FicWad

His Serene Highness, Prince Bail Prestor Organa, Senator, First Chairman, and Viceroy of Alderaan, is a deeply good and compassionate man. Pragmatic, yes, but idealistic enough to have never wavered over his beliefs - not even in an era where such beliefs have rapidly come close to skirting the edge of "treason," according to the dictates of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic - and brave enough to be willing to fight for those beliefs, for the preservation of those ideals, even if it means finally crossing that line into treason against an increasingly dangerously corrupt and totalitarian government. Incredibly proud to consider himself a good friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi's and loyal to the ideals of the Jedi Order - even though his disappointment in that Order's growing inability to adhere to those ideals burns him to the core - for several years now Bail has been fighting against the insidious transformation of his beloved Republic in the only ways that he knows how: by planning ahead for what he believes will be the worst; by gathering allies and information everywhere that he can; and by seeking to stem the tide in every way that he can without being branded a traitor and losing his ready access to the various powers within the Republic.

Although Bail is a deeply honest man, in this matter his pragmatism far outweighs his idealism: Senator Organa champions many benevolent causes, such as the Refugee Relief Movement, and he has been known to start and to present more than one petition to the Office of the Supreme Chancellor, protesting what he feels to be inappropriate measures taken by that Office over the course of the war, but he is also very, very careful not to take too outspoken or too public a stance against Palpatine. Bail understands the value of the information he can gather from his privileged position and the greater good that he can accomplish by working mainly behind the scenes, and so he is extremely careful not to attract Palpatine's wrath. Yet, Bail Organa also takes particular care to be and remain one of the Jedi's most loyal and reliable sources of information regarding Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's steady appropriation of more and more power from the Senate and the increasing pressure the Chancellor has brought to bear upon the Republic's Constitution, twisting it further and further out of true. Thus, Bail Organa is also the source who provided Jedi Master Mace Windu with the disturbing information about the danger of the amendment that is to propose placing the Jedi High Council under the control of the Office of the Supreme Chancellor.

Bail is an enormously charismatic, empathetic, sympathetic man. His family is prone to Force-sensitivity, and Mace Windu believes that it is a pity the man's parents considered him to be too close to the line of ascendency - a lineage that eventually saw him elected the Viceroy of Alderaan - to send him to the Jedi Temple for training. He could have been a truly powerful Jedi, given the proper training. The man is certainly courageous and selfless enough to have made an excellent Knight, despite the fact that he is constantly surrounded by and obviously accustomed to the lap of luxury. Ever since Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, his then eighteen-year-old Padawan learner, had first brought the seemingly entirely too young Alderaanian Senator to the attention of the Jedi Council, Mace Windu has developed a certain . . . fondness for the Prince, the fondness of a man who recognizes a kindred soul, someone whose heart is filled with the same devotion and weighed upon by many of the same cares and anxieties as his own. A Jedi is not supposed to not dwell overmuch upon the past, and therefore should not harbor regrets, but Mace believes that it is acceptable for him to regard the young Prince with a certain . . . fond wistfulness, considering both the good man that he is and what the man might also have been, had he been allowed to train as a Jedi.

So when the Senator does not show up for a meeting that he was quite insistent about making with Mace for this evening and Mace cannot track the man down, unable even to make contact with any of the Alderaanian aides or junior Senators who might have been able to inform Mace of the whereabouts and condition of their Viceroy and Prince, Mace Windu is stricken with a sudden sense of powerful worry, worry that he is unaccustomed to experiencing for Senators or indeed for many individuals at all. Distracted by that worry, distracted by his earlier discussions with Masters Yoda and Kenobi and by Master Kenobi's confounding, persistent, and unseemly (for a Jedi) loyalty to Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu makes one of the few spur of the moment, not thoroughly planned and thought out decisions of his life. He decides that he will go to the Senate Rotunda, see if Chancellor Palpatine is still in his office, and seek to question the man about Senator Organa's possible whereabouts as well as to try to speak to Palpatine once more about what the loss of Count Dooku will mean to the Separatists. No sooner has Mace come to this sudden decision than he is out of the Temple and upon one of the many small Jedi transports, speeding off towards his destination - a destination that he reaches all too quickly.

Curiously, there is a Jedi shuttle docked at the Chancellor's private landing platform.

As he stands there, mulling over this puzzle, Mace Windu is abruptly stricken with an almost cripplingly powerful bad feeling about this. His hand is on his lightsaber and he is running into the building and up towards the Chancellor's private office before he has any time to think, acting on instinct alone, his footfalls silent on the elaborate inlay of Alderaanian marble as he cuts quickly through the vast echoing emptiness of the vaulted halls.

Yet, even as Mace Windu cuts with desperate swiftness up through the building to the private office of the Supreme Chancellor, the shadow within that office is, with a simple twist of will, triggering the device that has rested, undisturbed, for decades within the abstract twist of neuranium that has been mistaken by all who have seen it as a harmless piece of sculpture. Even as Mace Windu storms up through the immense, deserted hallways, the neuranium gets warm and a small round spot on its back - on a section of the neuranium that cannot be seen except for by someone seated in or standing very near to the chair that graces the Chancellor's desk - smaller than the circle a human child might make of thumb and forefinger together, turns first the rusty shade of old blood, then the vivid hue of fresh blood, and then the searing color of an open flame. Finally, a spear of scarlet energy lances free of the neuranium, drawing with it from out of the darkness the device that the neuranium has so faithfully cradled, hidden within its depths, for so very many years, part of the object twisting away, breaking off to vanish up the shadow of a long, dark, full sleeve while the remainder lengthens into a fiery blade that paints the office with the sanguinary color of stars seen through the smoke of burning planets. Even as Mace Windu tears into the first of many holding offices that separate the rest of the Senate Building from the actual offices and inner sanctum of the Supreme Chancellor, the shadow within the guise of Palpatine of Naboo wholly claims a lightsaber whose blade is the molten hue of a dying planet, self-immolated and consumed in fire, and attacks.

As he passes into the actual offices of the Chancellor, his Force-augmented speed so great that he is little more than a swiftly passing blur on the security holorecordings, Mace Windu hears Obi-Wan Kenobi screaming, "Dooku!" as if he is being forced to watch the death of hope itself.

