FicWad

The visage he shows to the crowds is that of an extremely dignified yet kindly old man, one of middling height and average build, with strong, noble features - most noticeably a cleft chin and patrician nose - a reassuring smile that effortlessly conveys wisdom and understanding, extremely brilliant blue eyes that are both warm and penetrating, regal silver-gilt hair that until recently still showed signs of its once vibrant red hue but is now rapidly turning pure white, and a cultured, soothing voice. He is an unbelievably intelligent and charismatic man who somehow manages to strike most of the people who meet him and who know him as modest, unassuming, pleasant, caring, grandfatherly, and, thus, both extremely likeable and eminently respected. This man is known the galaxy over as Palpatine of Naboo, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, and he is - with the exception of those of his own government of independent, purely democratic ideals, those of the Jedi Order who are increasingly uneasy of his rapidly burgeoning power, and those very few individuals who are aware of a part of the actual truth of his soul - most often regarded, even by the Separatists who oppose his government, with an admiration that approaches outright awe. As he circles the Great Rotunda, moving with ease among the Senators and aides and well-wishers who have come to see for themselves that he has indeed been safely returned to Coruscant and the people of the Republic after his harrowing kidnaping, his once richly elegant but now both slightly singed and tattered robes bear mute but powerful witness to the hardships he has recently personally weathered, all in the name of the democracy and Republic he heads and so often passionately speaks of loving and desiring to protect and secure, whatever the costs or the risks. His bravery, as he moves among the crowd, taking the time to speak to individuals, to reinforce a message of hope, lifts the hearts and spirits of almost all of the beings who are there, in that room, and those who are watching, on the HoloNet.

But if one were but to scratch the surface of Chancellor Palpatine, the result would be the unveiling of a monster so evil, so cold, so tyrannically selfish, so utterly psychopathic and yet also so chillingly, manipulatively brilliant, that it would stun most of the galaxy senseless.

Beneath the façade of this kindly, charismatic, courageous elderly dignitary is the darkly brilliant mind and ravenously power-hungry soul of a Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious.

And Lord Sidious is in the grips of a towering fury.

One moment of inattention. One. That is all. That is all it has taken to disrupt years of carefully laid and executed traps within plots within plans, and he is so enraged that a constant haze of red threatens to wash his vision the color of blood.

Right now, that meddlesome do-gooder whelp of a Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, ought to be dead and dealt with. That ridiculous washout of a Jedi Master and flawed and failed Sith Lord, Count Dooku of Serenno and Lord Tyranus, should be safely, provably deceased. And that mechanized animal, General Grievous, should have been put down, once and for all. One solitary Force-be-damned moment of inattention, one single colossal attempt to focus all of his considerable power to the task of overpowering the last of Anakin Skywalker's defenses and swaying the boy's body into obeying his command, and now Kenobi is alive and well, Grievous is presumably still at large, having almost managed to kill Sidious out of his own ignorance and inability to follow orders, and as for Dooku . . . the Force alone knows just what it was that he managed to do, to vanish so utterly from out of the path of the killing blows that should have struck the head from his body, sai cha. It is a good thing that Kenobi chose to return to the Jedi Temple, rather than accompany young Skywalker here, with him, to address the HoloNet crews. He has had many years of practice at protecting himself, hiding the truth of his identity and his intentions, his emotions, behind shields so impenetrable, Force-suggestions so deceptive and so near to being impossible to detect or to resist, so that none can perceive the truth of his nature, unless he first wills it. Yet, at the moment, he finds that he is surprisingly hard-pressed to maintain the mask that has long since become so effortless that there are times now when he honestly believes himself to be only Palpatine, forgetting that he is anything other than the proclaimed savior and political authority of the Galactic Republic, the single most important and powerful being in the known galaxy.

His Master would laugh at him now, were the old fool still living. He had always been of the opinion that Sidious wanted too much for too little, that he was careless of his purpose, as a Sith, that he took too many risks, remained too much within the light - seeking after the praise and privilege that comes only from the approbation of the weak-minded or the insignificant, the pawns and the cannon-fodder of those with imagination and will enough to seek and to seize true power - for a creature of the Dark. He used to chide Sidious about these things, not only warning him against seeking too much attention - and therefore unnecessarily risking the exposure of his true nature - in his false, secondary life, but also reminding him, time and again, that becoming too familiar, too comfortable, with that second, shadowy life could damage his Dark core and weaken his power, perhaps even ultimately providing another with the means by which to break him, to bring him down. Unnecessary distractions, his Master had called them. Short-sighted old fool! Plagueis had been so caught up in himself, in deepening and refining the depths of his own darkness - endlessly preoccupied in searching out lost knowledge, forgotten powers and secrets to increase his own personal power base, through meticulously researched and rigorously tested careful, cold experimentations - that he had never truly understood how much power there really was to be gained or how great a potential for influence and control actually rested in and through the adept, thorough manipulation of others, the gaining of the love and faith - and therefore the unswerving loyalty - of just such pawns as the ordinary masses.

While it is true that the first rule of the Sith has always been that treachery is the way of the Dark Side, and the only absolute truth that all Sith hold to is that the Dark Side is the only path to real, absolute power, Sidious personally believes that Darth Plagueis lived his life with such a close and limited focused around seeking more power through greater knowledge of the Dark Side that, in effect, he dismissed the first rule of the Sith and ignored the true nature of the power of the Dark Side. Treachery, after all, comes in many shapes and sizes, in all walks and venues of life, not just in the pursuit of more and greater Dark Side powers. Is it not, therefore, foolish indeed to exclude so many of the myriad possibilities for treachery, by limiting oneself to a life primarily lived only within study, unknown and unrecognized by the vast majority of the living? The answer, to Sidious, has always been obvious. The attention and approbation of the masses not only increases his personal power, it strengthens the fundamentally Dark nature of his true being by challenging and refining his ability to deal in treachery and to give betrayal and still be adored and cheered by the masses. Sidious understands what Plagueis never could, and it is only right, after all, that he should, since he is Plagueis's successor and supplanter. He was able to defeat his Master and drain him of his energy and his life, when the time came, because his understanding of and capacity for treachery surpassed his Master's. It is only fitting that he should be more powerful than Plagueis, both in his true life, as a Sith, and in his false one, as the politician from Naboo. Politicians are, after all, the one breed of animal that naturally seeks power and praise through manipulation and treachery. The more false they are, the more cleverly and completely they deal in betrayal, the greater their power grows and the greater the devotion - the outright fanaticism, even - of the foolish pawns under their sway becomes.

