#paint war

As much as being on the Council was exhausting, he did enjoy it. Enjoyed the camaraderie he experienced with his fellow Councilors, the opportunity to listen to his fellow Jedi as they came forward with their concerns and successes, the responsibility of going through mission requests and thoughtfully discussing with the others and with the Force which team would be best to send.

No, being a member of the Council was a blessing he would not have thought he was worthy to ask for.

He just didn’t want the Council to regret the appointment, nor did he want his fellow Jedi to doubt his ability to be there, to aid and support them.

Which meant that, especially when in public, he had to be on his most Master-ly behavior.

He stepped into the lift to head to his quarters. He needed some rest, needed to isolate himself so he could let down his barriers and relax.

A rustle caught his attention and Mace frowned, the lift was empty except for himself, but he could feel several somewhat-muted presences nearby in the Force.

He looked up just as the Force sent him a nudge of warning, too late, as Mace ended up with a face full of paint.

Thanks to the Force, he’d gotten his eyes closed in time, and he stood there for several moments that he’d later blame on just how tired he was and was not, in any way, due to surprise.

“Oh no!” He heard someone whisper. “We got his face. We were supposed to get his head!”

Mace reached up and wiped at his eyes, clearing them of paint enough to open them. His hands and tunics—and face—were covered in purple paint. He gave the top of the lift his most serious look.

“If I were you, I’d get down here now.” For a moment nothing happened, but a moment later the small hatch at the top of the lift opened and a small figure dressed in the initiate uniform jumped clumsily down.

“Hello Master Windu. Sorry about the paint.”

Mace raised one eyebrow at him, before turning his attention back to the top of the lift. “And your compatriots?”

“It was just me!” The initiate, Kenobi, Mace’s mind reminded him, Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

Mace didn’t remove his attention from the hatch and a few seconds later a padawan and a second initiate let themselves down and into the lift.

It took him a moment to place them. Initiate Luminara Unduli and Padawan Quinlan Vos.

He gave the trio a serious look. “What do the three of you think you were doing?”

“Dropping paint on you.” Padawan Quinlan gave him a cheery grin, and Mace noted the faint splatter of blue paint that meant he had probably not been the first to get the paint treatment.

Mace took a deep breath, expelling his irritation as best he could, trying not to think about how absolutely idiotic he must look right now.

Nothing like the Councilor he was trying so hard to be. But even if he looked undignified, he would remain calm and in control, as a Master of the Council should.

“And what made you think that was a wise use of your time?”

“Laughter keeps you from turning into a wet rag like Obi-Wan,” Padawan Quinlan informed him, sounding not at all repentant.

Initiate Obi-Wan gave the older boy a stink eye, but the smile he turned on Mace almost passed as guileless, and Mace had no doubt that whatever he was about to say would be a made-up-on-the-spot excuse. “What Quinlan means, is that being serious is good when you’re supposed to be serious. But you should also laugh when you can, because that’s good too, and we just wanted to make you laugh.”

“Oh?” Despite himself he almost smiled, admittedly impressed with the off-the-cuff excuse. “And where did you learn that?”

Initiate Obi-Wan’s eyes widened in muted panic. “Uh… I read it?”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” This time it was Initiate Luminara who chipped in. “In a treatise on humor. By Master…”

“Koochoo,” Padawan Quinlan finished. “Master Koochoo.”

Initiates Luminara and Obi-Wan gave the padawan an absolutely exasperated look. 

“Ah.” Mace nodded seriously, and it was getting harder to hide his own humor. “I don’t think I’ve read that treatise, I’ll have to look it up in the archives.”

All three of the troublemakers nodded and Initiate Obi-Wan tried for another guileless smile, and Mace made a note to never believe that smile, no matter how convincing it looked. “Uh huh. It’s there. For sure.”

Mace forced himself to remain serious. “I want you all to understand that this was not behavior fitting of a Jedi, I expect you—”

To Mace’s surprise, Initiate Obi-Wan interrupted, crossing his arms almost petulantly. “Knight Depa didn’t think so.”

That stopped Mace in his tracks. Depa. Of course his former padawan was behind this. He should have known the moment it had happened.

