Anakin POV

We were on the Defiance with Admiral Cohen navigating us to Malachor. Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon were standing beside me, and holograms of Depa, Yoda, Windu, and Plo-Koon were around us.

"This is either overkill, or it is going to be a bloodbath," I said.

"Sidious has had some time to rally some forces around him," said Depa. "He will not go down easy."

"Four of us attacked him during Order 66," said Mace Windu. "All of us joined the force."

I looked down at my feet, remembering in shame the night he was referring to.

"Peace be with you, Skywalker," said Master Yoda. "Fall again, you will not."

"I don't know if I am up to this master," I confessed. "Bring balance to the force again by facing him alone."

"Why do you keep saying alone?" said Obi-Wan. "Do you not see this gorgeous Jedi Knight standing at the ready?"

We both laughed.

"We will take him together, brother," said Obi-Wan.

"Remember your training, you must, apprentice," said Yoda.

"Yes Master," I said.

"Palpatine has lived many lives, and is a master of all of the lightsaber forms," said Qui-Gon Jinn. "We must be on guard against anything."

"Alright, time for a plan," I said. "We take two gunships and blast our way into the hanger. Once there, we make our way through the ship to Palpatine command center here. We take out what little security of clones he has then it's just us versus him and his guards. All of that should be relatively simple, now gets the hard part.

"Next we deal with Palpatine and the guards. He will have two guards at both entrances, and four around his throne, totaling eight. Ahsoka, Master Depa, Master Plo, Qui-Gon, they are your targets. They are not trained in the force, but very skilled and dangerous. They train with Palpatine himself. They are brutal and cunning."

They all nodded.

"That leaves Yoda, Windu, Obi-Wan, and myself to take Palpatine. If he wants to turn me, which if it was me, I would try, he would try and get me alone, somehow. The easiest way to do that is to injure all of you, but me, and make me feel helpless somehow. So we need to work together as a team and have each others backs. We all have different fighting styles, and methods of the force, but they all complement each other. If we pair up right, we could overwhelm him."

"That is actually a good observation," said Obi-Wan.

"He is going to try to make you feel like you cannot do whatever you want to do, win, protect your family, be the chosen one, without the help of the Dark Side. You must resist that," said Depa.

"Master," I said, looking to Yoda, "does this have your blessing?"

Yoda took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Playing to our strength, we are. With us, the Force is."

I nodded. I looked to Ahsoka, who was staring intently at the throne room, and seemed to be processing what was going on. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" I asked her.

"Sure," she said.

We walked a little ways out of earshot. "How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Pumped, I think it's a great plan."

"Yeah. I think it will work," I said. "But we can modify it. We need someone on the ship talking to the Admiral anyway. That can be your job, if you want."

"Hell no! I want to help," she said.

"Snips, Rex found your diary. We know how angry you are. It's okay. I am not going to turn to the dark side if you sit this out. I don't want you to take revenge either. I don't want you going down the path I went down."

Rex came up to us. "Is everything alright?"

"You read my diary!" seethed Ahsoka.

"I just wanted to make sure you were eating and stuff," said Rex. "You weren't talking to me and I did not know what to do."

"Well now Anakin does not want me to help because he thinks I am an angry person and will join the dark side!"

"That's not what I said."

"Honey," said Rex, "you're scaring me. You are scaring a lot of people. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"By invading my privacy?!"

"What is going on?" said Obi-Wan coming up.

"Rex read Ahsoka's diary and told me, and now we are worried about her fighting Sidious," I explained.

"What's in it?" he asked.

"Her reflections about the baby, her anger towards Sidious, why she doesn't want to eat," said Rex.

"Shut up!" seethed Ahsoka.

"Ahsoka calm down. If Anakin kept a journal and Padme read it and found out that he was practicing the Dark Side would you want to know?"

"Well, yes. But isn't that an invasion of privacy?"

"Of course it is. But you lose the right to privacy when you do not take care of yourself. Let me tell you something, when Anakin lost his mother, I asked him to keep a diary to journal his feelings. Anakin said he would only if I did not read it, against my better judgement I agreed. After the fall of the Jedi, I found the diary and took it to Tatooine. I read it because I missed Anakin and came to find out, Palpatine had been seducing Anakin to the Dark Side from day one. Now if I would have followed my instincts and read that diary, I would have discovered Palpatine was a Sith and Anakin would have never been Vader."

"Oh," said Ahsoka. "But, when I left the Order, and then came back and he was a Sith, it was like it was my fault and we can't let Palpatine win!"

I heard that. "Ahsoka, that is what this is about? You never left me."

"I left the Order. You were alone with Sidious, and you fell to the Dark Side. I will never forgive myself."

"Ahsoka, I made a choice."

"You are like my brother," she said. "Bad things happen when we split up."

"Okay Snips, you're coming. We go as a team."