It is all but expected, that he should behave as a pale and secularized version of a Sith, in the role he plays, when he puts on the trappings of his false, secondary life. Even if Sidious does occasionally lose sight of himself when reacting, as the politician, to the moments of his greatest personal triumphs, as a - no, as the Dark Lord of the Sith, then why should he beware? What has he to truly worry for? At the most basic of levels, the politician can only serve to strengthen the Sith, for it is not possible for such innate treachery to undermine the darkness, the Dark quality, of his being. The neatness of it pleases him. Sidious prefers to deal in darkness, to remain within the bounds of the Dark, as much he can, in all aspects of his life, even those that are false. It also amuses him, when he truly takes the time to thinks about it. The endless gullibility and outright foolishness of the vast majority of so-called sentient, intelligent beings never fails to delight him. People are, in the main, just so Darkness-be-blessed stupid! /Given the right motivation or when properly manipulated, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Most beings are so ignorant and so lazy that they will either unquestioningly accept or else actively believe in a lie simply because it's easier for them or because they want to believe that it's true - if, that is, they're not simply afraid that it's true, in which case most of them will automatically assume that it is true simply because they believe that since they have the wits to fear that something is so, then that, of course, means that it /must be true.

Through the mind and senses or emotions alone, thinking beings will generally anticipate bits and pieces of reality to come, and those assumptions oftentimes end up being mistakenly taken for the whole of reality, out of either simple ignorance or laziness - when, that is, they're not being deliberately taken for reality simply because the supposed truth of those assumptions is preferable to or easier than the alternative. Mere consciousness and logic alone simply are not reliable standards with which to view the universe. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. And as for consciousness, well . . . most beings view the universe through a transparent grid of assumptions, oftentimes under the self-perpetuating delusion that their individual grid is the whole of the universe. The universe is so vast and the truths that it offers are so harsh and varied that most sentient beings, rather than taking the time or expending the effort to make an attempt to truly grasp the complexities of the universe, simply impose a framework of their own beliefs and notions - most of which are entirely arbitrary and even untrue - over that larger universe and then call that artificial construct "reality," even though the whole thing is quite often entirely independent of what the senses report and is oftentimes also completely independent of what actually is. Nothing is ever simply as it seems or as it is named. Reality, like life, is merely a succession of appearance: the face that every individual, every object, turns towards the world is no more and no less than the artificial construct of a mask, an enigma translated into the easily grasped - and patently shallow, if not outright false - terms of a symbolic signifier.

Like the Sith, politicians in general have long been aware of the fact that, while symbolic forms have always been the supports of civilizations, their laws and their moralities, they are not true, they are not reality. As soon as a thing is named, is labeled, its essence is limited, if not lost entirely, for nothing is limited to its name, any more than intelligent beings are limited to the carefully constructed masks of the faces they turn towards the watchful and judgmental light of day. Since symbolic forms are illusions, and illusions sustain civilization, though, those who rule must always maintain the illusions that support their societies, regardless of the presence or lack of the "truth" to be found in those supports. Thus, the effective use of symbolism is a key to power with razored edges, for it is symbolic uncertainty alone that provides the impetus that drives the destruction of all sufficiently weak or unprotected civilizations. When the people lose faith in their comfortable and comforting illusions, they self-destruct until they tear their world or their worlds, their overall reality, apart with them. Reality, the so-called "objective" universe, is, at its core, absolutely unreal. There is no such thing as "truth," for the very term requires both conformity with physical verifiable reality and adherence to the underlying belief system of the individual "truth-seeker." And belief systems, by their very definition, place faith in the unknowable above factual verification, while facts stand independent of faith.

Yet, because it is impossible to go searching for a cause without, in the process, creating an immediate result, when a great enough number of truths (truth being easily mistaken for fact) are combined into an assemblage of verifiables, the result is that their illusion becomes reality. And when an observer truly believes in an illusion, then that illusion becomes real, it becomes reality, to and for that person. Intelligent beings tend to presume that all questions have concrete, discoverable, and easily categorized answers, while the reality is that the universe does not address such presumption. The universe has no destination, other than the darkness of eventual entrophic decay. Reality offers no deception and no encouragement; it is intelligence that creates both. Intelligent beings all believe in self-uniqueness: snowflakes are equally unique - and equally common, equally expendable as they are needed for some use and renewable or attainable elsewhere, afterwards. Those who believe in a single overriding "truth" and pursue it actively, wholeheartedly, are inevitably either disappointed or delusional or both. However, those who can be made to believe in a cause, a purpose, a higher destiny, a greater fate, one seemingly tailored specifically to each unique individual . . . Such belief can be a powerful excuse for certain inactions or an overriding rationale for specifically directed (and oftentimes overwhelmingly violent and self-centered) actions. It is, for example, ridiculously easy to trick an intelligent being into believing that studying the physics of light is the same thing as pursuing illumination. Thus, over the years, Sidious has consistently found that ideas and assumptions - most especially beliefs - have the potential to be the deadliest of weapons, purpose is the strongest impetus for murder and war, and misguided or otherwise subverted good intentions make the most destructive arsenal of all. And all of these things thrive on and foster treachery.

Of course, the easiest and surest way to deceive someone into believing a lie of any sort - no matter how big or small - is to manipulate that being until he or she or it is afraid that the lie, whatever it might be, is true, since fear of a supposition being true almost inevitably leads to accepting that it is. After all, logically, one cannot fear that something is true without first accepting the possibility that it may very well be true. Thus, for most beings, accepting a possibility - any possibility - is the first step towards believing in it utterly, since the majority lacks the motivation - if not the intelligence - to question. For those beings who don't question - including those who either don't know how to question, or what to question, or who may not even know that they should be questioning things, including those who simply can't be bothered to expend the effort or run the risk of questioning things - it is all but effortlessly easy to simply believe in whatever those who are either seen as being in charge, in positions of power and authority, or else as deserving of being in charge, because of the respect and admiration of the masses, simply say is true. Hence, the brains of most supposedly intelligent beings are chock-full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, the greatest part of which is entirely false, and yet still they persist in believing that it is all true. Therefore, the vast majority of people are - thank the Force! - so incredibly stupid that they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and a truth.