Well, she wouldn’t like it as much when she ended up covered in paint.

Initiate Obi-Wan seemed to realized that he’d just interrupted a Master and was paling incredibly fast, clearly worried he’d overstepped.

One would think that he’d have thought that before dropping paint on a Master, or lying through his teeth about some treatise on humor…

The Force around him seemed to almost giggle, light and soft and warm in a way that Mace hadn’t realized he’d missed. 

Mace sighed. What was it Yoda was always saying about the wonder of a youngling’s mind?

There was no treatise on humor by a Master Koochoo, that Mace was very sure of, but the three children in front of him weren’t wrong either.

There was a time to be serious and there was a time to not, and if Mace was honest with himself, he’d forgotten that.

He was a Councilor always. But he was allowed to still be Mace.

Force, Yoda was constantly being ridiculous, but that didn’t mean that people thought he was any less trusted. And perhaps Yoda wasn’t the best example, because he was Master Yoda. But the other Councilors were still seen enjoying themselves and no one thought any less of them.

Perhaps he’d allowed the stress of his new position get to him a little too much.

He shook the thought aside for later pondering, and focused back on the three troublemakers in front of him, trying to decide the appropriate response.

He waved the door to the lift open. “Follow me, you three.”

The three of them exchanged looks but obediently followed him. The two initiates with penitently bowed heads, and Mace could hear them whispering quietly to one another, while Padawan Quinlan was still as cheerful as ever as he followed along behind.

Some of Master Tholme’s reports on his Padawan were starting to make a lot of sense.

He led them back to his quarters, trying to remember where he’d kept his supplies for evasion practice with Depa.

He came back to find the three children looking around his quarters with interest, though both Luminara and Obi-Wan pretended they hadn’t been when they caught sight of him.

“You know,” Mace started. “You were right. There’s a time to be serious and a time for humor.” The three exchanged looks, and it was clear they were expecting some sort of reverse lesson, which, now that Mace thought about it, would probably be a good idea. He would save that for later, there would be a lot of clean up to do with that.. “I think there are probably a few more Councilors that need to be reminded of that lesson.”

He set his supplies down in front of the three younglings.

Padawan Quinlan was the first to move, grabbing the paint balloon sling shot. “Is this—”

“Yes.” Mace smiled. “What do you say the four of us go find a few councillors?”

The three padawans looked up at him, and Mace was only human, the looks of adoration and near hero-worship were very hard to resist when directed at him with such tenuity..

“I though for sure that you were like Obi-Wan and had a stick up your—”

“QUINLAN.” Obi-Wan sounded outraged. “Master Windu is a Councilor! You can’t use language like that around him!”

Mace couldn’t help the snort of laughter. “Oh, so you can throw paint on me, but can’t use barely-crude language?”

Initiate Obi-Wan frowned at that before turning to Initiate Luminara. “What do you think?”

Mace could see the young girl clearly weighing her words. “Well, Master Yoda says that words are the foundations upon which we build both ourselves and others… but paint washes off.”

The two initiates both nodded seriously before turning back to the padawan. “No swearing around Councilors.”

Mace bit his lip, trying not to laugh as Padawan Quinlan let out an outraged protest at being ganged up on. Mace had the feeling it was not the first time and it certainly wouldn’t be the last either.

“Well, are you allowed to throw paint on Councilors with a Councilor?”

Obi-Wan nodded seriously, his two friends only seconds behind him. “Absolutely.”

Mace watched as they all armed themselves with paint projectiles.

“You do know that we’ll have to clean up after this, yes?”

The three of them exchanged another look. “It’ll be worth it.” Padawan Quinlan sounded almost fervent and Mace had one moment to wonder whether this was a bad idea before he dismissed it.

-_-

“Who first?” Mace asked, and watched as the three listed out the Councillors and then picked their first target through a convoluted word game that Mace didn’t understand in the slightest.

Ki-Adi was their unwitting first target, and an ambush in the hallway before his apartment left him covered in pink paint and quietly hissing vengeance on Mace’s head. Mace pointed to the purple paint still on his face, but suspected that wouldn’t be enough to save him from Ki-Adi’s vengeance.

