First of all, a few thanks are in order, because reviews are finally being posted. Thank you. CC-645, your suggestions were quite helpful, and yes, the inconsistencies that you mentioned were deliberate, but they stemmed more from laziness on my part than any actual plot-related reason. I've been doing quite a bit more research for these last couple chapters, and I hope it shows. But I'm still not totally sure about the timeline...

-*Nineteen Years Ago*-

Nakomi...

What?

Be still, child. Can you hear me alright?

Ow! Ow, that hurts!

I know, I know. I'm sorry. Do you know where you are?

Who are you?

Nakomi, do you know where you are?

...the Temple...?

No. I knew I shouldn't have brought you here. This is going to hurt, be strong.

OW! Let go of me! Where am I? Who—

-*!*-

"—are you?" I yelled, sitting bolt upright and opening my eyes. Immediately, I cringed at the pain in my head and face. "What happened? Why do I..."

I trailed off. Icy rain was pounding down on me, and I was sitting on a platform vibrating with the force of the angry ocean below. My clothing was soaked. With wind cutting all the way to my vulnerable skin, I rapidly began to shiver. Obi-Wan was crouching next to me, looking about ten years older than he had when I saw him last and a great deal wetter. He was tentatively holding my jaw in place, but slowly let go of it. It stayed, but ached.

"Please tell me you remember who I am, young Padawan," he said wearily. "Please."

"Master Obi-Wan!" I scrambled to my feet and almost fell over as the pain in my head made my vision swirl sickeningly. He steadied me.

"Good, good. I was afraid that that blow had hurt you very seriously. When I saw you lying here on the platform..." He shook his head.

"Someone hit me?"

"You don't remember who?"

"No."

"I suppose it doesn't matter. Come." Obi-Wan stood and placed a hand on my back, guiding me towards the door. It slid open, revealing Jaun-We and Lama-Su.

"Master Obi-Wan," the Prime Minister said stiffly. "I was not aware that you remained on our humble planet."

"I believed that Jango Fett was a threat, and it appears that I was right, doesn't it? If you will excuse me, I'm going to use the medical systems on my ship to make sure that my Padawan doesn't have permanent brain damage." Maneuvering me in front of him, the Jedi pushed through the two Kaminoans without even the slightest bow. I was shocked at how angry he seemed at them. They hadn't done anything.

"Master Obi-Wan, we have a fully-equipped medical bay here—" Jaun We began, but he ignored her.

"Why are you so angry with them?" I asked. He glanced down at me as we walked rapidly through the halls, almost but not quite running.

"I'm not, I simply want to catch the bounty hunter. I'd leave you here if I trusted these creatures not to experiment on you. Please, accept my apologies, I knew how dangerous this was going to be and yet I dragged a Padawan into it anyway."

I stared straight ahead. "Master, don't apologize. This is what I'm supposed to be doing, isn't it? Rather than staying inside the Temple fighting with other children."

He didn't answer.

Outside, Obi-Wan stopped dead when he saw the Starfighter, a strangled sound worming its way out of his throat. I winced and shuffled out of hitting distance. Had I...really left the canopy down...? So that water could fill the cockpit and spill over the sides?

"It's alright," the Jedi finally said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Come. It won't take much to fix."

I stood under the wing, out of the rain, while he worked hard to fix the problem that I had created. R4 kept up a steady stream of sympathetic beeps above me, but I ignored them. When the cockpit was finally dry, Obi-Wan lifted me into it and then climbed in himself, wringing out both of our robes before closing the canopy. This time, he didn't make me sit behind the seat, though I felt that I deserved to. Instead, I crouched beside him.

"We're going after them?" I asked as the small ship lifted off. Obi-Wan nodded.

"Yes. We are."

"You're going to try to destroy them?"

"I see no other way."

"But, Master...Boba's just a child."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I'm aware of that."

I realized that he must have already thought this over, come to the unwelcome decision that there was no way to eliminate Jango and the significant threat that he posed to the Republic without killing his "son," as well. I could only imagine him turning the problem over and over in his head as he waited for me to come to on the platform, searching for another solution and failing to find one. We were Jedi. We were supposed to preserve life, not end it, especially not for one so young. And this fact must be hurting him even more than me.

Was this what it was to be a Master? Doing the right thing even when every part of your being told you that it was wrong? A sudden and unprecedented desire to remain young forever rocked me as we broke through the atmosphere.

