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1. Calm Before The Storm
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William Catalyst was extremely bored. He had been standing by the counter of the Red Rose Café for about two hours and he was really over it. He did have one thing t ease his boredom which came in the form of a thin white looking cylinder that was covered in buttons. William knew that it was an I-pod. It had just arrived in the holo- mail yesterday morning and he had been so excited but now, after ages of listening to it he was already over it. He did however enjoy the music which was blaring through the earphones. If someone was nearby they could probably hear the thumping of the beat.
He hadn’t come to Coruscant to work at a cafe and listen to a boring old P-pod. When his father said that he was going to Coruscant for a business trip, he had begged his father to let him come too. After much bargaining and going on about how William was 13, his Father relented and let him come. Since he was an only child to a rich Telosian family he would always be spoilt.
William had come to Coruscant looking for adventure. Even though the serene countryside of Telos was his home, he was more of a city type, independent and cunning.
His parents were always going on about when William at the age of 6 stole away onboard a hover bus heading towards Citadel Station. Unfortunately for Will when he disembarked a squadron of TSF was waiting along with one crying mother and an angry father
But back to the present.
William was at the counter of the Red Rose Café. He was bored, and the rush hour of this sector didn’t begin for an hour. Will wondered what sort of customers would come through the doors today. The reason he loved the job was because of the diversity of the customers. Since the Jedi Temple was only a few streets away occasionally Jedi Knights would come to the cafe to celebrate successful missions and the like. William had been surprised to find that these great warriors he had heard so much about were so…ordinary. His boss had told him when he had taken the job two weeks ago that Master Windu himself had once come to the café.
That was a miracle all in its own.
Will loved the cafe's design. It was quite large, clean and elegant with several different tables covered with enchanting old-style table cloths. There were windows scattered around the place, bathing the whole are in sunlight. Strangely for this planet, everything was made of expensive wood. Another nice feature was that the doors were large and made of glass that actually required someone to push to get in. It was a very old style Café.
Will was interrupted from his thoughts by the cling clang of the bell as two people entered. Immediately Will turned off his I-pod and slid it into his pocket. It was an expensive Café, and Will’s boss had very high standards. Then he remembered that his boss wasn’t actually at the café; he was at a business meeting with the Coruscant Food Foundation.
The people that had entered were both young, about 27 or 28. One of them was female, and the other was male. They were both wearing plain, nondescript sort of robes that had no flamboyancy at all. They sat down at the table that was closest to the exit. Will switched on his charming mode and approached the table, giving off a radiant The-customer-is-always-right-in-this-establishment-and-I-am-not-trying-to-sell-you-something-I-want-only-what-is-best-for-you smile. He examined the two people closely. The female had sandy colored hair that was tied neatly into a bun. She had a straight, perfect nose and a just as perfect mouth. Her eyes sparkled with blue light. Her teeth were so white she looked like a supermodel. Her skin did not have the plastic looking skin that was associated with neuron-beauty therapy. The woman’s great beauty seemed to be genuine.
Williams’s steady gaze then fell upon the man. He was bald and had a goatee. Deep, penetrating olive green eyes stared at Will. He had a normalish nose and a grim, unsmiling face. Another interesting feature was a scar that ran from his temple to his upper cheekbone. He seemed far more grim and troubled than his female companion, who had an almost childlike innocence about her. Will wondered if they were together. They seemed so different… like they each supported a different political party .Will realized something else. They seemed to both glow. When Will blinked, the glow was gone.
Despite their strangeness, Will thought that they both looked cool.
“Why, thank you.”
The man spoke unexpectedly, and Will leapt back, startled. The man was smiling, and suddenly he looked far less threatening. Will did not realize he had spoken aloud. He quickly recovered his composure and asked in an innocent voice, “What is it you would like today?”
The man immediately replied, “Eye blaster, shaken not stirred,”
After some glancing at the menu the woman replied, “Just a water thanks,”
She then stuck her tongue out for reasons unknown
Will nearly laughed at the woman’s childish personality, but he held the giggles in. He returned to the counter and pulled out the necessary ingredients for an Eye Blaster.
While Will was busy making the drinks, a group of five people entered the café. Will glanced up. Two Twi’leks, two Rodians, and an unshaven, muscled Human. William thought nothing of it as all the people on Coruscant had something distinguishable about them. The people sat down at the same table as the other two customers. The newcomers exchanged words with them in low voices for a few moments. All of a sudden, Will felt a dread through the air like a vapor, and he froze, glasses still in his hand, for what reason he couldn’t fathom.