Something about that thought made him smile.

Luminara picked Dooku next, which really made Mace wonder if he was going to go through with this whole thing. Yan wasn’t like Ki-Adi who would laugh it off. But then Obi-Wan looked up at him with wide, imploring eyes and Mace caved.

They found Yan Dooku and Sifo-Dyas together, which gave them two councillors at one time, much to the delight of his young painting assistants.

The two Councillors were sparring, and by the end of the attack, the whole room was covered in yellow paint that would take them forever to clean. Sifo-Dyas however was smiling and Mace suspected he’d had a vision of this and had decided to go along with it, that suspicion was confirmed when Sifo-Dyas pulled out a holo-device to capture the moment.

Mace made a note to see if Sifo-Dyas would give him a copy of the holo, because Yan Dooku covered in yellow paint was clearly something that needed to be recorded and kept safe for future black-mail purposes.

Not that Mace would ever stoop so low.

But it was Yan Dooku, who was one of the most stubborn and frustrating men Mace knew, so it would be prudent to cover his bases.

Three—four, if they included Mace—Councillors down, and nine to go. They lucked out when their ambush to get Plo Koon netted them both the Kel Dor Councillor and Shaak Ti.

The two councillors did not go down easily, and Mace found his own tunics covered in as much orange paint as the two other Councillors.

In fact, Padawan Vos was the only one who didn’t end up covered in orange, though from the way Obi-Wan and Luminara were whispering together as they eyed the slightly-older boy that wouldn’t last long.

It was at that point that Mace received a terribly worded comm—Yoda and Yaddle really shouldn’t be allowed to send comm messages—declaring war on the four of them.

Mace was pleased to find that he was not the only Councillor that was weak to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s wide eyes, because both Plo and Shaak were quickly pulled into the paint war.

They got Oppo quickly enough, even managing to knock his own paint back onto him before he could get them with it, leaving him a green and blue mess.

Yarael, Saesee, and Even fell quickly. In hindsight Mace realized that should have been a warning sign, clearly the three Councillors had been bait. Their attack on the Councillors turned out into all out war when the three Councillors pulled out a hidden basket of paint-filled balloons and they were besieged by Yaddle and Yoda darting in and out with paint bombs, gleefully hitting every single one of them—their own team included—in what was an impressive display of the versatility and agility of Ataru.

Covered in at least five different colors of paint Mace hadn’t been this at ease since his appointment to the Council.

-_-

It was going to take forever to clean up the good half of the temple that had gotten doused in the paint war, but Mace couldn’t help but think—Shaak Ti and Yoda bickering beside him and discussing the need to ban paint from the premises for the next decade and Initiate Luminara and Initiate Obi-Wan cheerfully discussing how to get Padawan Vos back for turning traitor and dumping a bucket of paint on them—it had been worth it. 

Even if it would take him an extra few years to solidify his serious persona, the bright side, was that in the aftermath it was unlikely that the general chaos of the past day would be pinned on him, after all, all of the Councillors had gotten involved at some point, and Yoda had been the one to cackle the loudest, everyone would clearly suspect Yoda was behind it all.

-_-

Depa smiled at him as she wiped the green paint from her face. “Really Master? Isn’t revenge not the Jedi way?”

“It isn’t,” Mace agreed. He gave his former padawan a fond smile, putting down the empty bucket he’d used to douse her in paint. “But remembering to embrace life is. That’s why you set those three troublemakers on me, wasn’t it?”

Depa smiled. “Technically I only got the initiates in on my plan, they brought in padawan Vos. But I was worried about you. You’ve been stressed.”

“The paint to the face certainly helped with the stress.” He doubted the robes he’d been wearing yesterday would ever be fully clean again. They weren’t even colorful, which might have been fun, instead the paint had all mixed into an interesting not-quite-blackish color. “And the systematic dousing of the rest of my fellow councillors in paint certainly helped as well. Thank you.”

“Yes. I heard about Master Mundi getting doused in paint and locked myself in my rooms to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.” She waved to her face and the green paint that she’d missed in her first attempt to wipe it off. “Didn’t quite work.”

Mace gave her a reproving look. “Did you think it would?”