And amazingly, as he falls out of his mad blind dash, staggering with the sudden shock of a blast of what feels like absolute, unadulterated evil, ripping out through the Force like a jagged scream, he hears Dooku - Dooku as he was within the Order, his voice epitomizing calm and compassion, nothing at all like he has been of late, as the leader of the Separatists - answer: "It doesn't hurt, young one."

Palpatine is screaming: "Help! Help! Security - someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!"

Dooku answers with the commanding voice of a Jedi Master. "Oh, cease your ridiculous dramatics, Sidious! This is most certainly not murder, nor is it treason! It was treason when you ordered Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas to place the order for the clone armies and then ordered me to murder him so that he could not report on the success of his secret mission for you to either the Jedi High Council or the Galactic Senate; it was treason when you plotted with the Trade Federation to blockade and then invade Naboo; it was treason when you plotted with me to create the Confederacy of Independent Systems and then sought to sacrifice the life of Senator Amidala to win the Senate's approval to seize control of the clone armies in the name of the Republic and begin these Clone Wars; and it was most certainly treason when you ordered General Grievous to assemble the Separatist fleets and attack Coruscant. This/, on the other hand: /this is /justice/."

While Mace Windu grabs blindly for the nearest wall, locking his knees so that he will not fall, the final of a series of rapid shocks comes in the unmistakable powerful voice of a long dead friend, driving him to the ground.

The lilting and slightly accented deep rumble of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn declares, "A justice that you have escaped far too long, Lord Sidious. Surrender! Drop that lightsaber or by the Force I will see to it that you know what it feels like to be skewered upon one, just as your earlier apprentice, Darth Maul, once skewered me, on Naboo!"

This is the moment that defines Mace Windu.

Not the consummate skill with which he has achieved countless victories in battle, nor the numberless battles his ponderously careful diplomacy has avoided. Not his penetrating intellect, nor his talents with the Force, nor his unmatched ability with the lightsaber. Not his dedication to the Jedi Order, or his devotion to the Republic that he serves.

But /this/.

Right here.

Right now.

Because Mace Windu, too, has an /attachment/. Mace has a secret love.

Mace Windu loves the Galactic Republic.

Many of his students quote him when speaking to students of their own: "Jedi do not fight for peace. That is only a slogan, and it is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace."

For Mace Windu, for all his life, for all the lives of a thousand years of Jedi before him, true civilization has had only one true name: the Galactic Republic. And he has given his life in the service of the Galactic Republic, which he loves. Mace has taken lives in its service, and lost the lives of innocents. He has seen beings whom he cares for maimed, and killed, and sometimes brought to even worse straits than that - sometimes so broken by the horror of the struggle that the only answer they have been able to find lay in committing greater horrors still.

And because of that love now, here, in this instant, the nine words that manage to push their way past the shock of hearing the voices of two dead men within the Chancellor's private office and into the forefront of Mace Windu's mind shred his heart, burn its pieces, and feed him its smoking ashes.

Palpatine is Sidious. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord.

The true meaning of this revelation is far too large for his mind to gather in all at once.

It means that all he has done and all that has been done to him . . .

That all the Order has accomplished, all it has suffered . . .

All the Galactic Republic, that the galaxy itself/, has gone through, all the years of suffering and slaughter, the death of entire /planets . . .

It has all been for nothing.

Because all of these things have been done to save the Republic.

And the Republic is already gone.

The Republic has already fallen.

It is only the corpse of the Republic has been defended by the Order - by Jedi who have been obeying the orders of a Senate that has been under the command of a Dark Lord of the Sith.

In an instant, Mace Windu's entire existence - which, over the course of this terrible war, has become crystal so shot through with flaws that the hammering shock of nine words alone are more than sufficient to crush him to sand - is utterly destroyed, the underpinnings of his reality so irredeemably lost that he is, in that moment, no longer a Jedi Master, no longer a champion and stalwart defender of the Galactic Republic and the ideals of peace and justice, freedom and democracy, that it champions. In that moment, he is less than nothing.

Yet, because he is Mace Windu, he takes this blow without a change of expression.

Because he is Mace Windu, within a second the man of sand is stone once more: pure Jedi Master - regardless of the fact that the Jedi Order is an empty facade and his Mastery is a hollow lie - he automatically coldly weighs the risk of facing the last Dark Lord of the Sith with what could be a second Sith or might be a Jedi ally, a man who has been thought dead for thirteen years, a Master who blazes with some strange emotion that is utterly alien to the Jedi way for his former Padawan, and quite possibly also that former Padawan learner, a boy who is so powerful that his Force-signature is so bright that it cannot be looked at straight on and so emotionally unstable that he simply cannot be trusted to do his duty when the power of his emotions acts as a potential distraction with every heartbeat.

And because he is Mace Windu, the choice is no choice at all.

Mace Windu is back on his feet and running, flat out, when the closed door of Palpatine's most private inner office explodes into a shower of splinters and a shadow bearing a lightsaber burning with the bloodshine of the Sith dives through the jagged doorway. By the time the other occupants of that private office emerge through that shattered door, the Korun Master is already engaged in battle within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, blade-to-blade with a living shadow.

Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fights for his life and for far more than his life. Each dazzling violet whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning is a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways. He is fighting for the Republic that he loves, and he is Jedi grace incarnate.

Vaapad, the completed form of Juyo - the seventh form of lightsaber combat, which was incomplete for millennia - takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven such tentacles. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; according to the records, the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one can never know how many tentacles it has until it is already dead: they move too fast to count, almost too fast to see. They are rather like Jedi, in this one regard. Swifter than can be easily tracked.

So is Mace Windu's blade.

Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but there is a high price to be paid in harnessing its power, and with that power also comes great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight: he must give himself over to the thrill of battle and the rush of winning. Form VII channels pride, aggression, and exaltation in violence into the energy of outright attack. Thus, Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the Dark Side.

Mace Windu created this style, and he is its only living master.

This battle is Vaapad's ultimate test.