More importantly, though, because most of them are, nonetheless, quite confident that they can tell the difference between the two, they are not only even easier still to fool, they are also more inclined to act on their beliefs, in defense of or in reaction to the things that they are told and that they believe to be true. For most, it's not even the actual truth that's the important thing: it's the purpose or the cause that they build up around what they believe. Sentient beings inevitably need struggle, need barriers, need difficulties or, even better, an outright and easily defined enemy, to direct all their efforts and attention towards in order to gain a true sense of purpose for their otherwise meaningless little ordinary lives. It's easy to lead and even easier to deceive people when they have such a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than truth. In fact, truth really has no bearing in it at all. Real truth is hard to sell. It gives no sense of purpose: it is merely truth. By avoiding the truth and providing the masses with a visible and highly convenient enemy with no apparent ties to him, Sidious has, through his alter ego, given those masses both a sense of purpose and a cause. By giving them a strong enough sense of purpose, he has manipulated them to the point whereby they will do anything they are told to do, believe everything they are told, follow his guidance willingly and gratefully into the fires and tortures of hell, and be perfectly willing to do anything and everything - to sacrifice anything that might be asked of them or to commit any and every atrocity imaginable - just to prove that they are indeed worthy enough of simply remaining there, striving to fulfill his will, in pursuit of the purpose that he has given them. Moreover, they love him for it and will continue to love him for it, for giving them that purpose and presenting them with the honor of his trust by allowing them to suffer and strive and sacrifice and die, in his name, in honor of his purpose, his cause, the whole entire time.

In giving a people purpose - and this holds true whether dealing with only a small, local group or the entire collective presence of a galactic-wide alliance - if done correctly, the masses will strive amongst themselves, viciously, for the honor of giving the most, sacrificing the most, suffering the most, dying the most quickly, the most horribly. After all, the vast majority of all supposedly intelligent beings are actually quite stupid: they want to believe, and so they do; they want a sense of purpose, so they will actively help to build one up around whatever "truth" has been handed down to them; and since they need adversity, need adversaries, to retain that sense of purpose for their meaningless little lives, they will fight to the death to protect the accepted sanctity of the truth of their belief (or beliefs) and to ensure the eventual successful fulfillment of their purpose with all the fervor and zeal of true fanatics. And never mind how ultimately false their belief(s), how hollow their purpose, might actually be. They will not question that which has come to be the bedrock of their lives, not on their own, not willingly. True fanatics refuse to ask questions. Questions are their enemies, for every question they might ask would potentially shatter the underpinnings of their lives, destroying the meaning they have accepted for their lives. It takes quite a bit of blood and effort to budge, much less to break, the masses from their false beliefs, their hollow purposes, once they have embraced them. After all, what kind of rational being would willingly surrender the meaning, the greater purpose, or the known and understood (and therefore comfortable and comforting, in the absence of questions) beliefs from its life? No one would. Not easily.

That's why the people of the Galactic Republic have followed him, as the beloved and highly respected politician from Naboo, into this war. It's also why they will keep on believing in the war effort and persist in fighting, for however long he continues to tell him they must and against whomever he happens to tell them is their enemy. And that is why it is his fate - no, his right - both to finally win revenge for the Sith against the Light-loving, mealy-mouthed Jedi and their disgustingly democratic and fairly ordered Republic and to obtain the Sith order's ultimate goal of total domination, of absolute and uncheckable power, over the entire galaxy. Force take it, it is his right! It is well within his power, now, well within his reach. Both goals are, the one coming to be just as soon as the other one completes the utter destruction of the Jedi Order. He has been planning this for decades, for the vast majority of his life. How dare Dooku betray him by failing him so spectacularly! How dare /Kenobi continue to defy his will and ruin his plans so thoroughly! Force take it all, Anakin Skywalker is /his! The boy is rightfully his! He should be his, entirely /his, and he /so would be wholly his, by now, mind and body and soul, if it were not for that thrice-blast and may the Dark devour him whole Kenobi! By Force, it is ridiculous, how difficult it is proving to be to kill this one insignificant little Jedi Master! Just what /is /it about Kenobi, anyway? By all rights, the man should have been killed, dozens of times over, just since the escalation of the war and the expansion of the Outer Rim Sieges this past year!

For pity's sake, the man is apparently so careless of his life that he wastes his energy on frivolous things like harmless Force-powered light displays! For the life of him, he simply can not /understand how Kenobi keeps managing to elude death. Nevertheless, though, Obi-Wan Kenobi has swiftly become the bane of Sidious' existence, and he is now determined to utterly destroy the man, soon, /personally, if he has too. He will not continue to suffer the way Kenobi stands between him and Anakin Skywalker. The Skywalker boy, the ex-slave from Tatooine and proclaimed Chosen One of Jedi prophecies, will be his next apprentice, or he will die. Anakin's raw potential for power within the Force is far too great - greater even than the Sith Lord's own, impossible though it may seem, given that Sidious is the sum total of all the dark energies that once resided at the cores of all the Dark Lords of the Sith who have preceded him, directly along the line of ascendence, descending from Xendor himself to Sidious - and the boy is far too potentially dangerous for him and his plans to allow anything else. The situation has continued to remain unresolved for far too long as it is. Kenobi has got to go. Anakin will be his, once the boy's former Master has been dealt with. If only that incompetent had killed Kenobi, as planned, as he had been ordered to, before he had goaded Anakin into such a rage that the boy had defeated him! He will never again think of Dooku as Tyranus. The man obviously was never truly worthy of a Sith Lord's title.

Only the constant silent repetition of the Sith Code - Peace is a lie: there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. /- gives him sufficient focus to allow him to calmly maintain his guise, as the wise and kindly old Chancellor Palpatine. It is entirely astonishing - and therefore wholly unacceptable. He had truly thought that he was years beyond the kind of greedy impatience and unbridled fury that could truly endanger both his disguise and the achievability of the final goal of his ultimate plan - right up until the moment when he nearly loses control. That it is Obi-Wan Kenobi who disproves this belief only serves to reinforce the fact that the Jedi Master must be dealt with, once and for all, as soon as possible. Just the mere fact of Kenobi's continued existence gives Anakin Skywalker enough strength and moral fortitude to keep resisting his wiles, while his continued presence as the boy's Force-partner somehow manages - though the Sith Lord /still cannot, for the life of him, come up with a viable reason to explain how he does it. The young Jedi Master is supposed to be of only average power (though more and more seriously Sidious finds himself doubting the validity of this claim), and yet somehow he still continually hampers Sidious' access to Skywalker's mind, even when Kenobi is injured and unconscious. If Skywalker were not so obviously powerful and Kenobi were not quite so unshakeably good, Sidious would have snatched Kenobi up as his apprentice years ago, just to discover how and from where he manages to draw on such strength - to shield the boy just enough to protect Skywalker from falling entirely prey to the Sith Lord's power, no matter how strongly he draws upon the Force.

