troubled musings.
"Forgive me, Crissayel. I should have explained I was taking a few moments to focus on recalling something my teacher once told me that I thought might be helpful. Tell me, what did you find in your sister's loft?" I apologetically replied. My excuse even having the benefit of being true, from a certain point of view.
Wearing a grim expression that made him look much older, his answer was disturbing.
"Callista's entire loft was filled with stacks of charcoal drawings done on old-fashioned drafting paper. When I looked through them, I realized the details were different, but the subject was always the same.
Images of a faceless hooded figure, or maybe many different hooded figures. Sometimes tall and long-limbed, other times short and squat, plus everything in between. It, he, she, or they, appearing in places frequented by my sister.
I had no idea what any of it was about, until I found a few pictures which Callista was in herself. Standing at her window to peek out through the curtains at the hooded figure crouched in an alley across the street.
Looking behind her on a street, but not seeming to see the figure on a rooftop ahead of her. It took time to find enough pictures like that to realize she was drawing herself being watched and followed."
His voice dropped in volume, but there was such intensity in his whispered hiss, I might have found it frightening, if I wasn't, well, me. "Hunted. My sister was being hunted, by something with claws."
Fixing me with a look that seemed to challenge me to defy his interpretation of events. Crissayel finished his description in his previous worried but otherwise normal tone, with the ominous words.
"It's only the drawings of my sister and her apartment building that truly tell the story, but even then, I didn't realize how much more there was to it. Not until I got a look at my sister's journal files. If I thought the drawings were bad, that was much worse."
Again, no sooner had he finished speaking, then the nervous tic in his neck set the Terellian's pointed chin and the lower half of his tapering jaw to jerking, once, twice, and a third time. A third fit of staccato coughing following the instant the twitching ceased.
During this entire conversation, I'd been acutely aware that Padme was listening in attentive silence to dissect every word spoken. Through our new bond, I'd sensed a surge of a very particular sort of sharp, tightly focused, slow to attenuate anxiety. The feeling had first risen up in her when I'd barely begun coaxing Crissayel's story from him.
Experience allowing me to identify the very specific reaction as the emotional component of a line of thinking used to name a specific danger instinct or intuition warned against, yet the strong-willed woman's subsequent reaction had convinced me she'd recognized the momentary fear was groundless.
When the same rush of emotion came again, and stronger than before, however, I initially thought the savvy politician had found the young teen's tale of locating and dealing with the smugglers of the Lianorm Swamp on his own just as implausible as I had.
Now, though, as a shock of cold disdain freighted with a weight of angry suspicion stole through her, I recognized my mistake while listening to the barking coughs that followed the alien's curious twitching. The odd physical display still didn't mean anything to me, but it definitely meant something to Padme.
"Crissayel, if that's even your real name, would you care to explain your lies to Knight Skywalker, or shall I do it for you?" Padme pointedly questioned. Her voice thick with stern disapproval and seething with disdain.
I'd known she despised liars, but hearing the cutting contempt she was directing the Terellian's way for what were likely lies of omission as much as anything else, I was glad I hadn't exhibited the spectacular stupidity required to behave in a similar manner regarding my own secrets.
A look of panic suddenly suffused the Terellian's long face. It was by far the most emotion he'd so far shown outwardly, as he stammered fearfully "Be quiet, she'll hear you! You're going to get my sister killed!"
Instantly, I allowed my Force Sense to expand outward as far and as clearly as it could. At least while I remained as Dim as I'd been since I was ten. It was times like these, with a life or lives obviously on the line, that I most chafed at the self-imposed constraint I'd been made to see the wisdom of maintaining by my Master a little more than a decade ago.
I'd been touched, in an odd way, by the enormous sacrifice of time and effort she'd made. The risk the Jedi Master had accepted to discover a means of hiding a sizable portion of the power I had, and would continue to grow into.
The close call with Palpatine, and the growing alarm in some quarters concerning the rate at which my power continued to develop only two of the reasons such concealment had proven itself necessary, I knew. Not that this knowledge did anything to curb the frustration which tried, again, to boil over into anger. Only to be released, as it always was, wearily into the Force.
Through the Force, I was the duracrete of the walkway beneath our feet. Solid, seemingly immovable and impermeable, yet constantly subjected to countless tiny stresses. All acting to create change in the seemingly changeless stone.
I was the air we breathed. Full of myriad scents and subtle chemical interactions. Forever engaged in a silent dance of whirling, shifting, perpetual search for equilibrium. Complexity making of the swirl of gases an invisible kaleidoscope.
I was IG-1, watchful, and so very durable, yet capable of astounding fluidity. A symphony of astounding complexity in near-perfect harmony. My ever-growing command of Mechu-deru making my awareness an audience to the song my attention set to singing through every circuit, actuator, processor, and mechanical component.
I was Ahsoka, her bright luminescence the author of an aria which spoke of promise and potential. Curious, oh so curious, about the galaxy and everything in it. More passionate than many a Jedi would be comfortable with, yet fiercely devoted to realizing her dream of protecting and helping people.
Presently uncertain, but determined to control the fear which had just set her heart to racing. The lightsaber at her side a chorus in miniature of many small interlocking components. with a glimmering song-stone of green fire for a heart.
Padme's warm glint, with it's present freight of uncharacteristically cold emotions, I was not.
Most relevantly, I was Crissayel. Desperate, driven, and struggling not to drown in a rising tide of panic. Experience and maturity giving a low reverberation of depth to all the emotions inside him, but an old, dreadfully tenacious fear fed an equally developed pain. Which, in turn, fueled a sense of hopelessness which constantly sent him careening from helpless rage to the brink of complete despair.
There was a device of some complexity around his midsection, no, on his belt. Initially, I thought it was some sort of concealed listening device, but as my awareness traced the path of circuitry, I came to understand the machine was designed to receive rather than transmit any signals. An instant more, and I was examining in my mind's eye something that bore a great deal of similarity to a detonator.
"Not military tech, and definitely not purpose-fashioned assemblages of bomb components. Perhaps a repurposed initiator and signal-receiver from a mining or municipal demolition charge?" I silently considered while suppressing a frown.
No more than two or three heartbeats had passed since the panicked exclamation of the teen-who-was-not-a-teen, so I pasted my best approximation of a surprised expression across my face, then made a very obvious cross-bodied grab for my lightsaber with my dominant hand. All the while twitching the first three fingers of my right hand in a subtle curving motion.
A feminine voice with a growling timbre called out loudly from the same rooftop Crissayel had earlier jumped. The anticipated, but as yet unseen speaker's ultimatum halting my hand just before it could close about my weapon.
"Touch that lightsaber, Jedi, and my bomb will reduce the Shi'ido in front of you to bloody chunks. Same goes for your little Togruta brat, the Naboo, and the battle-droid.
One of you tries something, you'll be explaining to that wretched Council of yours how you managed to paint half a Naboo city block the color of hostage. If you survive the blast to explain anything to anyone."
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