To the four Jedi watching, the Korun Master appears to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which dances a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace presses back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march. His own lightsaber blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that has been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, makes a haze of its own, an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seems to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once. It doesn't seem possible that the shadow he fights, that dark smudge of speed-blurred shadow, could truly be Palpatine/, though Mace can clearly see that it is. Their blades flare and flash so swiftly that it simply would not be physically possible for any being who is not Jedi to even truly see them. Even Jedi eyes must strain to follow their courses as they crash together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that it is easier to follow their contest simply by perceiving them within the Force. For the Force itself roils and bursts and crashes around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent. And it is steadily darkening, moment by moment, that darkness upon the Force feeding upon the shadow's murderous exaltation, fury spraying into the Force and strengthening that taint through some poisonous abscess that has crested in the hearts of /both combatants.

There is no Jedi restraint here.

Mace Windu is finally letting go and cutting loose - a wish made by easily tens of thousands of sentient beings over a span of at least three decades, now being granted in what is perhaps the Galactic Republic's most dangerous hour.

Mace is deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly exists as an independent being. Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flows both ways. He accepts the furious speed of the Sith Lord, draws the shadow's rage and power deep into his inmost center -

And then lets it fountain out again, through him and the viciously swift dance of his blade.

Mace Windu reflects the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.

There had been a time, once, when Mace Windu had feared the power of the Dark; there had been a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars have given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, Mace Windu had faced his inner darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared. Instead, he had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.

So Mace Windu is not afraid. The darkness has no power over him.

Yet . . . neither does he have power over it.

Vaapad makes him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop that is completed by the shadow itself. Together, they become a standing wave of battle that expands into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's public office. There is no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands become brief shields, sliced into segments that whirl away through the air; couches become terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there is still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.

Impasse.

Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift.

The fighting is effortless for him now; thus, he allows his body to handle it without the intervention of his mind. While his blade spins and crackles, while his feet slide and his weight shifts and his shoulders turn in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slides along the circuit of Dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source.

Feeling for its shatterpoint.

What he finds there would have frozen his blood, under any other circumstances.

Mace finds the knot of fault lines in the shadow's future easily enough, just as easily choosing the largest fracture and following it back to the here and the now . . .

Where it leads him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway.

Mace has no need to look. The soul-shakingly powerful presence in the Force is familiar, and is as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead: the Chosen One. So instead of looking, Mace disengages from the shadow's blade and leaps for the window, slashing away the transparisteel with a single flourish that spins him around towards the shattered door -

Right to where he suddenly cannot avoid seeing the man who is standing in it.

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Not Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker is standing a pace in front of and one step to the right - to Obi-Wan Kenobi's left - of the young Jedi Master, and he is -

Different. Changed. The tangled web of fault lines in the Force that Mace Windu has so recently seen connecting Anakin to Obi-Wan and to Palpatine is no more; in their place is a single spider-knot that sings with power enough to crack the planet. Anakin Skywalker no longer has shatter-points. He is a shatterpoint. The shatterpoint. Everything depends on him. Everything.

Or so it seems, until Mace abruptly realizes that Obi-Wan Kenobi - who is also different, changed, suddenly so overwhelmingly powerful within the Force that Mace could actually mistake his presence in the Force for that of Anakin Skywalker - sings with the exact same potentially reality-reordering solitary spider-knot of power.

The instant's distraction costs Mace Windu greatly: a Dark surge of the Force nearly blows him right out of the gap he has just cut into the window. Only a desperate Force-push of his own alters his path enough that he slams into a stanchion instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. Because of that Force-push, Mace bounces off the wall and the Force clears his head enough that he can once again give himself to Vaapad.

Mace can feel the end of this battle approaching, and if can feel it coming, then so can the shadowy blur of the Sith he is facing. Indeed, in the Force, the shadow suddenly becomes a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turns the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angles the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out into the wind. Out with the lightning. Out onto a rain-slicked ledge above a completely sheer half-kilometer drop. Out where the shadow's fear makes it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turns some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete. Out where Mace can flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half. One piece - the greater part of the weapon, its cold metal bearing only the incriminating fingerprints of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine - flips back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbles away from open and swiftly retreating fingers, bounces on the ledge, and falls through the rain towards the distant alleys below. And just like that, the shadow is suddenly only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion. The transformation is so sudden, so complete, that Mace Windu actually blinks, stunned, and pauses his forward motion, the tip of his leveled lightsaber halting just shy of touching the center of Palpatine's chest.

"You are under arrest. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over for you. You've lost." Mace's words rings with surety. "You've lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: you are defeated by your own fear."

Palpatine lifts his head at that, his eyes smoking with hate. "Fool," he hisses. He lifts his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into the dark shape of raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons. "Fool!" His voice is a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is /mine/?"

Lighting blasts the clouds above, and lightning also blasts from Palpatine's hands, Dark twisted lightning, so that Mace has barely enough time to even register - and not nearly enough time to comprehend - what Palpatine is talking about. He only has enough time to automatically slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that are clawing toward him. For Vaapad is, after all, far more than a mere fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness.

Power passes into Mace and out again without touching him.

And the circuit completes itself: the lightning reflects back to its source.

Palpatine staggers, snarling, but the blistering energy that pours from his hands only intensifies, as his pain serves to feed the power.

"Anakin! Obi-Wan!" Mace calls. His voice sounds distant, blurred, as if it were echoing up from the bottom of a deep well. "Help me! This is your chance!"

Mace senses the approach of what feels like two stars going nova within the Force from behind him, moving from the office floor to the window ledge -

And Palpatine is not afraid. Mace can feel it: the Sith Lord isn't worried at all. "Anakin, listen to me! You must destroy these traitors!" the Chancellor shouts, his Force-projected voice clearly audible over the howl of writhing energy that joins the Dark fire rushing from his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest! It's an /assassination/!"

And this is when Mace finally understands. He has it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatterpoint of the Sith.

The shatterpoint of the Dark Side itself.

Mace thinks, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker . . .

Now the two presences are at Mace's shoulder, and yet still Palpatine makes no move to defend himself against the two silently approaching Jedi. Instead, he ramps up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the violet fountain of Mace's blade slowly but inexorably back toward the Korun Master's face.

Palpatine's eyes glow with power, casting a yellow glare that burns back the rain from around them. "This man is a traitor/, Anakin! /Obey me! Destroy him!"