Regardless of how he does it or how impossible it ought to be for him to do it, though, the fact remains that Kenobi still somehow continues to protect Skywalker, to shield him, so that no matter what Sidious does, irregardless of how much meticulously prepared influence or raw power he brings to bear upon the boy, Skywalker somehow always manages to avoid giving in to him completely. As soon as Sidious first became aware of Anakin Skywalker as both a growing power - a vergence within the Force and no doubt about it - and the likely fulfillment of the Jedi prophecies of the Chosen One, he had starting working on boy, gaining the ex-slave's affection and trust even as he had unobtrusively broken his way into the young one's mind, carefully laying the groundwork that by all rights should have long since handed Sidious the keys to Anakin Skywalker's soul. Yet, even then, even though Kenobi and Skywalker had been a new and somewhat uncertain Master-Padawan pair and both of them had been suffering from the loss of Qui-Gon Jinn, Kenobi had already had such a strong presence in the boy's mind - anchoring Skywalker in Kenobi's calm, in Kenobi's love of the light, of the Light Side of the Force, and shielding him from tampering behind barriers apparently of Kenobi and Skywalker's making, together, out of their mutual trust and dependance upon one another - that it had been extremely difficult to do much more than weaken Skywalker's will and gradually cloud his reasoning by implanting certain behavioral compulsions, burying them deeply, securely, within the boy's mind for later use.

Having been forced by Kenobi's constant meddling to resort to other methods by which to gain influence and power over the boy, Sidious has been ever so carefully increasing his control over Skywalker - mostly by simply feeding the boy's ego and convincing him that Sidious' alter ego is the boy's most loving and loyal partisan, bar none (not all that difficult a task, given the way most of those Jedi fools treat the boy) - ever since the Jedi Order first began sending Anakin and Obi-Wan out on missions. And he has also gradually been strengthening his hold over the boy's will since the Clone Wars began and he made the decision to make Anakin his next apprentice, working his hooks deeper into the boy's mind with every visit that the trusting little fool pays his public persona. Yet, despite all of his work and all of his careful planning, even when he had managed to usurp control of the boy's body to make him strike what should have been a killing blow against Dooku, because Dooku had not managed to kill Kenobi, Anakin had managed to retain enough power to resist him and enough strength to regain control over himself the very first moment Sidious' focused attention upon him had wavered. Thus, Sidious is now utterly convinced that, until Kenobi is gone and Skywalker can be made to give in to him completely - not only willingly but knowingly, aware of who and what Sidious really is - Anakin will never truly be his. And he is determined to have Anakin. So Obi-Wan Kenobi must go. That, now, must and will be his new priority, above all other things.

Once he has made this decision, Sidious finds that his impatience and fury with Kenobi and the shredding of his magnificent plans subsiding to more easily manageable levels. And so he smiles, even more widely than before, and almost effortlessly manages to resists interrupting Anakin Skywalker's ridiculously loving account of how Obi-Wan Kenobi managed to make the rescue of the kidnaped Chancellor possible.

He can afford to be generous, in this one instance, and overlook the boy's continued, unacceptable compassion, at least for the moment.

After all, he is the Dark Lord of the Sith. He is the one living Master of the Dark Side of the Force. In a very real way, he is not only a living vessel but also a personification of the Dark.

And the Dark, like all darkness, is generous, as he very well knows.

Its first gift is concealment: as is so with all beings, his true face lies in the darkness beneath his skin (the face he presents to the world being an even more artificial construct than the mask that most individuals adopt as their faces) while his true heart remains cloaked in shadows even deeper still. More importantly, though, the greatest aspect of the gift of concealment lies not in the ability of the darkness to simply protect a given individual's secret truths, but rather in hiding from such individuals the truths of others. Darkness always protects beings from that which they dare not know.

The second gift of generous darkness is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace; the beauty and the allure that imagination brings to what would repel in day's harsh light. The greatest of all its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it is day, it is the light, that is temporary. Day is the illusion. Darkness is the true face of reality.

The third and final gift of darkness is that of the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the darkness embraces the light, the Dark allows the Light to exist, bringing it forth from the center, the core, of its own being. Without darkness, without the Dark, there would be no light. Light would have no meaning, then, for it would not even exist.

With each triumph of light, every victory of the Light, it is the Dark, it is darkness itself, that truly wins.

He is as certain of this, and of the infinite patience of the Dark, as he is sure that darkness always eventually, inevitably, wins.

After all, eventually even stars will burn out. Ultimately, all light, all of the Light, dies.

All he needs to do is continue to remain patient, and the light of the combined star of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker will consume itself. And then, at last, he and the Dark will finally win. It is unavoidable.

It is destiny. /His/ destiny. The destiny of his people, of the Sith, of the Dark Side, the darkness. The Jedi will fall; the light of day will end as darkness falls upon the Republic; the light shall perish, utterly; and, at long last, even the Light itself shall die.

Only he, the avatar of darkness, the everlasting and eternal personification of the Dark, will remain.

It is only a matter of time. And patience. Obi-Wan Kenobi will not stop him. He will not survive the dying of that twinned star. And, with Anakin Skywalker finally at his side - where the boy rightfully belongs/, given his power - none shall be able to prevail against him. Soon, now, very soon, their light shall die and the Republic, the galaxy, the /universe, shall be his and his alone. And he will bring order out of chaos and crush all who attempt to stand against him.

