Two days later:

~Sidious's POV~

"Your plan is going perfectly master. The Jedi are all in position outside of Ilum," Darth Vader informed him without any emotion in his cybernetic voice.

Dear Vader had lost the ability to impose emotion into speech after Mustafar. "All the Rebel forces? You are sure?" Sidious snapped. He did not want a single person, any last clone not there at Ilum.

He wanted to destroy them all.

"Positive. Our spy is to be trusted; he will not fail me. He has a family to think of, after all," Sidious could not very well argue with that, now could he? Love was such an easy way to manipulate. "Good. Send our fleet without delay," he ordered.

"And the Death Star?"

"We will wait until the time is right," he assured his eager apprentice. "Now go. Make them suffer."

"Yes, master."


~Obi-wan's POV~

"Do you concede?" Anakin gasped, centimeters away from his ear. Obi-wan, squirming underneath his bombastic friend, and breathless with laughter after their recent tussle, was no more intimidated than if he were fighting Dooku. Nevertheless, he still did not like it when Anakin did this to him. It was playing dirty.

"Of course not, youngling! Get off me!" he ground out, pinned down but undefeated. "I'm not getting up until you concede the fight. You're not that old and I'm not that stupid," Anakin replied. "Opinions may vary on the latter point," Obi-wan huffed.

In retaliation, Anakin smacked him behind the head. "Don't talk back to me!" he ordered, his very voice sounding of held-in laughter. "Just give in already! You can't even see me," he pointed out.

This unreasonable point was unfortunately, very true. Anakin, sometime during the time when Obi-wan had been crushing his stomach with his elbow, had hidden his force signature.

Thus, Obi-wan truly had no clue where Anakin had been, and that made it relatively easy for him to be attacked and pinned down beneath crushing weight. Now, cheek pressed to the floor and Anakin's breath misting the skin of his neck, he was persistent still.

"I can still give you a run for your money, my foolish young friend," he replied. "Still? You gave me a run for my money a few minutes ago! Can't you hear that thumping? That's my vaping heart, you barve. And it's not nice to make people laugh when they're trying to beat you up, you know I get confused," Obi-wan snorted in some laughter of his own.

"What confused you? The earwax or the fricassee?" he inquired. "Shut up!" Anakin replied with a barked laugh. "Did Qui-gon really put earwax in the…?" he asked.

"He did," Obi-wan shivered at the memory. Their hosts had not taken kindly to that one, and Obi-wan distinctly remembered sleeping outside in the pouring rain for his master's mischief.

Anakin chuckled softly in his ear, seeing the memory. "Oh, force. Knock it off, I can't think straight now. What's your name again?" he asked playfully.

Obi-wan grunted, finally going still underneath the heavy compactness of grievance named Anakin. "Sexy man number four," he replied.

That did it. Anakin burst into sufficient laughter that it was relatively easy to grab his arm and throw him off Obi-wan's back. He stood smugly, as Anakin curled into a ball, laughing himself to tears.

He placed a boot on Anakin's chest victoriously. "I'll take that as a full surrender," he assumed. Anakin, purple-faced, shook his head. "Force. Force," he appealed, hand gripping his side desperately.

"You know…You can't just…Spring things like…That on me, master. You're going to kill me one of these days," Anakin griped between laughs. "No worries on that regard Anakin. I'm relatively sure the force has already decided that you are going to be the death of me," he reminded his young friend.

"Oh, gosh. How did you come up with that one? Man, Obi-wan, you got me. You win. Now help me up…Ah, my side is going to be sore for weeks," he complained as Obi-wan grabbed his outstretched arm and hauled him to his feet.

"That is your own fault for playing dirty," Obi-wan scolded him. "My fault? I was playing dirty? You sprung earwax, fricassee, and sexy man number four on me, and you think I was playing dirty?" He gasped out. Obi-wan chuckled.

"I think I've been around you too long," he observed. "I guess so. I wish someone would have been around to hear you say that, no one is going to believe me when I tell them," he said.

Obi-wan shook his head happily and trotted over to the bench, swiping his sweaty forehead and chest with a towel.

"A reason why I reserve my uncouth attitudes for you, brothen," he chirped. "Whatever, master. I suppose that's a compliment in your own warped, twisted way," Obi-wan was about to demand just how his view could be considered warped or twisted when Anakin was the suicide flyer, but he was interrupted by the force. Through it, the distinct drums of war began.

Anakin sensed it too. Grimly, all trace of playful competiveness vanished, replaced by a general. "Rex," Anakin said into his comm. Link.

"Are the twins with you?" he asked. "Yes, sir. Did you know that they know where the word green came from?" Obi-wan cocked an eyebrow.

He didn't even know here green came from. "That's great Rex. The battle is beginning. Escort them to my quarters and then lock them inside when you get there, got it?" He ordered.

Rex's flash of vanished humanity was heard through the comm. Link. "It will be done sir. I'll prep your fighter too," he said before he hung up.

Anakin looked up, and though his expression was swathed in a sea of force written whiteness, Obi-wan knew it was grim. Here began a war for something that was akin to justice itself. Ilum.