"Anakin, he's too strong for me," Mace declares, his voice going thin with strain. The result of this Dark power is beyond even Vaapad; he has no strength left to fight against his own blade. "Take him. It's your /destiny/."

Skywalker merely laughs, long and low, as he echoes Mace. "Destiny!"

"Help me! I can't hold on for much longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes is rapidly spreading outward through his flesh. His skin flows like oil, as though the muscle beneath were burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his own electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin! You must see that! You must help me! Please, Anakin, I am your friend! Listen to me! Obey me! Kill this traitor! Anakin! Anakin - "

Mace's blade has bent so close to his face that he is choking on ozone. "Anakin, you are the Chosen One - "

Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice is clinically detached as the young Master notes, "Anakin is not the Chosen One, Master Windu. He is the Sith'ari. I am the Chosen One."

Palpatine's sudden wordless roar of absolute rage above the endless blast of lightning is the only warning Mace Windu has. He has just enough time to think, What?! before the full power of the Sith Lord's hate strikes him full-on.

White lights explode behind Mace Windu's eyes and both sides of his face feel as if they have been smashed, caved in by hammer blows. His legs crumple under the unbearable weight of the agony ripping through him until he drops to his knees, stunned. The noise from the storm dies away into a distant tinny roar as a second blast of Dark lightning tears into him, flaying his nerves with pain, scraping them raw and bloody and blistering with tongues of fire, until his entire being is one writhing mass of brilliantly refined and utterly concentrated shrieking agony. In the single instant that nothing stands between Mace Windu and the fully unleashed power of the Dark Lord, his body is little more than an open channel of pain, the absolute essence of pure hatred that is the heart of the Sith Lord pouring into him. It is more than enough power simply to instantaneously kill most non-Force-sensitive beings outright. It is more than enough power to kill even most Jedi.

Mace Windu, however, is not most Jedi.

In the seemingly endless moment when flesh and soul alike cry out helplessly in pain, in that slender sliver of time before the darkness of unconsciousness rises up to claim him in its blessedly pain-free embrace, Mace Windu sees two impossible things.

He sees the semi-opaque, semi-transparent, blue-tinted, light-haloed, Force-strong figure of an incredibly young looking Qui-Gon Jinn, impossibly leaping out from the dark nothingness of the storm-wracked night to snatch Mace as his body is about to slide bonelessly off of the window ledge, scooping him up and carrying him along effortlessly as the Jedi Master dives in through the broken window.

He also sees the semi-transparent, semi-opaque, light-haloed, blue-tinted, Force-strong figure of an incredibly young looking Jedi Master Dooku, calmly blocking and redirecting half of the barrage of Palpatine's twisted Dark lighting with the verdant green blade of a lightsaber the likes of which Mace has never seen before, drawn and ignited with almost nonchalant swiftness and ease, while Dooku simply . . . absorbs the rest of the powerful attack into himself without even so much as flinching from the bombardment.

Carried to safety well within the room and then unceremoniously dropped in a heap to the floor, the last thing Mace Windu sees before consciousness flees him is the light-limed shape of what is and yet is not a familiar vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker standing firmly together, shoulder to shoulder, blue lightsabers held at the ready, their faces transformed by some terrible purpose that makes Mace Windu want to turn away and cover his eyes, for fear of being struck blind.

What the - ?

The unfinished thought follows him down into the blanketing darkness.

***

Master Yoda is meditating alone in his chambers in the Jedi Temple on the possible link between Chancellor Palpatine's office and the Sith Lord, Sidious, as well as on the increasingly troublesome closeness of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker's relationship. He has been meditating on these things for several hours, since perhaps an hour after first Mace Windu and then Obi-Wan himself had parted company with Yoda, after their troubling meeting. Yoda had spoken to Obi-Wan for a few moments, after Master Windu had already departed, and, for some reason that he has not yet been able to puzzle out, the words of the young Jedi Master had left Master Yoda even more disturbed than Mace Windu's contentiousness. Yoda cannot fathom Obi-Wan's reluctance to use Anakin's closeness with the Supreme Chancellor to further the Order's efforts to locate Sidious, and the lack of understanding is almost as disconcerting as Obi-Wan's fierce protectiveness of the young Knight in question.

"Yes, of course I trust him, Master Yoda," Obi-Wan had patiently explained in response to Yoda's questioning. "Please, don't ever doubt my faith in Anakin. The Jedi Order can always trust Anakin to do what he thinks is right. But we can't trust him to do what he's told. He can't be made to simply obey. Believe me: I've been trying to teach him for many years."

"But an unintentional opportunity, the Chancellor may have very well given us," Yoda had just as earnestly insisted. "A window he has opened into the operations of his office. Fools we would be, given the evidence of Sidious' influence over the Senate, perhaps even over that office, to close our eyes to this opportunity."

"Then we should use someone else's eyes," Obi-Wan had immediately snapped. Then, sighing, he had quietly continued to try to explain. "Forgive me, Master Yoda, but the High Council just doesn't know him the way that I do. None of you do. Anakin is fiercely loyal, and there is not even so much as a gram of deception in him. You've all seen it: it's one of the arguments that several members of the High Council have used against elevating him to Master. Anakin lacks true Jedi reserve/: that's what you've all said, at one time or another. And by that you all mean that he wears his emotions like a HoloNet banner. How could you even think of asking him to lie to a friend - to /spy upon him - when you know how completely against his nature it is to be deceitful?"

"If proven necessary, the reason why we would call upon you to ask him, this is. Agree fully with Master Windu regarding Palpatine's threat, I do not, but understand the need for better information regarding the Chancellor's intentions and decisions, I do. If Anakin - "

"You don't understand. You must not make him choose between me and Palpatine - "

"And why not? Fear you would lose such a contest, do you?"