And so Sidious smiles, remembering with pleasure the perfection of order that always accompanies the still, silent absence of life that ultimately is the sole inheritor of and dweller within the wreckage that he inevitably always makes of those who attempt to stand against him. Already, the Sith Lord has destroyed countless beings upon many, many worlds. His memory, his mind, is bottomless, unending. Below memory itself there is only more darkness - the emptiness that interpenetrates and encloses the tangled neural pathways threading the synapses of his brain - the same absolute emptiness of the void that yaws between atoms and galaxies alike. Without it, without the void and the darkness, nothing - not light, not the Light, and certainly not life - could exist. Yet, with it, the perfection of utter order is lost to the chaos and the mockery that is existence as a living being of flesh. Still, with it, there is also that final path to complete control, to absolute power, to enough power to bring order out of the midst of chaos and still it to his will, for within the embrace of the Dark there lies secret pathways to the ultimate power source and order-orientating energy of the Force. Through that darkness, through the power of the Dark and the death of the chaos that is uncontrolled and uncontrollable life, Sidious will triumph, as he has already triumphed so many innumerable times before. In the end, Obi-Wan Kenobi will doubtlessly prove to be no different than any of the other insignificant little lives he has snuffed out, swallowing up the light of their fire within his darkness. It is entirely inconceivable that anything else might ever be so. Soon, he will have his revenge, and then the Dark will have its final triumph.

Soon.

***

Anakin Skywalker throws himself so thoroughly, so enthusiastically, into his role as the designated Jedi "poster man" and storyteller extraordinary for the HoloNet crews - and, by extension, his own self-designated role as the official lauder of all of Obi-Wan Kenobi's many glorious deeds - that he is soon so caught up in his own remembrances that he fails to notice it, when the Chancellor first looks startled and then discomforted by (even to the point of actually being unhappy with) Anakin's lengthy recitation regarding the events leading up to his and Obi-Wan's rescue of Palpatine from Grievous and Dooku. His memories of the mission to Cato Neimoidia - especially the tail end of that mission - easily capture far too much of Anakin's attention for him to have any left to spare for Palpatine. Even though he is still disappointed at having lost the Trade Federation Viceroy, Nute Gunray - his anger having lessened considerably since Dooku's defeat and what Anakin frankly believes to be the end of the Separatist alliance, although he would rather have to tell Obi-Wan that he has lost his lightsaber, yet again, than have to admit that he agrees with Master Windu - Anakin is particularly tickled by the memory he has of finding Obi-Wan in that room with the jammed sliding doors on Cato Neimoidia, where his former Master had valiantly defended Commander Cody and Squad Seven against the battle droids and droidekas that had them all pinned.

For all of their reliance on droids, for all of their infatuation with high technology, for all of their seemingly inborn cowardice and greed and guile, the Neimoidians nevertheless have a soft spot for their youth - their seven formative years as grubs, struggling for limited food in communal hives, discovering early on the benefits of duplicity and not only self-centeredness but also outright selfishness. The fungus foodstuff of those early years is as dear to them as adults as it had been to them as hatchlings, and no wonder, since it is the same fungus that has found favor with many different species scattered all throughout the galaxy, a fact that largely accounts for the way in which the Neimoidians have evolved into a wealthy, spacefaring society, with ships enough to attract the eye of the notorious Trade Federation and, ultimately, droids enough to equal an army, after essentially taking over the Trade Federation. The fungus - prized for its medicinal as well as nutritional value - is grown in the dank conditions encouraged within the burrows and grottoes of nest mounds with the work of laborer beetles, harvester beetles, droid overseers, conveyors, and other droids devoted to sorting and transportation. In the deep recesses of these nest mounds, untouched by sunlight or starlight, the starter fungi - molds, mildews, and sickly white mushrooms - undergo treatments with natural and synthetic growth-acceleration agents. Higher up, in what constitutes the basements of such citadels, the matured end product is either consumed by grubs or else packed and readied for shipment. Although the area in between these two spaces is mostly used for storage of other items - the thousands of hoarded treasures of the adult residents of each particular nest - because the fully matured product is regularly transported up within the structure, there is always the chance of encountering free-floating spores - spores that are known to have adverse effects on humans and humanoids, effects that are essentially disorienting and dislocating in nature.

Towards the end of the Republic campaign to seize the Trade Federation's purse worlds (Deko, Koru, and Cato Neimoidia) and the Neimoidian homeworld itself (Neimodia), Viceroy Nute Gunray and his entourage had slipped into Cato Neimoidia, intent on looting the citadel before it fell and retrieving the Viceroy's most prized personal possessions before they could fall into the hands of the Republic. Since the citadel was built on top of a functional nest mound and the Jedi Order and Republic government both wanted to have the Viceroy taken alive, it was decided that Anakin, Obi-Wan, and some of the clone troopers under their command would infiltrate the structure through the nest. The plan was to secretly get into the underground fungus farm levels with the harvesters, quietly work their way up through the processing and shipping areas to the hatcheries, and then split their forces so that Obi-Wan and Commander Cody remained behind with Squad Seven to draw away the droids while Anakin and another partial squad of clone troopers infiltrated the upper reaches and went after the Neimoidians. Although extremely risky, with only two Jedi, because this plan nevertheless stood the best chance of succeeding, Anakin had parted ways with Obi-Wan and Squad Seven soon after the droidekas had begun deploying against them. Unfortunately, an iris-hatch blast door between the far end of the final corridor and the launching bay the Neimoidians were using had prevented Anakin from reaching Gunray and his lackeys before their /Sheathipede/-class transport shuttle could take off. Afterwards, Anakin had received urgent word from Commander Cody that he and "General Kenobi" were pinned down on level one, in the shipping area, so he had hurried off to go rescue them.

Alerted by the clone commandos that the air was saturated with spores, Anakin had his rebreather safely in his mouth as he approached the room in which Obi-Wan had apparently held his own against what appeared to be the remains of about twenty super battle droids and almost forty droidekas or destroyer droids - rapid-deployment killing machines that number among the most deadly effective weapons of the Separatists, due to a combination of sheer momentum and sequenced microrepulsors that allows the bronzium-armored droids to roll swiftly into battle, like balls, and then unfurl in the time it takes to blink into tripodal gunfighters, shielded by individual deflectors and armed with paired, twin-barreled, high-output blasters. Due to the fact that their shields are powerful enough to resist lightsabers, blasters, and even light artillery bolts, the only proven strategy for dealing with droidekas is simply to run from them - especially since surrender is never an option. However, somehow or another, even while drugged half out of his mind on stray spores - since Obi-Wan had lost his rebreather earlier in the engagement, right before they had split up, when he'd had to leap past a tangle of falling clones to catch and deflect part of a sudden volley of blaster bolts that had managed to get past Anakin's aggressive defense - Obi-Wan Kenobi, half of the pair of Jedi commanders that the clones sometimes reverently refer to as the Warrior of the Infinite, had nonetheless wrecked havoc on both the super battle droids and the far more deadly destroyer droids. In fact, a weaving, shuffling, staggering Obi-Wan had just been dealing with the last of the droidekas when Anakin had gone charging into the room.