The unshaven man rose up, his chair falling to the ground with a loud bang. Suddenly a blaster was in his hand--and it was pointing at Will.
The man said in Basic, “Hand the chip over or the boy dies,”
The woman shifted in her seat nervously, glancing back and forth between the man and the weapon. But she looked over into William's wide, terrified eyes, and her jaw set. She rose slowly from her seat.
“I suggest you back away, or this will be extremely painful, thug. If you knew who we were, you would be stupid not to leave.”
The man shifted his weight, obviously eager for a fight.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
He grinned gleefully, showing rotting teeth.
“Oh, my name is Sera, Sera Senlet, and this is my friend Jack Spara. I am known as 'The Exile' and my friend over here is Revan.”
The man continued to grin
“Never heard of you, but I am being paid a large amount of money to recover that computer chip, and I’ll take it from you dead or alive.”
The man with the goatee sighed. “I hate fighting on an empty stomach, eh Sera?”
”Oh shut up and get too it.”
Suddenly the man who called himself Revan waved his arm through the air. Everything seemed to explode after that.
Will dropped behind the counter, glasses flying into the air.
His inquisitive nature quickly overwhelmed him and he took a quick peek at what appeared to be a raging battle.
Revan and the exile were too occupied to notice him. Both of them had drawn lightsabers... but they seemed… different from the lightsabers that the Jedi from the temple had.
The Exile’s lightsaber was double-bladed, the color of beautiful silver like the fountains of Naboo.
Revan’s saber was blue, like the traditional Jedi Guardian. Soon all of the thugs were dying except for the unshaven man, who was lying in a pool of his own blood.
Revan walked up to the dying man and kicked him… hard.
“Tell your master that he should send something better than mercenaries next time!”
The man died without a word or a cry.
The Exile deactivated her saber and said in a puzzled voice, “Father Redback isn’t stupid enough to send mercenaries….. I bet it was a distraction!”
With that the clangy bell of the café’s door rang and a man in a black suit that once might have been good looking but now hung in tatters entered.
In with him walked two humans with cracked faces and mindless stares.
With one quick step forward he said in a raspy, oily voice, “Meet minion one and minion two!”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Walking through the daunting doors of the base, Kyle Kungan felt a shiver run down his spine. He felt nausea run through his body and adrenaline began to pump through him. He was on Coruscant, casually walking through the streets of the middle-city. The air was dry and polluted, but Kyle was too used to it to care. The street was crowded in the middle afternoon and several passersby wondered why a teenager with such a serious expression was wandering through the streets. They were in too posh a suburb for a homeless boy to be wandering around and to support such a claim the boy was wearing reasonably suitable clothes, at least as a middle-income teenager was concerned.
Pale Robes that were a peculiar fashion amongst the areas young populace.
Most of these observant passers-by quickly forgot as they returned to the reality that most of them had children to feed, money to earn or people to extort.
The teen walked into an industrial-looking building, only two stories high, that looked like it was probably the offices of several loan-sharks, accountants or lawyers. The building was shadowed by a vast skyscraper that blocked out the sun.
This building was not as it seemed, however. As the automatic door slid open, a beautiful waft of air-conditioned air beckoned the new guest inside. That was not all that happened. A security camera sleekly swiveled and began recording the visitor, whose image was being transmitted to a nearby room and being scrutinized over by several psychologists who looked to see if the new arrival was displaying any signs of uneasiness or aggression or any other suspicious outward emotions. A swab of his hair that had just been plucked by a atom sized robot confirmed that this particular teenager was exactly who he said he was and the tiles that he was steeping on when he entered electronically confirmed that this person did not have the slight footprint deformation to confirm was he not a clone. Meanwhile, the bored-looking receptionist sitting at the expensive wooden desk a few steps away from the door twirled her finger absentmindedly around the button that would activate the self-heating tiles to maximum, incinerating anyone who happened to be standing in the reception of the business Kyle had just walked into
The receptionist, after receiving the green light from several different sources typed in a password that changed every hour and a 15 digit code was punched into the computer sitting on the desk. This all happened in the five seconds it took for Kyle to walk inside the building to the desk.
A hole opened on the floor exactly where Kyle was standing, and he fell into what seemed to be an endless blackness. No words were exchanged, and the whole process had taken 5 seconds less than expected.
Perfect.
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