"Master, respectfully, I am fully aware of the fact that the Order considers our relationship to be . . . closer than it should. You, however, have no idea how much Palpatine's friendship has meant to Anakin over the years," Obi-Wan had said flatly. "You would be asking him to use that friendship as a weapon! To stab his friend in the back. Can't you understand what that would cost him, how much that would change him, damage him, even if Palpatine turned out to be entirely innocent? Especially if he were innocent. Their relationship would never be the same - "

"The best argument in favor of such a plan, that is. A potent reason to pursue it, you offer. Clouded, the boy's future has always been. Dangerous. Much darkness surrounds him and only increases it does. Deeply disturbing, Master Windu's report of the ties between young Skywalker and the Supreme Chancellor is," Yoda had gravely countered. "Worth the attempt, if only to distance young Skywalker from Palpatine's influence, such a mission would be. The only Jedi proven to have the capability to battle a Sith Lord alone, if necessary, he is, other than yourself. The one Jedi we can best hope would survive an encounter with Sidious, Anakin is. The Chosen One, he is: keep him in a position to fulfill his destiny, we must."

"Whether he is destined to destroy Sidious or not, Master, respectfully, Anakin Skywalker is not a possession of the High Council or the Jedi Order, and the Council and the Order would do well to remember that. Anakin Skywalker is a Jedi/, a man with a fiercely loyal and loving heart who has sworn to uphold the Light, and it is precisely because of this that he would never be able to do this thing that you and Mace Windu have spoken of. In any case, the question as to whether or not it would be best that I ask him to do it, if it became necessary, is irrelevant," Obi-Wan had retorted, voice calm but implacable. "You and Master Windu came to an understanding and made your decision. The word of the Council is final, Master. Master Windu shall continue to oversee the investigation into Sidious and his influence over the government, including the possibility that he may have hidden himself amongst Palpatine's advisors, while the Order devotes itself to the task of locating and neutralizing General Grievous. Master Windu has his task, here, and you are far too valuable to the Order to risk in battle, Master Yoda. Master Windu will doubtlessly need you here, to aid in his search: it is your sensitivity to the broader currents of the Force that is most likely to hasten the effort to uncover the Sith Lord's true identity. That leaves Anakin and I the obvious choice to go after Grievous, once he has been found. Anakin is the Chosen One and he is an extremely skilled and powerful Jedi. He has defeated Dooku, which proves him well matched for Grievous, even considering the General's penchant for using more than one lightsaber at a time. Anakin and I are a team, Master. We are well used to fighting as a unit. It would be foolish to separate us for such an important mission, and while the Jedi Order is many things, I do not believe that /foolish is among them. Now, if you'll excuse me, Master," Obi-Wan had continued, inclining his head respectfully but not actually allowing Yoda any time to protest, "it has been a long and tiring day, and there are many things that I wish to think on. I am, in the main, recovered from the injuries I took, but I must admit that I feel I am in need of meditation. If you wish to see me again before the Council calls for a full, formal report from us, I shall, of course, abide by your wishes, if I am able, Master Yoda."

Obi-Wan had bowed slightly, respectfully, and glided on out the door before Yoda could recover enough from his surprise to frame a protest. Although the logic of Obi-Wan's assessment of himself and Anakin Skywalker as the most obvious, available choice for the task of dealing with General Grievous is sound enough - though it unsurprisingly entirely overlooks Obi-Wan's unique, sound qualifications for such a mission without Anakin's presence - the reasoning behind Obi-Wan's insistence that young Skywalker's nature and status as a Jedi precludes his ability to act as the Order's eyes and ears in the Supreme Chancellor's office still would not come clear to him, after hours of meditation. Yoda understands perfectly well that the Jedi Order does not own Anakin Skywalker - though he is slightly puzzled by Obi-Wan's need to issue him what amounts to a warning regarding that fact - but all Jedi are servants of the Force, and the Chosen One is meant to bring balance to the Force. Why, then, should Obi-Wan balk so fiercely at the notion that it might become necessary to call on Anakin Skywalker's closeness with Palpatine in order to further the Jedi's search for Sidious? The lack of understanding is worrisome. It is even more troubling in light of what Master Windu has seen, the dangerously strong ties that his gift has revealed between both Anakin and Obi-Wan and Anakin and Palpatine.

This war has disrupted Anakin's training so thoroughly that the boy literally functions as a piece of weaponry, and he is, unfortunately, unstable because the Order has had no choice but to continue to encourage his prowess as a warrior, as a weapon to be used against the Separatists and the Sith alike. The idea that Anakin has molded himself more to Obi-Wan's hand than to the will of the Council and the Order is troublesome enough. The notion that he might possibly one day be knowingly used as a weapon by Palpatine - perhaps contrary to the will of the Order or even against the Jedi themselves outright - is completely unacceptable. Regardless of how far the influence of the Sith Lord Sidious might reach within the Republic's government, Mace Windu is right about the ties that Palpatine has fostered with the boy. They are potentially dangerous to the Order and they need to be broken, as quickly as possible, one way or another. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to happen without Obi-Wan Kenobi's aid. What Yoda and the Council needs is another way to approach this problem, one that won't automatically trigger Obi-Wan's distressfully overdeveloped protective instincts towards the boy . . . and so Yoda has been meditating on the issue since shortly after Obi-Wan Kenobi parted company with him. Intently focused on this issue, deep in meditation, Master Yoda fails to notice any of the various disturbances in the Force that occur inside the Temple over the following several hours. The nature of the Jedi Temple - continuously suffused with so much power and energy from the Force that it's essentially next to impossible to sense specific Force-powered actions occurring within its structure, unless one is physically on hand to observe its aftereffects - actually works against him in this, as it disguises and disperses the effects even of the glorious eruption within the Force that surrounds Obi-Wan and Anakin's surrender to, embracement by, and subsequent return from the Force itself.

It isn't even until the battle against Sidious is almost over that the disturbance within the Force grows great enough to disrupt the flow of Force within the Temple and rouse Yoda from his meditation, the concentration of malevolent power called upon by Sidious disrupting Yoda's calm and causing him to surface with a startled gasp and a blankly muttered, "Hmm?"

***

The shadow has revealed itself at last. The guise of Palpatine is gone. In its place is a - a creature whose eyes are a cold and feral yellow, gleaming like those of a predator lurking just beyond the fringe of firelight. The structure of the bones surrounding those feral eyes appears to have swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilling out of a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blankets it has gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast. Stunningly revolting, the face is a misshapen horror, and it is the face of Sidious, the last remaining fully trained Dark Lord of the Sith, the face of darkness personified.