As the final droid collapsed, Obi-Wan had aimed the blue blade of his lightsaber casually towards the floor and stood swaying in place like a willow in a gale, breathing hard and obviously heated enough from his exertions for his face to be slightly flushed and yet still nevertheless sporting a grin so wide that it was almost a smirk. "Anakin!" he'd cried happily, expansively, as his former Padawan abruptly dropped out of a flat run to cast a startled look around the room. "How are you?"

Anakin had loped over to his distinctly wobbling former Master, and, as soon as he'd reached him, Obi-Wan had promptly collapsed into his arms. Movements carefully precise, so as to mask his concern, Anakin had deactivated Obi-Wan's still humming blade, reattached the lightsaber to Obi-Wan's belt, and then inserted a rebreather into Obi-Wan's slightly slack mouth - the same small, twin-tanked rebreather that Anakin had discovered and retrieved from the floor of the grotto where it had fallen, earlier (accidentally knocked loose by Obi-Wan's leap to help block Anakin and the others from blaster fire), on his way down to Obi-Wan. Then, carefully lifting and cradling Obi-Wan's shockingly light form so that he could carry him more easily out of the room, Anakin had retreated back to where Cody and several other commandos were waiting, some with their helmets already removed.

"General Kenobi?" Cody had immediately demanded, forehead creased in concern.

Cody was carrying a short-stocked DC-15 blaster rifle and wore the white armor - currently sans its imaging system helmet, which he had tucked safely under his left arm - that had come to symbolize the Grand Army of the Republic relatively early on in the war. A first generation clone grown, nurtured, and taught on the remote world of Kamino, just three short years earlier Cody had been designated only by the identification number of CC-2224, nothing more than one of the many hundreds of thousands of nameless and essentially identical clones being trained up for eventual use by a Republic that hadn't even known he or his brethren existed yet. At that precise moment, though, the whiteness of his once pristine armor had only shown in small patches, in areas where there were no smears of mud or dried blood, no gouges, abrasions, or charred patches there to hide or otherwise mar its glossy surface. Cody's position as the leader of the 2,304 strong regiment of clone troopers known as the 212th Attack Battalion - now a regular part of the ground troops of the Open Circle Armada, since Commander Cody's actions in other Outer Rim sieges had so thoroughly captured the attention of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he'd specifically requested Cody's battalion when he and Anakin first received the mission to take the Trade Federation's new (well, new in the sense that the Neimoidians had fairly recently essentially taken the Trade Federation over) home planet of Cato Neimoidia, and that operation went well enough, overall, that the entire battalion (or what was left of it, anyway) had been permanently assigned to the Open Circle Armada's ground forces - had been designated by bright orange markings on his helmet crest and shoulder guards, while his upper right arm bore stripes signifying the campaigns in which he had participated - Aagonar, Praesitlyn, Paracelus Minor, Antar 4, Tibrin, Skor II, and dozens of other such worlds from the Core to the Outer Rim.

Over the course of the war, Obi-Wan - and, therefore, Anakin - has formed close, strong battlefield partnerships with several Advanced Recon Commandos, including Jangotat, who fought valiantly under Obi-Wan's command on Ord Cestus, and Alpha, the first ARC trooper to so distinguish himself that he had been given a name to distinguish him from his brethren and the clone with whom Obi-Wan had escaped from imprisonment, by Asajj Ventress, on Rattatak. Anakin makes a special point to keep up with Alpha, despite the fact that the ARC trooper has, since his harrowing escape from Rattatak, been relocated to the classrooms on Kamino, helping to train the next generations of commandos. Since it's unlikely that he'll be able to return the favor and help save Alpha's life any time in the near future, Anakin feels like sending the clone an occasional letter, briefing him on the progress of the war as he sees it and informing him of the continued bravery and increased ingenuity of the clone troopers - some of which Alpha has taught - is the absolute least he can do, given Alpha's part in the escape from Rattatak. (Despite what Obi-Wan says about Ventress' purposes for having him kidnaped and tortured, Anakin is not at all sure that she wouldn't have eventually killed his Master, rather than simply give him up to Dooku once she had finished trying to break him.) From what Anakin understands, the other clones give Alpha their undivided attention and unwavering respect, in part because of his well-known ties to both Obi-Wan and Anakin - ties that had helped Alpha begin implementing the program responsible for giving the clone troopers, especially the ARCs, names, not just identification numbers, after his assignment to Kamino.

Unlike the latter generations of troopers, the early-generation ARCs (like Alpha) had, of course, received extensive specialized training from Jango Fett, the Mandalorian clone template himself. Although the obsessively orderly and controlling Kaminoans methodically bred most of the bounty hunter's individual characteristics out of the clones, giving the average clone troopers an extremely diminished aptitude for independence and a strong tendency towards utter loyalty and complete obedience to known figures of authority, they had been more selective about their genetic tampering in the case of the ARCs. Due to this lessened amount of interference, ARCs display more individual initiative, increased creativity and intelligence, and stronger leadership abilities - hence, the ability of conscientious Jedi commanders (like Obi-Wan and Anakin) to fairly easily form working battlefield partnerships with ARC clones. Essentially, ARCs are more like the late bounty hunter himself, which is to say that they are naturally more human in outlook and behavior. Although Commander Cody isn't genetically an Advanced Recon Commando, the Kaminoans had recorded a slight but noticeable deviance in his biochemistry during his growth. As a result of that anomaly, Cody has always displayed several of the same characteristics as the ARCs. Because of those characteristics, he has also received ARC training, which has, in turn, reinforced the many ARC attributes in his personality (hence, his presence on the force gathered to assist with the Cato Neimoidia mission).

