A Jeweled Rose In Clone Wars

Part 18

Fives was temporarily assigned to Ruby's legion, and he was soon going to go back to the 501st. However, he wasn't done investigating the inhibitor chips, and they made the mistake of giving him a new one. Now he had the perfect thing to use for testing.

(ON ONE OF ANAKIN'S BATTLESHIPS TO RETURN FIVES)

"Hey," Ruby said to Anakin.

"What are you doing here?" Anakin asked her.

"Wanted to personally see Fives off," she stated to him, "I plan on talking to Padme when I go on break. It is about the fair treatment of our soldiers."

"Why are you telling me this?" Anakin asked the red-loving girl.

"Aren't you and Padme like... a thing?" Ruby replied confused.

"How did you know that?!" Anakin asked, slightly panicked.

"The 212st told me everything when I was their commander," she said calmly.

"They know?!" Anakin was now very panicked.

"Yeah... Who doesn't?" Ruby stated.

"WHAT?!" he had to calm himself quickly, "The Jedi Masters don't know, right?!"

"Yeah, because the council is practically blind," she noted, "However, Kenobi may or may not know... Actually scratch that... He definitely knows."

"WHAT!?" Anakin yelled.

"I already told you everything, so I think your question is already answered," Ruby said. There was an awkward silence between them. "Well, this is awkward..." Ruby stated.

"Um... So..." Anakin said trying to break the ice, "Do you know what is happening with Mandalore?"

"Yeah!" Ruby said, "They are planing a siege, and they are building up a force. They might end up joining the Republic do too preasure, but we are assisting because there is a chance to capture Maul."

"So who is going to be part of the force?" Anakin asked, slightly interested.

"Well, there is Satine, Bo-Katan, the Night Owls, Ahsoka, possibly my legion-" Ruby was listing them one by one, but Anakin cut her off.

"Wait what did you say?" Anakin asked, he didn't believe what he had just heard.

"My legion?" Ruby asked.

"Before that!" Anakin replied.

"The Night Owls?" Ruby missed the point.

"No, between those two!" Anakin said.

"Ahsoka?" she asked, "Yeah, she is part of the group..."

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?!" Anakin asked, "How did she even become part of that force in the first place?"

"Well, because she was out of work, I may or may not have contacted her and offered her a spot..." Ruby replied nervously.

"THAT STILL DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY YOU DIDN'T INFORM ME!" Anakin yelled.

"I thought she would've told you about this by now," Ruby stated.

"Sooooooo," Anakin said after he cooled off, "What makes you such a great leader?"

"Nothing really..." Ruby replied. 'Or maybe it is because I take at least two seconds to think before I do anything,' Ruby thought to herself.

"You really care about the Clones don't you," Anakin noted. 

"I feel like they are being wronged, and are nothing more than slaves," Ruby stated, this struck a chord in Anakin.

"SLAVES! DO YOU KNOW WHAT SLAVERY LOOKS LIKE, BECAUSE I SURE DO!" Anakin screamed, how could Ruby think that was slavery.

"Yes, they are," Ruby said as she closed her eyes, "I do know what slavery looks like, too." She said continued with her now open eyes staring at her hands, and then she turned to the other general. "They have no right to choose for themselves whether they want to fight this war or not, and if they are, quote on quote, defective they are forced to clean, or are killed. What happens at the end of this conflict to them." Ruby paused her gaze becoming harder as if in pain to say the next words, "They will most likely kill them, and that is why they don't talk about armies after this war."

This shocked Anakin to his core, he who has once been a slave was now a slave owner. This was horrible, and he couldn't believe what he and the Republic had done. He wanted to say that she was wrong to tell her or something, but deep down, he always knew that she was right.

"Skywalker, the only way to protect our men is to stand up when we still can. If we don't we will be no better than our foes," the girl said. She was trying to say something else, but then the ship shook.

"A Separatist fleet is approaching," they heard on a loudspeaker.

"What?!" Ruby said, "Why would they come here? We are decently far in Republic space!"

They engaged in battle, and there were a lot of problems. They didn't have enough ships to face off the enemy fleet, and they were vastly outnumbered. If they didn't call for help they would be gone. They managed to get help, being General Kenobi's fleet, but they realized they had to board the enemy vessel to try and disable some of the canons because if they didn't, it would create an EMP strong enough to annihilate all the Republic Ships.

(SEPARATIST SHIP)

Ruby, Anakin, and Obi-Wan was running through the enemy ship, and planted a bomb to destroy the reactor, but if course something bad had to happen. They were under a lot of enemy fire when a grenade was thrown at them, and it exploded close enough to Obi-Wan that it distracted him for long enough so that he got shot. It wasn't deadly, but it knocked him out cold, leaving both his former padawans to carry (or more preferably drag) him out.

(OBI-WAN KENOBI'S MIND, AT LEAST I THINK...)

He just stood in a patch of land that stretched further than the eye could see. It was a grassy plain with flowers everywhere, and it was indeed peaceful here. He looked in front of him to see someone in a white cloak looking at the flowers, and he took a step closer to whoever they were. They figure turned around to show that inside the their cape was pitch black and so was its entire body. Once it fully turned around the luscious land had turned into a rocky barren place with lava everywhere. It gestured its hand to show him everything, but not in a sinister way, it was earning him.

"Who are you?" Obi-Wan asked looking at where the figures eyes should have been. To his surprise it seemed to open its eyes which were pure white like its cape, and it also opened its mouth which was the same as the eyes. It mouthed something that he couldn't understand, and then he realized who the person was, "Master? Is that you?" he asked and the thing nodded. Suddenly he heard a voice telling him to wake-up coming from the figure's mouth, but it didn't match up with the lips. He woke-up to see a medic telling him to wake-up, and he stood up knowing that something bad was coming.