"Sith'ari!" Sidious snarls threateningly, advancing further into the room, both hands raised menacingly before him but for the moment not streaming those snarling flows of Dark lightning. "I should have known. I should have known! My Master, Darth Plagueis, drained me of so much power that I nearly died in order to create you! Oh, yes, Anakin Skywalker: my Master made you. The one secret he would not entrust to me - the location and ultimate outcome of his final trial - and of course it would be you/, Anakin Skywalker. That he succeeded in creating the Sith'ari and that the Force would then choose to bring you to me - !" Sidious shakes his head and laughs, those bestial flat yellow-gold eyes burning darkly with an emotion that almost might have been hunger, his rising cackle full of such utter malice that the Force trembles with its Dark power. "Imagine, Anakin Skywalker, not the Chosen One of Jedi prophecies but instead the prophesied savior of the Sith Order! Do you - /can you - understand what this /means/, Anakin? The Sith'ari: the perfect being who will rise to power and bring balance to the Force; the one who will rise up and destroy the Sith and yet in the process will return to lead the Sith and make us stronger than ever before. I did not know my Master's ambition was quite so great as that. I merely knew that Darth Plagueis had striven for many decades to turn his sight so deeply inward that he could come to comprehend, and therefore master, both life and - because the two are one, when seen clearly enough - death itself. The Dark Side of the Force is the pathway to many abilities that some would consider unnatural. Darth Plagueis the Wise eventually gained enough knowledge to learn how to directly influence midi-chlorians to create life. Once he had gained this ultimate power, he had nothing to fear save losing it - for with such knowledge, to maintain life in someone already living would be a very small matter, don't you agree? In his search for power over the creation of life, he virtually stumbled upon the key to immortality, the secret to eternal life. And to safeguard this power's existence, he eventually taught the path towards it to his apprentice, whom he had quite foolishly allowed to break the Rule of Two and take an apprentice of his own, in hopes that it would curb his appetite for power. As if I would allow my old Master to stand in the way of my plans! I killed him, of course, for his foolishness. I slew him in his sleep. A true tragedy, wouldn't you agree? Plageuis never saw it coming. That's the tragic irony, you see: he could save anyone in the galaxy from death - except for himself. And you think that you can stop me?" he snarls contemptuously.

As he has spoken, the pinpoint glitter of his reptilian eyes have continually attempted to seek out and capture Anakin, and as his anger has continued to grow so, too, has the compelling pull of those hard glittering orbs, like frozen fire, the cold malice in them also growing apace. The unnatural hard brilliance of that bright yellow-gold gaze gradually transforms, darkening and melting until the pinpoints of bright frozen fire have turned into pools of light-dimming, life-crushing darkness. The Sith Lord's unyielding gaze opens onto a black evil as elemental and seemingly vast as the spaces between the furthest-flung stars of the deep, a dizzying blackness wherein unspeakable horrors dwell amongst the deeps, leviathans of the deepest dark spaces of the void. Abominations. The greatest of which is the Sith Lord himself, the mind behind those unnatural eyes, filled with a thousand unnameable dark hungers and consumed by the inescapable evil of interconnected plans so many layered, so multi-faceted, so insidiously all inclusive, that their intricate, interlocking, overlapping weave easily encompass the slow crushing death of this galaxy. Thoughts that have never originated in the mind of any sane or decent creature steeped within the dark morass of that terrifyingly brilliant evil mind seep out from behind those eyes, out of that vast and elemental darkness, crawling, writhing thoughts, like worms, seeking to ensnare the weak or the unwary, to latch on to the unsuspecting and the innocent and suck them dry, pull them down within the morass of that darkness.

Fortunately, there is no one present within the room who is either weak or unwary.

But the Sith Lord doesn't seem to realize this, for he keeps speaking, and he keeps trying to capture Anakin within the trap of his eyes. "You? Sith'ari, you are the means by which I have risen to power! You are the means by which I shall create my Empire! For the Republic will be my Empire, before this war is through. Already, my plans are near their completion. Already I have trained a number of Dark Side Adepts as my personal agents, many of whom are already safely ensconced on Byss, the world I have chosen to become the throne world of my Empire, only waiting for word from me to come and take part in the great Jedi purge I have masterminded to coincide with the end of the Clone Wars. Already I have found and claimed almost a hundred Force-sensitives to raise in the full power of the Dark Side of the Force, Force-adepts who will be raised to be devoted only to me and who will serve as my secret agents, as my Emperor's Hands - quietly infiltrating the galaxy to act my eyes, ears, voice, and hands, able to reach all throughout the galaxy and mete true justice in my name. Already I have hunted down and gathered up many for the Secret Order of the Prophets of the Dark Side, an organization of Dark Side Mages that I alone created and I alone will direct, being the most gifted of all Dark Siders in far-sight, that rare ability that allows one to foretell the future. Others whose loyalty I have claimed and that I will claim will serve on my Inquisitorius, the branch of Imperial Intelligence I will found within my Empire that will be composed solely of those Jedi who can be turned to the Dark Side and who will willingly assist in hunting down any Jedi who do manage to survive the end of this war. For make no mistake about it, the end of this war is coming, and it will be absolute when it arrives. I engineered this war and I will end it utterly when it has served its true purpose! The Republic is mine and it will be my Empire, a Galactic Empire that will evolve so slowly, so naturally, into a universe-spanning magocracy ruled through the Dark Side of the Force alone, without the need for the various trappings of superweapons and droids and clone troopers and ships that comprise the crude methods of technological domination that the sentient beings of the galaxy will never realize what is happening until it's already too late for them to try and fight it. I have modeled Byss on this concept and I will continue to perfect that model until it embodies my vision of a true utopian society, a society whose secular nature will be thoroughly subsumed with the Dark Side of the Force! None will be able to resist the creation of my Dark Empire! I will be the most powerful Sith Lord that there has ever been! I will do what my Dark forefathers have never been able to do! I will bend the Galactic Republic and twist it to my will until it is the new Dark Sith Empire!" Sidious is not just shouting, he is almost screaming at the end of this pronouncement, so caught up in his own evil, grandiose schemes - a purely evil plan filled with and fueled by such incredible rage, such utter darkness, that its inherent destructiveness, its glaringly obvious weakness, should have been apparent to any sane being - that he has actually forgotten, for a few moments, where he is and with whom.