In the initial stages of the war, all of the clones had been treated the same way - which is to say that they were essentially treated no differently from the war machines they piloted and the weapons they fired. To many, the clone troopers had much more in common with the battle droids poured out by the tens of thousands from Baktoid Armor Workshops on a host of Separatist-held worlds than they did with the individual citizens whose lives and freedoms they were fighting and dying to protect. However, attitudes had begun to shift as more and more troopers died heroic, uncomplaining deaths. The unfailing, unswerving dedication of the clones to the Galactic Republic, especially to their Jedi commanders, showed them to be true comrades in arms, ones who were deserving of all the respect and compassion that they were now - after three years of warfare - much more regularly being afforded. Although it had been the Jedi themselves, with the addition of a few other dedicated progressive individuals in the Republic, who had urged that all second- and third-generation troopers - not just the highly distinguished ARCs and other clone commanders - be given names rather than numbers, to foster a growing sense of that fellowship, the notion was received and embraced with enthusiasm by the people of the Republic.

Obi-Wan and Anakin have been and are still champions of that movement, having gifted many a clone commander and clone trooper with an appropriate nickname over the course of the war - Obi-Wan because he believes that it is morally wrong to treat living, sentient beings as if they were machines and therefore flatly refuses to do so, and Anakin because he doesn't believe that it's right to treat any one or any thing - organic or otherwise - capable of reason as if it were no more than an object to be owned and used by others. Thus, the clones - knowing that Anakin and Obi-Wan have fought for them, not just with them, ever since the war began, and also understanding (through personal experience or word of mouth from other clones who have served with them) that the famous Kenobi and Skywalker team are rightfully considered the brightest hope for a once again united and free Republic that no longer knows war - treat the two Jedi, especially the self-depreciating General, with a combination of respect and care that approaches reverence, especially when the clones are alone among their own and need not worry about others overhearing their awe - an all too human emotion that the Kaminoians most certainly did not program into any of the clone troopers.

Seeing Cody's concern and the grim faces of the other clones, Anakin had quickly assured them, "I'm sure it's just the spores, and maybe a bit of exhaustion. You did say the spores weren't toxic, right?"

"They aren't toxic, sir, just disconnective," Cody immediately reiterated.

"Then he should be fine soon," Anakin reassured them, using the Force to carefully clear off a section of the floor so that he could lay Obi-Wan gently down, propping his head securely against his shoulder and reaching out tentatively along the bond just to make absolutely sure that his former Master really was okay. Obi-Wan was understandably tired, but otherwise he felt rather like Anakin imagined his former Master might have felt if he'd been drunk. By probing lightly along the bond, Anakin could view most of Obi-Wan's recollection of the fight against the droidekas and other droids. Settling himself down for a look, Anakin had directed a quick explanatory comment towards the still closely watching clones, "Please, excuse me for a moment. There's just something that I'd like to check, before I help him wake back up," and then, placing his human hand lightly across Obi-Wan's forehead so there would be no question as to what he was doing, closed his eyes and reached out to his former Master.

Anakin then watched through the eye of Obi-Wan's memory as Obi-Wan had shot off towards a room with a bank of turbolifts on its far side, effortlessly deflecting the bolts being blasted at him and mangling two super battle droids that stood in his way. The room beyond had been stacked with coffin-sized repulsorlift shipping containers apparently constructed of some lightweight alloy. Treaded labor droids were moving additional containers into the room from an adjacent packaging area when a battle droid suddenly appeared at the entrance. Obi-Wan had taken a moment to glance at the wall-mounted mechanism that operated the sliding doors and then, adopting a familiar defensive stance, had done just as he had earlier, in the grotto, to help Anakin, returning the first of the droid's blaster bolts and then sending the second one caroming around the room in a series of ricochets precisely calculated to disable the door apparatus. Everything would have gone as planned, if only a labor droid had not entered the room at an inopportune moment, guiding a levitated shipping container behind him. Ricocheting from the floor, the carefully deflected bolt had passed completely through that container before it struck the door mechanism. The pair of sliding doors attempted to close, but the crippled container was now in the way, so they began to cycle endlessly through attempts to lock completely shut, opening and closing partway only to slide back and try to close again.

Unfortunately, each time those doors opened, a battle droid of one sort or another - some of them only super battle droids, though the vast majority were destroyers - would squeeze into the room, firing away, forcing Obi-Wan back towards the entryway through which he had originally come, where a brutal firefight was still raging between the clone commandos and another contingent of super battle droids. And while all of this was going on, something else had also been afoot, as well, as strands of some gauzy white substance began to drift down from the holed shipping container. Obi-Wan, remembering the warning about drifting spores, had realized instantly what the substance had to be, but when he took one hand away from the hilt of his lightsaber to search for the rebreather that should have been attached to one of the pouches on his belt, his hand had come away empty.

"Stars' end!" Obi-Wan cursed, more in disappointment than in anger, already beginning to feel woozy.

In no time at all, Obi-Wan had felt as if he'd downed three bottles of Whyren's Reserve.

Bleary-eyed but lucid, tipsy but sure-footed, weary but attentive, Obi-Wan soon seemed to be the sum of all contrasts. More or less rooted in place, he swayed, wobbled, tottered, and reeled drunkenly, oddly graceful, nonetheless, as he either evaded or parried the many almost unremitting currents of blaster bolts directed towards him. Although his singed and burned outer robe soon bore evidence of all the near hits, the floor - heaped with droids, both relatively whole and in pieces, blasted bodies sparking and limbs twitching - eloquently attested to the accuracy of his deflections. At times, Obi-Wan had felt as if he were merely holding the lightsaber and letting it do all of the work. In one hand, in both, it made no difference. The lightsaber inevitably found itself in the path of the bolts most suited to deflecting them for the greatest amount of damage against the droids - or else Obi-Wan anticipated the bolts and twisted himself aside at the last moment, allowing the walls and floor to handle the ricochets. In the midst of all this, Anakin was thoroughly amused to note that Obi-Wan even occasionally took the time to steal a moment or two to congratulate himself on the skill of his returns. Obviously, Obi-Wan had been deep within the Force's embrace, but he had also been deep within some other zone as well, giddy with astonishment, as the world unfolded in slow motion all around him.

The feeling strangely reminded Anakin of the way he'd felt when he'd been Podracing.

Shaking his head, smiling bemusedly, Anakin gently disengaged himself from Obi-Wan's memories, drawing back so he could focus solely on feeding Obi-Wan a boost of healing energy, helping to speed up the process of burning off the effect of the spores. Carefully brushing Obi-Wan's disarrayed hair back away from his face - and absently noting that he would need to get it cut again soon, if Obi-Wan were still planning on keeping it short (which Anakin still vaguely hoped Obi-Wan would grow tired of soon, instead deciding to allow his hair to grow out long enough to tie back properly) - Anakin waited patiently for another few moments, and then helped the waking Jedi Master remove the no longer necessary rebreather, grinning down at him as Obi-Wan blinked blearily up at him. "Ah, there you are, Master. I thought you'd be coming around soon. Here, let me help you up," he offered, suiting actions to words and drawing the still disoriented Master smoothly up to his feet. "So, Master, I really must know," he continued, teasing gently as he helped steady Obi-Wan, "exactly what lightsaber form were you using back there, anyway?"

