War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.
In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capitol and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the Galactic Senate.
As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor...
"Kill him. Kill him now". The Chancellor's calm commanding pierced Anakin. The double buzz of a blue and a red lightsabre crossed over the neck of the defeated Count Dooku, affording a simple strike to end the war.
"I shouldn't."
Trust your feelings Anakin. The memory of his master Obi-Wan Kenobi's oft spoken words, who was now lying crushed just meters away. Significance warred across the young Jedi's face. His feeling was not just that summary execution was wrong, his enemy was disarmed, incapacitated. Something more. Something here and now. Something on Coruscant below.
"Do it."
The slime seeped through Chancellor Palpatine's voice. Slime that gave Anakin clarity he had not felt since... since he had failed his mother.
Obi-Wan had mentioned to him debates in the Jedi council. Was Count Dooku the Sith Lord and Darth Maul's master? Or was he something else? Something... less? Merely a new apprentice to a more powerful and more dangerous being. That voice. It nags at Anakin. Along with the feeling, the feeling of cold and... he can't tell. The Dark Side obscures his feelings.
Clarity.
Anakin snaps his head toward the Chancellor and begins to speak: "Y..." But, the cold shivers through him, he knows he is too late. He strikes Dooku hard in the jaw with the curved hilt of the sabre and the old man crumples to the floor, before flinging it toward the Chancellor. He does not see, for he has leapt toward Obi-Wan, but the sabre hovers momentarily before Palpatine before crashing under Anakin's feet. A shower of sparks fly up from underneath him as Anakin propels himself toward the exit, toward his friend and ultimately toward his home. Blue lightning crackles from the Chancellor's hands aimed not at Anakin, for Palpatine is quick to abandon an apprentice, but to the wrecked walkway pinning an unconscious Obi-Wan to the deck. The walkway melts engulfing Obi-Wan's body, but Anakin cannot stop. He launches himself back onto the bridge, lifting Dooku's unconscious body and dropping it, hard, toward the Sith Lord. It will not be enough to save Obi-Wan. Someone must survive this catastrophe. The republic is lost. Lost longer ago than they knew.
The cold tells Anakin he will not escape, and from his eyes he sees Palpatine beginning to move. He reaches out, but the Dark Side around the Chancellor resists him, so he shifts his mind to something smaller. A console. Attached to the deck. He sees it in his mind lifting and hears the screech of torn metal as it is hurled toward the transparisteel viewers. The rush of air escaping to vacuum and the crash of a blast door. It will not hold long, but Anakin can get back, back the way he came, to his droid, his fighter and maybe even his home.
He had lost two solar panels and his second oldest friend, but Anakin was in the atmosphere. Hurtling toward the city below. Fire ships, desperate to keep death in space, and not on the, frankly rather well-off, citizens of the republic on the upper levels of Coruscant, tracked his descent, spraying fire retardant as he careened toward the Jedi temple. With Obi-Wan dead, only Master Yoda could find them a way out of this mess.
Clarity.
Yoda did not know what the Chancellor was. Even he was not strong enough to see through the cloud that the Dark Side had created. Barely any other Jedi recognised there was a cloud. Those that did, Master Windu and Master Luminara at least suspected, were too blinded by their own arrogance, or compulsion to play the role assigned them, to see what it meant. Yoda, the council, none of them could stop what was about to happen.