"You really don't know when to shut up, do you, Chancellor Palpatine - or shall I call you Darth Sidious from now on, since that is obviously the appellation that you consider to be your true name?" The question is asked in such an incredibly calm voice - once touched with just a hint of pity - that it takes a moment for the Sith Lord to register the fact that anyone has spoken. When the query - and the pity - register, he rapidly becomes so puffed up with affronted anger and indignant rage that it almost appears as if the hideous figure will simply fly to pieces under the barrage of the rising internal pressure of hatred and fury. But before Sidious can launch into yet another long-winded speech detailing his delusions of grandeur, Obi-Wan speaks again. "I thank you for your testimony, but I will thank you more if you will cease speaking. I believe you have just supplied us with more than enough evidence to satisfy the Senate as to the necessity for your arrest. We will be able to take our time now as we hunt through the records you have been keeping in your 'secret' headquarters, beneath 500 Republica, and in the Sith archives that you have squirreled away in The Works. Oh, do, please, refrain from gawping. You really shouldn't share your secrets with your own apprentices, if you don't want others to find out about them."

Dooku's smile is as bright and sharp as an ignited lightsaber. "You didn't even bother to change the access codes to the buildings or the various machinery in The Works, Sidious. That's evidence of poor planning and rather slip-shod security on your part, wouldn't you agree?"

"You - you - " Sidious simply sputters for a moment, clearly taken aback, having never encountered any enemies so foolishly brave as to treat him as if his immense power were entirely negligible. "You are dead/, Dooku! I /saw you perish! You fell before Anakin Skywalker's blade! How is it that you can even be here?"

"The devil is in the details, Sidious. Have you not told me of this many times, yourself?" Dooku merely calmly asks, urbanely amused. "Think back. You never saw me die. The blade of Anakin's lightsaber never touched my neck. I submitted myself to the Force utterly, trusting in it and in my own light, and the Force claimed me. I vanished bodily, disappearing right out of my clothes, remember? I will admit that you were a bit preoccupied at the time, seeing as how you were overriding Anakin Skywalker's mind and will and body with your own evil commands, forcing him to do your bidding - to execute, in cold blood, an unarmed man who had already surrendered and thrown himself upon the mercy of the Republic - but I am certain that you will remember it, if you can just bring yourself to admit that you've made a mistake and move beyond what you've assumed in order to clinically analyze the actual sequence of events that occurred. /Think, /Sidious. There I was, defenseless and upon my knees, and I said: /If you willingly strike me down now, Anakin Skywalker, you will only succeed in surrendering one of the keys of your soul into the foulest grip of Darkness imaginable. You will not kill me. You cannot kill me. There is no death: there is only the Force. And if you strike me down now, the Force will embrace me and I shall become more powerful than you could ever imagine. And while Anakin Skywalker stood and gazed in humble awe upon the redeemed figure of Jedi Master Dooku, you, Sidious - a howling whirling dervish of hatred, a shrieking storming tornado of rage and darkness and maleficence, an overwhelming outpouring of screaming evil - reached out into the young Jedi Knight's unprotected mind as you commanded and demanded, imposing your own will over that of the boy's, snarling at us both: What utter /nonsense! /Anakin Skywalker! /You will not listen to this nonsense! Kill Dooku immediately! /I /order /you, as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, to kill Dooku /at once!" /Dooku's recitation is implacable, his entire manner serene, despite the fact that Sidious is once again snarling at him. "You overpowered Anakin Skywalker's mind and, with your words, freed my soul from the confines of the flesh. Under your Dark influence, the two lightsabers - my own and Anakin's - that were crossed at my throat slid together like the blades of a pair of scissors, sai cha, but by the time the lightsaber blades jerked together under the pressure of Anakin Skywalker's Force-raped and mind-controlled hands, I was already gone. Qui-Gon was waiting for me, and he embraced me, even as the Force did, but my body was gone, my empty clothes drifting into a pile upon the floor. Remember, Sidious?"/

"You went to all of that trouble to send Dooku away to Tythe, to distract Obi-Wan and Anakin and keep them away from Coruscant, while you ordered Grievous to secrete his charges in a place of safety - upon Utapau, as it happens - and to implement the plans you had given him regarding the end of the war. You accelerated your timetable and told General Grievous - who does not know the identity of your alter ego, Sidious, as Palpatine of Naboo - to attack Coruscant and to take your alter ego prisoner to bait your trap for Anakin. You thought to have Dooku kill Obi-Wan so that Anakin would, in his pain and his rage, lash out and kill Dooku while in the grip of what you think of as the Dark Side of the Force. You believed that you would be able to make Anakin Skywalker your new apprentice then, as you have been planning to eventually do for a majority of the past decade, ever since you truly became aware of the extent of his ability with the Force, after your agents failed to secure you one of the living ships of Zonama Sekot because of Anakin's power and Anakin survived this affront to your minions because of Obi-Wan's daring." It is Qui-Gon Jinn who is speaking now, the words absolutely true and yet also the makings of a subtle trap - one that Sidious is far too angry to sense. "You believed Anakin to be the Chosen One and you thought it would wonderfully suit your execution of the Sith's vengeance against the Jedi Order if you could succeed in twisting him to your side, so that the Order's belief in Anakin as the Chosen One would blind the Jedi to the danger that Anakin would pose to them if he were your partisan."