Their chosen battlefields would be different, they always had been. Their battlefields were a tribute to themselves. Obi-wan's would be on the bridge with the clones, strategizing, controlling the politics of war through wise intuition, honed knowledge.

Anakin would be in the space outside, flying, commanding, charging towards the goal, winning the battles through cunning initiative and natural talent. Defense and offense, peace and war. They clasped hands, brother to brother.

"May the force be with you," as it always was, but miracles were needed as well, sometimes. Sometimes the force wasn't enough; Qui-gon and Shmi had proven that.

"And you," with a final nod-for what else needed to be said between brother Jedi?- they ran out of the practice room and into their selected battlefields.


~Bail's POV~

Bail had been inside many control centers, and he had seen many battles-not many space battles, admittedly, but many crusades. At the same time, he had never in any of those battles, seen the same efficiency as he witnessed executed now. In the midst of chaos, the Jedi had brought some semblance of order.

Not enough order to keep the ships still apparently. Bail clung to the nearest securely bolted down device he could find as the ship jolted with coming fire-blasts.

The clones seemed unworried and detached, so much so that if they were not calling out information and status reports to General Kenobi every two seconds, he should have thought they'd slipped into daydreaming at their stations.

Outside the giant plasma protected windows, explosions of fire and metal added to the labyrinth of closely linked starfighters, clone fighters, vulture droids and Sith starfighters. From Bail's position, it could have been merely an all out game of tag; it looked like.

Padme appeared at his side, expression dead calm, but he noted the sleek shine of sweat on her brow. Her husband was out there somewhere.

Bail imagined if it were Breha out there fighting in that great maze of dying men and exploding casualties and shivered. Thank goodness his wife was not Jedi.

"So far we're at a deadlock, sir," Admiral Yularen reported to Obi-wan, though the Jedi was standing right next to him, watching the battle with as much detachment as his clones.

How can you do that? Bail thought, watching his friend, whom he had seen smile and scream, laugh and cry.

Staring at him now, Bail was almost sure that these words and actions were foreign to the Jedi. It looked as if nothing could unsettle him, not even when a clone, having been ejected from his fighter, crashed into the viewport windows, both legs torn from his body, mouth opening and closing in a desperate gamble for oxygen in airless space.

Then, airless as space was, he detonated, and blood spattered all over the window, blocking their view. Bail inhaled sharply and Padme cried out, shocked. Obi-wan, the admiral and the clones did not seem disturbed.

"That's it," Padme decided, her voice trembling with revulsion. "I won't just sit here while this happens. Obi-wan, what can we do to help?" she demanded.

Obi-wan did not turn as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. His unblinking eyes (why is it he never seemed to blasted blink?) did not stray from the scene. Finally, he pointed at the holo-projector, which several clone technicians were huddled about.

"Keep an eye on those Sith cruisers. We can't remain in stalemate forever. Sooner or later either we'll need a plan to make them back down or they'll have a plan to make us back down," he strategized.

Bail and Padme hurried to do his bidding, huddling with the murmuring clones near the projected battlefield. "I think they're moving forward," Padme muttered, eyes tracking the small starfighters as if trying to find Anakin's.

Bail nodded, his heart thumping in his ears, the tense adrenaline in the air slipping in to fill his veins. "But why?" He asked.

He knew enough about military tactics to know that you only moved forward if you were advancing upon a retreating enemy, advancing anyway to try to intimidate the enemy, or…Making room for reinforcements.

"Sir! More ships coming out of hyperspace!" In his daze, he heard a clone call out. "Well, they're certainly not ours," Obi-wan predicted, without any scruples in the face of this fact. "How many?" Admiral Yularen barked.

The clone who had announced it squinted at his screen, and suddenly paled. "General…" he gulped, shaking his head slowly, as if trying to bring himself out of a nightmare.

Obi-wan nodded grimly. "It's the entire Imperial fleet, isn't it?" A simple nod accompanied this canny deduction: and then a combined inhalation from the clones.

"Well," Obi-wan observed, lips screwing into pert discontent. "This should be interesting," not the word Bail would have used, but it sufficed. "What are we going to do?" Padme inquired.

"Something tells me we're going to need a different plan," Admiral Yularen considered as…Darn, as several dozen Imperial ships flashed into view behind their enemies. "Indeed, Admiral. Cody, patch me in to Master Yoda," Obi-wan ordered thoughtfully.


More than twenty reviews already, wow! I certainly wasn't expecting that. Well, let me be the first to thank everyone who supports my stories, and to answer some questions.

1. If you'll bear with me everyone eventually the other Jedi are going to find out Obi-wan is blind. I won't tell you when, but I can guarantee its going to be awesome.

2. I'm afraid that if I were to grant Anakin and Padme another child the universe might just explode, followed closely by Obi-wan's brain. Thus being, Luke and Leia will remain their only children, but not to fear, soon enough other children will join the Skywalker family.

Again, I appreciate everyone who takes some time to review, critique or scold, its all as good as gold to me!

~Queen Yoda