Editing on the post for chapter nine of the WIP
The LJ is insane and refuses to allow me to change anything in the posting for chapter nine of my WIP because supposedly the post it too large. Which is total bullshit, because I've tried shortening the over-all post to compensate for the slight addition in length from the rewording, and the LJ still refuses to post the edit. So here, for those of you who know, as I now do, that Neimoidia is the homeworld of the Neimoidians and Cato Neimoidia is just another one of its purse worlds, is the edit that I cannot get the LJ to post.
The paragraph in question reads:
Towards the end of the Republic campaign to seize the Trade Federation’s purse worlds - Deko and Koru Neimoidia - and the Neimoidian homeworld of Cato Neimoidia, 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.
The paragraph should read:
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.
For those interested in reading the entire scene intact, as it is supposed to be (including both the edit and a correction where it appears my fingers got away from me once whilst spelling "Kaminoans"), please continue reading:
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 Kaminoans 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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The paragraph in question reads:
Towards the end of the Republic campaign to seize the Trade Federation’s purse worlds - Deko and Koru Neimoidia - and the Neimoidian homeworld of Cato Neimoidia, 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.
The paragraph should read:
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.
For those interested in reading the entire scene intact, as it is supposed to be (including both the edit and a correction where it appears my fingers got away from me once whilst spelling "Kaminoans"), please continue reading:
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 Kaminoans 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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