"And I would have succeeded in my plans," Sidious spits, falling into the trap, "if only Dooku had not been so incompetent that - "

"You never would have succeeded." Obi-Wan Kenobi's words are spoken in the distant, detached voice of a man so deep within a far-sight vision that he cannot even spare awareness enough to gauge the reaction that his words are eliciting. "Anakin Skywalker is the Sith'ari, not the Chosen One. It was once possible that you might have been able to claim the broken, burnt husk of Anakin and encase him in that evil black suit you have designed to entrap him, but even as Darth Vader, he would not have been yours. And it would have been his hands - because of my interference - that ultimately would have destroyed you. But that road is closed to you now and it can never be reopened. It has been shut since the moment Senator Padmé Amidala Naberrie of Naboo, formerly Queen of the Naboo, perished in the attack on Coruscant. You would consider this death a minor incident of collateral damage, but in truth it is a tipping point and a catalyst. Like the butterfly effect of chaos theory, this one small, seemingly unrelated event incited a chain reaction that influenced the outcome of events on the Invisible Hand/, allowing Dooku to escape from your evil, Qui-Gon to regain Dooku, and Anakin and I both to survive your 'rescue' and the subsequent controlled crash landing of the remnant of /Invisible Hand on Coruscant. That chain reaction revealed to Qui-Gon Jinn and Dooku the way to return, to manifest within the physical realm - as you see they are before you - and it revealed to Anakin and to me who and what we truly are. We have embraced each other in the fullness of that knowledge and submitted ourselves to the Force, which has willingly embraced us and then turned us loose again. You've chosen your own fate in this, Sidious, willingly and knowingly. In deliberately choosing to speed the order to treacherously attack Coruscant, you have written your own death sentence, Sidious. You cannot escape us. We are far more powerful than you. If you continue to fight, we will defend ourselves and you will fall. One way or the other, your evil will be extinguished. We do not wish to cause you harm: the citizens of the reunited Galactic Republic deserve to see you brought up on charges for the many crimes you have committed against them. But you must not continue to push us as you have been. You cannot escape us. And you cannot turn Anakin. You might as well cease trying to use Force-persuasion to order him to do your bidding. The hooks you once buried within his trusting soul and open mind have been entirely excised from his system, burned out of him by the Light of the Force. You cannot turn him and you cannot keep him from fulfilling his true destiny. Remember, Sidious. Anakin is the Sith'ari, not the Chosen One."

"Let me see if I remember it correctly," Anakin offers, his smile almost mocking. "The Sith'ari: the perfect being who will rise to power and bring balance to the Force; the one who will rise up and destroy the Sith and yet in the process will return to lead the Sith and make us stronger than ever before." The smile blossoms into an all too familiar smirk. "I believe I've done all of that except for the destruction bit. Entirely Entirely unwittingly, I've led the return of the Sith's rise to power and paved the way for the Sith's ascension to a seat of authority that has empowered the remnants of the Sith Order and made the Sith stronger than they ever have been before, seeing as how the Sith Empire was never so great as the Galactic Republic is, even torn apart as it is now. As for balancing the Force, well, that will come when the Sith and the old Jedi Order are both gone, and that cannot happen until you are gone, Sidious. Obi-Wan is the Chosen One and so he will remake the Jedi Order, but the Sith'ari must destroy the Sith, remember? And as of this precise moment in time, Sidious, you are the Sith. You are the only Sith that there is. There may be many of your 'Dark Side Adepts' on Byss, but there are most certainly not any other Sith Lords knocking about anywhere in the Republic. You've seen to that yourself, Sidious. You've no one else to blame for it but yourself. And so I say to you again: surrender. You cannot escape us and we will fight if we must - if you make us."

"Fools!" Sidious only thunders. "What can you possibly hope to accomplish here? Even if you were, by some fluke, able to kill me," he sneers, obviously not thinking very much of their chances of accomplishing such a thing, in spite of all that has been said to him, "what do you suppose will happen? What will happen to the Republic? To your precious Order? You will be charged with my murder and the Order will be torn to pieces!"

"The Jedi will be charged with murder? Really? On what grounds?" Dooku only calmly - and ever so slightly humorously - inquires.

"For cutting down the peaceful, old, and much-beloved Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, you fools! What else?"

"I find it difficult to imagine that anyone will believe Palpatine to have been peaceful or troubled by the infirmities of great age, once they have seen the footage of the holorecordings of your actions in that inner office and your battle against Master Windu," Qui-Gon quietly points out, his smile achingly gentle.

"What?!"

"Surely you can't believe we'd be so unimaginably stupid as to come in here, to the seat of your power, and not arrange for there to be an unimpeachable record of the entire sequence of events that would doubtlessly unfold, once we had confronted you with your crimes?" Anakin's voice is neither as gentle nor as calm as Qui-Gon's or Dooku's, and it is perhaps because of this fact that Sidious takes Anakin's point much more easily to heart.

"You - you - you tricked me - "

"That's a laugh, coming from the likes of you!" Anakin snickers, smirk stretching wide.

"I'll destroy you all for this!" Sidious' face is so horribly deformed that it's impossible to tell if the almost painful looking expression on the Sith Lord's death-head of a face is a grimace of rage or just the snarling rictus of thwarted darkness. "I'll destroy your Temple! I'll purge the galaxy forever of the debilitating weakness of your Order!" A practiced flick of one outstretched wrist, and a communication device appears in the Sith Lord's hands. Less than a heartbeat elapses between the shrieking promise of vengeance in the voice of Darth Sidious and the issuance of an order into that communication device in the righteously wrathful voice of Chancellor Palpatine. "Clones! Troopers! Listen to me! This is Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and I am ordering you to immediately execute Order Sixty-Six and raze the Jedi Temple! Now! Kill all Temple residents!"

"Qui-Gon, Dooku, the children - " Obi-Wan cries.

"At once," Qui-Gon vows, and then abruptly and utterly vanishes.

"We will seal the Temple. Not one of the residents shall come to harm, if we can prevent it from happening. We will hold off all who come against the Temple until you are done here," Dooku promises before also vanishing.

"Troopers - !" Sidious is roaring into the communication device in the voice of Palpatine when Anakin, with a merest flick of his lightsaber, slips up underneath the Sith Lord's guard and deftly skewers the device right out of his hands. Such is Anakin's skill that the powerful energy blade doesn't even singe the Sith Lord's pasty fingers, though the comm unit is fried, rendering it hopelessly inoperable, and pierced through, essentially destroying it utterly. "You - !" Anakin merely smirks at the enraged Sith Lord, causing Sidious' hands to clench into fists and his entire body to quake with rage. "You will pay for that!"

"Come on then," Anakin only laughs - an oddly joyous sound, all things considered - and waves his left hand in clear invitation as Obi-Wan silently moves up to his side, taking up his familiar position so that they are standing together, shoulder to shoulder, lightsabers at the ready. "Why don't you make me?"

In response, Sidious spreads his arms wide, in a gesture that makes his sleeves into black wings. He takes one step forward, and another step, and then another. Lightning spears out from those outstretched hands, and the battle is on.

***