Frowning faintly to himself, Plo stared at the comm in his hand for
several long minutes, his mind lost in thought before he got to his
feet and made his way out of his own quarters with the comm he had
been entrusted held tightly in his grasp.

When Anakin, rubbing the
back of his neck sheepishly with Obi-Wan at his side, had arrived and
quietly asked Plo to take over his comm for a while, Plo had been
endeared by the trust given him.

Now he was annoyed.

Because in the last four
days he had the comm, the chancellor had tried to contact Anakin not
once, not twice but eight times.

Three calls and five
message functions and a this point he was not only annoyed by the
constant interruption to his own life but also alarmed by how much
the chancellor of the Republic took contact with one Jedi knight.

For what purpose the
Chancellor wouldn’t tell Plo and that was enough to send several
red flags up to the top and Plo needed…

A second opinion.

Skywalker had trusted him
to hold his comm, to keep distraction to a minimum while the boy
tried to deal with his own Fallen state and Plo would do his best as
someone trusted to do that.

Pausing in front of the
door, Plo glanced at the name plate before knocking, waiting.

“Caleb, no don-wait! Oh
for… you are cleaning that up padawan.” Came from inside the
quarters and Plo couldn’t help but grin as he heard the familiar
chuckle of Mace Windu mix in with Depa’s exasperated tone.

“Karma sure is a thing
isn’t it Depa?” He stated in a faux innocent voice and Plo could
almost imagine all the younglings faces.

And they were younglings
to him.

Most of the temple outside
of Yoda and a few wookie Jedi were far to young to be anything but. And Yaddle was an age mate.

Finally the door opened, a
frazzled Depa standing to attention before she saw who it was, a
smile crossing her face as one of her braids dropped into her face.
“Master Plo, what an unexpected pleasure, please, come in and
excuse the mess.” She stepped back and he stepped in.

And firmly paused, staring
into the room before slowly turning his head to look at Mace, the man
standing over by the bedroom doors with a wicked grin on his face as
Depa’s young padawan continued trying to remove what looked like
sticky blue gum off the floor, walls and caff table. “What in Force
name…” Plo couldn’t help but chuckled.

“Caleb science
experiment went wrong.” Mace continued to grin wickedly and Plo couldn’t help
but chuckle too, remembering a certain young lady’s own science
experiment going very wrong in Mace old quarters.

If he had heard the rumors right, the
left wall was still red tinted from that experiment. “I see.” He
turned his head to smirk at Depa and laughed outright when she stuck
her tongue out at both older Jedi.

Shaking herself, Depa face
turned from a smirk to a small smile. “Is there anything I can help
you with Master Plo? I’d offer you something but I’m afraid I
don’t have anything safe for kel dors but as it is, you can come in
with boots on since we need to do a hard clean after Caleb’s little
experiment.” The human stated, her young padawan’s clearly
blushing a deep red.

Reminded why he had made
his way to these quarters, Plo humor faded as he lifted the comm,
catching Mace attention. “I’m afraid I’m in need of a second
opinion my friends. Knight Skywalker has given me his comm for the
foreseeable future to limit distraction and I have in turn discovered
something… alarming in my eyes. Sate a potentially foolish man’s
worries.” He murmured.

The two older humans
exchanged looks, Caleb pausing in his cleaning to peek up with wide,
curious eyes.

In the end, three alarmed
council members were the result of Plo’s excursion, all of them
asking the same thing.

Why was the Chancellor
trying so desperately to speak with Knight Skywalker and was this a
common occurrence? And if so, how long had the Chancellor of the
Republic been speaking with the young knight like so.

Had this been going on
since he was a padawan, when he was no more than ten and just a child
that didn’t know better than to listen to an authority figure?

The implication of it were
not… comforting to any of them, even Caleb, squeezing out a rag of
blue water into a bucket, looked uncomfortable.

“Skywalker needs all the
space he can get right now,” Depa murmured, a hand resting on chin
with fingers sprawled against her lips. “But we can try asking
Obi-Wan while Skywalker is in his own therapy with you… this has to
be done cautiously regardless, if we were to discover something…”
She trailed off.

Three masters exchanged
long, uneasy looks.

This was building to be
something that should not been allowed to happen.