"Nakomi, brace yourself," Obi-Wan said tensely. I did as I was told, staring at the rapidly-shrinking bright dot that I somehow knew was Jango Fett's ship. Were they aware of our pursuit of them? Why hadn't they—

Before I could even finish the thought, they vanished into hyperspace.

"Blast it!"

"Can we still follow them?"

Obi-Wan didn't answer, just accelerated. I closed my eyes and tried to combat the hideous queasy feeling that was slowly creeping up through my body. I'd never felt sick like this before; it seemed to be stemming from the agony in my head. There was something very wrong. A concussion? Definitely. Maybe even a cracked skull. Whatever it was, hyperspace was not helping it.

The sensation abated slightly as we reentered normal space, right in the middle of an asteroid field. I winced as one tumbled past us. Its absence in the formation afforded me a clear view of a nearby red planet.

"Geonosis?" Obi-Wan muttered to himself. "Why did they come here...?"

"Master..."

"Yes?"

"I think they saw us."

Jango's fighter, which had been drifting leisurely through the asteroids, suddenly turned sharply and cut a path through a denser section of the field. An obvious evasion maneuver. With his knuckles white on the controls, the Jedi gave chase.

During the battle, the only thing I could do was hang on and watch. As rapid fire from the ship that we were pursuing slammed into our hull, despite Obi-Wan's best efforts, my helplessness manifested itself as a hard ball in the core of my being. It seemed to grow as time went on. I could barely stand this—I couldn't do anything but try and follow Jango's ship with my eyes in case Obi-Wan lost sight of him. The inactivity made my blood into acid in my veins and lined every breath with razors. If only we were on the ground, I could use my lightsaber, actually be of use...

Jango was leading us deeper and deeper into the asteroid field, making it so that we had to dodge the huge rocks as well as his fire. More than once, Obi-Wan was forced to choose between allowing the bounty hunter's missiles to hit us and smashing into an asteroid. I flinched despite myself as a rock larger than the Starfighter actually grazed the canopy, leaving a long white streak. Far ahead, I could see a small figure in Jango's cockpit doing the same as their wing clipped an asteroid. That was when it hit me.

Obi-Wan wasn't returning fire.

"Why aren't you shooting at them?" I demanded. "He's trying to kill us, we have guns—"

He said nothing, concentrating instead on flying. Despite my indignation, I sensed that it might be a good idea to keep my mouth shut until we were out of the immediate danger posed by the gigantic rocks all around us. While we kept clipping them despite Obi-Wan's intense concentration, Jango evaded them with ease. It almost looked as if he had done this before. As if he had practiced flying through this asteroid field multiple times before. In preparation for today? Or simply out of boredom? Not that it mattered. He was so much better than Obi-Wan, and not even the reflexes of a Jedi were better than experience. I felt a momentary stab of envy towards Boba. It looked like he had put his faith in the right party after all.

Suddenly, something moved across our path. An asteroid. But it was so much larger than the others around it; almost big enough to be considered a moon or a dwarf planet. And it was going a lot faster, too. There was no way we could avoid it. The kind of fear that you feel only when you know for sure that you're about to die bloomed in me, and I was suddenly concerned with how light-headed I felt. As if that mattered.

There were muffled thumping sounds from outside. Obi-Wan had finally fired a couple of torpedoes—not that they would do much good now. Jango Fett was on the other side of the rock that would be our grave, couldn't he see that?

It wasn't until the resulting explosions carved out a hollow in the asteroid, giving us room to decelerate, that I realized what the purpose of the maneuver had been. Obi-Wan landed the Starfighter in the new crater, so gently that I didn't feel anything on contact. I knew exactly how this would look to the Fetts. Our ship crashing into the asteroid, obviously killing everything on board. It was strange for me to know that someone thought I was dead. Jango and Boba would believe that whatever was left of me was drifting through space, while actually, my heart still beat in my chest, my lungs still expanded and contracted. It made me uneasy.

"Are you alright?" Obi-Wan asked, glancing over at me. I just nodded. My head still hurt, but I didn't feel as if I was in danger of passing out again any time soon. "Good. I'll need your help when we reach the planet."

With that, he pulled away from the asteroid and turned towards Geonosis, a planet the color of blood. Something was tugging at my mind, giving me a feeling of foreboding about the planet, but I wasn't sure if it was the Force or just the last effects of the severe blow to the head that I had received.

So I ignored it.