Chapter 1: Anakin

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     Darkness. It enveloped her like a snake choking it's prey. It was an all consuming fire that would destroy everything in its path. It's enemies, it's allies, and eventually it's wielder. This darkness that stifled Anakin's senses came from a small figure in the corner of the room. This small figure was radiating amounts of darkness that far surpassed Count Dooku and Darth Maul's pervasive auras. All coming from the tiny form.

As Anakin peered into the room the yellow eyes that met him were filled with a viciousness that dared any onlooker to try her. Try and best her, bring her off her self-proclaimed pedestal. Anakin and Rex had risen to that challenge, as well as the rest of the 501st. They went off to do the impossible. Capture the new yet powerful Sith Lady that had arisen out of the shadows. Capture Darth Castra.

Anakin had never been under the delusion that this would be an easy mission. Despite his normally cocky output on life he knew the facts and the rumors that surrounded the new Sith. She was a person of no mercy, who enjoyed watching the hope leave a person's eyes, soon followed by their life. She prolonged the process of death as long as she could and would torment a person until they were begging her to kill them, to put them out of their misery. Yet, if time permitted she would not. Instead, she'd keep them alive longer in more intense pain, until their only connection to the physical realm was her. She was prolonging their pain and misery until her sadistic fantasies were fulfilled.

He heard the rumors too. That when she'd take villages, she did not take them, but utterly decimated them. However that wasn;t the cruelest part. It was rumored she always went after the children first, leaving her army of newly modified Magna Guards to handle the rest. The people who started these rumors say she was a deadly kind of beautiful. And that had it not been for the trail of evil that followed her, she would have appeared as the friendliest person in the world.

Word had it that she would take the children, claiming to be a Jedi sent to rescue them into a secluded area as a "safe hiding spot" for the children. But once all the children were in and there was no getting in or out for them. All that was left when the dor reopened were the various limbs of children, strewn across the floor like playtools. Several decapitated heads and many had third degree burns from a lightsaber that was not close enough to cauterize the flesh and remove the nerves as well as any sense of pain. No, these lightsaber burns were just far away enough that they did not burn the nerves to numbness. Instead the victims had felt every moment of the endless pain delivered by the Sith Lady. Anakin had seen the body's of victims before he and his legion were assigned.

Oftentimes the victim was lying in a pile of their own blood. Deep gashes ran across the victim's body, and after some research it was found that the victims often had salt poured and scrubbed into the wounds and it was safe to assume that the Force had also been used to maximize the pain felt. There were scorch marks endlessly covering each child's body as broken bones stuck out and were seen where a bone was sticking out of the flesh, or rather what was left of the flesh.

When this mission began he wasn't sure whether this new Sith Lady was full of bantha shit or if the rumors were true. He thought that even the worst Sith would not, could not be as cruel as that, nor would they have the patience to play with their prey for so long. Any delusions that this Sith had any compassion fled when they faced her.

When they had finally cornered Darth Castra, her outfit hid her face, but her posture said it all. Her posture screamed defiance. That she would not, would never back down from a fight. But what to Anakin by surprise was the eerie familiarity he felt seeing that posture. When she finally spoke, it was the voice modulator that came through. The words that came next chilled Anakin to the bone,

"Never again will I be a slave to your despicable Republic, to your traitorous Jedi. Never again will I be a slave to you!" Never again will I be a slave to you! The words echoed through his head.

To me? What could this new Sith Lady have against me? I've never met her... But the Force, that damned Force, pushed against his consciousness, whispering the answer. An answer that he would not accept.

Instead he led his men to fight, but as soon as it began Anakin realized that he was not leading them to a victory or even a battle, he was leading them into a massacre. As the cloaked Sith took her position, Anakin immediately recognized the unique style of fighting, a reverse grip based on Form V, drawing heavily on VI, with that acrobatic twist on Jar Kai. That fighting style belonged to one person and one person only. Ahsoka.

As quickly as the thought came was a s quick as his dismissal of the thought. Ahsoka may have walked away from the order, walked away from him, but she'd never become a Sith. No, he knew her, better than anyone, he knew how she operated. She was driven by compassion and a need to help others. She lived and breathed love, she was the epitome of the Jedi's morals, up until they betrayed her. But Anakin knew, he just knew, that his Snips would never be capable of the cruelty of the Sith before him.

The Sith before him did not kill her opponents, no, that'd be too merciful, Instead she siced their arms off with a lethal elegance, as though it was not human flesh that she was slicing through but butter. All around him Anakin heard and saw, kriff, he felt the pain that surrounded him. As each clone's armor failed them and their limbs dettatched all you heard were the haunting screams of a man not yet dead. The peaceful slumber of beyond eluded them, and all they felt was searing pain. Alive, yet unable to fight, unable to move, only able to scream. Just the agony that surrounded him was almost enough to completely render Anakin immobile. Never before had so many people been in such pain as this around him before. Usually he only felt a small prick that was really a fatal blaster wound. But now... but now it was an all consuming, overwhelming amount of pain, pain that would not rest for hours, hours until they finally fell asleep in death's arms. No this was in no way, shape or form his Snips.

But one thing that confused Anakin was while the Sith danced about in a lightsaber duel with him while maiming his men, she never hit certain clones, namely Kix and Rex. As their duel pressed on and his clones became fewer, he knew it was only a matter of time before Rex and Kix were gone too, before more people he cared about were lost. However despite the ferocity of their duel, their powers matched, and the onslaught of blaster bolts from his ever loyal troops, she never tried to evn hurt either of them.

Anakin could sense through the force that to a certain degree hs vod recognized the fighting style, whether or not they were under the impression it was Ahsoka, he did not know. He himself did not believe that it was her, his padawan, his sister, his family, his rock through the battles. He did not believe it was Ahsoka Tano.

Until it happened...

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