"Form?" Obi-Wan had echoed blankly, peering uncertainly back towards the room with the remains of the destroyed droids.

"Actually, I think it was more an absence of form than anything else," Anakin laughed, shaking his head. "Ah, if only Mace, Kit, or Shaak Ti could have seen you! They would either never get over the shock, or never stop trying to learn how to mimic your moves."

Obi-Wan had merely tilted his head to one side and blinked at him, in abject confusion, before frowning and drifting off towards the carnage of droids. "We did this?" he asked Cody, somewhat vaguely, as he wandered past.

"You did most of it, General," the clone commander responded, voice oddly gentle.

Obi-Wan simply stared confusedly at Anakin, patiently waiting for an explanation.

"I'll explain later, Master," Anakin promised soothingly.

Shrugging, Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair and was about to fold that hand around his chin in a familiar considering gesture when he started and, as if just remembering, exclaimed, "Gunray! Anakin, did you get him?"

Anakin's shoulders had drooped eloquently in response. "Locked blast doors," he briefly explained. "The entire entourage escaped the palace."

Obi-Wan appeared to mull over that for a moment before he'd offered, "You could have gone after them."

Anakin shrugged. "What, and leave you?" He paused then, lips twitching, before adding, "Of course, if I'd known you'd become master of a new lightsaber form . . . "

Obi-Wan's eyes brightened. "They'll be taken in orbit."

"Maybe."

"If not, there'll be other times, Anakin. We'll see to it. They cannot run forever. Soon, they will reach a point from which they will be able to run no further, and then . . . then, among fields of fire, former Padawan-mine, they will meet their doom." Obi-Wan had nodded then, his eyes strangely distant, almost unfocused, as if he were looking upon some far object, though his gaze was technically directed towards Anakin. "Hmm. Messy. Deal in treachery and be dealt with treachery, I suppose."

"I . . . should think so, Master," Anakin had finally agreed, slightly confused and troubled by the strange cast in his Master's eyes, the distance in his gaze. "Though I don't know about the 'fields of fire' part. The Neimoidians are all cowards, and the other extant Separatist leaders are little better."

But, "All paths lead to fire, from here. Fire scourges, but it can also purify. So . . . fire, and perhaps Light. But it is a very large perhaps. The Dark has little more use for them, now. He is planning a sacrifice - he means it to be a holocaust. Better they should have stayed for us, here. Better they should surrender. Fire has no mercy. And the Light has no use for forgiveness - only balance."

"Master, are you . . . feeling alright?"

"Hmm? Oh! Yes, Anakin, I'm quite fine," Obi-Wan had insisted, quite cheerfully. "The sensation is rather odd, though. Master Qui-Gon never did believe in trying to chart the probable paths of the future. He always said they were far too changeful to be useful - almost treacherous, in their ability to suddenly change. This doesn't seem very likely to change, though. I can see fire waiting for them at the end of every pathway that leads out of here. They really should have surrendered. The Dark has dealt them treachery before: they should know by now that they will receive nothing but more betrayal."

Shrugging, Anakin offered back, "Perhaps their greed is blinding them, Master. Aren't you always telling me that the war isn't personal, for them, that it's just a matter of business - of profit - for the Neimoidians and most of their partners amongst the Separatists?"

"Yes, but no material reward is worth dying for, Anakin. It's very hard to spend whatever profit you may have made once you've been slaughtered. And he will kill them, all of them, once he no longer has a use for them. Sidious is a Dark Lord of the Sith and treachery is the first rule of the Dark Side. It is his nature, to deal death and betrayal."

"You can't by any chance see who he is, Master, can you?" Anakin had asked, raising an eyebrow hopefully, though only half seriously. Since he had never before known Obi-Wan to be particularly strongly prescient, he was, frankly, almost half-convinced that the oddly glazed look in Obi-Wan's eyes and his strange words were just prompted by lingering disorientation from the spores, causing his Master to imagine things.

But Obi-Wan's eyebrows had rushed together in a deep frown, and there had been a hint of very real - and quite convincing - frustration in his voice as he'd responded, admitting, "I am only able to make out a man-shaped figure in black robes, hugging the shadows. Nothing else. He hides his face, his identity, even from his allies among the Separatists. He is a wraith. I cannot truly see him."

Anakin had been frowning, intrigued by Obi-Wan's all too believable description of the elusive Sith Lord and - curious as to what else Obi-Wan might've seen, in these visions of his, around that black-swathed form - about to ask him more about what he'd seen when a helmeted commando had stepped out of a nearby turbolift and hurried over to them, effectively cutting their conversation short. "General Kenobi, General Skywalker, we've found something of interest among the equipment the Neimoidians left behind," the clone had eagerly reported.

That, of course, had led to their perusal of an apparently accidentally abandoned sickle-footed, humpbacked mechno-chair with incised intricate designs, which Obi-Wan had studied intently for a moment before declaring, "I think I've seen this chair before."

And after that, things had rapidly gotten very interesting indeed, as the chair first tried to escape and then to self-destruct and then had spit out a sequence of one of the most secret (and as yet undeciphered, at that point) Separatist codes as it played a fragment of a recording of Darth Sidious . . .

Knowing that the Republic's discovery of the mechno-chair and the subsequent breaking of one of the Separatist's main communication codes is no longer a secret, that he would have never thought to try to examine the mechno-chair as closely as was needed if Obi-Wan hadn't kept insisting that he recognized it, and that more people need to realize how dangerously real the threat of this particular Sith Lord really is, Anakin grins devilishly at the HoloNet reporters, deliberately drawing upon all of his considerable charm and charisma, and then throws himself headlong into the story, remarking, "And let me assure you, friends, that with Dooku gone, Grievous on the run, and the Separatist alliance in shreds, it won't be long before the Jedi Order is free to hunt down the despicable Sith Lord who has masterminded this entire conflict, Darth Sidious, who is so cowardly that he will not reveal his true face even to his own allies . . . "

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